How to Make a Nugget: The Conclusion to the Conculsion.

This is the very end of a very long story about my pregnancy and birth.

You'll find:

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
Part 4 is here
Part 5 is here

the Finale: "Anthony's Paper Pants"

I was overcome with happiness to be on my way to meet my bebe. I couldn’t wait to find out if he was cute or not (although I knew that he would be). I have no idea how people get to this point and don’t know the sex of the baby. The suspense would kill me.  I would have had the doctor tell me if he was going to be a summer or an autumn if the information had been available to me.  The worst part of it was that for the first time, they took Anthony away from me.  They took him to dress for surgery while they prepped me. I hadn’t realized until that point how much his presence was holding me up emotionally.

It was totally worth it though. Here’s why. Anthony is a serious sort of fellow. He’ll almost never let me make him wear anything goofy. Our first Halloween together I bought him a cape and  vampire fangs to glue to his teeth. Did not happen. This turned out great for me because they gave him a paper outfit that was two sizes two small and a rather smart paper hat. He. Looked. Awesome. It reminded me of a friend’s dad who took us to Rome and had to wear Italian sized paper pants over his American sized legs to waddle around the Vatican because he was wearing shorts.  Just Delightful. Then, Anthony further proceeded to keep my mind of things by bolting into the room like a shot when they gave him the word,  hunching down to put his face directly beside mine lest he should see anything unnerving in the other side of the sheet and pass out in front of everyone. He didn’t move from that spot the whole time, bless his heart. He threw his iphone to the 
anesthesiologist to take a picture when Maxwell finally graced us with his glowing presence.

I made it b&w so it wouldn't gross you out. See how I love my readers?

More after the jump.

How to Make a Nugget: The Conclusion- Part 1

This is the fifth part of a series I'm writing about my pregnancy and birth. There's a disclaimer around here somewhere. Anyway, proceed with caution! I appreciate everyone who's taken the time to stick with me though this long, drawn out tale!

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
Part 4 is here

Part 5: The conclusion part one or  “Dr. Bradley Is Dead to Me”

When we arrive at the Hospital, we are immediately in all sorts of trouble with the evil nurse who checks us in.

 

“You don’t know if your water broke because no one ever knows that. Whoa, IT DID! Why didn’t you get here the minute your water broke?!” “You should have been on IV fluids this whole time!” “Why did you bring so many pillows?” “No, I don’t want to see your birth plan. I’ll tell you the birth plan” she said.

I also fibbed a little bit about the time frame for which my water had actually broken because as soon as it breaks, you’re on the clock to have the baby in 24 hours or you’re off to surgery. It’s not really that big of a deal. It just statistically increases the chances of infection. Allison said I could fib, so I did. I was in survival mode at that point and had no morals. It was “Lord of the Flies” and I was trying to keep the conch shell. I knew, right off the bat, that this woman was going to be a pain in my tuchus. Little did I know what was about 

to happen.

More after the jump... if you are really, really brave. 

How to Make a Nugget Part 4

This is part four of a series I'm writing about my pregnancy and my son's birth.

Here's Part 1.

Here's Part 2.

Here's Part 3.

Disclaimer 

If you’re in this for the fashion, look away.  If you find yourself repulsed by a woman’s inner need to rehash every gritty detail of bringing their young into this world, then this post is NAWT going to be to your liking. If you don’t like a lot of wordy words comin’ at you, catch you next week. My feelings won’t be hurt one iota, and I promise I still love you. Also, if you are pregnant with your first child, I will forbid you to read further.  I would never knowingly tell this story to a preggo on her maiden voyage to a birthing suite.

I’ve put off telling the story of Maxwell’s birth, because honestly, it was traumatic. It was not at all what I wanted or expected--- and I really had no idea what to expect.  I feel, now though, almost a year-and-a-half later, that it’s a story that should be recorded. As long as I’m recording it, why not let you all in on it? I let you in on lots of other embarrassing things that I do.  I would never call anything about childbirth unnatural or embarrassing. I’m just saying that there are moments in this tale that I would not describe as being my finest hour.  Hopefully, after all these months of physical and emotional healing I can laugh at this whole experience as I laugh at most everything in life because if you can’t laugh at yourself, God is going to be yukking it up without you.

