2020
December
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A virtual visit

By • On • In Kids • 1 min read

Thanks to COVID, no one was allowed in or out of the hospital room.

So, for example, Justin couldn’t leave to get me some ice cubes. Or to pick up food the next day. (After our first order from the cafeteria, we learned we had to actually get two or three “meals” a person in order to not be hungry, lol.) And while normally spouses leave when you get the epidural for sterile reasons, this time they kept Justin in with us during the procedure.

Unfortunately, this policy also meant no visitors could come meet the baby. I was so sad that Jackson couldn’t visit us there. But as with everything these days, we had to make do with Zoom!

Initially I had the camera set only on me, and Justin was out of view holding Beckham. I didn’t want Jackson to be jealous or upset that we were there with the baby and not him.

He didn’t seem to mind, though.

After saying hello, he told me he was exercising and ran away. I thought for sure that would be the end of our visit, haha.

But he did come back to the camera, and I started asking him about what he was doing but he cut me off.

“Where did the baby go?” he said.

Apparently I didn’t have to hide Beckham, after all. We showed him Justin and the baby, who was sleeping, and Jackson said he was sleeping, too. When I said the baby was wrapped in a blanket, he ran to get a blanket, too.

Then Jackson showed us the little baby dolls my mom had brought for him. He was laying them down and putting on their blankets, too.

He was way more interested than I was expecting him to be. And the best part of our virtual visit is that I was able to record it, so now we have a video of the special moment that we can watch again and again.

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Finally — a name!

By • On • In Kids • 1 min read

“Let’s just wing it,” Justin said when I was still pregnant and trying to brainstorm names for the baby.

We did have one name picked out for each gender, though, so I’m not really sure why we kept everyone in suspense for so long.

When the nurses asked right after he was born, I was the one who put off announcing it. There was too much going on — no need to make a decision on the spot, I thought.

I just needed a minute, but then it kind of spiraled from there.

Next Justin said we should sleep on it.

Sleep? Ummm… when exactly would that be happening?

Then, when we were in the recovery room, for some reason Justin thought this would be a good time to start looking up baby names.

“I’ve already read them all,” I told him. Literally, I think I read them all.

Still, I was nervous about pulling the trigger.

Is it the right name??? Is it too weird? It’s such a hard decision!! When someone came in for the birth certificate, I told them we needed more time.

Next Justin was second guessing whether we should flip the first and middle names that we had chosen. But I vetoed that idea pretty quickly.

My cousin reminded me to go with my gut. Everyone’s name always ends up fitting perfectly, after all.

Finally I was confident to make a decision. It flows nicely, it goes well with Jackson — plus it’s just an awesome name! And Justin was ready, too.

Back to what we originally picked out, we made it official: Beckham James Dardick.

Fun fact: I first came up with Beckham after I googled “names similar to Bennett” — which is Jackson’s middle name.

Another fun fact: Jackson’s first and middle name initials are JB while this baby is the reverse, BJ. That was not done on purpose, but still fun nonetheless.

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Warning: TMI

By • On • In Kids, Pregnancy • 1 min read

It felt like the next day (since he was born in the middle of the night), but really it was later that same day when I learned I wasn’t exactly in the clear yet.

Baby boy (not officially named at this point) was doing great.

But I ended up with a couple of blood clots and lost a little blood. The nurse came in for a regular check and discovered blood had soaked through my clothes, the mattress pad, etc. Next thing I knew a whole team was back in my room with a medical cart in tow.

Noooooo!

I felt exhausted and defeated. I was so over all the poking and prodding and just wanted to be done — for good!

First they got an IV ready and started me up on pitocin. Again. Then they put in a catheter (ouch) and manually extracted the blood clots (double ouch). They didn’t know where they were or how many there were so this process was mainly just kneading my stomach over and over — hard. One of the nurses squeezed my hand throughout.

Thankfully, they got them out and I was fine going forward. I didn’t end up needing any medication — or whatever was in the next step in their protocol for this situation — so that was good news.

I did have to keep the IV for awhile, and the nurses had to do more frequent checks on me. The “massages,” as one nurse called them, were light and easy the remainder of the time.

Everything was all good from then on, and I was still able to leave after 24 hours (a shortened stay due to COVID).

I couldn’t wait to sleep in my own bed again!

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L&D Part III: BOY!!!!!!

By • On • In Kids, Pregnancy • 1 min read

While it’s scary in the moment when you don’t know how things are going to play out, in hindsight my labor really couldn’t have gone any better.

For the majority of the time, I didn’t feel a thing and even when I did I thought it was manageable. The timeline was much speedier compared to Jackson, and while my blood pressure was initially a concern, it turned out to be fine throughout.

Pushing lasted about half an hour, a big improvement from 2.5 hours with Jackson!

This time around, I could feel when a contraction was starting so I had a better idea of when to push, rather than just relying on the machine (which apparently is a few seconds delayed).

At approximately 1:57 a.m., I thought I was just doing another regular push when I heard all the nurses reacting.

Wait, what’s happening??? Is the baby coming? Was the baby born?!

You’d think I know the answer. But I did not… and I’m pretty sure I even said that last one out loud…

Then I saw a baby in the doctor’s hands! And Justin announced: It’s a boy!!!

“No way!!!”

I was so surprised — I had been thinking girl — but was thrilled nonetheless.

“Another boy!!!”

I was also surprised that they then handed him straight to me. I wasn’t sure if that was really a thing or not. (Jackson had needed some immediate assistance so that didn’t happen with him.)

Enjoying our first little baby snuggles, I couldn’t get over how teeny his little body was.

He was perfect!!!

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