At long last it’s
here. This piece definitely took me longer to write than any other that I’ve
written. I don’t know that I’ve ever written and deleted so many lines from one
of my writings before. I must admit that
I’d wanted to write this quite some time ago, but today was the day it felt
like it fit. I definitely didn’t mean for the time to slip too far without
having written this letter. As we know,
I’m getting older, and my memory isn’t quite what it used to be. Liam is already 6 months old to the day today.
He was born on Friday, January 13, and I am writing this on Friday, July 13. Once again, I’ve attempted to compile this story/letter
completely from memory. There are times that my memory isn’t the best, and I
end up remembering details a bit differently than they happened. That isn’t an
attempt to purposely lie about the events, it’s just the way I remember them.
I’m pretty certain Annie will have corrected any major discrepancies long
before this hits The Unsound anyhow.
Again, knowing my son will someday read this is my motivation to ensure
it sees the light of day. Liam, enjoy
your story.
It should have been an early indication – everything will be
exactly as it was last time, only opposite. Wait, what? Let me back up a
little.
By now, Lilah was a year and a few months old. She’d already
developed her incredibly spunky personality that, I hope, she will never lose.
Obviously this story is not about Lilah, but I wanted to highlight that fact so
I may return to it later. Now that Lilah was over a year old, we’d started
talking about trying again. We knew we didn’t want the two kids to be spaced
too far apart, and we’d also remembered it had taken us a long time with
Lilah. We’d decided June or July would
be a good time to revisit the idea, but fate had other plans. I’m told things
happen for a reason, and certain things aren’t coincidence. I suppose I’m open
to that idea, as this one was pretty strange.
We’d just finished another day at work. Actually, we’d
finished another week at work. It was Friday evening, and we went to the store
for some odds and ends. We returned
home, and I put Sesame Street on for Lilah (our regular after work/daycare
routine), while I got on the computer to check my various regular websites.
Annie had disappeared, but that was normal, as she normally changed after work.
About 10 minutes later, she returned down the hall. Never the one to be subtle,
she once again bluntly proclaimed “I’m pregnant”. This time it was about as
matter of fact as if to say “It’s Friday”, or “I’m hungry”. “I’m pregnant”. I
sort of just looked at her and laughed. I thought she was joking. I mean, of course
she was joking. I may have even said “whatever”. Then I saw her face, and knew
she wasn’t joking. Annie never has had what I would call a poker face. She is about
as easy to read as a Dr. Seuss book.
Now, if you’ll remember, we found out that we were pregnant
with Lilah on the same day that my mom found out my dad’s cancer was to the
terminal stage. That day? May 13th,
2009. This particular day? Friday, May 13th, 2011. Pretty hard to make this sort of thing up,
and I wouldn’t want to. Who would believe such nonsense?
After taking a few minutes to wrap our heads around the
extremely eerie coincidence, we decided to load up and go tell our parents in
person. They were the only ones we told
(again) until after Annie was 12 weeks along.
Annie’s pregnancy seemed to go about as opposite from her
first as could be this second time around. She was plagued with constant nausea
and heartburn from early on. During her first pregnancy, she experienced a
constantly kicking, moving baby. This time around, she would have to push, poke
and prod at her belly to elicit any type of movement. It was fairly obvious from the beginning that
this pregnancy was going to be very different from her first. We just didn’t
know how much, yet.
It wasn’t until August that we got to learn the gender of
this particular baby. Of course, I was
going to be happy no matter what gender the baby was going to be. All I wanted
was for the baby to be healthy. As long as our baby was health, I could care
less what we were having. That was until we found out we were having a boy.
Then I was ecstatic. We were going to
have a boy. Lilah was going to have a baby brother. We were going to have one of each. It just seemed so perfect to be having a boy
this time around.
Subsequent ultrasounds, however, revealed that there may be
a bit of a problem. Nothing serious, we were told. Just something to monitor.
It appeared that his kidneys were not doing what they were supposed to do;
something about them being dilated. We
were told that it was nothing to be too concerned with, and that it was very
common for boys, but something to keep an eye on. They said it was usually
something that would most likely correct itself. Later, we would also learn that Annie
supposedly had gestational diabetes (we were and are skeptical that she ever
had it in the first place). That was
mostly controlled with a strict diet, which Annie did wonderful with.
Pretty much everything that could have been different from
her first pregnancy, was. We had
constant checkups in Reno to ensure his kidneys were still doing ok. They never
did return 100% to normal, but they did get better, and by the time he was
born, pretty much back to normal. Because she was diagnosed with gestational
diabetes, the doctor was worried the baby could get too big. Because of this,
they didn’t want Annie to go too far past her due date, so they scheduled an
induction for Wednesday, January 11th.
Yet again I waited until the last minute to finish painting
the nursery. Since Lilah had her own room, I would prepare the spare room for
the baby boy. Little did I know what
kind of a job I was in for. The previous
occupant of this house had a son themselves, and his room was this spare
room. They had, in their typical
fashion, painted the top boarder of the walls with an oil paint stencil. This
one was dinosaurs. Not only did these
dinosaurs run around the entire room, but there was glow in the dark paint on
two of the walls and the ceiling. I had
no clue of the job I was in for. Those walls required multiple (like 4 or 5)
coats of primer and paint to cover. The stencils weren’t so bad as the glow in the
dark paint was. Just when I thought I’d had it covered, I’d turn out the lights
only to see the glow through my fresh paint job. Eventually I was able to get the paint to
cover, and the furniture put together. We had a new nursery that would not be
empty for long.
The evening of the 11th, Annie and I dropped
Lilah off at my mom’s house to stay the night. We wanted to have one final good
meal before going to the hospital, so we went to Mazatlan to have a nice dinner.
