Charles Joseph Hackman is here!

It is Pete again, to announce that Charles Joseph Hackman entered the world at 9:34 am on Tuesday, December 23rd! He weighed 7 lbs 14 oz, and is 21 inches long!

What a day this has been... I posted my last post at around 1:30 am and was downright grumpy and tired. Needless to say, I didn't sleep a whole lot that night... Anyway, I will do my best to accurately describe the events of the day...

I slept until around 4 am and then I woke up for some reason... I can't remember if someone had come in to check on Marie or not but it is honestly all a blur at this point. I want to say that the night nurse had come in to check on Marie to see how things were. From what I recall, the night nurse was checking her dilation as it looked like she was progressing to the point that they might want her to start pushing.

At 7 am, the shift change took place and the new nurse just took charge and had Marie start pushing heavily. The baby was in the +1 position, which meant that his head had gotten to a point that it was starting to pass the pelvic bone. So from 7 to about 8:30, they had Marie really start pushing and there were a few points when you could see the tip of his head. They got him to the point that they wanted to call the doctor, and found out that the doctor was in with another patient delivering via c-section and would be a while!

So the nurse immediately had Marie stop pushing and even though the baby was starting to show, he was okay and his heartbeat was strong. They took her off the Pitocin to slow down the contractions. Since they knew that the doctor would be a while, they told Marie to rest for the next half hour or so, conserving her energy... We all took a quick nap and then around 9 am, the doctor came in and siad that she was ready to have Marie push again.

So, she started pushing pretty hard at that point and after a few hard pushes, Charles Joseph Hackman was born! It was so surreal... I was watching with my camera at the ready, hoping to snap a picture of Charlie's first minutes... Then all of a sudden, out popped this little head, all wrinkled and ugly and blue! Then the doctor starting yanking on the poor baby's neck and I could have sworn that she was going to break the poor little fellow's neck, trying to pull the rest of his little body out of that tiny hole! Anyway, after a few tugs, he came out and started turning even more blue than before... Then came the most beautiful, and yet pathetic little cry as he started to cry... I was so in awe that I completely forgot to take a picture of him coming out!

They then proceeded to wipe him off, rubbing his back and coaxing him to get all of the crud out of his lungs... He cried for about a minute and then they put him on Marie's chest. She had done so great... It was really just amazing... Simply amazing... There is no other word for it!

So they tended to fixing up Marie, and as they did that, they took Charlie over to the warmer (or the Chicken Fryer, as Marie called it). I went over to check him out and he was just the most chill baby! He just sat there looking at me and I looking at him and it was just so surreal... I could not beleive that this little thing was the by-product of Marie and I!

Anyway, at that point, it is once again a blur as everyone was rushing in and out of the room... There were dozens of calls and text messages that were sent out over that next hour. I am sure that there are tons of people that I forgot to tell.

So around noon or so, Mom and Dad Bonaccorse headed down to the cafeteria to get some lunch and give the newly expanded Hackman family some time to bond. We ordered some food from the cafeteria and then just sat in awe. After lunch, Mom and Dad went back to the house to get some rest. I stayed with Marie and we both finally just zonked out. We slept at least a good three hours or so.

Anyway, it is almost a full 24 hours since the last post and I am rather tired... Marie and Charlie are doing great. They expect us to be able to come back home either late on Christmas Eve or early Christmas day! That is all I can type for now... Maybe if we aren't completely wiped, we will give more details... Or maybe Marie will give her point of view...

Regardless, my life will NEVER be the same and I am looking forward to getting CJ home. I don't think, that you could ask for a better Christmas present!

Marie's pre-labor saga

Hello everyone! This is Pete... I apologize that it has been almost two months since the last post... Marie has been a bad blogger!

Anyway, I just wanted to give everyone a quick update on how Marie is doing... On Saturday evening, Marie was not feeling well, and was vomiting just about every hour or so from around 11 pm to around 7 am on Sunday morning. Because of all of the vomiting, Marie was feeling a bit dehydrated, which made her Braxton Hicks contractions a little stronger than usual... However, there was no regularity to them and even though they seemed to sometimes increase in severity, they also waned quite a bit as well. So on Sunday morning, Marie called the doctor and they said to come to the hospital to make sure that everything was okay.

