My baby is all growed up now....

We took him to Chuck E Cheese last night.  I have a feeling it won't be much longer that we will get to go to Chuck e's...sigh.

We had a great time and Mom and dad and Jonathan came.  They have a new machine that puts the kids' pictures on a card like a credit card and Ash did it like 30 times!  Jaden let me pick one today to keep and came back again with some more and said "You can have these , so that you will be able to remember what I was like in my childhood"  LMBO!  That boy is hysterical.  We go to Home Depot tomorrow so he can tell the girl, Hi, my name is Jaden, do you remember me?" to which she always answers by giving him a hard time...Oh yeah, I remember you George.  No, no it's Jaaaaaaden, Jaden.  Oh ok Jeff.  No no listen its Jaaaaaden, ok? Jaden.  She will continue a few times but he won't stop so she has to give in and say Jaden eventually 

When Ash got up today and I told him Happy Birthday, he said very matter of factly, umm presents come with birthdays.

I had a hard time this year.  He still loves dinosaurs which is what we did his cake in but there are only so many plastic dinosaurs you can buy... we went to walmart, and I thought he does need clothes...they are ugly!  I found one numblebee (bumblebee) transformer shirt that lights up...on clearance...3.00!!  SCORE!

We were having a blast at Chuck E's last night when all the sudden I smelled smoke.  Who in their right mind is smoking in Chuck e's???? I turn to see a guy hiding it in his hand...yeah dipwad the smoke trailing up from your hand doesn't give it away....His girlfriend says "Your not supposed to smoke in here, as he gives her a drag

I see a worker cleaning off a table and ask her if there is smoking allowed. (like I didn't know) No, is there someone smoking?  Well duh, who got their nose dissected here people?  You can't smell that?  Another worker came towards us in a few minutes looking aound so I try to motion behind her where he's standing and wouldn't you know he looked at me right then...gasp.  She continues on like she doesn't see anything and then calls me over and asks if that was him.

I think, ok they will ask him to leave so we go on with playing until I look up and he's coming towards me.  Robert was standing right next to me but this guy continues to get in my face and say "You better not tell"  Ok the guy is totally wasted, and I think I got a buzz off his breath!  At this point I haven't seen any males working there so I'm concerned as to how they are going to get this drunk skunk outta here.  I see a boy loading paper and tell him don't let those girls try to get him out he is plastered and didn't even care that Rob was standing right next to me when he threatened me.

We got up to the table and the manager was standing by the door watching him.  Rob told me this morning that he had called the cops but they still weren't there when we got all the kids gathered and all the stuff and left.

WOW, didn't know going to Chuck E's would be so much excitement.

Here's a few snipit's from Ash's birth story ~

Today is baby Ashton's 2nd birthday.  I watched him taking a nap on the bed that he was born on, with the cloudy, overcast day that it started out to be....just like it was 2 years ago.

Even though I have some video of his birth, I never wrote it down, so I thought I better try to remember everything before I forgot too much.

Like I said, it was a drippy, overcast day, the kind you just want to curl up and do nothing but listen and watch the rain.  The weather couldn't have cooperated more.  It was so relaxing. It was a perfect day to have a baby.  I finally thought after the last few months of contractions, on a daily basis, that I MIGHT possibly be in labor, FINALLY!  I was, after all, only 2 weeks overdue.  This was the day of my appointment with the midwife that she was going to make me go to the "dreaded" hospital and get induced!!! ...NO NO NO NO    Nothing is worse and more painful than that!  I had an ultrasound a few days before and there were a few calcifications on the placenta but nothing much, and the baby was supposed to weigh about 10 pounds...ugh!  All I could think of was the ultrasound that I had 2 days before I had Kaitlyn said she was 3 1/2 weeks from the due date and weighed 7- 7 1/2 pounds.  She was 8 1/2 and I really don't think she gained a pound in 2 days! SO just how much was this baby gonna weigh?  Why was he being so stubborn about coming out?  I tried all the labor inducing tricks....walking which was extremely difficult as it was, I can't even remember now what it was M gave me to take, using the breast pump, etc. 