After that we made it to the hospital, and Annie was given whatever medicine
they give her. I was more or less occupied with work emails and the 49ers
message boards. You see, Saturday would be their first appearance in the playoffs
in like 10 years, so I had things to keep my mind off the waiting. Oh yeah, I was
also keeping Annie company and doing husband things…or something.
That evening was pretty routine. We watched a little bit of
T.V., then went to bed, trying to get some sleep knowing it may well be our
last evening of real sleep for a while. I didn’t do too bad, but I don’t know
that Annie got much rest. They pretty much mess with her every half hour or so.
She was a good sport that first night, though. I probably would have lost it on
them multiple times, but she knew they were only doing their job.
The next day was supposed to be the main event. In fact, I
made sure to get up early enough to take a shower and shave real nice so as to
look refreshed and clean for all the pictures with my new son. I knew that he
would be born on Thursday, we would be in the hospital for the night, go home
on Friday and get to enjoy the playoff game on Saturday. I had it all planned
out. Someone forgot, however, to inform my son of said plan. Thursday wasn’t spent having a baby. It was
spent (by Annie, anyways) in pain and frustration. It was spent in what I like
to call, for lack of a better word, purgatory.
There was no advancement on the baby’s part. So we spent it visiting
with family, watching t.v., and monitoring my work emails and 49ers message
board. Oh and being an attentive husband…or something. That evening Annie
wanted me to get some real food, so I went by Susanville Supermarket and smuggled
in some chicken strips, a salad and sugar cookies for her. That evening was spent like the previous,
until it was time to “go to sleep”. This time, the nurses decided they were
going to work on what they could tell was our last remaining nerve by showing
up every 20 minutes to poke, prod and “check” Annie. The culmination of no baby, no sleep and
constant harassment by the nurses finally pushed us past the breaking point. I
think I may have snapped at one of the nurses, but by that time I was starting
to live in a big blur.
Friday rolled around, and when I woke up, I looked at Annie
and said “Don’t worry, one way or another, our kid is being born today”. I knew
this was taking an emotional, as well as physical, toll on her. It certainly
was on me, so it had to be. Friday was
another long and trying day for us, as the nurses kept checking Annie to see if
she’d progressed any. Finally sometime in the afternoon, the doctor decided she
was far enough to break her water. This was good news for us, since that pretty
much guaranteed we were nearing the end. We were only somewhat right. After he
broke her water, it was still quite a long process (or so it seemed at the
time) before she was in full labor. The
anesthesiologist came around and gave her the epidural, but it didn’t quite
work like her last one. This time she was still feeling a lot of pain through
it. They re-tried it, but still couldn’t seem to get it right. Eventually, she
just ended up having to push through the pain (which she did, and did well I might
say).
It all happened so fast, but I remember holding her one
minute, and the next she was telling me she had to push. The doctor made a
dramatic entry just in time to catch the baby. Annie didn’t push but for a
couple minutes, and before we knew it Liam Kade was born at 4:21 p.m. on that Friday, January 13th. There was
no staging like last time. There was no theater lighting, and no breaking the
bed down into a chair. It really did happen that fast.
When Liam came out, my first thought was “Wow, he looks just
like his sister”. The doctor suctioned
him out, got him to cry, and then the nurses took him over and laid him on the
warmer bed to clean him up. By that time, he had stopped crying. I remember
thinking that was odd that he wasn’t still crying. I stayed with him until he
was all cleaned and wrapped up, and then took him over to Annie to meet her son
for the first time. We wanted him to try to nurse as soon as he was born, which
he did very well. I was amazed that he
still hadn’t cried much, but figured he was just happy to be out of there and
getting some food.
After he ate, our families got to come in and meet him. We
also got to see Lilah for the first time since we dropped her off Wednesday
night, which was quite a treat for us.
After a brief visit with our families, they moved us across the hall to
our other room for the night. I was happy to be over there, because I knew we
were only one short night away from being able to go home.
We were ready for what we figured was going to be the
longest night yet. After all, when Lilah was born, we got zero sleep. Lilah
cried all night, and when she did fall asleep, the nurses would sense the quiet
and come harass us/wake up Lilah. Surprisingly, however, that wasn’t the case. Liam made it through birth, his first bath,
and pin pokes without much more than a few fusses. I would be lying if I said I
wasn’t at least a little concerned. It was just honestly so different from what
we were used to. I even asked the nurses if we should be concerned, to which
they laughed off as if I were joking, assuring me that he was perfectly
healthy. That night was probably the
best night of sleep we had since we’d gotten to the hospital. The nurse was
fantastic, and let us rest. Liam pretty much slept as much as a newborn baby
can sleep on his first night. I woke up to breakfast being brought into the
room, and started to panic that I hadn’t woke up before then. I felt guilty
that I’d slept through the night and that Annie had to take care of Liam all
night. That’s when she told me that she also got a full night’s sleep.
After feeling refreshed and relieved, the doctor came in to
give us the go-ahead to leave. It never felt so good to be home as it did that
day. It had been a long three days, but it was well worth it in the end.
From the day he was born, Liam has been the exact opposite
of Lilah. That’s not a good thing or a bad thing, but it certainly is nice to
have two opposite personalities. Now that Liam is getting older, his favorite pastime
is to lay around and smile. He doesn’t get too worked up, and is very content
to occupy himself. One of my favorite things to do is watch Lilah interact with
him. Sure, we can make him laugh, but not like his big sister can. She can merely
walk into his line of sight, and he lights up. It truly is one of my favorite
things to watch. I can’t imagine what I
did to be so lucky, but we certainly do have a perfect family.