I was the ginormous ball that drops on this New Year's Eve. Two days before D-Day.

Chapter 4. "D-Day" or "How I Emotionally Abused Mr. Newsfeed"

The waiting game was torture. Everybody you’ve ever met calls you and asks you if the baby has arrived every single, stinkin’ day. No one wants that casaba melon outta there as much as you do. You have the nursery ready, your bag packed, ankles the size of the ancient sequoias.  You are ready for the preggo experience to END and to get a hold of your Nugget. Little did I know that each day was a stay of execution against the agony that I would eventually endure. You should know I almost added “happily” there in the last sentence as an adverb to modify “endure”, and then I got really honest with myself.

My water finally broke on a Sunday morning. By that point, I had been hollering “this is it” for two weeks.  My “Braxton-Hix” or “practice” contractions had been so uncomfortable that it was not an unusual practice for me to grab onto something and squat down to breathe deeply in the grocery store, the shopping mall, church, or wherever this out-of-place behavior would be the most embarrassing to Mr. Newsfeed. Because of the Christmas holiday, he’d been home for weeks bothering me all day and watching me like a ticking time bomb because that’s what I had become. I will never again believe a movie scene in which a woman’s water breaks, she’s rushed to the hospital, and starts pushing. It’s hooey. Got me? Hooey. That would have been a cake walk.

It was in the wee, small hours when I climbed into bed with Anthony to tell him that we’d be meeting our baby that day.  I had to knock him around to wake him up so that I could inflict this special moment upon him. He was sleeping in the guest room because I was such a beached whale at that point that I needed 37 pillows to get comfortable enough to get an even an hour or two of sleep. There was not any room for husbands. He was upset that I was waking him and was reluctant to believe me that “today was the day.” He’d heard it too many times before. I retreated to my room to endure more contractions with my ipod meditations and pillows. In the days leading up to “the big one” I had been skate/snowshoeing/waddling over to the fitness center to walk the day away and the baby OUT on the treadmill.  After my water broke, however, I was NOT interested and had to make myself walk around every now and then.

Mid morning, Anthony finally dared to come seek me out in my momma bear lair. He asked if I needed anything. I very specifically described what I wanted to eat (a food that I’ve never craved before or since) and the kind of water I wanted in a very serious way. I think he finally believed me because I’m very seldom very serious. When he returned with them, I asked that he sit them on the bed and go away. I should mention here that for a good 48 hours or so, I was not anyone with whom you’d want to be having a baby. I’ve been trying to make it up to him ever since.  Whatever.  The day of Max’s birth wasn’t exactly his shining moment, either.

All of our weeks of training and practice was not comforting us in those panic-filled hours. The day wore on and I stared at a window in our bedroom trying to prepare myself for each contraction. I was yelling to Anthony “now!” and “NOW” to indicate the start and end of contractions so that he could time them. They kept getting worse but never really achieved any sort of constant interval that would indicate that Max’s big debut was imminent. I was determined to stay at home for as long as humanly possible. I didn’t want to futz around at the stupid hospital for days waiting to have the baby. In the back of my mind, though, I knew that we had been snowed in for days and the roads had been recently  cleared so it would be great if we could go to the hospital before it snowed again.  I held out until the last possible minute. 

Then, around one o’ clock in the morning, almost 24hrs after this all this had begun,  Anthony skated me out to the car on a thin sheet of ice and away we went. I have some sort of idea about how annoying I had to have been on that car ride. I just knew birth was imminent. I expected to feel the baby start sliding down the baby shoot at any moment on that car ride. I had one foot up on the dash in a sort of crazed squat and was doing and yelling things that were absolutely not part of our Bradley training. I was breathing deeply but that was about it. All bets are off when your body has been squeezing your insides like a giant tube of toothpaste for two solid weeks and you know that cap is about to burst free... also that you are going to be responsible for making sure the toothpaste gets into a good college.

(to be continued)

Conclusion  Tuesday!


