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Prince Kailan
See his Photo Gallery here.
Our firstborn entered this world on December 2, 2003. After an arduous journey down the birth canal and much pain for his mother, he was born a healthy 7 lb 15 oz, 21.75 inch skinny baby boy. Mother figured that with all the weight she put on he could have been a little bit more robust, but alas we loved him anyways!
First Stitches
On August 11, Brian decided to leave work early after a couple long days and late nights at work. Unfortunately, he decided to get gas on the way to daycare, and arrived less than five minutes after the latest in a long string of Kailan’s "incidents". When Brian arrived, the assistant manager was on the phone telling some poor parent that their child would need to go to the emergency room. When Brian arrived at the classroom door, he saw both teachers wearing latex gloves and Kailan with an icepack on his head. The poor parent on the phone was obviously Stacy.
The floor was covered in bloody towels, and Kai had a bloody little valley above his left eye. Apparently, Kai had tripped while playing and made the mistake of using the corner of a toy box for a soft pillow to land on.
Stacy met Brian at daycare and took Anya home for a snack while Brian took Kai to Urgent Care. Unfortunately, they arrived 40 minutes before the clinic opened. Who knew that a regular clinic would close and leave no medical staff on duty for an hour prior to reopening with new staff as an after-hours facility? Rather than heading off for an ER, Brian sat on a park bench to watch storm clouds roll by as Kailan sat on his lap eating a Ritz and bleeding through his bandages.
When the clinic finally reopened, the recently graduated doctor quickly determined an ER visit was required because the clinic doesn’t stitch "gaping" wounds. So, Brian and Kai packed themselves back into the car and picked up the rest of the family for a fun-filled evening in the ER. After nearly an hour of negotiating rush hour traffic, road construction, and collapsed bridges, the family arrived in downtown Minneapolis at Children’s Hospital. Hurray! We were the only second in line to get into the treatment area of the ER, which unfortunately translated into an hour wait.
By the time Kai had been visited by a nurse and a doctor, Kailan decided that anyone who entered the room was coming in for the specific purpose of hurting him by removing his bandage. By then he had been screaming bloody murder each of the 4 times any medical staff peeled back his band-aid. After nearly another hour, a life aid came into the room to explain the process and bring a movie. When she had left, Brian told Kai, "Well, what do you know. Someone came in and didn’t hurt you." Kai’s response was a, "Huh!" of disbelief.
Finally at 9 PM, two nurses assistant’s came in with a boogey board, sheet, and Velcro straight-jacket. Kailan was promptly strapped down and the real torture began. Although he had been given a local anesthetic to numb his head, he screamed at the top of his lungs for the next 45 minutes while the nurse cleaned his forehead with brown liquid after iodine after brown liquid, including three syringes squirted directly down into his open cut. She followed up the liquid torture with 2 internal sutures and 6 external stitches to close him up. For the first 10 minutes of the ordeal, Anya was fascinated by the "Little People" video the life aid brought. By the time it was over, she was sleeping soundly through Kai’s tortured wailing.
Unfortunately, this will probably remove modeling from Kailan’s list of possible career choices.
Kailan's birth story
Kailan was due on November 24, 2003; however, he didn’t want to vacate the premises even though his lease was up on my uterus. Thus, the eviction process began.
On November 26, 2003, I got my membranes stripped by the PA (physicians assistant), and it wasn’t the torture I expected. One of my friends depicted it to be as bad as labor, so I thought she just had a low pain tolerance. Yeah, that wasn’t it. No labor for me that day, so it obviously wasn’t done right.
On December 1, I went and got my membranes stripped again, this time by my doc and not the PA. It hurt much more than the first time. Brian said my face turned white, and he thought "That must really hurt". Little did I know that was just the start of the labor torture.
Since I just was put through some intense pain, it seemed a good idea to go shopping. I went to the local mall on the way home and walked around a bit, and bought some Christmas presents. I needed to get some of those good endorphins floating around in my brain to offset the bad ones just released.
By the time I got home I wasn't feeling the greatest, so I ate some crackers, cheese and pickles and just rested. I was still pregnant so I could eat like that. About 6 pm I started to get contractions at 10 minutes apart. Brian got home around 6:30 and it took him about a half hour to realize that I was timing something. By about 7:30 they were under 5 minutes apart, so I went upstairs and took a shower. Brian called the hospital and told them we were thinking about coming in. I spoke to the woman on the phone and she said to come in when they were 2-3 minutes apart lasting around a minute for an hour. So we went downstairs and started counting everything.
Unfortunately Brian was trying to follow the strict letter of what the nurse said, so if I would have one 3.5 minutes apart, then he would start over. Finally, I had enough and wanted some drugs, so we headed into the hospital around 10:00. As we were sitting in the waiting room in the ER, the receptionist was starting to look like she was getting concerned that I was going to have the baby right there. She called up to the Maternity Ward and told them that they REALLY needed to come and get me. When I got up there, the nurse checked me and I was at 6 cm dilated. They took me into the labor room and I threw up my little meal. Another thing, mom never told me about. They told Brian to stay and not re-park the car because I could have the baby at any moment. I wasn’t so lucky.
It took them about an hour to get me the epidural and I was starting to get a little irritated by that point. Actually, I wanted to choke them all for not seeing that I was in extreme pain, and why were they not doing something about it??? When the doc put in the epidural (finally) he went in too far and told me I may have a headache the next day (more on that later). When they had put in the epidural, it had slowed down my contractions so much that they gave me some Pitosin to speed them up again. I never fell asleep the whole time I was waiting for full dilation. I was probably dilated to 10 way before they made me start pushing, and the nurse told me to push when I felt the urge. Considering the fact that I was numb and not feeling anything down there, I really didn’t see how that was possible.
They then started turning down the epidural. About 2 1/2 hours of pushing later he wasn't coming out and the epidural wasn't working AT ALL. They told me I could either try the vacuum to help him get out, which would give me some tearing, or do a c-section. I figured I would try the vacuum before they cut me open. The vacuum worked and about 6 contractions later he was born! I used every ounce of the miniscule amount of energy I had left to get that baby out.
I have never been in so much pain, so tired and so hungry in my entire life, but it was completely worth it!
I had 3rd degree (almost 4th degree – yikes!) tears that it took them 20 minutes to stitch up and the "headache" the next day was more like a migraine. Since the epi doc punctured my spinal fluid sack, there wasn't enough fluid to keep my brain where it was supposed to be. It didn't hurt too bad when I was lying down, but when I would stand up it would hurt like hell and I would get dizzy and nauseous. The morning I was discharged they did a blood patch and poked me in the spine again (they take blood from your arm and put it in your back to plug up the hole). It worked to take away the migraine temporarily (maybe 6 hours), but then my back hurt. After about 10 days the epidural "headache" went away as the hole healed, but in the meantime I was in bed. Brian took off 2 weeks, which was very much needed since he had to take care of both Kai and I.
Oh the joys of labor!
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