Hanging with the Hockenberrys: November 2010

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a scheduler. I never go anywhere without my planner. Yet in the last 3 weeks, I have went from a Type A personality who scheduled everything in my life, to a Type A personality who is confused as to why I suddenly can't schedule anything in my life. All while making myself crazy trying. But everything in my life now centers around the child. What about me? I am a firm believer that the center of attention should always be on (or at least really close to) me. (I kid, I kid!) I'm actually happy to share the spotlight with our new addition. He's an amazing little guy. After all, how many people can eat, poop, and sleep all at the same time? (Besides Daddy, of course.)

I won't lie though, the past few weeks have been tough. There has been one hell of a learning curve associated with a first born child. Did you know babies have cues? For example, whenever he is hungry, he starts to chew on his fist. Or he'll start opening and closing his mouth while rooting around, kind of like a baby bird. He usually only does that one when he 1) sees me, 2) hears me, or 3) senses that I have walked into a room. So pretty much all the time. My existence has literally been reduced to that of a human boob. Great. Oh, and just because he's yawning and his eyes are closing and/or rolling back in his head does NOT mean he's ready to sleep just yet. Or anytime within the next 4 hours.

This week was especially rough on the sleeplessness front. I am running on fumes. And before you start blaming the baby, let me tell you Greyden was fine. We had one night where he was so overtired he could barely keep his eyes open, but refused to go to sleep. I have never seen anyone struggle so hard to stay awake, besides the dog, who we refer to as Harley Party for that very reason. No, the sleeplessness stemmed directly from the Thanksgiving Party Animals that took up residence in my house last week. (That would be my parents, my brother, my sister, and my brother-in-law.) Apparently having a new baby in the family hasn't slowed them down near as much as it has me. It actually appears to have done the opposite and given them a reason to celebrate. A lot. I'm used to going to bed at ~~8:00~~ 10:00. These people didn't even think about shutting down until 11 or later. Or even 3 am as I discovered early one morning when I was awoken by the sounds of a guitar and singing coming from the kitchen, courtesy of my husband, sister, brother-in-law, and a bottle of Crown Royal. But honestly I can't complain too much. We had a great time and I loved having them here. It was so nice to have an extra set of hands (or 10 extra sets as the case may be) to hold the baby while ~~Mom and Kerry~~ I did all of the cooking and cleaning. Okay, maybe they did most (okay, all) of the cooking and cleaning. They even decorated my house for Christmas and put up the tree. That would have taken me forever to do on my own, if it would've gotten done at all, so I am eternally grateful for their help.

Thanksgiving 2010 (aka: The Shagene Invasion)

Kerry & Greyden

Greg & Greyden

Andrew & Greyden

Baby's 1st Thanksgiving

A baby gift from my sister. Have I mentioned that I love her?

Picking out the ~~Griswold~~ Hockenberry Family Christmas Tree. Yes, it's from Lowe's. Because that's how we roll in Texas.

There is a tree strapped to the top of my mini van. Please kill me now.

Me, Mom, Dad, Greg, and Greyden. In the parking lot of Lowe's. Picking out Greyden's first Christmas tree. Not my idea of the perfect baby's first visit to a Christmas tree farm, but whatever.

Too pooped to party anymore:

Okay, it's been a while. Over two weeks to be exact. But I fully intend to keep up the blog. I'm sure it won't be NEAR as entertaining as when I was pregnant, but I'll do my best. Pregnancy was obviously the biggest adventure...

Eviction Day - November 1, 2010

We showed up to the hospital at 6 am on the dot. Okay, more like 6:10. It was early and my last day of freedom to sleep in, so I wasn't moving as fast as I should have been. (That and I was heading to the hospital to deliver the watermelon. I wasn't exactly looking forward to that part.) They got me signed in and started me on Pitocin around 7 am. I started contractions right away, but couldn't feel them until around 9:30. At that time the nurse told me that the anesthesiologist had two c-sections that day, one at 11:30 am and one at 1:00 pm. If I decided that I wanted an epidural, I had to let them know by either 10:30 to get it before 11:30, or wait until after 1:30. I was hanging tough and the contractions weren't bad at all. I told her I'd let her know later. Later ended up being about 20 minutes. Holy cow, those things can come on quick. By 10:00 I had made a few important decisions: 1) the fact that I was enduring the contractions was stupid. Why was I putting myself through this? 2) I was NOT going to miss my window of opportunity by trying to tough them out until after 1:00 pm and potentially not be able to get my epidural, 3) I was a goddess for even attempting to consider a natural birth, and 4) I am a wuss. Give me the damn shot.

