Day 17 – A picture of something that has made a huge impact on your life recently

I don't know if anything makes a bigger impact than the birth of a child. Perhaps the death of a loved one. I decided to go with the birth of Richard Arthur Michael Ferens at 10:34PM on Friday May 13, 2011 tho.

Ricky was a much anticipated baby. Although I feared that I would have problems getting pregnant, due to my age and various other reasons, I was apparently an idiot as we got pregnant right away. Scared the bejeebus out of us actually.

Most of my pregnancy was spent with me being paranoid that something would happen. I had 5 ultrasounds and a few fetal heartbeat monitoring tests as well (we found that Ricky responded to the Mario theme song). Due to positioning of certain things I didn't get to feel Ricky moving around much which was bothersome. I know I will hear, and have heard, that the novelty of that wears off rather quickly (especially at 3AM when baby is playing soccer apparently) to me it was worse as I didn't have the reassurance of feeling him moving around. I lived in fear from doctor appointment to doctor appointment just so I could hear his heartbeat. Ultrasounds were amazing to me. We had our first one at around 8 weeks and got to see 'the blob' with a little heart beating. It was amazing.

Finally May 12th arrived. We had our Pre-natal class that night, I had some pains during class but just figured it was gas (hey..I was pregnant afterall). I mentioned during and after class that I was going to go into labour that night and Ricky was coming out on Friday. No if ands or buts about it. The teacher told me not to as the next weeks class was about breast feeding. I told her that I would bring the baby! Grocery shopping afterwards during which I thought.."hmmm, maybe". We got home around 11 and I had Mike put plastic on the bed (as I planned on sleeping all night ya know) just in case. Mike slept upstairs on the couch as I was restless. About midnight I realized that it was labour. Not so pleasant actually, oh well, can't get any worse right? Yah. Labour sucks. I tried a hot bath, ran out of hot water. I tried various positions to get comfortable. All the books are full of crap. Finally around 530AM I went to wake up and tell Mike. His response "can you hold off on it awhile?". Me being the wonderful person I was, told him to go sleep for a few more hours. Around 730 he got up again and showered, had breakfast, made his tea, fed the cats and lizard and finally we left for the hospital around 830. Sigh.

Got to the hospital, yup, beds are all full, I'm not really that far along labour-wise so why don't we just walk around the hospital for a couple of hours then come back (they did give me a shot of morphine and gravol tho). I had been throwing up since midnight and wasn't really down with that so we just went to the meditation room and chilled there for a couple of hours. Went back, still no further along, actually walk this time please. Sigh. Fine. Walk around the hospital, with my vomit dish having contractions while people stare at me. Awesome. Finally my water broke and we could go back.

Admitted and into my own private labour room. With drugs! And Mike and Heather are hanging out while I am quietly labouring. I was totally mellow and dealt with the whole labour/contraction thing calmly. Just ask them. Drugs were great. Ricky was born at 10:34PM. So I was in labour about 24 hours. Throwing up for 22 hours of that. Awake for 36'ish hours by the time I had him. Good times. But it is all okay cause now I have my baby and we can go home with him soon and be a family.

Nope. Due to a fever I spiked during labour and Ricky's heartbeat being a little wonky pre-birth they are putting him into NICU. So I got to hold him twice and count his little fingers and then they took him away from me. Mike went with Ricky at my request and I got cleaned up and then dropped my stuff off at my shared recovery room and headed right to NICU. Back and forth between there and my room for the next 14 hours. I think I got maybe a couple of hours of sleep in there but not much. I was pretty darn tired let me tell you. After a scare that they might transfer Ricky to Montana or Red Deer we got transferred to another hospital in Calgary (the NICU at the hospital I delivered at was full and he wasn't a serious enough case to warrant having to stay there). We got a private room in a pediatrics unit which was nice. He charmed all the nurses there. We were there for five days.

Due to the possiblity of Ricky having an infection they needed to pump him full of antibiotics. He had very small veins so they eventually had to run the IV through his head. It was terrifying for me. I was in continuous fear of pulling out the needle. He managed to pull it out 3 or 4 times which means they had to take him away to reinsert it. I was also struggling to nurse him properly and they had me feeding him formula so he wasn't that interested in learning how to properly.

We got home on Thursday morning and like I promised we went to class that night. There had been another baby, shout out to Declan and his parents!, born the day before Ricky was. He was a Big baby! Almost 10lbs. Ricky looked like a string bean compared to him, 7lbs.

So blah blah, many months have now gone by and I have a 7.5 month old baby. Who is the most amazing human being that I have ever known. I can be in the worst mood imaginable and look at him and be happy. He means the world to me and he has made me a better person.