Cooper has landed

My due date for baby #2 was 10/22/02 ten years ago. It certainly had a nice ring to it. However, I had no desire to go to my due date. We still don't know if Jake was on time or not because my cycle was irregular when I got pregnant and the due date I was convinced we had (because Jared and I were apart before that!) was actually not the way he was measuring. So I had no idea what to expect with baby #2, except that we were having another boy. Plus we were having a vaginal birth after having a C-section to add more mystery to the mix.

Like all my pregnancies, I labor for about a month. And go no where. It's ridiculous. I have friends that sneeze and they go from 1 cm to 5 cm. I labor for hours, in REAL labor and I don't get to a 1.5. I had actually considered trying a natural childbirth with Cooper, even though I had no idea what I was getting myself into. My contractions finally started to be consistent on Sunday evening, October 20th (when, again, for the third time, a man at church asked me if I was having twins. REALLY??? You don't ask a woman that even if she IS having twins, but especially a woman who is about ready to pop and already feels like the Goodyear Blimp). My mom had flown in the day before and I'm convinced Cooper was waiting for her to get there.

The problem with my contractions is that they start out of virtually out of the blue and they are hard and close immediately. There's no building. But even though they're hard, at least with Cooper, they aren't productive.

After laboring at home for about 2 1/2 hours and getting in the tub to see if that did anything, we finally drove to the hospital. This was around 2am. We were about 2 blocks away, alone on the road, with no one else in sight. Except for the police car. Who then proceeded to pull Jared over. Are you kidding me?

So we're waiting (well, I'm trying to crawl out of my skin becasue of the contractions which are torture when you're sitting in a car) for the officer to approach our vehicle. He shines his light on Jared and asks him where he's going in such a hurry. (Seriously, Jared wasn't going but a couple of miles over the speed limit. He wasn't going fast enough in my opinion). I didn't wait for Jared to respond. I leaned over my big belly as much as I could so the officer could see me and I said as nicely as I could, "to the hospital!"

He shone his flashlight on me and said, "Well looky there. How nice. I've got kids too. How exciting." He may have even gotten his family photos out to show Jared while I worked through another contraction. I'm not sure. But then he let us go on our merry way, without giving Jared a ticket. If I hadn't been in excrutiating pain, I would have argued with the officer. Jared has been pulled over for speeding, oh, about half a dozen times that I know of and each time the officer has let him go. I got pulled over ONCE on the worst day of my teaching career with a sick baby crying in the back of my car and I don't get one little "where you going so fast?" or courtesy warning for a spotless record. And I got slapped with not one, but two tickets because I couldn't find my insurance card either. So while I was glad we were moving again, I was a little miffed Jared did it again! Is he seriously more charming than moi?

That would only be the first of a few crazy scenarios over the next 12 hours. I was shocked to discover that with the labor pains I was experiencing, I was only at a 3. I wanted to cry. When the nurse asked me what I wanted for pain, I said an epidural. This was insane. It was late, I was tired and some sleep would be nice. That's when the nurse said an epidural wouldn't be possible. Excuse me? Turns out a week before, the anesthesiology group (the only one in Kalamazoo serving both hospitals in the city) decided that they were no longer going to administer epidurals to VBAC women. (Vaginal birth after Cesarean). That would be me. Yet no one cared to let me know. Although a lot of good it would have done. Jared asked what on earth were they thinking? Well, it was a tactic to get more money. We VBACs are at "higher risk" for uterine rupture and have to be monitored more. So if they have to monitor more, they want more money. However, and here was the clincher...IF I wanted another C-section, they'd come at my beckon call to do that. Because those are faster. If women are laboring, who knows how long they'd have to stick around. So feeling beat up and exhausted, I was told at 3 in the morning my choices were: door #1) another C-section or door #2) a natural, drug free vaginal delivery. I didn't want to do another surgery. But after what I'd already been through, I didn't want to do natural either. But here was my chance to "try" it, even if it was forced. So that's what I did.

Pure hell. I can't explain it any other way. For almost 12 hours. It was the hardest, most excrutiating physical distress I've ever been in, with no end in sight. The nurses gave me Stadol, which as Jared so accurately described, is like giving Tylenol to someone with a migraine. It's useless. And it made me mentally miserable. I had tunnel vision and hearing. I couldn't speak the words my brain wanted to say. Why people voluntarily do drugs is BEYOND me. That was also around the time I was feeling nauseous and got sick. And oh, yes, the contractions started to piggy back...when right after one has peaked, another one starts up without giving you any rest on the way down from the first. Yeah...I did that for several hours.

