6 Months

June 22nd, 2018

Today marks your 6 month birthday - my how time has flown. It feels like just yesterday that your mother and I brought you home.  I wanted to start this blog as a way for me to track my thoughts, actions, frustrations, anxieties, etc., as you grew older. I knew the longer I waited, the more that I would forget. There is a saying I've heard several times since you were born: "The days are long, but the years are short." It seems the days are getting longer and longer, with not enough hours in the day to balance the responsibilities at work, home and family life. Regardless of the bull shit of this thing that we call life - coming home to you makes it worth it, you make it worth the effort.

My hope is that one day I will be able to share this with you, so you can see how much I love you. Everything that we do now revolves around you. You're the first person your mother and I think of before we make any decision, even if it's unpopular to everyone else. I'm certainly not an author, I'm sure that you will find grammatical errors; but, everything I type is coming from my heart. I love you.

Chapter 1: The First 6 Months

It's hard to describe the first few moments with your newborn child. Your mother and I went into the hospital thinking that we were there for a routine checkup. As I'm sure your mother has told you by now, she had Preeclampsia, which essentially means she had severe high blood pressure. We were stuck in a triage room while we awaited the doctor. After several hours, we found out we were staying, today was the day you were going to be born into the world. We told your grandparents and they moved us to one of the delivery rooms. Your mother of course was freaking out, mostly because she hadn't had anything to eat and she just found out that...she couldn't have anything to eat until you born. As her OB said, "Well sweetie," you see Dr. Aspuru was about as flaming as you could have as a male doctor, "What goes in must come out, if you catch my drift." I don't think your mother fancied shitting all over the nurses or her fabulous gay doctor, so she didn't eat for the rest of day.

Of course, we didn't bring in the bags for the night, so I went to go get them out of the car. I passed Dr. A (this is what we called him, Aspuru is too much of a mouthful). "I just broke her water, by the way, so we can speed the process along." At first I was bummed that I missed it. You see, I was envisioning a rush of water like you see in the movies, but think of it more of a "trickle." OK, I thought, this is it. We're going to start the labor process. Your mother starting her contractions, made it a few hours, then begged for the epidural. They don't tell you this in your checkups, but you have to have at least two bags of fluids before you can have an epidural. After 2 or 3 hours of agony, your mother had her pain meds and she went to sleep. Me being the workaholic, I opened my laptop and began to work while she rested (I'm not proud of this, so hold the judgement...I promised I'd get something done, what else was I supposed to do?).

It was now midnight - time to make a call. You were stuck in the birth canal and your poor little head was getting cone-shaped. On top of that, your mother's blood pressure had started to rise and they were concerned for your health. The doc and I agreed that if your mother hadn't progressed past 6 cm of dilation after the next four hours, we were going to do a C-Section. Naturally, your mother was in hysterics. Nothing scares Amber like the unknown - but she knew she could get through this for you. Nothing was more important, and I literally mean nothing, than your safety. Off we went to the OR.

They don't tell you this, but the spouses can only go into the Operating Room after the doctors and nurses have scrubbed up and they're ready to pull the baby out. So there I was...stuck. Stuck in an open hallway, praying that nothing would go wrong and I wouldn't be there to hold your mother's hand. I'm not super religious, but I prayed. Man did I pray. "Let's go have that baby," your nurse said. Into the OR room I went.

Madelyn Susan Pallas, born 4:38am, 6lb 15oz, 20.25". There you are. It's hard to describe the moments after they pulled you from your Mother's womb. First, I had to make a choice - stay with your mother or leave with you. We'd already discussed it, there was no way either of us wanted you to be alone without at least one of your parents.