So Marie, her mother, and I packed up all of our stuff and headed off to the hospital around 7:30 am on Sunday morning. They put her on an IV to rehydrate her and checked her dilation. Marie was still at around 2 cm, but they took some blood and urine samples and let her get a little sleep. Around 1:30 pm, they came back saying that they were a little concerned about her blood pressure and the potential for preclampsia (pregnancy induced high blood pressure, which leads to birth complications). So they basically said that they needed to monitor her urine for a full 24 hours, and that she had a choice of going home and staying on bedrest, collecting her urine, or she could stay at the hospital and they could do it. She decided to stay overnight at the hospital.

In the meantime, Marie's father was flying in to the Dayton airport at around 4:00 pm, so I went up to the airport to pick him up. After picking him up, we came back to the hospital to see how Marie was doing. She was in good spirits and just wanted the baby out. Dad and I went back home and got a good rest... I went to bed at around 9:30 pm and let me tell you that it was one of the most restful sleeps that I have had in some time!

Anyway, I went to work Monday morning and was so busy that I didn't get a chance to talk to her until around 11 am or so. When I talked to her, she said that they were going to induce her! Well, let me tell you, I was like "Don't you DARE have that baby without me!" She assured me that she would not, and that I had plenty of time to finish up work. So I left work around 1:30 pm and headed to the hospital.

So I got to the hospital and Marie was doing well. They had started her on an IV drip of Pitocin, which is a chemical that induces labor and contractions. Her contractions were getting slightly more intense, but not unbearable. They checked her dilation and after 6 hours of Pitocin, she had only dilated up to 3 cm. So around 9:00 pm, they decided to manually break her water.

After her water broke, the contractions started getting a bit more intense, so around 11:00 pm, she decided that the pain was enough that she wanted to get an epidoral. She did great with getting the epidoral and afterward was feeling no pain.

At this point, there is not a lot to report except that I am tired and getting a little cranky. She is lying in bed and says her legs feel like heavy marshmallows. Mom is sitting to my right, sleeping in the fold out bed-chair and Dad is to my left stretching out between two chairs. I am sitting in a rocking chair, putting my feet up on a footstool, and am starting to get a little grumpy and wish that I had a bed to lay out on. Other than that, there is no news to report... I am really hoping that Charlie comes soon. I will try to keep you all posted as much as I can!

It's been a while!

Morning everyone! I am so sorry that we haven't written in a while, but the last two weeks have been busy, to say the LEAST! Pete and I travelled to Florida last week for a much needed break and to participate in my brother's amazing wedding. Although it was a very intimate and small wedding, it totally fitted John and Christina's personalities to a "t". I was super proud of him, and I couldn't be happier having Christina in our family. I always knew she would make a great sister, and she is such a wonderful addition to our family!

The rest of our time in Florida was spent hanging out with my family, which is super important to me. My grandmother is closing in on 90, and I am very aware that she won't be here forever, so this time spent with her was even more precious to me. Having also spent time with both my aunts and cousins (Des and Eddie) was wonderful as well. I miss them tons already, but know I will see them soon.

For those of you that have seen the update on facebook, I will now fill you in on our very eventful Sunday evening/ Monday. Sunday was spent shopping with Pete and Desiree at one of the 7 billion outlet malls in central Florida. We had a great time and did manage to find some awesome deals. (hellooo.. La Perla undies for 5 bucks a piece.. yeah.. thats right.. wohoo!) After our pilgrimage, we stopped at a Checkers (YUM) and came back to the hotel.

Later that evening, I wasn't feeling so hot. We had made plans to meet with John, Chris and other good friends at a German restaurant. Now, mind you, I have been looking forward to this outing for WEEKS, if not months, since it has been a while since I had a decent schnitzel. (and get your minds out of the gutter.. its not THAT kind of wiener, you pervs)

The entire ride to Sanford was spent breathing and slowly realizing the horror that I wasn't feeling so hot and, dare I say it, NAUSEOUS. I already can't drink my beloved German beer, but to not feel like eating my Jager Schnitzel was just agonizing. We finally arrive at the restaurant and BOOM. I have to puke. And not just once, but about four times. The evening was spent looking longingly at Pete's yummy dish and my absolute sheer determination to not throw up again.

Finally, I broke down and had to excuse myself from the group. By this point, I was pretty miserable and no longer wanted to smell any German food for the rest of my life. We called my amazing cousin Maria del Mar and asked for her advice on what I could take. We stopped at a local walgreens and went on our way. Pete, being the very proactive husband he is, thought to take a few extra bags just in case I didn't make it to John's house.

