Tyler Enters the World....The Whole Story

Whew! Life has been a whirlwind the last week and I feel like I'm just getting back into the swing of things.
Going back to the last couple blog entries....as for the Baby Contest.....Denise was the winner, first guessing the correct sex, then being the closest in date and time. In the Den WOULD HAVE won....had he not (purposely) entered the year 2008. Betcha smack'n your head over that one, aren't cha now, D?? :) lol Denise....email me your mailing address and I'll send you your Starbucks gift card. :) As for the rest of you CHEATERS....may the fleas of a thousand camels attack you in your bed tonight. Shame on you!

Now...For those of you who asked....here's how our beautiful Tyler came about....

Last Tuesday morning I noticed that the baby wasn't moving around very much. I drank some OJ and went to lay down for a bit and monitor the baby's movement, a habit I've gotten into since reading about fellow photographer Blair Banks experience and subsequent Baby James Project, which you can read more about at the link to the right (and if you're pregnant, or know anyone who is, you should definitely read it). After 20 minutes of still feeling nothing, I decided to head down to the dr.'s office to make sure everything was all right. When I got there they hooked me up to fetal monitoring and tracked the baby's heart rate for about 30 minutes or so. By this point I had felt the baby move and was dreaming about a sausage-egg-cheese croissanwich from Burger King on my way home when the midwife came in and said that they were concerned about a few "dippity-dips" that the baby's heart rate had taken in the last 20 minutes. Dippity-dips. *snort* That midwife is so dang perky. But I actually really like her a lot. So they sent me over to the hospital for yet MORE fetal monitoring on the big dog hospital monitors.

I mentally canceled my sausage-egg-croissant fantasy and drove over to the hospital, calling Steve-o to update him. "I'm sure it's nothing" I told him, but he decided to call our rock'n babysitter Erica anyway, and meet me there.

When I got to the hospital, they hooked me up to an IV (which I *still* have a bruise from) and started a small drip of Pit to simulate some minor contractions, to see how the baby handled the stress of contractions. An hour later....baby had done just ok - Dr. Kitchens was monitoring MY monitor from his office and wanted me to stay yet another hour just to be sure things were a-ok. After yet another hour (by this point I'm salivating over the idea of lunch...Hmmmm, I think a Big Mac is in order after the morning that I've had), the nurse comes in and announces that the Dr. thinks everything looks fine and I can go home. Yay! I sit up (since my back is absolutely cursing my name for laying flat on it for the past 4 hours) and prepare to go home, when the baby's heart rate drops VERY low.....and stays that way for 7 minutes. Enter a new nurse, who literally runs into the room when the baby's heart drops and makes me lay back down. Steve and I eyeball each other skeptically, thinking that this nurse needs to go for some decaf because obviously, I messed up a monitor when I sat up and she's freaking out for no reason. She adjust me, adjust the monitor, said that Dr. Kitchens didn't like that and he was going to call back in just a minute. I said, "are you sure that it wasn't just because I sat up?" She was adamant that it was NOT just because I sat up. My original nurse comes in and says, "honey, you just bought yourself a ticket for a C-section"

"All I did was sit up!"

Apparently, sitting up was not the culprit, because my heart rate stayed steady, while Tyler's dropped, indicating that it wasn't the machine, but was indeed the baby.
Steve started making the phone calls, telling his parents to pack up and drive down from Atlanta, informing family and friends that we were having a baby. I was fretting over the fact that my house was a mess and I'm pretty sure that I have at least 2 pair of dirty underwear laying inside out and on the floor in the bathroom. Can't we wait and do this later?? AFTER I vacuum the floors and bathe my children, and pack a bag and...oh crap, I haven't even taken a shower yet today. And what about that Big Mac??
"No food. No drinks before surgery"

*insert curse word here*

So we begin the waiting....I try to mentally and emotionally rearrange my expectations for childbirth and prepare myself for the awful reality of a c-section ( I do NOT do well with surgery, doctors, hospitals, large needles, nudity in front of strangers, etc).

At 5:15 I leave Steve-o behind to get scrubbed up and I go into the O.R. to get prepped for surgery. First big task: A Spinal.
Oh God.
I HATE epidurals, spinals, whatever. I think they are more painful than childbirth itself. The "little prick" they give you to numb the area first is much more painful than like a "bee sting". Maybe a monster mutant Optimus Prime Killer Bee from the heart of Africa, but certainly like no bee sting I've ever known. Then they pull out the 4 ft long needle that they thread into your spine to numb you from the waist down. By this time I'm trembling uncontrollably. The nurse soothes, "oh, honey...are you cold?"
Um....no.
Slightly apprehensive at the idea of thick needle being jammed (painfully) into my spine is more like it.
After 5 excruciating minutes, it was finally over and I laid back to get prepped for surgery. They put up a paper "tent" thing across my chest so I didn't have to see anything (thank God) and started to get me ready.

Humility is.....

Being laid out on a table under a very bright light. Completely naked. Weighing more than you have in your life. In front of 8 strangers. 2 of them men.

At this point in time I'm feeling......hot. Extremely hot. Sweating even. And then...nausea. Light-headed. Tunnel vision.
"I don't feel good"
"what's that honey?" (everyone in the south calls you honey)
"I. don't. feel. good. I'm going to pass out"
The anesthesiologists eyes widen. "Oh! Don't do that!" as he grabs a bag of something and squeezes it into my IV. Instantly I feel better.

Doctor: "Let's get started. Can you feel that, Tammi?"
Me: "no"
Doctor: "how about that?"
Me: "no"
Doctor: "Good, because I've already started"
Nurses: chuckling.

Ha Ha. Hardy har har. Freaking HILARIOUS.

Enter Steve, camera in hand and we sit and wait. Steve tries to settle me by quietly talking about our honeymoon. It worked.
And a few minutes later, I feel some tugging, the nurse says, "get your camera ready, dad".
A cry.
"It's a boy"
Steve: "It's a boy!"
Me: "It's a boy?!"
Inside my head: "holy crap! I have 3 boys!" :)

Tyler announced his entrance to the world by promptly peeing all over the place as soon as he hit the air in the O.R.
Apgar scores of 8 and 9 and a perfectly healthy, beautiful baby boy is ours.

Good thing we monitored that heart rate. Good thing I listened to my gut and came in that morning. Good thing his heart rate dropped *just* before I was about to leave. The dr. said that there was merconium (simple definition: baby poop) in the sac (that's bad) and that the placenta had also started to calcify (simple definition: harden and quit working). Had we left that morning and not gotten Tyler out, things could have potentially ended much differently, and/or tragically. We were grateful that things came about the way that they did. And we are grateful for Tyler, who honestly is the quietest, sweetest, most easy going baby ever.