Well, it's about time to announce it. Micah Neal Meyer arrived safely, though after some delay, on Friday December 16th weighing in at 7 lb. 11 oz (after taking three very big poops--two of them all over his mama) and measuring 20 inches long. He has beautiful eyes and skin like his daddy, and is the most beautiful thing in the world. I dare anyone to say anything different. :o)
My mother asked me recently if I was surprised at how much I could love him. I'm not sure that I am, though I am most certainly amazed at how beautiful he is to me. Maybe that's the same thing.
I've been working on this post in my head for a while. I wish I could have written it right after he was born, but that didn't work out. So here it is now the best I can recall it.
Becoming a mom wasn't what I thought it would be. I don't mean being a mom, but rather becoming one. My pregnancy was very disconnected from my labor and delivery, which were very disconnected from the child placed in my arms. I'll try to explain.
You spend nearly nine months being pregnant, which has all sorts of stages, perks and drawbacks to it. You know there's a baby inside you, and that somewhere around 40 weeks later you'll get to meet that baby. You know it's the process by which you become a parent. You can feel the baby kicking and see him or her moving around inside you and it's very cool. It's a long, process that's both amazing and annoying (I'm not going to lie--I'm not one of those people who was completely in love with being pregnant. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike it, but I wasn't sad about it being over. I enjoyed it for what it was and was ready for it to be done when the time came).
During pregnancy, you know there's a living thing inside you. But you can't see him or her. You can't really visualize this small person waiting to be born. Everything you see is a cartoon drawing of a baby all curled up in a womb. Cartoons aren't real. So, you're waiting for this cartoon baby to arrive, and you know it's going to come when labor starts. So you begin anticipating labor once the final weeks arrive. Except you're not really sure you're going to immediately know when it starts, because it's different for every person. So you spend time thinking about your body and analyzing things and wondering how you will know. And in my case, you really hope your baby will arrive on a certain day so that he or she will share a birthday with both you and your grandpa, because that would be just cool. And even once that momentous day passes and there's no labor, you start thinking about how you're eating up your six weeks of maternity leave with waiting, and that's just not cool. So you start doing things to encourage labor to happen. And people keep asking when the baby is coming. You spend a good deal of time thinking about the whole labor thing.
Eventually, finally, you know. It's time. You're in labor. Now the process begins. You tell your husband. You call your doula (birthing assistant). You think about the books you've read and the classes you've attended and the way you've been hoping your labor and delivery will go. You've spent a lot of time thinking about and preparing for this big, long, difficult process. And now it's here. You breathe, you move, you rock your hips, you smile. You think about embracing the whole experience--everything you wanted to do so that you could say I brought my child into this world with strength and confidence and it was beautiful, not the horrible scream-fest they show in movies.
My labor was good, on the whole. But longer than anticipated. It started late on Wednesday night when the practice contractions I'd been having for well over a month were coming regularly for about two hours, and then suddenly changed into real ones. With a practice contraction, your whole belly tenses up and gets tight like when you flex your stomach muscles. With real contractions, they move downward like they have a goal. At least that's how it was for me. I managed to sleep through most of the night (after we packed up and drove home from our free hotel room in Tofte, courtesy of the Bluefin Christmas party), and in the morning Neal made us eggs benedict for breakfast. I had determined that I was not going to the hospital until it was really necessary. Around noon I went in to get checked out and was dilated to 3 cm. Around 2:00 or so my doula arrived at our house, and around 3:00 I finally consented to leave. That proved to be convenient timing because around 3:30, as we were waiting to get into our room, my contractions suddenly decided to get a little more serious then they had been.
During my labor I ate, took a shower, threw up, drank lots of fluids, threw up some more, ate some honey for energy, threw up some more, employed lots of pain management strategies, and did my best to embrace the pain as a productive process. Later in the evening when my child still wasn't arriving and the contractions were amazingly strong my asthma started acting up, I knew I was dehydrated and using up my stores of energy, and finally was willing to consider some pain medication. Haha. Too late. They expected a baby around midnight--right on the due date. After another four hours of non-stop contractions, I was finally panicking a bit. We were a 2+ hour ride from the nearest big hospital if something went wrong. What if I ran out of energy? What if I couldn't push? What if the baby went into distress? What if I needed a C-section? I couldn't even imagine the though of getting into a vehicle for 2 hours--I was in so much pain.
Fast forward (I'm skipping a lot of details here). The baby was a bit stuck, so the doctor decided to help get him or her out. That meant time to push. This part of the labor process is its own special process. After hours and hours of trying very hard to do nothing but let the contractions do what they are supposed to, it's finally time to do something, which was awesome. Apparently it's not uncommon to have a bit of a time figuring out exactly how to push. Fortunately, I had no trouble at all. I was real good at the pushing part. About an hour and a half later the baby was unstuck, which meant progress could be made, and about another half an hour after that, my son was born.
