Laughter is the best medicine

I wanted to be able to keep track of the funny things to remember from my labor and delivery...

these are the ones I can remember....

So on Monday the 5th, John and I did a lot of walking around trying to get things going. It was so weird though because as soon as I woke up that morning, I had some sort of crazy hunger. I mean...crazy. First off, all I wanted was fast food...and A LOT of it! So we started off our morning by going to McDonalds...I got TWO meals..and ate them within SECONDS. John said I looked "ravenous". And...I did.

I was having pretty bad contractions every 6-8 minutes at that time and I was in my pajamas still and I am sure I looked like such a weirdo. I was in the corner, hugely fat, with TWO meals and every 6-8 minutes I would close my eyes really tight and quietly sing to myself....HAHA!!!

John thought it would be fun to take some REALLY flattering pictures of me....I decided it would be fun to try and look as sexy as possible...

....haha!!

When John and I get really tired we get REALLY goofy. It's almost as if, for a while, we get a huge burst of energy. After Gianna was born, we were just trying to fall asleep and John was EXHAUSTED but all of a sudden he hopped up and started dancing around with a blanket on his head. I was DYING of laughter, which sucked because A) it sort of hurt and B) Gianna was sleeping on my belly! So every time I laughed it was like a little earthquake for her! I tried to get some pictures but only ended up with these two.

Dr. Pepper is my guilty pleasure. In fact, I was VERY addicted to them before I got pregnant. John made me sign a contract (on a sticky note...hehe) saying that i PROMISED i would not have ANY dr. pepper (or any other caffiene) during my pregnancy. I of course tried to weasle my way out of the contract here and there but he would never void it! I did have a sip of my sisters Dr. Pepper one time, but I came home and confessed to John. Uhg.

Other than that, I never had ANY! I was so excited to have the baby so that I could have a Dr. Pepper. It's been 9 months and I still feel the "need" for them! It's awful. I told John that since I went so long without them, that I will try not to have one very often at all...but im not sure thats going to work out...which stinks because they are so unhealthy and put on the weight! But addiction is addiction! :)

Anyways, John surprised me by calling the kitchen and ordering me a cute little dr. pepper after I had Gianna! I didn't even know he did it so when they walked in I about DIED!!! :)

This is me attacking my Dr. Pepper! :)

MMMMMMMMM SO DELICIOUS!

After you give birth, they offer you a nice little "Special" meal, to celebrate. John and I both got the "Sirlion Steak"

We just about peed our pants when we took the lid off of our plates...the steak was about .01 ounces.

It was DISGUSTING too. I couldn't eat mine. But the sparkling cidar was FABULOUS! :)

John thought this moment was really funny...enough to note it in our labor notes...haha hes so silly.

Apparently I was at about a 9 and my contractions were AWFUL. I had a contraction and was not doing so good during it, and right when it ended I said, "Pull up my socks!" ...John thought it was funny that I cared. What can I say...I have always hated saggy socks!

at about 7.5 centimeters I started to feel A LOT of pressure with each contraction. But I still was cracking Jokes. Anyone know of Frank Caliendo? Well, we love him. If you know his Bush impression then this might be funny to you, otherwise youll just think im a weirdo..hehe

But apparently I told the nurse that the pressure was getting really intense and then looked at John and said "We have to de-pressurify!"

...haha!

Once I hit 8cm the nurse called my doctor. He apparently lives on "moscow hill" ...in moscow I assume, and so it took him FOREVER to get to the hospital. The plan was that I was going to have him break my waters because it can speed things up a bit so I couldn't WAIT! I wanted this all to be over with! But my doctor took his sweet time. Then when he got to the hospital he came into the room (in street clothes) just to check out the situation I guess...but he didn't check me or do anything besides stand there. I remember thinking "HELLO!?!?! ARE YOU GOING TO GET THIS THING OUT OF ME!!!!!!!!?????"

Well, I was in a different world in my mind and didn't hear what was going on, but eventually I said "What is he doing!?" (I thought he was still in the room) and the nurse told me, "He went to change his clothes" ...

I thought to myself "WHAT?! I AM DYING, I AM LITERALLY DYING, AND HE WENT TO CHANGE HIS CLOTHES!?" but i figured it would be quick and that he would be right in...

NOPE...

I have no idea how long it took, it seriously felt like hours to me but eventually I really felt the urge to push and kept telling my nurse that I needed to. She would tell me we were just waiting on the doctor and I would freak out a bit saying, "Well how the heck long does it take to change your dang clothes?!?!!??!"