I don't remember time frames now but I think I ended up calling Robert at work around 9:00 and telling him I think I'm finally in labor.  He came home and around 10:00 called M.  I thought to myself , ha ha no hospital for me thanks!  I casually took a shower, got dressed and paused for the contractions which got strong pretty darn quick, but I was still ok.  I brushed my teeth which nobody understood why I would want to do that...but I don't like dirty teeth and since I was doing ok why not?

Robert called my mom and I think she came over pretty soon.  The midwife's assistant came with her baby.  M had me drink gatorade and I sat on the bed awhile still doing pretty good if I do say so myself.    About an hour into it the contractions were getting REALLY hard but much to my amazement I was taking them without a peep and surprisingly well.  M wanted me to get on the ball and I tried but it made things much worse and I started loosing control and was so dizzy and weak I didn't stay on it.  I ended up vomiting all the gatorade up and of course they all started trying to clean me up and change my shirt but that was the last thing on my mind, so they let me be, in my puk shirt.    I went into my own world with each contraction concentrating on something insignificant and really stupid now that I think about it, but it worked.  As long as I didn't have my concentration broken that is.  The assistant was very much a help but her baby broke my concentration quite a few times.  Right before I had Ashton, M turned off the fan  ....ohhhhh man not good.  The hum of a fan or vaporizer has always been the most comforting thing to me and I always have one or the other going in my room.  It has been that way since I used the attic fan to take naps when I was little.  I really about lost it then....   All I could do was mumble FAN FAN.  M didn't want the air on the baby when he came out, but mom to the rescue said "no she needs the noise of the fan" so they turned it back on and away....I don't know if I started pushing because I was ready or if it just felt better, but I started pushing and I guess it was then I knew this was it....no turning back now!  I know, I know, like I could have before...but it was really happening then.

M wanted me on the birthing chair, which by the way I find very uncomfortable and hard on the back of the legs.  My legs kept falling asleep, but I did what I could and pushed as much as I could.  M and assistant were both yelling at me to PUSH GET HIM OUT NOW!!!  Ashton's heart rate was staying in the 80's and he was as stuck as stuck could get.  I just kept telling them I CAN'T GET HIM OUT!!!   I knew something really wasn't right that I couldn't get him out when Jaden, my 5th baby had shot out and the doc barely caught him before he hit the ground and he was a good size at 8 lbs 10 oz.  They had oxygen on me and at the end that was all I could do not to hyper-ventilate and pass out.  I kept telling M I CAN'T GET HIM OUT SOMETHING'S WRONG!  HELP ME!!  She told them to call 911 and I started hanging on Robert's neck literally hanging and letting every bit of energy I had go into trying to get him out.  My mom was on the phone with 911 and they wanted to know our phone number...we had just changed it and he couldn't think of it ,and was so frustrated, he said "just tell them to get here NOW I don't give a damn what the number is they can look it up".  Between M and assistant yelling at me and the tone in Robert's voice I knew thing's didn't look good.  Robert could hardly hold me up as I didn't even attempt to hold myself....then all of the sudden that horrid ring of fire you hear about...   oh yeah... I started screaming then!  I just screamed not saying anything just screaming out.  I had finally gotten his head out.  They got me on the bed and M still yelling at me to push him out started pulling him as hard as she could.  She did everything short of planting her feet in my butt to pull him, and then finally pop there he was....just as EMSA got in the house. 

.....  so the paramedics and rescue workers start piling in the house, coming back to my room while everybody is yelling HE'S OUT!!! 