Speaking of son, I think mine is ready to eat, so I better stop here for now. The point of this post was supposed to be more about the becoming a mom part than the mechanics of having a baby part, but oh well. As hard as labor was, it was also good, and I would do it the same way all over again.
My mother asked me recently if I was surprised at how much I could love him. I'm not sure that I am, though I am most certainly amazed at how beautiful he is to me. Maybe that's the same thing.
I've been working on this post in my head for a while. I wish I could have written it right after he was born, but that didn't work out. So here it is now the best I can recall it.
Becoming a mom wasn't what I thought it would be. I don't mean being a mom, but rather becoming one. My pregnancy was very disconnected from my labor and delivery, which were very disconnected from the child placed in my arms. I'll try to explain.
You spend nearly nine months being pregnant, which has all sorts of stages, perks and drawbacks to it. You know there's a baby inside you, and that somewhere around 40 weeks later you'll get to meet that baby. You know it's the process by which you become a parent. You can feel the baby kicking and see him or her moving around inside you and it's very cool. It's a long, process that's both amazing and annoying (I'm not going to lie--I'm not one of those people who was completely in love with being pregnant. Don't get me wrong, I didn't dislike it, but I wasn't sad about it being over. I enjoyed it for what it was and was ready for it to be done when the time came).
During pregnancy, you know there's a living thing inside you. But you can't see him or her. You can't really visualize this small person waiting to be born. Everything you see is a cartoon drawing of a baby all curled up in a womb. Cartoons aren't real. So, you're waiting for this cartoon baby to arrive, and you know it's going to come when labor starts. So you begin anticipating labor once the final weeks arrive. Except you're not really sure you're going to immediately know when it starts, because it's different for every person. So you spend time thinking about your body and analyzing things and wondering how you will know. And in my case, you really hope your baby will arrive on a certain day so that he or she will share a birthday with both you and your grandpa, because that would be just cool. And even once that momentous day passes and there's no labor, you start thinking about how you're eating up your six weeks of maternity leave with waiting, and that's just not cool. So you start doing things to encourage labor to happen. And people keep asking when the baby is coming. You spend a good deal of time thinking about the whole labor thing.
Eventually, finally, you know. It's time. You're in labor. Now the process begins. You tell your husband. You call your doula (birthing assistant). You think about the books you've read and the classes you've attended and the way you've been hoping your labor and delivery will go. You've spent a lot of time thinking about and preparing for this big, long, difficult process. And now it's here. You breathe, you move, you rock your hips, you smile. You think about embracing the whole experience--everything you wanted to do so that you could say I brought my child into this world with strength and confidence and it was beautiful, not the horrible scream-fest they show in movies.
My labor was good, on the whole. But longer than anticipated. It started late on Wednesday night when the practice contractions I'd been having for well over a month were coming regularly for about two hours, and then suddenly changed into real ones. With a practice contraction, your whole belly tenses up and gets tight like when you flex your stomach muscles. With real contractions, they move downward like they have a goal. At least that's how it was for me. I managed to sleep through most of the night (after we packed up and drove home from our free hotel room in Tofte, courtesy of the Bluefin Christmas party), and in the morning Neal made us eggs benedict for breakfast. I had determined that I was not going to the hospital until it was really necessary. Around noon I went in to get checked out and was dilated to 3 cm. Around 2:00 or so my doula arrived at our house, and around 3:00 I finally consented to leave. That proved to be convenient timing because around 3:30, as we were waiting to get into our room, my contractions suddenly decided to get a little more serious then they had been.
During my labor I ate, took a shower, threw up, drank lots of fluids, threw up some more, ate some honey for energy, threw up some more, employed lots of pain management strategies, and did my best to embrace the pain as a productive process. Later in the evening when my child still wasn't arriving and the contractions were amazingly strong my asthma started acting up, I knew I was dehydrated and using up my stores of energy, and finally was willing to consider some pain medication. Haha. Too late. They expected a baby around midnight--right on the due date. After another four hours of non-stop contractions, I was finally panicking a bit. We were a 2+ hour ride from the nearest big hospital if something went wrong. What if I ran out of energy? What if I couldn't push? What if the baby went into distress? What if I needed a C-section? I couldn't even imagine the though of getting into a vehicle for 2 hours--I was in so much pain.
Fast forward (I'm skipping a lot of details here). The baby was a bit stuck, so the doctor decided to help get him or her out. That meant time to push. This part of the labor process is its own special process. After hours and hours of trying very hard to do nothing but let the contractions do what they are supposed to, it's finally time to do something, which was awesome. Apparently it's not uncommon to have a bit of a time figuring out exactly how to push. Fortunately, I had no trouble at all. I was real good at the pushing part. About an hour and a half later the baby was unstuck, which meant progress could be made, and about another half an hour after that, my son was born.
Speaking of son, I think mine is ready to eat, so I better stop here for now. The point of this post was supposed to be more about the becoming a mom part than the mechanics of having a baby part, but oh well. As hard as labor was, it was also good, and I would do it the same way all over again.
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