Waking up on the day you know you are going to become a parent just may be one of the strangest, most nerve-wracking experiences on the planet. We woke up before the sun on Thursday, after ya know a solid full 8 hours of beautiful sleep, and got ourselves ready to go welcome a lil bundle of boyness. I mean honestly, what do you wear to the hospital the day you’re about to become a parent? I feel like that’s a big decision…Or it was just one decision that I used to distract me from the inner anxiety vs. excitement cage fighting match going on in my head at that point…

I must admit, I cried like a baby saying goodbye to Gracie…yes, she’s just a dog, but she is MY dog and my first baby and we were leaving her for 4 days to go off and bring back something that was going to make her no longer the center of our attention…slightly heart breaking, specially since she appeared to know something was UP.

We walked into the lobby just like we had done several times before for all his lil check ups, got to spend all of 5 seconds with my parents (thanks flu restrictions) before registering and ushering ourselves upstairs to triage where they put you in this curtained off room, make you wear the lovely gowns, and ask you 8,000 health questions while strapping you up and sticking you with needles, very calming environment. They had to move the fetal monitor about 5 times while we were there because gymnast baby wasn’t feeling much like settling into one place…it’s fine, we were about to kick you outta there anyways, enjoy your last moments of solitude :).

We got the run down from all the nurses, my doc, 2 anesthesiologist because there was apparently a failure to communicate on who was actually responsible for making me feel like I had no legs, fortunately I got the more socially acceptable one who actually looked us in the eyes when talking to us…phew.

The best part of this whole experience so far was seeing P dress up in the human sized, white onesie cover-all get up with matching booties and head gear…Or it could of been the fact that instead of walking into the operating room, they had to wheel my entire stretcher because I accidentally sent my shoes down to my parents…Oops. But thanks for the extra special treatment one last time. This was way more comfortable then strutting down the hallway with my open back flaps of shame.

We left P in the hallway with another Pop to be ( 3rd timer, much calmer then us), and off I was to enjoy a freezing cold ice box on a skinny table surrounded by nurses trying to keep me calm by talking about dogs and baby names. It was an A for effort, but no way in hell were you going to keep me 100% calm in THAT situation.

Did the spinal hurt? Honestly, no worse than a bee sting…I swear. The WEIRDEST part was the slow and progressive tingly feeling shooting down to my toes ending in complete paralysis of said toes…for a claustrophobic person,this required lotsa deeeep breaths…which was a challenge since the lil air tubey nose thingy kept falling outta my nose, but I clearly survived. The Numbing Doc kept warning me that I’d feel like I wasn’t actually breathing anymore, thanks for a warning of a terrifying experience that NEVER happened…sheesh.

By the time P came into the room, it was GO time. He sat next to my face, we chatted about how to work the camera, and we attempted to not freak out as we waited patiently for those first moments of wailing crying.

For those still reading up til this point, kudos to you….let’s keep going shall we?

Now, for the past few weeks, and literally up until the moment of his birth, AND after, people have asked me why I was having an elected C-section. My preggo experience has been problem free, I’m healthy, no REAL reason to go through with it this way, except for the fact that the lil asian ultrasound lady told us he has a big noggin…THAT is enough reasoning for me. Validation of this choice came when the moment Dr. Allen started pulling the lil guy out she said ” Ooooo myyyy, that is quite a lovely large head” in her oh so soothing, monotone, never excited voice, love her…followed by the other doc “You made a good choice in this one”. THANK YOU, LETS MOVE ON.

A few tuggie tugs later, he was OUT, at 9:44 am, 2 hours and 15 minutes after being admitted to the hospital like a hotel guest (why would ANYONE wanna do it the other way?!) .

No question about his lung capacity because homie screamed and wailed for a solid 35 minutes post-eviction. They threw his lil squirmy, squishy body over the blue curtain of sanity like a muppet for me to see. And by the time they had him over to the lil scale, getting cleaned up, they were asking us to name this like cheesy covered 8lb 1 oz, 20.5 inch long baby.

Now, prior to eviction, P and I had one final conversation about the name. We had our front runner, but we were still on the fence. That was until we overheard Dr. Allen talking about her weekend plans, with what we anticipated was her son Luke… well, that’s just fate. As the nurse asked us what his name was, I just shouted out Luke! We named a baby, we’re responsible people now! Later we found out, Luke is not Dr. Allen’s son’s name…oh no…it’s her First Babies name…her dog…in actuality this is WAY more fitting in my mind, kindred spirits Dr. Allen and I are :). So yes, technically we named our baby the same name as our doctors dog…judgement not appreciated.

Luke rocked his tests (we feel the need to put his 8,9 Apgar scores on his college applications to Harvard) and spent the next 20 minutes crying with pops as mama was sewn back to normalcy before heading off to the “Wait til you can move your toes and they make you suck one ice cube at a time” room, which for me was about an hour, I believe it was my will power of forcing feeling back into my toes that sped up this process, and my desperate desire to eat more than one ice cube at a time. They finally let me get my hands on this lil squishy, incredibly mobile in-utero, baby who is now our Son. Shwhat?

Luke Thomas, you’sa champ. God is Good.