To conclude the TTLY series, it was at this exact moment one year ago that Stu took this, the first, video of Blake. He weighed 8lb 11oz. He had the biggest mouth I’ve ever seen when he screamed. And still, to this day when he smiles, he opens that mouth up huge. It’s the greatest, most fantastic smile. And he hands out those smiles and laughs generously all day long.
Thanks for humoring me, it has made me so nostalgic to see all of these videos again. I’m shocked that a year has passed. I didn’t know so much joy could be bundled up in one year.
I love you more than you will ever know Baby Boy, Happy Birthday!!
This is what a person can turn into after almost 4 hours of trying to push a baby out and no painkillers. If you think I’m bragging, I am. I totally earned that right, even though none of this was on purpose. It was a terrifying night, and talking about it this morning, we both still shuddered. My husband was a rock star, I never could have survived that ordeal without him. My sister also had a leg, which was no small feat. Those 2 sweated with me the whole time. I know for a fact that they both experienced a good deal of post-traumatic stress (besides that they were both very sore physically too). This experience affected those with me even more than it did me. Mom and Daina were moral support for Stu, and I am so so so grateful they were there for us.
Now, Stu talks about the Seinfeld episode where he sees this girl in different lighting and she goes from being really pretty to super scary. He said that’s how fast I changed too. We finally got Blake out, he tended to the baby for awhile, and when he turned around to check on me, I had blown up to 3 times the normal size of my body. My vision was shot (even if I could have opened my eyes all the way), and I was STARVING. I ate so much. Breakfast was great there. I was just so happy it was over.
This is the last video we took because we didn’t know that things were about to get ugly. So so so so ugly. I believe it was about 2 hours from this video that I was in full force petocin-supplemented labor, and the anesthesiologist informed us that she “wasn’t comfortable” giving me an epidural because of the fact that I had been on heparin during the pregnancy. We later found out (after meeting with the hematologist) that that was all bunk. So, hip-hip-hooray for unnecessary mind-numbing pain!!
More waiting. I saved you a couple videos of us discussing contractions. Blahblahblah. This one is funny because we thought the epidural would be here soon and we would get to…wait for it…SLEEP! hahahahaha! whew. funny. I was actually asking Daina to bring my pillow and blanket. Silly silly parents to be.
Stu and I got nostalgic this morning. This day last year, I went into labor with this big ‘ol hunk that is trying to eat leaves off my patio right now. Mom and Daina had gotten in the night before, and little did we know how grateful we would be to have them! Stu and I thought we wanted this private experience together, but it turns out that if they don’t let you have the epidural, but they do let you have the petocin, you need ALL the leg-holding and moral support you can get!!! I think we took 3 or 4 videos before we had him, so I’ll post them all. Bear with me, this is almost over. They aren’t really all that fascinating; it’s just fun to marvel at our complete naivety. We totally thought this was no big deal, I would get the epidural when I wanted it and everything would be fine. I guess ignorance is bliss. Don’t worry, there aren’t any scary videos. Once things got scary we were WAY too busy to think about the camera. Unless you consider the post birth video of me is scary, which it is. That’s for tomorrow.
This day I made Daina go for a (long) walk with me, trying to force Blake out. I didn’t realize that by about noon, my water had already started to “break” (sometimes this is confusing to women who have already been trickling for months-sorry). After our walk, we decided to go for a pedicure. It was leaving the salon that I had the real breakage. The “oh no I have to run back in and get a towel” kind of breakage. We went straight to the hospital from there, and I was very sad we did, cause then they wouldn’t let me go home. I wanted to labor at home for awhile. I was delusional at this point and thought that that was some sort of key to my success. Well let me tell you, once your water breaks, they strap you down, so if you want to get anything done first, hurry!
Getting away from ranting and debating, we return to our previous theme, TTLY. We didn’t video every single day, so we have some breaks every now and then. This one is especially flattering of me. Pregnancy tends to lose it’s “glow” sometime around the 39th week.
If you haven’t been keeping up, look a few blogs back to see the explanation for this rash of videos. Besides that we were different emtionally, this time last year I was 9 months pregnant and my feet were 3 times their normal size. Stu is pretty mortified by this one, when really, it’s me who should have been embarrassed by those poor, swollen feet that I could only fit into flip flops and couldn’t reach to paint. October 7, 2007:
Wow, this one’s pretty dull, but keeping with the theme, this is what we were doing this time last year. On yesterday’s, I thought it was funny that I was all offended that Brenda bet I would have Blake on October 18th (he was born on the 17th). In every one, I’m sure that I’m about to go into labor. It’s best that I didn’t know I guess. Check out Stu’s gnarly facial hair. And that old kitchen. Ugh. At least I had countertops though.
Not talk to ya later. The title stands for “this time last year”. In one of my insomniac nights, I found the videos we took when we first got our video camera last year in anitcipation for Blake’s birth. Because the whole thing was new and novel (the camera and the pregnancy), we took some mundane videos. I find these videos so interesting though, now that I see how different our lives were. You really might not find these as interesting as I do (home videos are only so exciting to outsiders). But in honor of Blake’s upcoming first birthday, I will be putting up videos for each corresponding day last year, all the way up to the big day. Woo hoo!! Never before seen footage!! Feel free to watch (or not), but if you enjoy a good belly shot, then that, my friends, you will get.
