How Wonderful Life Is, Now You're In The World

Its already been one week since God performed the most amazing miracle I have ever witnessed. Sunday, May 18th at 05:40 Sofia Adelaide breathed her very first breath and completely took mine away. From the moment I announced to the world, "Its A Girl" I knew I would forever be a changed man....
It started on the Wednesday before, May 14th. Jo and I decided to go have dinner at Nantucket and she started contracting pretty hard around 7pm with her contractions being anywhere from 7-10 mins apart. We came on home and decided to just keep timing the contractions. Sure enough they increased to 5-7 mins apart and were hard enough to prevent us from getting any sleep whatsoever. I think the most sleep we got in a row the entire night was 20 mins. So early the next morning, May 15th (her projected due date) her contractions were 3 mins apart so we went on in to the hospital. The nurse checked Jo's cervix and found she was only 1 cm. dilated and 90% effaced. We were completely in shock thinking certainly she must be more dilated than that after having labored all through the night. We got up and walked around the hospital for about an hour and then she was rechecked. No change. What a stubborn cervix. So we went home on our baby's due date (Thursday) without a baby and without any sleep. The contractions continued to be anywhere from 7-10 mins apart and still were so strong Jo couldn't sleep through them (therefore I couldn't sleep either) so again, a second night in a row with no sleep. Friday we went into the doctors office to be checked. The doctor said she was maybe 1.5cm dilated but really not much different. I thought my wife was going to strangle that doctor. I have learned that the wrath of a pregnant woman is far worse than anything you could ever imagine. Completely helpless and frustrated, we took the prescribed sleeping pill for Jo and went home to try to get some rest. And still, contractions so strong Jo couldn't sleep at all Friday night...only now when she was trying to get up with each contraction, she had Ambien on board and was completely woozy! Bad combination. Jo labored again all night long around the clock with her contractions anywhere from 5-10 mins apart. Saturday rolls around and we are complete zombies. Our living room is decked out with warm compresses, a birthing ball, massage lotions, tennis balls for back massage...the whole works. It was like we were running a Birthing Center or something. Jo's parents came by for some much needed support and encouragement. As the sun went down our heads hit the pillows knowing we would be up in the next 5 mins focusing on breathing and acupressure...but we were hopeful. Around 10pm or so Jo's contractions "changed". They were now 3-5 mins apart and as she stood up to walk around I noticed her boobs were no longer resting on top of her stomach :-) but that her belly seemed to be much lower. She called the doctor who told us to come on in to the hospital. ***The events that would happen next are sure to be in some theatrical comedic production*** Jo screams through her contraction for me to run upstairs to grab her a tshirt and sweatpants. Of course I am now speedy gonzales and can make it to the top of my 14 steps in 1.756 seconds.... what I didn't know was exactly how fast I could get down the stairs. While in our room, Jo lets our a huge yell from downstairs while having a contraction. Fearing my baby was about to be born next to my television set freaked me out a bit. I take the first step down the stairs and, apparently not moving fast enough, Gravity intervenes. I slip and tumble down the rest of my stairs and when I make it to the bottom I was sure I had broken my arm. I'm lying in pain clutching my shoulder and trying to coach my wife through her contractions. hahaha I could only imagine what that 911 phone call would have sounded like. I realized my arm was okay and grabbed our things and jumped in the car. Not even 100 yards from my driveway the gas light comes on. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I think that was the quickest pit stop I ever made and I hope nobody got my license plate number as I'm sure there are skid marks leaving the gas station by my house. Finally we get to the hospital and the charge nurse says she is 4 cm. dilated. I'm not sure if I have ever told a complete stranger I loved them so much. Going on our fourth night without sleep Jo is completely wiped out and we were both concerned about her stamina for the next phases of labor. Next scene: Enter Hero. Anesthesiologist are wonderful people. For a moment, they can take away all the pain in the world. Thank you Mr. Epidural. We slept soundly for about 3 hours. At 5am the nurse told Jo we were ready to meet our baby. Something happened to me right in that instance. I am a nurse. I see people in their weakest moments. I have wiped the butts of the sick, stopped the bleeding of the injured, shocked hearts back to life, and held the hands of the dying....but this seemed to be too much too fast. One minute I was sleeping soundly and the next I am seeing my wife struggling and my baby's head and its pretty overwhelming. I must confess, I had to sit in "The Chair". You know, the chair they set aside for those weak dads who can't take it. The chair I laughed at and claimed would never need. Yes, that's where my butt was parked for a moment. When I stood up and saw a little tiny head peering into the world..... folks, I don't think I can explain the whirlwind of emotion that comes over you. The doctor held her up and let me announce to the world "Awwwww ITS A GIRL" My heart must still be in a puddle on that delivery room floor because it melted completely. I cut her umbilical cord "delivering" my own baby and stared at her lying on my wife's chest in complete awe. We are a family.
When we got back in our room Jo and I held our baby girl and gave thanks to our Wonderful Creator who has truly given us our heart's desire time and time again. In that moment we realized that her little tiny life really doesn't belong to us but to Him and dedicated her life back to God so he may use her and shape her to fulfill the dreams and plans He has in store for her.
Today my little Sofie-bear is already a week old. My biggest fear now is T I M E. Its already passing so quickly and I am watching her grow and change right before my very eyes. I just sit and stare at her trying to take it all in but I still feel like there is no way in the world to wrap my brain around the greatness that is Sofia. She is such a miracle and a beauty. When I see my beautiful wife holding her I have to pinch myself. Right now, with this very breath and with this very heartbeat... life is perfect!

