When you are about to have your first child there are tons of tidbits of wisdom that people will tell you. I gladly listened to everything people told me making mental notes along the way. Having just made it six months with my new best friend, I feel I am becoming quite accustomed to this new life. Some of the things people told us were about the negative aspects of having a child. I think the big factor in this for us, is how badly we had wanted a child, how long we had been trying, and finally after the cancer/miscarriage/fertility treatments how much we went through before we were successful.
One thing we heard over and over again was how exhausted we would be. Now, I will admit we aren't as well rested as we were six months ago. I can't remember the last time we were able to just sleep in as long as we liked. But I certainly wouldn't call it "exhausted". One thing we have going for us, is our child has been an overnight sleeper since we brought him home from the hospital. I think the shortest he ever slept overnight was maybe four hours when he was first brought home. The other reason I don't think I am tired is I enjoy the time I get to spend with him. Think of something you really enjoyed, like for me going to Walt Disney World, for you it might be reading my blog...if it is something you really had fun doing, you get whatever sleep you can and do it again first chance you get.
The other very cliched comment is that you will never know how much love you will have for the baby. Waiting until forty-one to have my first child, trust me a lot of anticipation and love had built up. I love my little guy a lot, and that love started the day my wife walked out of the bathroom with a pee-soaked stick. What has surprised me is just how much I like being around him. Even from the beginning when all he was doing was laying there and messing diapers, I cherished every second with him. Now I will say this. He seems like a very happy baby and everyone tells us he is a happy baby. That certainly helps. Even when changing a diaper he looks up and smiles and either grabs my arm or if I am careless enough he will grab the clean diaper and play keep away with me, which is apparently very funny when you are six months old.
But then again everything seems to be funny to our six month old. A hand full of someone else's hair is freakin' hilarious! Rubbing bare feet on daddy's head or whiskers is also a great source of amusement. The phrase "peas and apples" is the greatest joke ever told, ranking right up there with "The Aristocrats". I have no idea why "peas and apples" induces uncontrollable laughter, but I think it's pretty obvious that he has his daddy's sophisticated sense of humor.
The other side is, I am probably one of those obsessive and over-protective parents. When you have gone through your own health scare you realize just how precious and fragile life is. Someone told us the other day that kids aren't that fragile at all, all three of theirs rolled off the bed at one point as babies. That led to a conversation after we left that person about how after the first roll off (or at the very least the second roll off) wouldn't you take precautions to prevent future roll offs? This person claimed there was no harm done...but there's one we think the jury is still out on.
I may have given my son his first real electric guitar this week as well (which means I did give him his first electric guitar). Now I know what you are thinking, "He's six months old, he can't play an electric guitar" and you are exactly right, that is why his is half the size of a normal one. And since it is difficult for him to strum and hold down the strings, I even brought out a thing that automatically moves the strings for him, so he can just focus on the fretboard for now. See, doesn't sound near as crazy now, does it?
What I am getting at, is this is the greatest gift I have ever been given. We waited a long time for him and went through a lot to get him. Even when during a diaper change he accidentally peed in his face, which literally scared the crap out of him, all I could do was clean him up and laugh. Being spit up on twice a day, doesn't bother me, I just add the clothes to the huge pile of other garments he finds creative ways to soil. In other words, even the bad times are some of the best times of my life, so you can imagine how great the good times are. And hopefully by next week we will be playing our guitars together...
Showing posts with label pregnancy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pregnancy. Show all posts
Friday, June 22, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
My First Father's Day
Well if you weren't able to guess already, we were able to get pregnant. The swimmers we had frozen before I had chemo apparently thawed out just fine. However, my "friends" (and I use that term rather loosely) were quick to point out that they could have given me any sample and I wouldn't know the difference until the baby comes out. After all, you go the the "bank" they give you just a regular insulated coffee mug with a little test tube inside with your name on it. It seems like for as much as we paid for me to look at their dirty magazines and practice a little self abuse, they would come up with something a little nicer than some cheap looking insulated coffee mug like you get at trade shows for free from vendors you never heard of.
We were actually visiting at my parents' house when we found out the swimmers reached their target. My parents were overjoyed, which is surprising because people normally have totally different reactions if somebody shoves a urine soaked stick in their face. It was at this point that it dawned on me that I don't know nothing about birthing no babies. The coming months were filled with me cramming my head with everything from how to change diapers to how every single thing your child touches, eats, sees, smells, and hears will do irreparable damage to it and make you a bad parent. So, I will admit, I am one of those parents who is double checking every little thing that comes near my child to make sure it has passed a thirty-four step inspection.
