Half hour until go time

Trial pushing went well, but they decided to give her another half hour before they make a go of it.
Oh and that’s 9am to 9pm. We intend to get some sleep tonite!
Next post will be with baby news. See you all on the other side. Nic appreciates your prayers and happy thoughts!

Almost there

Dr. Maddock wants you all to know that Nic’s fully dialated, 100 percent effaced, +3 station. She’ll likeky have to start pushing within an hour or so. We chilled for a little while, watched some Lost (thanks Bates) and got some random footage on tape. Nic’s starting to feel the contractions again, despite the epidural, and occasionally feeling an urge to push, so it won’t be long now.
Visiting hours are from 9-9 and we’re on the 6th floor, D-wing at Albany med, if anyone wants to visit.
Trial pushing starting now…

Updating…

Gah, you don’t know how hard it is to tap out these updates on this tiny keyboard! But thank you everyone for your texts and phone calls and comments (Joey – tell your mom, thanks for the call)! Nic (and I) are doing much, much better now that we’ve had the epidural! The catheter part is pretty uncomfortable, but the number she gets the more it seems worth it. Right now she’s on a foly (pee) catheter, and an oxygen mask so there’s really nothing to worry about. They’re monitoring the baby’s heartrate cause they’d like it to be a little more active. Probably that just means its napping – which both Nic and I would love to be doing right about now.
Nic’s family is on their way here (they left as soon as we called cause they’re crazy like that). Mine will head down tomorrow. All is as well as can be expected – I promise I’ll post as soon as I can if anything changes! These things take time – it probably won’t happen before tomorrow…

Epidural Time

2cm, +1 effaced and sick of the pain. Contractions still aren’t regular but the customer is always right here in the US of A, and Nic’s ready for modern medicine to do it’s thing. 6 hours is more than I could take, so I’m all for the big needle!

Still waiting

So we’re on drugs now to create contractions. They’re trying to establish a normal pattern, but for the past several hours they’ve had a hard time with that. Sometimes we’ll get really hard ones at regular intervals; frequently they’re will be a bunch of smaller ones in between. They won’t tell us if the dialation has changed until they get the pattern established, so we’re tired, Nic’s sore and we don’t have a clue what’s going on…

Unto us a child is born…sometime in the next 24 hours

This morning I woke up to a poke in the arm and the whispered words ‘my water broke!’ At that point there were no contractions, and since we had a doctors appointment at 10, so we just figured we’d keep that. I set about some last minute preparations, ran a few errands, and returned home. As I did the doctors office called to reschedule the appointment. Nic explained that she’d really like to keep the appointment, since she was in labour, and they referred her to the hospital. Needless to say, we were less than eager to make the half hour trip only to be sent home cause we weren’t far enough along. So we kept making calls, watched an episode of ‘Lost’ and finally got a hold of a nurse who said we should go in anyway, since usually the contractions come before the water breaking and we should get checked out. By the time we got there, there were some irregular, but real contractions happening, and we were checked in. An hour, a tonne of questions, and two tests later, they decided we were, in fact, in labour and we could stay…
And stay we shall – for a long time. She’s only 1cm dilated, so there’s a ways to go. The nurse thinks sometime tonite or tomorrow. We can’t leave though, because without the amniotic fluid, there’s a risk of infection. Fortunately Jon and Jess are coming by with more episodes of Lost on DVD, and this’ll give our parents plenty of time to get here.
More news later, as it unfolds. I think we’re both gonna try a little nap – it’s been a big day so far.