Happy Birthday Baby Pete!

Three years ago, I won the naming rights to our first born.  Well, actually, I purchased them with the promise of a motorcycle and/or rebuilding an old hunk of junk car (a.k.a. his beloved '69 Nova).  He would like to point out that he never got to rebuild the Nova and that his lovely new Harley is not in anyway related to the original promise, but I digress.  I stole the idea from EAA, a sorority sister of mine, using my maiden name as his first name, so Peterson Gregory Kowalske was born.

Having completed tax season, and a week of the billing that goes with it, I settled in to enjoy my maternity leave.  A wax, a pedicure, a barbeque with friends and online tetris filled my weekend.  Monday, feeling just a few contractions, I picked up Ryan from his boat returning for a mid-patrol port call in the pouring rain.  We did his laundry and went grocery shopping but I don't even think we ate dinner because we were both so exhausted (he from a month of patrol, and me for obvious reasons).  About 3am, I woke feeling a little crampy and it wouldn't go away so I shook Ryan awake to tell him it was time for some drugs.  He brushed me off, half asleep, thinking I was telling him to take some drugs for his stuffy nose and snoring.  Finally I convinced him to take me to PNMC to at least get checked.  He was so convinced it wasn't time that he left all the bags and pillows by the front door.  (And don't even try to tell me it was my job to remember the bags, I was in labor thank you very much.)

On the way there, I swear to God, he hit every pot hole in Virginia.  I started writing down the time of the contractions, and was pretty surprised to find them 4 minutes apart.  When we arrived, I got changed and the nurse checked me, declared me at 5cm and sent me to a L&D room.  I think everyone was shocked, because I still wouldn't have described the pain as unbearable, just mildly uncomfortable!  My birth plan was pretty flexible.  It involved an epidural and a healthy baby and that's exactly what I got.   The epidural man arrived, popped it right in and I just relaxed watching the contraction on the monitor, happily not feeling a thing.  Ryan, poor guy, tried to get a little sleep, since I'd ruined his chance to recover from the patrol.  Later in the morning, maybe 6am, our friend DS stopped by on his way to work and we were having our own little party on the L&D floor.  Things were going fabulously, and then I vomited. 

According to my L&D nurse, women often vomit during transition.  Funny that no one had mentioned it during our baby classes, but now I know!  The nurse handed me this tiny little suction tube and suggested if I closed my mouth around it, it would just suction the vomit neatly.  I closed my mouth, vomited, and promptly sprayed the nurse.  I'm sure the suction tube was a nice theory, but it was kind of like throwing up through a straw.  Once we had that all cleaned up, the nurse checked and delcared me 10cm and ready to push.  Pete was not going to make thing quite that easy, he was posterior, or sunny-side up.  The wonderful L&D nurse (who probably wished he was assigned to someone else by this point) suggested I flip over a few times to get him to turn.  It worked, and just a few pushes later, Pete arrived.  Ryan cut the cord, the staff cleaned up the baby and handed him over to me.  He was perfect.  He is still perfect.

After delivery, all I wanted was a ham sandwich.  Remember how we went shopping but never got around to dinner?  PNMC policy is that women in labor cannot eat, so by the time Pete was born at noon on Tuesday I was raging hungry.  KP and SL came over to meet the new baby, and of course, bring a ham and cheese croissant from the deli in our office building.  Best damn sandwich I've ever had. 

I'm still amazed how easy labor was, compared to being pregnant.  I'm not joking when I say I would give birth every month for 9 months if I didn't have to be pregnant.  In fact, the first time was so easy with the epidural and pitocin that I decided to give it a shot drug-free the next time.  That time was just as easy, but it's a story for another time.

Happy 3rd Birthday Pete!