Then finally, the doctor came back in and said, "So, do you still want me to break your waters?"

and I yelled at him, "WELL, IF IT MAKES IT GO FREAKIN' FASTER!!!!!"

He paused and then said, "THAT is a yes!"

Everyone laughed...but i was mad!

Of course I want you to break my waters, I have been sitting here for (what felt like) HOURS waiting for you to! AH!

My step mom Chris, and my cousin were both born on September 6th. I don't know why, but I REALLY wanted Gia to have her OWN birthday.

At 11:45pm I looked up at the clock...I had just finished a contraction and the doctor told me that on my next one, I could push. I looked at him with horror in my eyes and said, "Is she going to be born before midnight?!??!?!" He told me that it would be incredible if she was, since for a first time mom it usually takes a while and so she likely would not be born before midnight. I said "Oh thank goodness!!!" Everyone in the room laughed. then I remember saying, "it's a good thing and a bad thing...I want her out! But not before midnight"

Hehe...She came at 1:12 (which apparently was really fast for a first time mom anyways....)

John was leaning over me singing into my ear during a contraction, like I liked him to do and I was having a bad contraction. Back labor. Uhg. I reached up to grab onto him, and somehow I reached up in a backwards headlock maneuver and grabbed on. I don't know why, but it made my back feel a MILLION times better, so eventually that became the new way I liked to grab onto him. I told him to stop touching me, and to stop singing....but loved having him in a headlock. haha! Apparently everyone in the room kept laughing about it, but I don't remember that at all.

So like I have said before, my saving grace during contractions was the song "I am a child of God"

We would sing the first verse over and over and over. The first verse was a perfect legnth for my contractions, but sometimes we had to repeat it a couple times. I don't know the other verse by heart so we stuck with the first one. Anyways, I eventually got REALLY sick of that song, and so I told John a contraction was coming on, like I always did...and he leaned down to my ear and started singing I am a child of God, like HE always did...

But I stopped him and said, "No! Not that song!" so he started singing something else, and I said, "NO! Not that song either!" Then I heard John sort of studder and fish around in his brain for another song...and although I was hurting from my contraction, I remember that in my head I was laughing at how funny that situation was. The poor guy couldn't do anything right at that point. haha!

John dislikes the fact that I ALWAYS appologize for things that really dont need to be appologized for. Well, I think he is right...

There were a few contractions there where I would let out some LOUD grunts or "screams" and after each one, I would appologize to the nurse. HAHA! She kept saying, "SCREAM! That is what you are SUPPOSED to be doing! Don't appologize, you are doing AMAZING!"

Also, I would tell John things like, "DONT TOUCH ME--I'm sorry"..."STOP SINGING!--I'm sorry" "JOHN! MORE ICE!--I'm sorry"

I was a very polite laborer :)

I remember saying this next one, but I don't remember how "Far along" everything was. John said that Gia's head was half out already.

But at one point I said, "JUST GET HER OUT OF MEEEE!!!! JUST GIVE ME A C-SECTION, I DON'T CARE!"

Everyone laughed.

I am glad no one took me seriously or I would have been really angry afterwards. haha.

When you finally leave the hospital, before you walk out they are supposed to check your braclets to make sure they all match and that you ARE taking the right baby home....They totally forgot to do that with us, so they just walked us out to the car. After we got ourselves in, our nurse came RUNNING out! They told us what had happened and said "STAY HERE!" and so they brought everything out to us. The girl that was doing all of the paper work was cracking up because it had never happened and she felt like she was working a drive-thru :)

John and I talked, just hours before we ended up going to the hospital, and he asked me, "Do you think you will be one of those ladies, like from the videos (birthing class videos) who are just completely naked?"

I laughed and said "NOT A CHANCE! That is so weird..."

Now that I look back on that statement, I realize how stupid it is...I mean HELLO...your vagina is out for the whole world to see, what is the big deal about them seeing your boobs?!

Anyways....we both laughed at how weird it would be...

Well...Once I was at the hospital I was getting more and more hot...so i kept asking to take my clothes off (and appologizing for it, of course) and I ended up being completely naked.

We laughed later at how funny it was that we had JUST talked about it being such a weird thing...and yet there I was...naked as a j-bird!

I loved chewing on the ice at the hospital. My mouth would get SOOO dry during contractions. So John was my little ice-man. He had a cup of ice and a spoon and after each contraction I would order the nurse to put the oxygen mask on my chest and I would order John for the ice.

I ordered these things by saying "OXYGEN!!!....ICE!!!"

Well, sometimes John was obviously pre-occupied.

My eyes were closed most of the time, so after I ordered for ice...I would just open my mouth, and usually the ice would magically appear :)

On a few occasions, however, I would say, "ice" then open my mouth...and nothing would happen!