Then, as if it couldn't get any worse, I got stuck at a 9. I was at a 9 for a good hour. That's when the midwife on-call gently suggested that after all I had been through we should think about a C-section since I wasn't progressing and I'd labored so hard for so long already. We had two different reactions to that option. Jared went ashen and his heart sank. He immediately thought: We went through all of that just to do a C-section anyway? My verbal response to anyone who would listen: "I don't care, just get this baby out!"

So while Jared got in his scrubs, the midwife told me to change positions while she went to find the doctor and let her know we were doing surgery. My mom had arrived by this point. I think it was 15 minutes or so before the doctor showed up. She checked me and in that amount of time I went to a 9 1/2. She looked at the midwife and said, "Just hold up this part of the cervix and let her push."

Hallelujah! I didn't care how we did it, I just wanted to do something to get this show on the road. I pushed hard and was told I was a champion at it. It was only for about 30-40 minutes, which impressed the nurses since this was my first vaginal birth. When Cooper came out he had his fist up by his cheek, so I tore. Horribly. I had to be sewn up in 3 or 4 layers, by 2 doctors. And I bled. A LOT. My mom even leaned in to Jared and said she had never seen that much blood before. I was dangerously close to needing a transfusion. The second they got me up to go to the bathroom, I fell flat on my back and passed out. Consequently, I was put on alert and couldn't get out of bed without someone else in the room. And I almost had to have a catheter, but somehow managed to dodge that bullet. Then I had to go to the ER a couple days later due to massive swelling in my feet due to the loss of blood. Fortunately it was nothing a little pill couldn't fix.

People are amazed I decided to have more kids after that. Which is funny because it never crossed our minds to stop at just 2. But I've never been through the ringer quite like that...or since, I might add.

Despite it all, we were so glad to have our new baby who arrived at 11:59am on 10/21/02 and tipped the scales as my BIGGEST baby at 7 lbs. 9 oz. Cooper is named to honor my Grandma and Grandpa Cooper. Interestingly enough, for those who weren't there when it happened, we moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan when I was 6 months pregnant. After spending 2 days looking for a place to live, we were thrilled to discover we were approved to live in brand spankin' new apartments with new EVERYTHING. A dream for starving students living in a variety of dumps for the past 7 years.

The development: Cooper's Landing Apartments
The street: Cooper's Landing Drive
Township: Cooper

No joke. Pretty crazy since we named Cooper before we left Ogden, Utah.  I asked the management if we'd get a deal on our rent since we were naming our baby Cooper. No such luck. Fortunately it was already priced well to begin with.

Here's the new family after a couple of weeks:














This was Cooper at one month. (Reminds me of JJ).

 

 



















Here's big brother Jake holding our little linebacker! He got really big, really fast :)

 
















Here we are getting ready to say good bye to Kalamazoo and make the 2700 mile trek to Forest Grove, Oregon!

 

 

I love this picture of Cooper. He was caught in mid-air!

 

Fast forward 10 years from that "special" delivery in Michigan. I got a text from the Birthday Fairy who said she'd be at our house Saturday night with helpers to leave a surprise on our doorstep.

 

This is what I found Sunday morning.

 

Right as we were getting ready to leave for church, I said loudly, "What on earth? Are you kidding me? Who's knocking on our door at this hour and on a Sunday no less. Cooper? Would you get the door please?" Dutifully, he went to the door, while I grabbed the video camera.

 

He opened it and said, "What the?" and then just stood there in shock. The other kids had run (and crawled) to the door to join him (because if the door is for one person, it's for all of them!) and were giddy to see all the ballons falling into our entry way and started playing in them like a pile of recently raked leaves.

 

Cooper asked if I knew who did this. I said, "the Birthday Fairy, of course." I explained he's crazy if he thinks I'd spend all that time blowing up 30+ balloons.

 

 

 

Where's Cooper?

 

 

 

 

So many balloons!

 

It was SO thoughtful of the Birthday Fairy to pay us a visit for Cooper's birthday. We've only had a couple of balloon casualities and are still enjoying them.

 

Happy 10th Birthday, Cooper!!

It's been quite the decade. I can't wait for many more!