If you want it sooner, you can publicly follow the Electric Elmo Newsfeed on your Google reader or Bloglovin' and shoot me an email letting me know you can't wait for the conclusion and you might get an exclusive sneak peak.

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
Part 4 is here
Part 5 is here
Part 6 is here

How to Make a Nugget Part 3

"Baby Class" or "How my Baby Was Born Addicted to Peanut Butter Treats"


(This is part three of a series I'm sharing about my pregnancy and birth. Here are Part I and Part II)

Nugget Feet by Suz Bushman

After the shock wore off about my pregnancy,  I had to either admit that a baby was coming to live with us or that I was ballooning up to 637lbs from eating too many cupcakes. I chose the baby.  I quickly began about preparations for his arrival. I wrote my first ever blog post. The graphics are goo-oood on that old blog so be sure to check that out.  I’ll also direct you to my birth plan. I had it all planned out, team. I was sooooo ready for child birth.  How did I even know to create a birth plan, you may ask? 

Enter Allison. I loved Allison.  It was at Allison’s house that I finally took a deep breath and felt like maybe everything would be fine. It was in her living room that I met my first real friends (since I had been pregnant) who were in the same rickety life boat we were in and having babies. They gave me hope, too.  I had found a Bradley (natural child birth) classes online and dragged Anthony 45 minutes across town in rush hour traffic to go figure out how to survive this birth, and Allison was our instructor. She had given birth to 3 or 4 kids naturally and calmly. She taught us all about husband coached child birth, relaxation techniques for labor, and put us on a special diet to help combat pre-eclampsia (a condition of high blood pressure that affects lots of mothers and often leads to Cesarean births). This diet, if nothing else from the class, was invaluable and likely kept me from being eclamptic when my weight soared to 280lbs the day I went into labor(not an exaggeration, but a lot of it was water weight that came off fairly quickly.) Although, all the healthy eating made me crave peanut butter treats and I would sneak one every couple of days.  In our baby class, we met the following:

-Cierra-A wonderful, lovely girl, who along with her husband Fitz(who is an an awesome folk band that you NEED to see in person when you get the chance) seemed to be super laid back and calm about this terrifying ordeal we were all going through together. They gave me lots of hope and were a good example to us. I still keep in touch with Cierra. She's since had another baby and is STILL a rock star and gives me hope.

-Tiffany-who never said much. She and her husband seemed as wide-eyed and scared as Anthony and I when we watched the videos of emerging babies. PS. These videos had cheerful mothers in them happily skippping out of the delivery room right after birth. I, for one, did not do that.

-Lisa-who'd already had two kids, so when she spoke, I always listened very carefully and took mental notes. Her husband and mine were the class clowns of this operation. I found her husbands jokes to be super funny and my husbands jokes to be super embarrassing.

and...

-Nicole-the girl who looked like she was smuggling a basketball because she was still tiny everywhere but her belly. She ran, worked out, did cardio and strength training all the way though pregnancy-- while working full time. I did a little yoga and watched the entire Gilmore Girls series while laying on the couch, during mine. I was ashamed of myself when she would tell us all she did in a day.

The reason I sought natural birth training out was this: I actually knew quite a bit about the way things usually shake out in the delivery room from my training and education. I’m a licenced EMT and was working toward becoming a Doctor before I ran off to save the world on the campaign trail. I knew that at the hospital, it’s all business. Big Baby business.  A maternity ward is the cash cow of any hospital.  Hence the plush surroundings for mammas who are there for a day, and the cold, sterile walls for heart patients who are there for months awaiting transplants.  It’s wham, bam, thank-you for the epidural- Ma’am.

I knew that wasn’t what I wanted before I’d ever read a word about the dangers of heavy medications being introduced to a fetus during birth. I wanted something real. Something beautiful and meaningful. Even if it meant that I would be in pain. “I laugh at you pain!” I thought. I will be strong and capable and do things my own way just like always. When you get over confident like this, God has really no choice but to humble you. It’s in the bylaws. 

(to be continued... Tomorrow!)