The other thing I didn't know about babies, was apparently you need approximately 43,560 square feet to hold all the items that your new baby will absolutely not be able to live without, use once, then outgrow, and need to be stored for any future babies. And while we are discussing things I didn't know, when you are buying stuff for a new baby, everything made previous to the point that you arrived at the cash register at the baby store, is very dangerous and should be burned and the ashes locked in a safe and the safe thrown in the ocean (safes are located in Aisle 4 and you don't want to get a used safe). Personally, I think the baby industry (and there is definitely a baby industry) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission get together twice a week to declare everything that babies had before now, is harmful and must not be used under any conditions. Which makes perfect sense, otherwise all those cribs, highchairs, and bottles we all grew up on, and apparently survived, would still be in use today, meaning we would not need to buy new ones. When you tell people you are going out to purchase said new products many older people (i.e. people that bought baby products last year) will say "you can just borrow mine" and you respond "they (whoever that is made up of) say that is unsafe now" and the response is "well it never hurt (insert name here)".
We went through all of the doctors' appointments where you listen to sounds that mimic a cow trotting through mud and pictures that look more like a black and white radar scan of an approaching cold front than any sort of mammal, but yet you still get choked up and excited. And then there is the time that you stare at the screen, trying to see if the jet stream is going to cause a Nor'Easter when the nurse looks at you and smiles and says that "jet stream" is actually a penis. Oh the feeling that goes through a future dad when he first sees his son's jet stream. Already I was thinking of all of the tools I would be buying him and all of the time we would spend working on cars together (although, that probably would have been the case if we were having a girl too).
I will admit, as the big day approached I got more scanxiety even if a scan wasn't imminent. I had waited so long for a child that I was so paranoid something bad would happen before I would be able to meet him. And let's face it, less than a year before, I had lost my job, got cancer, and we had a miscarriage in a matter of a couple of months, so I am not unfamiliar with bad luck. But after a lot of anxiousness and praying we finally were told to check into the hospital.
For anyone unfamiliar with labor, I will try to explain what happens. You rush to the hospital where your wife seems to be in a lot of pain and there is a lot going on, but on the outside nothing really seems to be happening. While all this is going on, every single person that is on your hospital floor will walk into your room, shove his or her hand underneath your wife's gown and loudly shout out a random measurement ("6 cm!", "80%!!", "10/6!", "less than 12 parsecs!!"). I think even the kid that delivered our food shouted out "THX1138!" before she left. All I know about these random numbers and measurements was the baby was still bigger than that. So, after close to a day of "labor" that only seemed to produce an exhausted wife and goop that I wasn't sure was pre-baby goop or left over lube from the constant measuring, the doctor gets down and looks like she is trying loosen an oil filter on a Honda and says,"Well, he's not going to fit, but you can still push for another hour if you want." Although I liked our doctors there, that has to be one of the dumbest statements I have ever heard in my life! As you can imagine, my wife was over the whole push-measure-push-lube-push-measure-measure-measure-push routine. So it was off to surgery.
I walk into the operating room after they had prepped my wife and I see her laid out on a table, tubes here and there, a curtain, and a line drawn across her stomach. The doctor said, "You can stand here on this side of the curtain as we cut or..." I don't remember anything after the "or" because I really didn't care what was on the other side of the curtain as long as I was on that side of it. I was even more glad I had chose that side after the procedure started. I don't know what they were doing on their side of the curtain, but on my side of the curtain my wife was being pushed and shoved around on the table like she was the little girl from the Exorcist (minus the head spinning around). Finally the shaking stopped and they walked around the side of the curtain with...a purple baby. The comments my "friends" made about switched samples are running through my head and I search my memory for any purple family members (although there was that one distant aunt...), but after a quick wipe down he became the most beautiful, non-purple baby I have ever seen. Any doubts of grabbing the wrong coffee mug at the sperm bank, were gone for good when one pediatrician at the hospital told us that our new baby was tongue-tied and this would lead to a lifetime of speech impediments, difficulty eating, crossed eyes, sloppy trumpet playing, inability to make friends, receding hairline...basically he was going to turn out like Quasimodo without the musical ability. This caused a huge smile on my wife's face and mine. Not because we wanted my son subjected to a lifetime of being a social pariah, but because I am tongue-tied and although sometimes I may have the problems the doctor foretold, it is not from being tongue-tied. It was like a little sign from God saying "See, now you know for sure he is your son."