Couvade Syndrome

The great mind of Wikipedia says this:
"Couvade is a common but poorly understood phenomenon whereby the expectant father experiences apparently physical symptoms during the pregnancy for which there is no recognized physiological basis"

When I learned about this in my junior year of nursing school I thought this was the most bogus concept I had ever heard......that is, of course, until about the end of my wife's first trimester. It was my wife who began noticing it. First, I always felt zapped, completely fatigued, sleeping all the time, no energy whatsoever. Next came the ridiculous food cravings. I've been a vegetarian for nearly two years now but I had began to crave cheeseburgers. Not any cheeseburgers, specifically burger king cheeseburgers with extra ketchup. Sound crazy? It only gets better. There were also plenty of times I would be starving to death as I came to the dinner table, only to sit down and discover I couldn't eat a single thing because I suddenly became nauseated. Then the scale in our bathroom started hating my guts. I used to like that scale. It always told me the number I wanted to hear....but it seems since Joana is pregnant, it has begun to lie! So it insists I'm 12 pounds heavier than I choose to accept, but whatever. And then, just when I thought I had experienced enough of these crazy Couvade symptoms, I suffered the mac-daddy of all pregnancy symptoms......PLACENTA BRAIN! Yes sir. My brain is often someplace off chasing stars in the milky-way. My latest occurrence of placenta brain came about last Sunday. I was over at the Sherman's celebrating cuatro-de-mayo birthdays of some wonderful people, enjoying myself without a care in the world. I can't remember the last time I ran around in the grass barefoot, played volleyball till my forearms bled, and chased pinata candy like it was gold! It was the perfect blend of childhood in an adult setting--thanks to corona. Anyhow, the evening came to an end with some yummy cake and ice cream. Jo and I got in the car around nine o'clock when I noticed I had a missed phone call. Of course, it was work calling as they often do to ask if I wanted to come in to work overtime as there is always of plethora of people who are on the brink of death. I called up the old voice mail only to be stopped dead in my tracks...."Hello Travis, this is Karen from work. I hope everything is okay, but I was calling you because you were on the schedule to work tonight and you're not here. Call us when you can". Do you know the meaning of cardiac standstill? That's what happened. Here it was nine o'clock at night, I'm covered with grass stains, grass in my hair, wearing flip flops, shorts and an old tshirt and was supposed to be at work at seven. I immediately called the charge nurse who was happy to hear I was indeed alive. I offered to come in as I was, grass stains and all, but she assured me it would be okay to go on home and take a shower before coming to work. Rarely am I ever irresponsible especially when it comes to my work. My co-workers were so great and assured me it had happened to all of them. It was around two thirty in the morning while I was doing some charting that I realized what had happened. All the blood in my body was shunted from my brain to my placenta rendering me a victim of placenta brain!