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
Part 4 is here
Part 5 is here
Part 6 is here

"How to Make a Nugget" Part II

This is part two of a series I'm sharing with you about the adventure that was my pregnancy and birth. Part one can be found here. It's a humorous look at the whole thing, so you might enjoy it even if you're not interested in the topic. If you are pregnant yourself, however, I'm going to recommended you click away immediately.

But first...

You should know

that I think

This guy is worth all the morning sickness in the world.

Chapter 2:  “Discarded Cork” or “There Goes the Neighborhood”

Even though the first trimester of my pregnancy was one long look into a toilet, I was still in denial. I think I was mostly shocked that this stage in my life had begun without some big fertility ordeal like I’d always expected. Nothing in my life has ever come as easy. 

I was indeed ill. For three solid months.  I guess my conscious mind was able to chalk it all up to bad sushi if I was able to stay in denial throughout all that. I was sick as in like NAUSEA THAT CAN KILL A GIRL for the first three months. I could not have a conversation with you or smell even your very pleasant personal smell without heaving for the nearest powder room. My poor husband gained a complex because I would often run off to do heavens knows what after I’d come in close to kiss him.  This all occurred (the sick period) during the dog days of summer. Because of course it did. 

Anthony was thrilled about one thing at least. For the first time in our marriage, we desired the exact same atmospheric temperature: freezing degrees Celsius in our little apartment. The only relief I found during that whole period of my life was to dawn my swim gear, scamper down to our freezing pool, and float like a discarded cork in the deep end of our apartment pool whilst small children ran around the edges of the pool shooting water pistols around me and reminding me what I was in for in 5-7 years.  I remember that one day, after a long day of burning my front half to a crisp in search of the relief the cold water offered me, Anthony came to sit with me beside the pool.

“Let’s just give the baby up for adoption” I said, only half joking.  “We’ll give it to a couple who’s longed for the opportunity to parent for years and years.  A couple who’s really got it together and will be sealed to this little guy and we’ll move to Europe because, well, our families would never speak to us again after that anyway”

And in the way that only that only my husband can, he talked me off that ledge by saying something to the effect ...“It’s all going to be okay. Tone down the crazy, Crazy McGee.”

(Max if you’re ever reading this someday, Momma was crazy with sickness and heat stroke when she uttered those words. I would go out with guns blazing and give my own life before I’d let anyone take you from me.)

Little did I know, I was about to lose any company I had in the “I’m not so sure about this” department, because the next thing I knew, I was lying flat on my back on a table looking at a picture of my little peanut—staring in shock and awe with the Mr. at the ultrasound monitor- amazed to see that an actual human form was living and squirming deep inside my guts. I’ve never been so amazed to see anything. Ever. 

Tears streamed down my face before I knew what had hit me. I looked up to see Anthony Elmo, who had, to that point, only cried one time in my presence, and that was when the Phillies had won the World Series, choked up himself. We were toast. We were hooked. We were parents. Anthony claims to this day that he didn't feel like a father until he physically saw Max emerge on the day of his birth, but I know something shook in him that day. It was a very powerful moment.

There were other memorable moments.When we heard his little heart beat. A few days after that, Anthony was joking around and fell on my womb with his knee, and after making him feel as terrible as possible I called up the OB like I was dying and scheduled an emergency appointment, and forced her to let me listen to the heartbeat again so that I could know my nugget was safe.

The day we found out he was a boy with a little boy peep top was only a big day for me because I’d been  telling people from day one that Max a boy and that I could feel his boy-ness radiating off of him, and  I finally had someone with medical training to back me up. I mean, I would have loved to put bows and tutus on somebody, but I knew from the beginning that it wasn’t going to happen.  I was sure to let Anthony have final approval on the girl name while I chose the boy name long before we had photographic evidence of the tiny peepers.

There was the day that we moved to our new city while I was about six months pregnant. It was the hottest day of the year. I felt beyond awful that my poor, sweet Aunties were the ones moving our stuff with Anthony while I sat ill and miserable in the A/C. I won’t mention their ages because you’d never guess it to look at them, but they certainly shouldn’t be relied upon as moving men and one of them has a bad knee.  To top moving day off with a bang, a wave of sickness hit me as I was standing in front of our new neighbors , I tossed my proverbial peanut butter treats right there in the front yard, and they probably thought a big, fat lush was moving in next door. Again, not my finest hour.  The point of this little tangent is, take care of your aunties and don’t ever drink.