  She later apologized for yelling at me so much and assistant said yeah we don't usually yell at our mommy but he was in real trouble and needed to come out and we didn't think he was going to be able to.   Yeah tell me about it!  They cleaned Ashton up and then came the weigh in.....11 lbs 2 ozs.   He went to the doc 2 days later yep 11 pounds....actually he went to the doc over and over and kept loosing all the way down to 10 pounds but I wish I had known now that I had Diabetes and the poor baby's blood sugars were so out of whack ....well he's really lucky to be here.  Between his heart rate, size, and all the meconium (sp?) and what we found out later he didn't have a very good start in life.  So they cleaned him and dressed him or should I say "stuffed" and bent him into his "First outfit"  Poor little guy was practically folded in 2 to get the "newborn" outfit on him.  M took pics of the placenta and did a "placenta print" where she just took a piece of typing paper and layed it on the placenta and I wish I could remember what all she said about it but it made a print that looked like a tree...something about the tree of life.  I know it sounds kinda gross who wants pictures of their placenta...to tell you the truth it wasn't really gross and I never knew this was done anyway.  The whole experience is and was new to me.  You would think after already having 5 kids I would have "been there done that" but I had never seen any of the placenta before nor had I ever gotten to film any births due to "hospital policy" or the circumstances surrounding them like the abruption with Lindsey.   I had to drink some shot of something that tasted like a shot of liquor to stop the bleeding, I think it was.  By that time I just wanted a shower.  I was dripping wet with sweat and all yucky to say the least.  Thank goodness I left the plastic that the mattress came in on the bed, so M and assistant changed everything while I took a shower and I got to crawl in a clean fresh bed.  M made me a grilled cheese even though I really had no desire to eat yet...she said I needed to get some protein in or something to that effect...things were still kinda a blur at that point.

I couldn't figure out why everytime I would pick the baby up he would cry and sometimes if I just rearranged him...I called M and heard "Well it may be a personality conflict"    How can I have a personality conflict with him already?  He doesn't even talk yet or really understand if I tell him that he stinks to high heaven,  is probably not a good thing.   So how can he already hate me before I've yelled at him to clean his room???  Well after telling the docs over and over something is not right....finally at his 2 week, I think it was, appointment the ped. noticed he didn't lift his left arm like he did his right.  She asked if he always did that....well yea he doesn't cry because I never put him down and leave him like this but on the few occasions I've had to change his diaper that he cried no he only threw one arm up.  Why?  Well I think his shoulder is broken   OH NO  I have a broken baby???????????  I went though the "I'm an awful mother to not know his shoulder was broken" to "I'm an awful mother I broke my baby" ....all the way to the hospital to get him x-rayed ....Sure enough my baby was broken.      He had already started mending so I just had to wrap his little arm to his body and be careful not to move or touch it too much....Well now I know why he cried when I touched him.  I was careful and he stopped crying when I handled him   He likes me afterall!

So would I do a homebirth again?            You betcha in a heartbeat!       What possessed you to do this to begin with, you ask?   Well I never really thought of it.   I just always wanted to try water birth or at least labor in a tub thinking how relaxing a shower is and  that it would be nice....Hospitals that I have been to immediately strapped me to the bed with IV's wouldn't let me up to even walk, with tubes and wires everywhere...now yes I know that a few were complicated so I wasn't treated like a regluar one....but I wanted to be ....FREE!

I found a Midwifery and started going.  It was so different....In an old 2 story house not a sterile office...started going to classes for early pregnancy...they had another for the end of pregnancy and lactation classes... just a world of info.  Here I THOUGHT I knew about pregnancy and giving birth by now...well one would think anyway!  Nope, I learned more in the few classes than I did with going through 5 pregnancies!  Everything was going perfect this time.  I would have my baby there in a real bed with real surroundings, in a real bedroom....my baby wouldn't be whisked away.  I would finally see what happened to the baby be there for the first bath etc....

Then the talk of having to close the clinic became a reality....  It was the only one around and it was closed just that quick.  Bound and determined I was NOT going to go back to the hospital I found a midwife that would take me and I COULD STAY IN MY OWN BED!  I got so excited but terrified I couldn't do it.  I asked if she ever had to take the mom to the hospital because they couldn't handle the pain...oh sure but you will be surprised how much you can handle in your own surroundings.  So true...I never could have taken this being in a sterile hospital surrounding.  Of course they would have done a C-Section on me...which in this case I could have seen.  A lot more than I see some of these C-Section hungry doctors doing them because the wind was blowing east that day!  I saw one on a show it because the baby was headed out face up "sunny side up" as the nurses called it when I had Kaitlyn that way...actually the last 3 were born sunny side up so if I'd had him I would have been sliced and diced 3 times!  That's rediculous!

So birth story ends and the life of the beautiful baby begins.......