So there was are.. trucking along, when all of the sudden, Pete goes UH OH and grabs the bags and starts spewing like he was in the exorcist movie. Seriously people, not to be graphic, but this kid threw up like a champ! Thank god he double bagged it. Needless to say, he has forever ruined Jagerschnitzel for me, and I will never ever look at beer the same.

We finally reach John's house and Pete and I are both in dire straights. We stick around and wait for John, Chris and Wolfram to come home. Low and behold, John is now sick and heaving his brains out. I kid you not people, it was like a scene out of the movie Outbreak. We couldn't believe it. At this point, the story gets repetitive, so I will give you the Cliffs notes version.

We get to the hotel, Pete and I continue violent puking and now pooping cycle Dad now joins in the festivities. Get a call from Chris that Wolfram didn't want to be left out and now he joins the inner sanctum of pukies. Call Desiree.. she is sick too.... AHHHHH!!!

The morning finally comes and I am too weak to do anything and quite frankly, too terrified to drink or eat. I was tired of puking and don't think I could have taken anymore. Finally, with my dad being so weak as well, and me starting to worry about Charlie, we decided to go to the ER to get re hydrated.

So to fastfoward, we spent the entire day in the ER and I ended up being transferred VIA FREAKIN AMBULANCE to a maternity hospital in Downtown Orlando because of some worries the ER doctor had. What seemed like an eternity and what I am sure will be a 10,000 dollar bill later, I came out with a good clean of health.

So that's that. I will try to post the pictures up from my very eventful Monday so that you all can relive what was me in all my miserable, hospital gown glory.

And don't fret, both Charlie, me, dad, John, Wolfram, Desiree and the Champ himself, Pete are fine. Thank god. Well, Pete will be fine, i am sure until he sees the hospital bill.

The Name Game

Hello everyone, this is Pete!

I am making my blogging debut to let you all know that we have decided on a name! As my lovely wife has written, I have had a heck of a time deciding what to call our child... There is so much responsibility involved! This is one of the few things that will affect your child for the REST OF THEIR LIFE!

So, to give you a little history, I will take you on a journey of The Name Game over the past 7 months...

In the first few months, Marie was all about deciding a name for our child. She bought the "1 trillion baby names" book which I immediately hid away. I went along non-committal-like, but with enough interest to not get her mad at me. A few names were tossed about, but we were still kind of in shock about getting pregnant in the first place, so nothing was really talked about with any seriousness.

Sometime in August, Marie REALLY starts to get serious about naming our child, but I told her that I need to find out the gender before I even consider a name, because that immediately eliminates half of the choices! I was not about to waste my time thinking about a name that wasn't even going to work. So August 25th rolls around and we find out that it is a boy. The ironic thing is that by this time we had already mutually agreed on an acceptable girl name, so it was back to the drawing board for a boy's name.

I looked over the book and wrote a few names down and immediately knocked a few off the list. However, I was really struggling with this name thing! We determined that if we used one of our father's names we would have to use both, and could not just use one or the other, which would essentially mean that he would have two middle names (like me)!

Right before the sonogram that would determine his gender, we had some friends visiting and we were kidding around after watching a Carl Weathers movie and I said that if we had a boy, we would call him Tyrone "Action Jackson" Hackman. I liked it, and it had a nice ring to it. Funny enough, the Action Jackson moniker stuck and we started calling him AJ instead of Pinhead.

So we kind of liked it and decided that we would try names starting with A like Andrew or Alexander, with either Joseph Douglas or Pierce as the middle names. Joseph William is Marie's father's name, and Charles Douglas was my father's name. Pierce is actually a form of the name Peter. We had tried a few combinations, but nothing really sounded right.

We tried out Alex for a while and it just didn't fit. We tried out Andrew for a day and it worked better, but it still wasn't right. I was starting to get a little frustrated and felt like I was now starting back at square one!

Then, earlier this week, after a visit by some friends who have a 3 week old son named Charlie, it just kind of hit me... Despite the odd nicknames for Charles (as mentioned in a previous entry by Marie) I kind of liked the name! I mentioned this to Marie and she told me that oddly enough, she was kind of liking the name as well! She immediately took that as a sign that our son was going to be named Charles and that it was my choice for the middle name... Either Joseph or William. I thought it over for a bit and decided that I really did like the name!

