Unlike Baby E, I had a pretty good idea of exactly when Liam was conceived, but after five years of waiting, I kept telling myself to hold on a few more days before I bought a test... I'd been late before, and AF had a way of showing up anyway...
This time though, I finally screwed up the nerve, bought the test and lo and behold, it was positive - we were having a baby!!!
I told Wayne and we made plans to find a doctor and decided to wait until we'd seen the O/B before breaking the news to Robyn that she was going to be a big sister... I knew she suspected something, because I was tired, cranky and queasy, so it really came as no surprise to her when we announced a sibling was imminent.
I was having a fairly routine pregnancy, a few hiccups here and there, and everyone was convinced that I was probably having a girl... so much so that even before my ultrasound, my sister went out and bought 'baby' her first bikini... weren't they surprised that May, when baby had boy parts!
It was funny, really - we had agreed on a boy's name rather quickly and there was no arguments about it, but our girl's name choices had been fraught with controversy... so we laid aside the controversy with one sweep of the U/S wand, and sat back to wait for Liam's birth.
Of course, I had to have picked a tumultuous time in our lives to be pregnant... Wayne had gone to a work-related conference at the end of October, before we got pregnant, and had met a colleague who was hiring a tourism and events management person for a business school program in Charleston, SC. We were living in a little town in South-western PA, called Charleroi while Wayne toiled in a geography department at the California University of PA, which wasn't the most ideal situation... he was teaching the History of Geography and Map Skills instead of his passion... and on top of that, the small town lifestyle just hadn't grown on us...
So, when Wayne got called up by the colleague from Charleston early in December to come down for an interview, we hopped on a plane and off we went on an adventure... Wayne to interview and Robyn and I to check out our hopefully future home...
During the interview weekend, Wayne fell in love with the College of Charleston, and Robyn fell in love with the Atlantic Ocean, and I fell in love with Charleston as a whole... it was kind of like Kitchener-Waterloo, where we had lived while Wayne was doing his masters and PhD work - big enough to have all the amenities and small enough to not be overwhelming...
Needless to say, just before we found out we were pregnant, we found out that Wayne had gotten the job... which would mean selling our house after fast tracking some of the repairs we needed to do, and packing everything up once again for a move across a thousand kilometers less than 10 months after we had settled in Charleroi...
but I digress, that's just background...
In the midst of planning and packing, and keeping the house showroom clean, I was battling morning sickness, and fatigue - the good thing was that Robyn and Wayne were fairly self sufficient... and away all day at work and school, so I could rest when I wanted to rest and I napped a lot....
In May of 2006, just as everything was coming to a head - Wayne was finishing up at Cal U, Robyn was finishing up her school year, I went to another routine dr. appt. and found out that I had failed my one hour test for gestational diabetes and would have to go to the local hospital to sit for the 3 hour...
So, off I trundled and lo and behold, I was about to turn our family's eating habits upside down... I had gestational diabetes - time to count every carb, protein and fat gram, test my blood sugar 6 times a day and generally throw another wrench into the mix...
It was actually a fairly easy transition - we had a fairly healthy lifestyle, it was just being really conscious of portion size and substituting some lower carb choices into the diet...
and so we made our move in June of 2006 and settled into an apartment in West Ashley, SC... Liam's room became the catch-all room for a while... boxes and extra stuff were piled high waiting for places to go... as we downsized from 2800 sq. feet into a 900 sq. ft apartment... but the rest was all good... Robyn and I started exploring our new home - mostly the air conditioned, indoor venues - cause darn - it's HOT and HUMID in Charleston in July and August, especially when you're in your third trimester...
The weather was still pretty hot and humid when September rolled around... but we managed to endure... We were getting ready for Liam's arrival in a month, starting to wash the baby clothes, put the crib and change table together and clean out his room... I went to my doctor's appointment on September 14th, to find out that we had another potential hurdle to overcome... my blood pressure was going up... and I needed to go back in two days to have it checked... until then, I was being put on restrictions - limited movement and all... so what did I do on my way home from the doc? Go grocery shopping of course, then when I got home, I tidied up the house, did some laundry and got ready to go on bed rest the next day....
I woke up on the morning of Friday, September 15th feeling crampy and achy - my O/B had said that I'd probably feel that way because of the internal I'd had the day before, so I thought little of it... I sent Robyn and Wayne off to their respective schools and hunkered down on the couch for the day, expecting to have the cramps subside and start in on the rest that I was supposed to have...
A few hours later, uncomfortable and achy, I headed for bed after making several trips to the bathroom... and my brother called... sitting there talking to him, we noticed that my cramps were starting to come and go... so we timed them... darn if they weren't getting regular - it looked like Liam wasn't going to have any part in me getting bed rest :)
I phoned my doctor's office, let them know I wasn't sure, but thought I might be in labour, called Wayne and told him to arrange for the rest of the day off, and I got myself together... The cramps were pretty regular, but they weren't too intense, so I thought it might be false labour... I packed up my stuff and drove over to Wayne's office, wondering if we were going to meet Liam or not, still not convinced I was in labour for sure.
At the doctor's office, we were quickly hooked up to the NST and lo and behold, we were definitely contracting and at about 6 minutes apart... it was time for a trip to L & D...
We headed over to the hospital, got checked in and sent to a room and then we waited for a nurse to come in and set up my IV in preparation for a visit from the anesthesiologist to get my epidural... the nurse couldn't find a vein!
The second nurse couldn't find a vein!
So when the anesthesiologist came in to give me my epidural, lo and behold, I was a pin cushion that hadn't taken... so he put in my IV and had to rush away to do a C-section.. promising to come back after that...
Of course, fifteen minutes into some other woman's C-section, I hit transition... and darn that hurt... every 3 minutes for the rest of the hour... until my guardian angel came back to do my epidural...
It was another few hours before Liam was ready to arrive - it timed perfectly for the doctor, who managed to finish out her daily office visits before coming back to the hospital to check on me... I started pushing at 5:15 pm and by 5:40, Liam was born!!
Such an accommodating little guy - he waited until the doc was ready to deliver him... and didn't even cause a major bump in her schedule :)
Liam Kenneth Stephen Smith, first picture taken at 5:50pm on September 15th, 2006
