Happy Birthday Domi!

Domingo today is your birthday. You are one year old. I cannot believe how quickly time flies. At the same time, I can't believe it's only been a year since you've been in our lives. I cannot imagine life without you and don't even really remember what it was like before you. You've changed so much over the past year it's hard to believe you are the same little peanut that was all squished up inside my "world's shortest torso". You're wearing same hat as in the picture below.


This is you, one minute on the outside. You've still got that giant dimple in your chin, and those chubby cheeks. But other than that, you are a completely different animal!
The 12 month update will be forthcoming, but today I thought I'd take a look back at where we all were a year ago today.
Well, actually, your birth story is not all that dramatic, so let's start a little bit further back. This is a warning upfront: this is a long detailed pregnancy and birth story not for the squeamish or easily bored.
At about 7 weeks gestation, around 2 weeks after the two little blue lines appeared, I started bleeding a little bit, so we went and got an ultrasound to see what was up, and there you were, a little amorphous blob that we dubbed "the bean". Well, trouble from the start, you decided that your heart rate wasn't going to be racing during that ultrasound, so we got another the next week. By then the bleeding went away and you said, 'ok this heart rate thing is not worth freaking anyone out about' so it was up to normal by the next week.
Things were pretty quiet for a while except for the sounds of mommy retching her brains out every morning for weeks. This would often happen as I was walking to court and would smell the diesel from the buses downtown. I was never so glad for Daley's obsession with garbage cans on every block.
So a few weeks went by without incident, until one morning very early, we had a big scare, and woke up in a puddle of blood. We went to the ER and the resident said that there was nothing we could do and you were lost. I have never felt so miserable in all my life as in those few minutes, and hope against hope that I will never ever feel that way again. But a little while later, another doctor came in, looked around on the ultrasound, and said everything was fine. I had a subchorionic hemorage that was causing some trouble, but it wasn't that big and they said there was a good chance that it would get better all by itself, and that there was nothing to do but wait it out. We went home and took it easy for a few days, and after a while, everything was going great. We soon found out you were no longer a bean, but a boy! We made audio tapes talking and singing to you, you will hear them and be totally embarrased one day.
But like abuela says, boys are trouble, right from the start, and you didn't want us to take you for granted, so at about 28 weeks, Fourth of July weekend to be exact, you decided to shake things up a bit, and I went into preterm labor. So I was stuck in the hospital for 2 days getting shots and drugs and trying to keep your anxious little butt inside. No more work for the rest of the pregnancy, and took medicines, started hypnotherapy and other hippy ways to keep you from coming early. Thankfully you cooperated. It wasn't until September 7, 2006 at 3:30 a.m. that you decided to make your grand entrance into the world.
The night before, Daddy and I were supposed to go to our last hypnobirthing class (we had used hypnosis to keep you in, now we wanted to use it to get you out!) but decided to skip it since it was going to be on nursing and bathing and what to expect after the baby comes. We figured we'd be pros at all that stuff, so we hung out with tia Heather that night instead. We had dinner, watched a movie and she decided to stay the night. We went to bed, and at about 12:30 a.m., I woke up when I turned from one side to the other and heard and felt a tiny little pop. I ran to the bathroom and all this fluid came whooshing out. After Daddy had a silent freak out because "whoa, this is really happening", we called the doctor, who told us to go to the hospital and have them page her when we were ready to go. She didn't tell me this until later, but she thought it'd be some time after her lunch meeting. Just two days before we had been in her office and I was only 2 cm dialated, so she thought it'd be a while. We woke up tia Heather with a very cliche "it's time" and I got in the shower and started thinking all my lovely hypno-thoughts. I wasn't uncomfortable until I squatted down in the shower trying to use gravity and your giant head to gently make my cervix open. After a few seconds of that feeling, I decided not to try that again. After I got out of the shower, I had a cup of tea, and we were off to the hospital. By the time we were in the car I began rethinking my thoughts on pain management. If there was no way of knowing how much longer I'd have to be in labor, or if they said it'd be hours and hours, I think an epidural would have been in the cards. But as soon as we got to the hospital, the doctor said we were complete and ready to push! They called Irma, she came flying down the highway and after a botched IV attempt by our flaky nurse, we were ready to go. Daddy was taking pictures and chatting with the nurses, and telling them about tia Leticia and your primas. The nurse said I was very calm for being complete, I must have been since I didn't bite Daddy's head off for being so chatty and taking my picture while I was feeling very strong contractions. The hypnotherapy works!
Once it was time to push, I didn't really know what I was doing, and I was actually afraid to push at first, but once I figured it out, it went very quickly. The crazy nurse kept wandering around the room, and I had to be obnoxious and snap at her to get back over to the bed to hold my leg when the contractions were coming so I could push. I actually didn't want to be on my back for the labor. I had read all these hippy books about labor, sitting up, squatting down, in the back of a bus, but Irma said that this way really worked, and if we pushed for a while without much progress we could try something else, so we gave it a try. Well less than a half an hour after we started pushing, we saw your little head full of curly black hair, then a second later your slippery skinny body came sliding out. Daddy cried because he had just seen a miracle and I was exhilarated. Your sweet, warm, naked, screamy, wiggly body was placed on my chest, and I looked into your beautiful face and smiled.
Since then, it's been a year of new adventures, and I think we've all learned a lot, especially me. You are the sweetest boy I've ever met. I love you more than you can ever imagine.
Happy birthday my darling boy.
love,
mama