In fact, I think every single part of that experience was a blessing. I used to think Father's Day was just another holiday where you give people stuff (or realize you forgot to buy stuff to give to people until the last minute). But today I have had to hide my emotions as I played with my son, thinking about how much happened to get him here and how hard I am going to fight to be around as he grows up. And one last thing on being a father after having testicular cancer/chemo, the procedures and processes involved in making this happen are very expensive. I had contacted Livestrong during our efforts and received a long list of organizations willing to help make our miracle happen, many of them offering their services for free. The earlier you contact these organizations the better, as many want to help from the very start. Luckily for us, we were able to have our miracle without needing to use these organizations. But, we are keeping all of the doctors' bills to show him anytime he asks for anything expensive.
We were actually visiting at my parents' house when we found out the swimmers reached their target. My parents were overjoyed, which is surprising because people normally have totally different reactions if somebody shoves a urine soaked stick in their face. It was at this point that it dawned on me that I don't know nothing about birthing no babies. The coming months were filled with me cramming my head with everything from how to change diapers to how every single thing your child touches, eats, sees, smells, and hears will do irreparable damage to it and make you a bad parent. So, I will admit, I am one of those parents who is double checking every little thing that comes near my child to make sure it has passed a thirty-four step inspection.
The other thing I didn't know about babies, was apparently you need approximately 43,560 square feet to hold all the items that your new baby will absolutely not be able to live without, use once, then outgrow, and need to be stored for any future babies. And while we are discussing things I didn't know, when you are buying stuff for a new baby, everything made previous to the point that you arrived at the cash register at the baby store, is very dangerous and should be burned and the ashes locked in a safe and the safe thrown in the ocean (safes are located in Aisle 4 and you don't want to get a used safe). Personally, I think the baby industry (and there is definitely a baby industry) and the Consumer Product Safety Commission get together twice a week to declare everything that babies had before now, is harmful and must not be used under any conditions. Which makes perfect sense, otherwise all those cribs, highchairs, and bottles we all grew up on, and apparently survived, would still be in use today, meaning we would not need to buy new ones. When you tell people you are going out to purchase said new products many older people (i.e. people that bought baby products last year) will say "you can just borrow mine" and you respond "they (whoever that is made up of) say that is unsafe now" and the response is "well it never hurt (insert name here)".
We went through all of the doctors' appointments where you listen to sounds that mimic a cow trotting through mud and pictures that look more like a black and white radar scan of an approaching cold front than any sort of mammal, but yet you still get choked up and excited. And then there is the time that you stare at the screen, trying to see if the jet stream is going to cause a Nor'Easter when the nurse looks at you and smiles and says that "jet stream" is actually a penis. Oh the feeling that goes through a future dad when he first sees his son's jet stream. Already I was thinking of all of the tools I would be buying him and all of the time we would spend working on cars together (although, that probably would have been the case if we were having a girl too).
I will admit, as the big day approached I got more scanxiety even if a scan wasn't imminent. I had waited so long for a child that I was so paranoid something bad would happen before I would be able to meet him. And let's face it, less than a year before, I had lost my job, got cancer, and we had a miscarriage in a matter of a couple of months, so I am not unfamiliar with bad luck. But after a lot of anxiousness and praying we finally were told to check into the hospital.
For anyone unfamiliar with labor, I will try to explain what happens. You rush to the hospital where your wife seems to be in a lot of pain and there is a lot going on, but on the outside nothing really seems to be happening. While all this is going on, every single person that is on your hospital floor will walk into your room, shove his or her hand underneath your wife's gown and loudly shout out a random measurement ("6 cm!", "80%!!", "10/6!", "less than 12 parsecs!!"). I think even the kid that delivered our food shouted out "THX1138!" before she left. All I know about these random numbers and measurements was the baby was still bigger than that. So, after close to a day of "labor" that only seemed to produce an exhausted wife and goop that I wasn't sure was pre-baby goop or left over lube from the constant measuring, the doctor gets down and looks like she is trying loosen an oil filter on a Honda and says,"Well, he's not going to fit, but you can still push for another hour if you want." Although I liked our doctors there, that has to be one of the dumbest statements I have ever heard in my life! As you can imagine, my wife was over the whole push-measure-push-lube-push-measure-measure-measure-push routine. So it was off to surgery.