The anesthesiologist came in shortly thereafter. Now, I'll be honest, I didn't even bother to look at the needle. I didn't need to. I was already PETRIFIED, no need to make it worse. I was shaking like a leaf (or like I was getting a tattoo - remember that Nikki?) and was shocked when he told me he was done. Besides the pinch of the numbing shots, it was nothing. As was everything thereafter. I hate to say it (and I'm sure I'm making some lifelong enemies), but labor and delivery was a piece of cake. They had me start pushing around 5:45 pm. Pushing actually ended up being the hardest part of the whole ordeal. I knew there was a watermelon somewhere that I was supposed to be pushing out, but I couldn't feel it. Evidently I was doing something right, because the nurse kept saying "right there! right there!" (and my husband kept saying "Git 'em girl! Git 'em!" which is coincidentally what he says to our dog, Bella, to get her to attack our other dog, Harley). Regardless of their encouragement, it didn't feel to me like I was making any progress. So I made the mistake of arguing that nothing was happening. The nurse assured me that we were getting there and asked if I would like a mirror so that I could see the progress. I must have looked at her like she had two heads and said "ummmm.....I don't know." Another wrong answer, because 30 seconds later there was a large mirror at the foot of the bed. THAT was interesting. Thank god they took it away before I actually delivered because I don't think Bob would have been to impressed to make his dramatic entrance into the world only to find mom passed out.

After pushing for over an hour, Baby Boy Hockenberry was born at 7:03 pm, weighing 6 pounds, 3 ounces and was 18.5 inches long. Unfortunately he was also a nice, bluish hue due to the cord being wrapped around his neck. He was breathing, however he was making small grunting noises with each breath. The nurses worked on him for a while trying to clear the mucus from his lungs, but he still wouldn't stop grunting. Both Kevin and I got to hold him for a couple of minutes, then off to the NICU he went, followed by Daddy hot on his heels. Mommy wasn't so lucky. I had to wait for the feeling to come back into my legs so I could get there. It took awhile for that and for the nurses to put me back together so I didn't make it to the NICU until 10:30 pm. Once I was there, I found him still grunting like a champion boxer. The nurse plopped him on my chest anyway and BAM! No more grunting. He just wanted mommy. The NICU nurses wanted to monitor him for a couple more hours to make sure the grunt didn't return, so we got to spend time holding him in the NICU before they told us that they were ready to bath him and send him back to our room with us. Kevin and I headed back to the room around 1 am, where I promptly sent him out for food since I hadn't eaten since 5:30 that morning. I'm not pretty when I'm hungry. We figured they wouldn't be bringing him back to our room until about 3 am, so we switched off the lights at 2 am to try to get some MUCH needed sleep, only to switch them back on 10 minutes later when the nurse knocked on our door announcing Junior's arrival. And of course he was hungry. There's no rest (ever again) for the weary.

The funny part is we still didn't have a name for him. We had been from one end of the alphabet to the other and still couldn't settle on one. Or any. We had been hoping that once we saw him, the clouds would part and his name would come to us. Yeah, not so much. The poor thing was nameless for the first 24 hours of his life. The birth certificate person came in the morning after his birth and asked if we had named him yet. We told her no, so she offered to come back 2 hours later. We asked what would happen if we still didn't have a name at that point and she said she'd come back 2 hours after that. We told her that she might want to save herself a trip and just come back after 4 hours. We were teetering between Mason and Greyden, even though all of our family and friends were already on the Greyden bandwagon. She ended up not coming back until late that evening and by then we agreed that he was definitely a Greyden. Greyden William Hockenberry. Grey for short. Although he's also Bubba, Punkin Head, Booger Toes, and Rose Bud. But oddly enough, he's not a Bob. Who would've thought it?

PS - It has come to my attention that I need to clarify my previous post. That is NOT me in the underwear shot. I have no idea who the poor girl is, but I'm hoping for her sake that it is Photoshop at its best. If that were actually me, you would 1) not find me posing in my underwear, and 2) not find me standing up. I'm at a loss as to how she's still vertical.

Me with my ~~happy~~ epidural button: