So as I write this, we are sitting in our third room here at the hospital. It’s nice though… one of the birthing suites.

Yesterday, Dr. Perales decided to keep Angie on the magnesium a little longer to let her get one more night of sleep. Later in the night though, she wasn’t doing too well on it, so at midnight, she turned it off completely. Angie started feeling better, but this morning she had some real trouble with her breathing. Angie was coughing a lot and when she did she was getting mucus with some blood in it. Probably just from the amount of coughing she’s doing. The nurses called Dr. Perales though and she ordered a lot of tests. So we saw a pulmonary doc, a respiratory therapist, someone to draw blood for tests (out of a vein), someone else to draw blood out of an artery in her wrist, someone to take an x-ray of her chest, and finally the anesthesiologist. There was one part where in all the commotion, the nurse pulled a cord out of the wall, which we later found out was an emergency signal… a couple other nurses came storming in ready to do … well I guess do whatever they needed to do.

The respiratory therapist gave Angie some albuterol to help with her breathing. Then they gave her some lasiks (not sure if I’m spelling any of this right), and that seemed to help a lot. With the x-rays they confirmed that she had pulmonary edema brought on by the combination of drugs she was on for the contractions. But the new medicines seemed to help and by 11:00-ish she was feeling better, and breathing much nicer. The anesthesiologist was able to put in her epidural, which has been a HUGE blessing. It wasn’t so much that the pain of contractions was too bad, but really more that she still hasn’t gotten a lot of rest, and today seems like it may be the day. The epidural has allowed her to kind of cruise through these early contractions.

She’s about 4 centimeters now, and her uterus is about 80 – 90% thinned out (I think the technical term may be “effaced” but I’m not positive). Her contractions are coming at about every 3 minutes right now and everything seems to be on track. Dr. Perales came in and checked on her and ordered some calcium to be added to her drip because it’s one of those things where as the magnesium goes up, the calcium goes down.

The nurse seems to think we will be going about 4 or 5PM tonight, which would make today Tater’s birthday. Kylie has been extremely helpful and last night was looking for a list of things to do while she was at home to help prepare the house for Angie coming home. I know it’s tough on her because she has exams this week and she’s so worried that Angie is going to deliver while she’s at school. I sent her a text message today to tell her to call when she gets out today. Depending on where Angie is when she gets out, it may be a good idea to have her come here so she doesn’t miss it. Getting kind of exciting, with the birth coming soon. I haven’t really been able to give everyone a call who has either called or who I’ve been calling. I’ve been telling everyone to just call me if they want an update. That way if I can, I’ll answer, but if I can’t then they will either know we are busy, or I’m on the other phone.

When the baby comes, I think we are going to identify a list of people to call, and then ask them to “spread the word.” I’ll eventually get to update here, and have taken some pictures and video, so I’ll update that once I get back to the house and can offload them.

NOT LONG NOW!!! :)

So turns out that eight weeks became one. Sunday morning, Angie woke up for what has recently been an hourly bathroom visit. Unlike most times, I actually woke up too, but didn’t think much about it until she called my name. She noticed some blood in the toilet so we began double checking our books to confirm what we already knew… call the doctor. A few minutes later she went back to the bathroom and some more fluid (with less blood) came out. It was about that time that we got in touch with the on call doctor who said “head to the hospital.”

I’m not embarassed to say that 7 weeks out, we hadn’t finished all of our prep. We hadn’t packed a bag or chosen a pediatrician. We hadn’t mapped out a course to the hospital either though this proved not be an issue at 4AM. So we quickly threw together a bag and drove on in. We also didn’t think far enough ahead to grab something to eat before we left or on the way in.

We got to the hospital a little before 5:00AM and they took no time at all checking us in. I think I filled out all of 4 lines on the form before Angie was in a wheelchair and heading down the hall. We were assigned to room 323 initially. I have to say I was surprised by the size of the rooms… Don’t get me wrong… this isn’t the Ritz, but the rooms are nice and big. After some initial tests, it was confirmed that Angie had ruptured, and would not be going home without having a baby first.

The next couple days has kind of been a blur. Angie hasn’t been able to get out of bed and for the first 24 hours or so, she didn’t get anything to eat or drink. She was on an IV though, so she wasn’t dehydrating or anything. They attached her to monitors (one for her contractions, one for the baby’s heartbeat, and one for her heartbeat.) and started giving her antibiotics to fend off any infections. They took some blood too to check for infection (and I imagine everything else too).

Our doctor was out of town for the weekend, so the on call Doctor came in and she was great. Our doctor (Dr. Perales) actually delivered her baby, and they have a lot of the same views and approaches to birth. She started Angie on some medicine to stop the contractions. I originally thought that if your water broke you were going to give birth within 24 hours, but it seems that’s not always the case. We were told that technically, she could go for weeks with her water ruptured, as long as she doesn’t get an infection or lose too much fluid. The medicine didn’t stop them completely though and Angie wasn’t getting any sleep, so they decided to move to the “big guns” which is magnesium. I can’t tell you how many people made a point to tell Angie that magnesium was going to make her feel like crap. But she was already feeling like crap with the contraction and no sleep. So we did it.

The first couple hours on the magnesium weren’t bad. Angie was wondering what everyone was talking about. Bedtime came and we turned out the lights and tried to get some rest. I have to admit that I didn’t have any trouble sleeping. Even on the hard pull out chair that they give me, I was out. Angie on the other hand never got any deep sleep. The magnesium made her feel so bad that she could only close her eyes and rest. Add to that, someone coming in every hour to check on her, and she was even more tired in the morning. Don’t get me wrong, the nurses have all been absolutely fantastic. We have felt comfortable with every single one of them. But a hospital is just not the place to get rest.

So here we are. Monday morning…early and waiting on our doctor to come in and see us.

We took a trip to Bogalusa, LA a few weeks ago, and I thought I’d post a few pictures to highlight the trip:

Angie and her Dad… so that’s where she gets it…

Angie with her mom and Aunt…

Kylie and my first real crawfish boil…

Kylie + Tractor = Get out of the way!!! (For the record… yes, she really drove it!)

Bogalusa, LA… If there weren’t alligators in there, it would be nice…

Our family of four… :)

I believe we are officially in the third trimester. This pregnancy has flown by and Angie has been great through it all. She still has some swelling in her feet, but so far it hasn’t be unmanageable. She’s also having pain in her ribs, which we were told to expect, but which I’m sure get’s old after a while.

Some exciting things have happened lately though. First, we received our baby furniture. We have a dresser, crib and nightstand that we picked up on Saturday. Bob and Robin were so nice to go with us and let us use Bobs monster truck to haul it all back to the house. The nightstand and dresser were already assembled, but the crib was not. Let’s just say that it was your stereotypical furniture assembly project. I read, and reread the first few steps multiple times before finally calling in some help. After we got going, it wasn’t too bad and I think it’s going to look great in the room. We have a glider on the way which Angie’s mom sponsored. :) Thanks Mom! Hopefully it will get here soon, so that I … mean Angie… can relax in it.

Another exciting thing is the movement that we can now see on Angie’s belly. The baby is now large enough that we can actually see the movement. No big hands or feet yet, but just seeing her belly jump around is cool enough for me. One of the things we read is that now is a good time for the dad to start talking to the baby. That was a little weird for me, and I found it hard to keep a straight face or be serious, which presents it’s own problems. See, the reason I’m supposed to talk is that it gets the baby used to my voice. That way, when he comes out he will recognize my voice and be comforted. My problem is that he would come out thinking I sound like Darth Vader…. “Tater, I am your father!”. So to fix this little problem I’ve decided that I’ll read to him. (Just as a reminder, the words he, him, etc aren’t meant to infer that he will be a boy… she may be a girl… I just dont’ like “it”.) Lately I’ve been reading a book that Rich and Leigh gave me for my birthday, which takes the pregnancy/first year from a mans point of view. It’s brought us quite a few laughs.

Which reminds me… I’ve been suffering from something commonly knows as “sympathy weight gain” and I realized I was either going to have to do something about it or buy some bigger pants. So I start doing some reading and have started watching what I eat. I figured I don’t have time to go the gym right now, but I did throw in a set of push-ups and sit-ups a couple nights ago for fun (and do plan to do some more). The best part was that the first day I decided to do this (including the push-up/sit-up deal) we were reading the book, and it just happened to be the section about weight gain. To summarize, it essentially said I would get to a point where I tried to diet, and then I’d do some push-ups and sit-ups and then I’d start finding excuses and rationalizing why I didn’t need to do any more. Angie loved that… we’ll have to see if it holds true. I hope for my pants sake that it doesn’t.