I walk into the operating room after they had prepped my wife and I see her laid out on a table, tubes here and there, a curtain, and a line drawn across her stomach. The doctor said, "You can stand here on this side of the curtain as we cut or..." I don't remember anything after the "or" because I really didn't care what was on the other side of the curtain as long as I was on that side of it. I was even more glad I had chose that side after the procedure started. I don't know what they were doing on their side of the curtain, but on my side of the curtain my wife was being pushed and shoved around on the table like she was the little girl from the Exorcist (minus the head spinning around). Finally the shaking stopped and they walked around the side of the curtain with...a purple baby. The comments my "friends" made about switched samples are running through my head and I search my memory for any purple family members (although there was that one distant aunt...), but after a quick wipe down he became the most beautiful, non-purple baby I have ever seen. Any doubts of grabbing the wrong coffee mug at the sperm bank, were gone for good when one pediatrician at the hospital told us that our new baby was tongue-tied and this would lead to a lifetime of speech impediments, difficulty eating, crossed eyes, sloppy trumpet playing, inability to make friends, receding hairline...basically he was going to turn out like Quasimodo without the musical ability. This caused a huge smile on my wife's face and mine. Not because we wanted my son subjected to a lifetime of being a social pariah, but because I am tongue-tied and although sometimes I may have the problems the doctor foretold, it is not from being tongue-tied. It was like a little sign from God saying "See, now you know for sure he is your son."
In fact, I think every single part of that experience was a blessing. I used to think Father's Day was just another holiday where you give people stuff (or realize you forgot to buy stuff to give to people until the last minute). But today I have had to hide my emotions as I played with my son, thinking about how much happened to get him here and how hard I am going to fight to be around as he grows up. And one last thing on being a father after having testicular cancer/chemo, the procedures and processes involved in making this happen are very expensive. I had contacted Livestrong during our efforts and received a long list of organizations willing to help make our miracle happen, many of them offering their services for free. The earlier you contact these organizations the better, as many want to help from the very start. Luckily for us, we were able to have our miracle without needing to use these organizations. But, we are keeping all of the doctors' bills to show him anytime he asks for anything expensive.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
(Creating) Life after Testicular Cancer.
I know I was supposed to write this last week, but by then end of today's post you will understand why I am not always able to post when I want. As I have mentioned in the past, I was laid off from work exactly two weeks when I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Two life changing events that came back to back. What only my very closest friends know what there was actually a third event that happened right after that.
We had been wanting to start a family for a while, and were actively trying for around a year. A few days before I started chemo we found out that we were pregnant. It seemed like the typical feel good story, boy loses job, boy loses ball, but before he lost that nut boy and girl get pregnant. There was a whirlwind of emotions, it was something we desperately wanted, but the timing couldn't be worse. Chemo works by being a very nasty drug that is easily absorbed by anything that grows quickly in the human body, like cancer cells, hair, taste buds, and unfortunately babies. Because of this the first week I had to take tons of precautions around my wife making sure that she did not come into any contact with anything that may have the chemo in it. Even using the bathroom involved closing the lid, covering the lid with a heavy towel, and flushing the toilet twice. I never realized how long it takes a toilet to flush until I had to stand, weakened from chemo, waiting for it to finish flushing twice so I could remove the towel and go back to my normal routine.
After we went through all of this trouble, we lost the baby. It was very early in the pregnancy, and to say we were stressed during this time would be an understatement. What we found out after this was the staggering percentage of first time pregnancies that end in miscarriage, however that didn't make us feel any better. It was a third blow to us in less than two months. It was the ray of hope we had been focused on through chemo. Of course many things ran through my mind, like was it my fault for missing a chemo precaution and maybe I should have postponed my treatment.
The next few weeks were a mass of confusing information. Some people say to try again right away, others say wait. Some doctors say don't try so soon after chemo, others say it is fine the swimmers either die from the chemo or are not affected. My urologist said to just give up for at least six months, but my oncologist urged us to see a fertility specialist because we "needed something good in our lives". And he was right.
The first thing a fertility specialist tries to determine is which partner is causing the trouble. This makes tons of sense, I mean treat the person with the problem(s), right? So, my poor wife goes through a series of tests that look like the set of a alien abduction movie. I still have nightmares about some other the stainless steel contraptions I saw. I also had to go through a series of grueling tests that involved me going into a room, and being provided with dirty magazines, dirty movies, and a cup. It was horrible for me, mainly because I had already read all of the magazines when we "banked" some samples before my surgery.
So after my wife goes through her series of probings and shots, and I watch a few movies, we find out that...surprise surprise the problem looks like it is with the guy with the testicular cancer and chemo. Who would've guessed? The doc was very supportive and said with very little intervention, we could use my frozen stuff and probably be successful. No nasty chemicals, no danger of having "Plus 8" after our names or being chased by reality TV producers, for the most part things are pretty normal...except one.
