The longest gestation period in the animal kingdom belongs to the ELEPHANT…approximately 95 weeks (almost TWO YEARS)!! It probably looks like a gruesome murder scene after elephants deliver their calves and I’m curious what an elephant giving birth looks like, but I don’t even dare google that. Speaking of googling, once I made a horrible mistake of googling a medical term and those images stuck with me for far too long (more on this later when we get to the joys of nursing). Could you imagine if humans were pregnant for almost 2 years – what would our babies even look like…they might be so big and developed that they just might crawl straight out of the womb! *shudder*
ANYWAY, luckily, we humans are only pregnant for 40 weeks and 40 weeks is long enough, thankyouverymuch. But of course, as much as my luck would have it, the little man decided that he wasn’t quite ready to meet his mama and papa and waited it out for an extra week – the longest week of my life!
As you can see, I was thrilled to be overdue
As I watched my due date approach and then pass, it was extremely disappointing and so anticlimactic…as much as I was so over being pregnant and so incredibly uncomfortable, my husband and I had been anxiously awaiting his arrival since the day we saw him in peanut form to shower him with love and kisses! It was as if Christmas morning had arrived and Santa decided that he would deliver presents on Boxing Day instead. Yea, it was THAT disappointing. Every morning after June 17th, I would wake up hoping that I would experience contractions, wait all day long hoping to feel contractions (by the way, no one WANTS to feel contractions because they hurt, A LOT), and then go to bed at night praying that I would go to labor in the middle of the night. And so it was, for a week, day in and day out.
Finally, on the morning of June 24th, I woke up as my husband got ready to leave for work to what I could only assume were contractions…sharp pains that radiated from my back forward to my belly. My contractions came probably 10 minutes apart all day long, but as the day progressed, the contractions intensified and started to feel as if someone was putting my lower body in a vice. All I could do was lay down in the fetal position until each contraction passed. I like to think that I have a high pain tolerance, but wow, these were something else. Finally, after the insistence of my father, my mother, my husband, and my grandmother (yes we were all living in the same house at the time, I know, how Asian of us), I called my doctor. I explained to her that although the contractions were still about 7 – 10 minutes apart, the intensity level was close to a 7/8 (FOR PAIN REFERENCE ON A SCALE OF 1 – 10: 1 = easy to carry a conversation, like normal and 10 = cannot talk, much less breath through them). She said to come in to get checked, but as I had two other friends sent home for being only in early labor, I insisted that my husband and my sister finish his dinner before we finally left for the hospital around 7:30pm.
on the way out the door
driving away
Funny enough, as we drove to the hospital, my contractions started to come closer and closer together and as we pulled up to the hospital, they were coming about every 2 – 3 minutes apart! By the time I checked in, changed into the hospital gown, and had a nurse examine me, I was already 5 cm dilated – success, I wouldn’t be sent home!
Once the epidural was administered (oh my god, the epidural was HEAVEN – pain went from a 10 to a 0 in a matter of minutes), the final waiting game began…
To make a long story short, I ended up having a c-section because the little man was actually breech (butt down rather than head down)…a little detail that my L&D nurse COMPLETELY missed. IDIOT. In fact, when she came in to check me at 7 cm, she said she could clearly see his head. My husband asked her how much hair the baby had and she told us he was bald (FYI, Asian babies are rarely bald)…which we thought was strange since both of us had a full head of hair when we were born. ANYWAY, when I was 9 cm and ready to push, the doctor came in and as soon as she looked down below, she asked the nurse if she hadn’t noticed that she was looking at the baby’s butt and said I needed a c-section right away. My sister said she actually heard the doctor say “Help, emergency! We need to get this baby out right now, he’s crowning his own butt!” as I was rushed into the OR. Thank God for my doctor…without her, who knows what could’ve happened!
Thankfully though, we welcomed our healthy baby boy, Ezra Zane Yehjoon Lee at 4:49 AM, June 25, 2013 weighing in at 7 lbs 6 oz and measuring 21 inches long!
our first family photo minutes after his debut!
looks at that sweet little face!
Seriously, it was love at first sight…41 long weeks of waiting to meet this little guy and he was finally here. I was in awe of every little detail – his fingers, his toenails, his ears, the little hairs on his arms and back (yes, he was a hairy little one when he was born haha!), his little raspy cry, his mongolian birthmark on his thigh…it was worth every single second of every single minute of every single hour of waiting. He was perfect in every way and everything that I could’ve ever imagined and prayed for.
*SIGH* Now I understand why people say that they miss the newborn stage…although the Ez is only 9 months old, I have to agree, I do miss the newborn stage, enough to want another one, hee hee! (I know, to all my Facebook followers reading this, I sound crazy because most of my FB statuses indicate no more future children haha!) Or maybe I miss the naivete of being a new mom, not knowing what was in store for me, just fueled by the excitement of becoming a mama.
Silly me…I never knew what it really meant to be a mom, I now realize. Nor did I even fathom what it meant to have postpartum depression. Sure, I had heard about it and acknowledged that I might get PPD since I had battled depression before, but I was not ready for it at all. These past 9 months have been the most challenging times I have ever faced in my life. As many ups the little man brought to our life, I probably had just as many downs thanks to that bitch PPD. These are the happiest moments of my life, but then I feel like shit sometimes and then I feel guilty for feeling like shit because I know I should be happy and then I feel sad. And cry. And then get angry. And then I feel hopeless. And then guilty again because there are people dealing with way more serious problems than I am. And then I feel selfish. And then I feel like nothing. And then the cloud lifts and I can BREATHE and see things the way they are – perfect. And then things are good for a spell until another trigger and there I go again, hurtling into the darkness. And then back up…then back down…up…down.
It’s been a hellish roller coaster ride, but I would not change a single thing. Okay, that’s a lie because really, I wish my brain would just chemically fix itself already, but I would not change the having a baby part and being a mama because I can’t imagine my life without my sweet, silly, happy little baby…I love him so. His existence alone has taught me what love truly is and that is the greatest gift he could ever give me. Even after he grows up and gives his heart to his future wife and has his own little babies to shower with his love…he will always hold a special place in mine, just for you, my darling Ezra.
“I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always, As long as I’m living, My baby you’ll be.” -Robert Munsch
Beyond 40 Weeks 