So after much thought and discussion, we have decided that he will be named Charles Joseph after our both of our fathers... However, if you want to call him Charlie, Tyrone, Chuck, CJ, Action Jackson, Chip, Chaz, or even Bubba, that is fine with me too. Although, I have to say that Charles is not technically his name until we put it on the birth certificate! I may decide to change my mind, but I doubt it... It has been hard enough getting this far! So, I hereby declare that the Name Game is officially over! Yay!

Our baby pics.. Enjoy!

It's not a democracy....

For those of you following my blog, the latest in the Hackman household drama has been deciding a name for Pinhead. I think we have come to a name, but Pete, being the ever dramatic person he is, wants to wait until his absolute deadline to make it official. Personally, I can't wait to make it official. He wants to make sure 10000000% he is good with the name before making that final call. Unfortunately, I hate to break it to him, but this is not a democracy, its a VADGEOCRACY. Thanks right people. I work out the math as such: I get a 60% stake in the vote, he gets 40%. Therefore, by vadgeocracy rules, I win. Let's think about this. Who has to carry said baby in their belly for nine months???? HMMMM???? Who has to carry around ginormous boulders in a bra for nine months??? Whose hoo-haw is permanently going to be traumatized by squeezing out a watermelon out of a lemon sized hole??? Basically, who's knocked up and giving birth here? That's right, me!

So, by said definition and set expectations that are to be delivered, I get final say. He is in denial, and is continuing to think he still has a "choice" in the name. Poor Pete. I reached my point and it was broken the second he blurted "Thor" as a possible name for our child. Granted, he was kidding, but I suspected that his dedication and seriousness on the issue was clearly not on par with mine. We did try out two other names, but they did not feel right. He did agree that those names just didn't sound like our child and after a day or so of "test-driving" the name, we gave them up.

Needless to say, we do have to thank two very cool people for being so awesome. They know who they are and I do not want to write their names because that would give away Pinhead's final name. Regardless of what Pete' thinks, Pinhead's name has been chosen, and Pete will write on the blog Wednesday to make the huge "Reveal". Although, for a small bribe, I may be able to spill the beans. Hope you all are having a great day and remember, when your wife, girlfriend, significant person is knocked up.. Vadgeocracy rules.

Reaching my breaking point...

Okey dokey people. At this very moment, I am sitting in bed with my soon to be dead husband who is STILL contemplating names. Yes, we are still playing the name game here at the Hackman Household. I am working on keeping a calm and happy disposition at this very moment, while my husband blurts out names like Sheldon, Mortimer, Vladimir and Waldo. Under normal circumstances, I would find this hilarious, but seeing as our kid will be born in 69 days, I would like to settle on his name ASAP. OH MY GOD. He just blurted out THOR as a freaking name. I am seriously going to kill him. Well, obviously not, but let's just say that he thinks its hysterical to find the funniest, most insane names and see what kind of reaction I will have.

You know what, for the next five minutes, I am going to write about what the holy hades he talks about in the morning. Yes, I want you to fully experience the Pete Hackman daily routine when in bed. (get your minds out of the gutter, people) At this very moment, he is whining about why his Frisky Dingo is not taping. For those of you who aren't aware of this show, and that should pretty much be ALL OF YOU, its the most insane, retarded show on the face of the planet. I am not going to even bother with giving you details, but Pete is of course, enamoured with the show. I just cringe when I see him watch it because I can count the brain cells dying as he watches.

Now he is playing with the stupid remote control trying to find this stupid Frisky Dingo show. I am praying that it is no longer on the stupid Adult Swim and has been gobbled up by the TV Gods of forgotten programming.

Pete still has the baby name book in his one hand, but do you think he is trying to find out a name for our kid???? NO. He is still obsessing about this freaking frisky dingo.

Still channel surfing, so no news to report or update you all on that front.

Now he is taking this valuable time to ensure that all the shows we like are getting taped on the DVR. AHHHHHH, good to know that his priorities are lined up.

Ok.. i think I need to eat. Normally he is the most awesome husband in the universe, but today, I think I am about to lose it. Please don't worry you all, he will be fine. As long as one of you calls him and lets him know that it may be in his best interest to find our kid a name soon.

Update, he just pondered the reason as to WHY NBC is sucking so bad in the ratings and why they have such stupid shows like Night Rider and Crusoe on the line up.

Ok, I am done. I need to eat and have to baby retail therapy. I love you all and please keep me and pinhead in your prayers. I really don't feel like going to jail because I have a dumb dumb for a husband.