Instead of opening my eyes, or saying "JOhn! Hello! Ice!?" I would keep my mouth open and make a little whine-y sound. I sounded like a little bird asking for a worm.

I was surprised (and still am) at how well breastfeeding has been going. Not that its COMPLETELY flawless, but it's been easy.

The first time she latched on though, it HURT. We learned quickly that Gia sucks in her bottom lip and so I have to roll the skin on her chin down AFTER she latches so that she will be on right. But those first few seconds until I can get her bottom lip right, HURT...EVERY time..(even still! the lactation consultant sait it was normal though...so thats good)

anyways...the funny memory I have of this was the first time she latched on. The words that came out of my mouth were..."Yowza!!" and "I-chee-wa-wa!!!"

.....I don't remember ever saying these words in my LIFE....I don't know why THEY were the first words to come out, but they were...haha!

When Gia's body finally was fully out of me, she apparently pooped a TON! John said he looked down and saw all this "dark stuff" and asked the doctor what it was. The doctor said, "That's baby poop! She probably lost about a pound!!!!" So....technically I delivered a 9.5lb baby....that's what I like to tell myself. ;)

I handed Gia over to John at one point so that I could go pee. As I hobbled over to the bathroom, I heard John start to talk politics with Gianna. She was being a bit fussy, but the sound of his voice was calming her...we happened to be watching the o'reilly factor at the time...and so as I walked to the bathroom I heard John say something like, "You see Gianna, if the President would just do *such and such* then *such and such* would happen and we could pay down our debt!" Then he went into some more detail..

It cracked me up. SUUUUCH a John thing to do..i loved it :)

Immideatly after Gianna was born, everyone in the room noticed her little pigglet noises. I mean, she LITTERALLY sounded like a little piglet! Everyone thought it was sooooo cute, and we would all laugh and smile everytime she would do it.

Eventually it got really bad and she even started to weeze a bit. They brought in an oxygen sensor and her oxygen was at 100% (Which they say is rare in babies....i think she gets her great lungs from her daddy because he has like 150% oxygen intake! its weird..)

anyways...Once her pediatrician came in, we had realized that she just sucks her toungue into the back of her throat. The doctor said its actually really normal and wont hurt her.

She has stopped doing it as much, it really only happens if she is real worked up about something...but when she does it REALLY makes me smile...I call her my little piglet :)

When Gianna was born i instantaniously became FREEZING cold. They also put her up on my chest immediately after John cut her cord...I was oo-ing and aw-ing at her when I felt a warm sensation come over me....then I said "Oh I think she is peeing on me!! It feels SO GOOD!"

...hah! ew!

Our first day home with baby, I had taken Gia into our room to feed her becuase she was being SOOOO fussy in John's moms arms and it had been a while since she fed so we just assumed she was hungry (which she was...but that's not the point of this story) When I took her into the room, I unwrapped her out of her blanket...She likes to feed skin-on-skin so I always have to undress her. WELL....let's just say we had experienced our first blow-out. I had my cell phone next to me, so I called John and was going to tell him to come in because it would be the very first poopy diaper that either of us changed and I thought he would appreciate doing it together. (He did. He is so sentimental, When I told him I thought he might like to change it together he got a little emotional and gave me a big kiss....ahah. It's funny the things that make you happy as you get older!)

Anyways, John and I were both SO tired, and a bit delirious, we had been saying weird phrases and wrong words all day...but for some reason we both CRACKED up at this one..and now we say it all the time..

I called him and told him I needed him in the room "ASTAT" ...I mixed up ASAP and STAT....

we both just died laughing.

Ok I saved this one for last because it is a "TMI" situation for sure...

So if you aren't interested in hearing about hemroids....turn back now! :)

Seriously...this is actually sort of graphic and gross...so turn back now.

Ok...So, first off...Before I went into labor, John had said how he did NOT want to see or look at anything "down there" and I said "GOOD!" ...we both thought it was sooo gross.

Well, as we learned from the whole "I will never be that lady who is laying there buck-naked" story...things change when the situation arises!

John ended up being really interested in everything that was going on.

He said that at one point when I was pushing he kept seeing all these "skin tags" appearing....he didn't understand what was happening until he realized that they werent skin tags at all..they were HEMROIDS popping up!

Yes, I know, that's disgusting...but hey, that's what happens when you give birth, give me a break people!

Anywho, I just thought it was funny that he thought they were skin tags...

HAHA...

I love these moments...

I am so glad I have someone in my life who can keep me laughing....even during labor!