(to be continued)

check back Saturday if anyone is still interested 

Chapter 3: Baby Class or How My Baby Was Born Addicted to Peanut Butter Treats

Part 1 is here
Part 2 is here
Part 3 is here
Part 4 is here
Part 5 is here
Part 6 is here

Identity Crisis: Max's Birth Story

I originally wrote two paragraphs of disclaimer here. But I just deleted them. Why warn you? No one warned me and I'm okay. Pretty much okay.

Part 1:  "You Must Be Messing With Me" or  "I'll SCRAPBOOK YOU, Honey!"

I loved being pregnant. Sure, I was big like a house. Sure, I had to pee more than a grandpa hopped up on Redbull , but deep down I loved it. 

Attention.  

Great skin (that I haven’t  experienced before or since). 

Frontsies in line at the drug store, bathroom, toll booths, you name it! Well, maybe not toll booths) 

What’s not to love?!

We’d only been married for about nine months when the stick turned pregnant.

To be absolutely accurate, seven sticks (of varying makes and models) returned with a pregnant verdict before I marched myself into the OBGYN’s office demanding some sort of explanation.  The only fifteen minutes I didn’t have to pee in that whole nine months was standing in the Dr’s office lady’s room holding their “superior, Dr's” pregnancy test that looked exactly like the seven others at home in my bathroom trash.  Who am I kidding? Back then, I would have vaccum sealed the things and thrown them in the nearest dumpster rather than let something stained with urine offend my germ-free fortress of a living environment. Who knew a year and a half later I’d let little packets of human diapers sit around for hours breathing the same air as my family and not think twice about it? This lady(the doctor) had some nerve . First, she outfits a young, impressionable girl with a defective diaphragm and then she giggles at me when I tell her this is my eighth test. She mockingly asks me if I need this one for my “scrapbook.” NO LADY, I don’t need your little pee square for my scrapbook. I need you to tell me what happened to my youth! I’m about to go back out into the world a mother! I’m going to have to get a terrible haircut and forget all about my self-centered existence that I LOVE.  I want to just stay in this doctor’s office forever where I walked in a young newlywed full of promise and with many blissful childless years in front of me.  The biggest thing I had planned this week was a pedicure, and you’re suggesting I start filling out pre-school applications, you dream snatcher! Please, don’t make me go out there!

But “out there” I did go. It wasn’t so bad. At first. I don’t remember a lot of what happened in the hours following my departure from that Dr’s office. I think I confirmed with the Mr. that our lives were essentially over and we agreed to hold off telling our friends and families until we could be sure that things were going smoothly and we could tell everyone properly—with lots of pomp and circumstance.

Immediately following that conversation, I stopped by my dad’s office on the drive home from the dr’s office and blurted out the news the same way that one would announce they’d had pot roast the night before—not bad as far as dinners go, but not particularly anything to write home about either. By midnight that night, we’d called everyone else we’d ever met on the phone and told them. I think I told my high school girlfriends over a facebook instant message.  All before we’d even really absorbed the news ourselves.  I have no idea what possessed us. I could claim that we were smoking a lot of crack that day, but it seems terribly  irresponsible to be smoking crack while “with child,” and more importantly, I don’t know enough about exactly what crack is to state our “crack use” in any kind of believable manner. So the best thing I can do here is claim to have had PTSD from that jokester doctor and her “trick diaphragm” to have announced my baby while he was still essentially embryonic and possessed of approximately ten cells. Clearly, I was lucky to have been banking on ten such extraordinary cells. That whole thing, like many of the great things in my life, could have gone very, very badly for me if at all dependent upon the grace with which I handled the situation.

(to be continued)

Leave me a comment letting me know it you like this sort of thing or if you'd rather I dispense with the baby chat and bring back the shoes.


Update: ( you can find part II here--- if you dare)