It's been a pretty crazy day--Nick is ONE year old today. :) Greg and I woke him up by singing Happy Birthday to him. He looked at us like we were nutcases and then started screaming for his bottle. Instead of a bottle with formula, he got a cup with whole milk. Nice way to start your birthday. But the rest of his day went pretty well. I didn't want to just take him home, and Greg had to work late. So I went out with my fellow ELL teachers. We went to Olive Garden, because breadsticks are awesome and calories don't count on birthdays. (Anyone's birthday. Really.)
Nicholas was very happy eating Italian food. I think he might have even been babbling with an Italian accent. He ate calamari, fried zucchini, toasted ravioli, pasta, shrimp, and breadsticks. (A very full boy.) Then they brought him a lava cake and sang to him. He loved it, especially the part where he grabbed a fistful of chocolate cake and stuffed it into his mouth. Happy birthday boy. Actually, it's probably the company that he liked best. Nick loves it when the attention is on him, and restaurants are good for that. I'm glad we went out; I feel like he had a nice birthday.
This time last year I was having agonizing back labor. Not a pleasant day, but Nick was the happy result of it. I look at the pictures of him and it's hard to believe this is the same kid. The above picture was after his first at-home bath. The picture below was in the hospital soon after he was born. Six pounds, barely, and 17 inches long. Wow. I think I'm going to post a facebook quiz I did awhile back, about having your first child. I'm just reminiscing. I feel happy that my baby is one, but a little sad, too, that he's growing so fast.
I originally posted this on February 8, 2009, when Nick was not even three months old:
Here you go mommies - a different kind of survey for a change - it's all about your first born! Just copy and paste it in a new note for yourself!
1. WAS YOUR PREGNANCY PLANNED? Yup. My doctors thought that I had a fertility disorder, so Greg and I decided to go off of birth control in February so that I could go on fertility drugs in June. Being a teacher, I wanted to time my pregnancy so that I'd have a long summer maternity leave. The OB said it was possible but not likely that I’d get pregnant without the drugs. But fate intervened.
2. WERE YOU MARRIED AT THE TIME? Nope. Greg and I were engaged in July 2007, and we got married last June (2008). So I was in the midst of planning a big wedding and had already purchased a dress. Thank goodness I had purchased a dress with ties in the back, so it could be loosened.
3. WHAT WERE YOUR REACTIONS? Complete denial, and then fear. I didn’t believe it. It was the first time I could have possibly gotten pregnant. My biological clock must really have been ticking. I was even at the doctor’s office getting a blood test, and the lady drawing my blood congratulated me. I told her I thought it was a false positive, and she laughed and said that there are no false positives, only false negatives.
4. WAS ABORTION AN OPTION FOR YOU? Not after I got the amnio results back. I really wanted to have a baby.
5. HOW OLD WERE YOU? 29. I turned 30 before Nick was born.
6. HOW DID YOU FIND OUT YOU WERE PREGNANT? I was very tired and I thought it was due to my graduate school program and working 3 jobs. “Do you see one line or two?!” He said two, and I couldn’t believe it. Plus coffee started making me nauseous. So I bought a home pregnancy test. I had to have Greg verify the results. “Do you see one line or two?!” He said two, and I couldn’t believe it.
7. WHO DID YOU TELL FIRST? Obviously I told my husband, then some friends at work. I wanted to ask how accurate home pregnancy tests are. I also needed someone to cover my hall duty so that I could go to numerous high-risk OB appointments. I waited to get the doctor’s call to tell my parents.
8. DID YOU WANT TO FIND OUT THE SEX? Oh yes. Nick is the 1st grandchild for 3 grandmas and 3 grandpas, so we wanted him appropriately attired. I didn’t care if he was a boy or a girl, because I wanted one of each.
9. DUE DATE? November 28th, 2008.
10. DID YOU HAVE MORNING SICKNESS? A bit. Mostly coffee turned me off which is weird, because I am very caffeine dependent. The bigger problem for me was extreme hypoglycemia during pregnancy. I had to eat every hour at least.
11. WHAT DID YOU CRAVE? Strangely enough, I wanted foods I’d eaten as a child. Spaghetti O’s, Cheetos, Macaroni and Cheese. Fake, orange, processed foods. I usually steer clear of heavily processed stuff, but suddenly I was craving it. Towards the end I ate a ton of goat cheese and water crackers daily.
12. WHAT IRRITATED YOU? My growing belly. I felt huge and the doctors kept telling me to eat more protein and iron. Between that and the hypoglycemia, I felt bloated all the time.
13. WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CHILD'S SEX? male
14. DID YOU WISH YOU HAD THE OPPOSITE SEX OF WHAT YOU WERE GETTING? Nope. I will want a girl for the next one, though. It’ll be hard if I have another boy, because my husband says he only wants two, no matter what. I would like to try parenting one of each.
15. HOW MANY POUNDS DID YOU GAIN THROUGHOUT THE PREGNANCY Around 40.
16. DID YOU HAVE A BABY SHOWER? I had 3 baby showers, actually. They were great and everyone gave us all the stuff we needed. One at my dad’s, one at my grandma’s, and one at work. Greg had one at his work, too, so I guess we actually had 4. I ended up with 37 outfits in the 0-3 month size. At least Nick was small, so he’s still in that size.
17. WAS IT A SURPRISE OR DID YOU KNOW? Well, I knew there’d be showers, I just didn’t know when.
18. DID YOU HAVE ANY COMPLICATIONS DURING YOUR PREGNANCY? I was high risk from the beginning. (Post RNY, thyroid disease, hypoglycemia, etc.) So I saw a maternal fetal medicine specialist every few weeks and had those super ultrasounds done all the time.
19. WHERE DID YOU GIVE BIRTH? Edward Hospital in Naperville.
20. HOW MANY HOURS WERE YOU IN LABOR? I was induced at 38 weeks due to growth restriction with Nick. After 12 hours of pitocin (and back labor), I was only dilated 1 cm, so they told me we could try again in the morning or do a C-section. Nick’s heart rate kept dropping, and they thought the pitocin was causing it. So I had a c-section.
21. WHO DROVE YOU TO THE HOSPITAL? My husband. Since I wasn’t actually in labor, we stopped for tapas on the way.
22. WHO WATCHED YOU GIVE BIRTH? Only doctors. They ended up having to give me a general anesthetic, so they wouldn’t even let Greg in.
23. WAS IT NATURAL OR C-SECTION? C-Section. The spinal didn’t take, even after 7 needle sticks. I guess I had calcification in my spine pretty severely. So they completely knocked me out. Not too bad, considering the morphine.
24. DID YOU TAKE MEDICINE TO EASE THE PAIN? Yup. Narcotics during the back labor, and Morphine during and after the c-section. I had a fun little button. I stopped using it after 1 day, though, because it made me pretty sleepy and high as a kite. They gave me Vicodin, too, to go home on.
25. HOW MUCH DID YOUR CHILD WEIGH? 6 lbs. even. He was short, though, 17 ½ inches. That’s growth restriction for you.
26. WHEN WAS YOUR CHILD ACTUALLY BORN 9:15 p.m. on November 17th.
27. WHAT DID YOU NAME HIM/HER? Nicholas James. My husband and I had a hard time agreeing on a name, and so we made lists and bought books for months. It was hard because I didn’t want to name my child any name I associated with students I’ve taught. So many names had negative connotations, especially with boys. I even had my 3rd and 4th graders make me lists, and we finally decided on Nicholas. James was after my maternal grandfather, who passed away in 2007.