....please God, let the symptoms stop here at 39 weeks. I don't think I can handle the symptoms that come next....

p.s. of course i don't have a placenta

Travis' Peculiarities

So I've finally done it; I've actually created a blog of my very own. For the past month or so I have become increasingly fascinated with blogs. I find myself navigating through the web of different peoples' blogs and enjoy reading the endless rants of different people. Only, I couldn't help but feel a little voyeuristic about it....sorta like I was snooping around in the lives of other people, knowing good and well that if it was on the Internet it was free for everyone to read. Nonetheless I still felt guilty, until now that is. For some reason I feel like I can justify my desire to peer into the blogger worlds of others if I have my very own blog to be peered into. Weird? Of course it is, but if you stick around long enough to read very many of my posts, you may indeed become overwhelmed with my peculiarities..... Which reminds me of this story from when I was in the fifth grade... My teacher, Mrs. Lane, was teaching us about the wonders of brainstorming before writing an essay (you know, the lesson where the teacher writes a word in the center of a bubble then has all these "stems" off of the center bubble forming a whole web of bubbles). Well anyway, we were supposed to choose a topic for our essay and she was asking for several different suggestions for the topics. At first my classmates were raising their hands and saying things like "Basketball" and then Mrs. Lane would write basketball in a bubble with all the stems and so forth and so on..... We had a few topics on the board when this one girl, Jaime Butler, raised her hand and said, "How about the topic of how Travis always pulls his eyelashes out?" (I admit I was a nervous kid with weird habits), then someone else said, "Or how about the weird way Travis holds his pencil"...... Suddenly there were hands raised all over the class with fifth graders dying to suggest something weird about me. Finally Mrs. Lane just said "Okay, I've got it". She drew her huge bubble and inside it wrote "Travis' Peculiarities". I must admit, as a fifth grade little boy I loved the idea of my name being on the chalkboard, but at the same time I didn't know what was so "peculiar" about who I was. Looking back I guess things haven't really changed to much. I've always been a pretty quirky guy and have come to accept that I may really indeed be "weird". The fact of the matter is, I like who I am--for the most part any way.
But like I was saying, I'm very happy to have my very own place to rant. I used to try to journal but I'm terrible with consistency. I have about 4 different journals on my bookshelf with only about 20 pages written on in each one of them. I think things will flow more natural for me at a keyboard rather than trying to push some ink across a page. We'll see.
Oh, I just finished "The Catcher in the Rye" by JD Salinger tonight. I had never read it before and picked it up earlier this week at good ole Barnes and Noble. I was there looking for a children's book called "The Wide Mouth Frog" for my baby that's on the way when I spotted it on a table. It was only six bucks so I said what the heck. It was interesting to say the least. I really had no idea what to expect when I started reading it. Come to find out its just about this 3 day chaotic adventure of this troubled sixteen year old boy. I've read it was quite controversial when it was published in 1951 because of JD Salinger's use of profanity and less-than-classy chapters. Boy if those boycotters could read some of the junk that's written today, psshht, they'd think ole JD was a saint. Anywho, I'm trying to decide what I'll read next. I was thinking "The Grapes of Wrath" or something from Hemingway...any suggestions? Whatever it is, I'll need to be a quick reader with the baby coming and all. Less than two weeks till the due date and after that I'm sure I'll have no time for a quiet read with a hot cup of sexy tea! Oh well...there's always audio books...