This technique required me to give my wife a shot in her gluteus maximus the night before the procedure. Our doctor was very supportive and involved so they even drew and "X" on the targeted butt cheek to show the exact spot that the injection needs to be placed. Well, the first round didn't work, so when went for the second try the next month, I asked the nurse if instead of an "X" if she could draw a happy face so I could "jab it between the eyes with the needle". See, these are the kinds of suggestions that would normally get you thrown out of your wife's doctor's appointments, but in our case the nurse drew the happy face. This seems all very funny at the doctor's office, but it results in uncontrolled giggling when you are sitting there with a giant needle getting reading to lance a happy face on your wife's posterior. For some reason, my bent over wife did not see the humor in the situation which only resulted in even more uncontrolled giggling from me. Luckily, we did not have to try it a third time because my wife said she was working on a few ideas of what she was going to have the nurse write on her butt to greet me the next round.
So, I will leave on this cliffhanger, did we get pregnant, did we have a baby, is the baby keeping me from blogging as regularly as I would like? I think you know the answer, but I will talk about it more tomorrow.
We had been wanting to start a family for a while, and were actively trying for around a year. A few days before I started chemo we found out that we were pregnant. It seemed like the typical feel good story, boy loses job, boy loses ball, but before he lost that nut boy and girl get pregnant. There was a whirlwind of emotions, it was something we desperately wanted, but the timing couldn't be worse. Chemo works by being a very nasty drug that is easily absorbed by anything that grows quickly in the human body, like cancer cells, hair, taste buds, and unfortunately babies. Because of this the first week I had to take tons of precautions around my wife making sure that she did not come into any contact with anything that may have the chemo in it. Even using the bathroom involved closing the lid, covering the lid with a heavy towel, and flushing the toilet twice. I never realized how long it takes a toilet to flush until I had to stand, weakened from chemo, waiting for it to finish flushing twice so I could remove the towel and go back to my normal routine.
After we went through all of this trouble, we lost the baby. It was very early in the pregnancy, and to say we were stressed during this time would be an understatement. What we found out after this was the staggering percentage of first time pregnancies that end in miscarriage, however that didn't make us feel any better. It was a third blow to us in less than two months. It was the ray of hope we had been focused on through chemo. Of course many things ran through my mind, like was it my fault for missing a chemo precaution and maybe I should have postponed my treatment.
The next few weeks were a mass of confusing information. Some people say to try again right away, others say wait. Some doctors say don't try so soon after chemo, others say it is fine the swimmers either die from the chemo or are not affected. My urologist said to just give up for at least six months, but my oncologist urged us to see a fertility specialist because we "needed something good in our lives". And he was right.
The first thing a fertility specialist tries to determine is which partner is causing the trouble. This makes tons of sense, I mean treat the person with the problem(s), right? So, my poor wife goes through a series of tests that look like the set of a alien abduction movie. I still have nightmares about some other the stainless steel contraptions I saw. I also had to go through a series of grueling tests that involved me going into a room, and being provided with dirty magazines, dirty movies, and a cup. It was horrible for me, mainly because I had already read all of the magazines when we "banked" some samples before my surgery.
So after my wife goes through her series of probings and shots, and I watch a few movies, we find out that...surprise surprise the problem looks like it is with the guy with the testicular cancer and chemo. Who would've guessed? The doc was very supportive and said with very little intervention, we could use my frozen stuff and probably be successful. No nasty chemicals, no danger of having "Plus 8" after our names or being chased by reality TV producers, for the most part things are pretty normal...except one.
This technique required me to give my wife a shot in her gluteus maximus the night before the procedure. Our doctor was very supportive and involved so they even drew and "X" on the targeted butt cheek to show the exact spot that the injection needs to be placed. Well, the first round didn't work, so when went for the second try the next month, I asked the nurse if instead of an "X" if she could draw a happy face so I could "jab it between the eyes with the needle". See, these are the kinds of suggestions that would normally get you thrown out of your wife's doctor's appointments, but in our case the nurse drew the happy face. This seems all very funny at the doctor's office, but it results in uncontrolled giggling when you are sitting there with a giant needle getting reading to lance a happy face on your wife's posterior. For some reason, my bent over wife did not see the humor in the situation which only resulted in even more uncontrolled giggling from me. Luckily, we did not have to try it a third time because my wife said she was working on a few ideas of what she was going to have the nurse write on her butt to greet me the next round.
So, I will leave on this cliffhanger, did we get pregnant, did we have a baby, is the baby keeping me from blogging as regularly as I would like? I think you know the answer, but I will talk about it more tomorrow.
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