A Long Journey

November 18th, 2008
7:00PM: We called the labor and delivery department to make sure they have an available bed. Unfortunately they didn’t! They told us to go to bed and they would call us when they’re ready, hopefully not after 9:00PM.

November 19th, 2008
1:00AM: The hospital FINALLY calls. We roll out of bed, do some last minute packing, and head for the hospital

1:45AM: Check in and get settled into our room. We meet our nurse, Julie. She is incredibly nice, and we really like her. She checked Peggy’s vitals and did an exam. Peggy is still only 1cm dilated!
Then the fun came…good cop bad cop. Julie wanted to be the good cop, so she called in another nurse to put in the IV. Needless to say, it didn’t go very well. Thirty minutes, three nurses, 15 minutes of hand massaging, and three needle sticks later, the IV was finally in.
2:45AM: Julie then put in the Cervidel (have no idea if that is the correct spelling). This is supposed to soften the cervix. It takes 12 hours to work, so now it’s a waiting game.

3:00AM: We try to get a couple hours of sleep (unsuccessfully)
3:30AM: Julie comes in to check on Peggy and informs me that the chair folds out into a couch! Wahoo! Now I can get some sleep!

5:30AM: We sort of wake up. We spend the next couple of hours watching all of the traffic in the “real world” out our highway view window.

7:00AM: We get a new nurse, Jo. Peggy almost had a heart attack when Julie told us “Jo’s” name before Jo came in. Peggy was very worried that “Jo” was a guy.

7:05AM: The cafeteria finally opens and Peggy gets to order some breakfast! Life is good!

7:45AM: The food finally arrives….life is even better!

We spent the next several hours hanging out and not doing much. Watch some TV, read some magazines, etc. Oh, and I spent several hours trying to get our internet connection to work. It doesn’t, so no live blogging! Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

11:30AMish: My parents stop by for a visit. It was nice to see some familiar faces. And they brought me some Lion’s Choice roast beef sandwiches! They also brought Dad’s laptop in hopes that we could get that to work on the wireless network. I ate, then spent the next hour trying to get the internet to work. Again, it doesn’t! Why is it so hard to connect to a wireless network?

12:30PMish: Peggy gets to eat a small lunch! Life is good again! And they tell her that at about 2:30, they’ll take the cervadil out and let her take a shower! Life is really really good! She’s had contractions about every 2-7 minutes, but most of them she doesn’t even feel since they’re not strong enough.

2:30PM: Jo takes the cervidel out. The next 30 minutes were heaven for Peggy! A shower! She was very excited to get a shower.

3:00PM: Jo tries to do an exam, but can’t find Peggy’s cervix!!!! They start Peggy on pitocen. They start with a low dosage, and plan on gradually increasing it every half an hour.

For the next 5 or so hours, we had a nice little routine down. Jo would come in and up the dosage, and we would take a walk. They switched Peggy to the wireless monitors, so that freed her to walk down the halls. We did laps around the nurses station. Somewhere around 5ish, I found my way down to the cafeteria to get some dinner. I had some spaghetti, meatballs, and mac and cheese! Yes, carb loading I know….it’s going to be a long night! Plus, that’s all that really looked good down there. Oh, and I also got some grading done during this time! Wahoo!

7:00PM: We get our third nurse of this whole experience, Ashley. We were supposed to get Julie again (which we were incredibly excited about), but she was assigned to watch over the women who are in L&D long term. We were very bummed, but she stopped by around 7, and talked to us for a while….very nice of her.
Ashley is nice and tells us that she’s here to cause Peggy pain. At this point, we say that we’re fine with that, because she’s hardly felt the contractions at all so far.

8:00PM: Dr. Clancy (Peggy’s doctor) has asked that they do another exam on Peggy to see if the pitocen has had any effect (we didn’t think it had). She was nearing the highest dosage of pitocen that they could give here. Ashley wasn’t able to find Peggy’s cervix, so she went to get the on call doctor. The doctor found it, and said she’s about 1.5cm, and 70% effaced. She then says “maybe we should just pop your bag of water.” The nurse says that she’ll call Dr. Clancy to find out. The on call doctor said, “no, I know her, we’ll just do it.” So, a couple minutes later, they popped Peggy’s water! They did more to progress her in 5 minutes than what happened naturally in the last 18 hours since we got here! Everything looks good, and the doctor says the baby just has a little bit of peach fuzz on his/her head! Our baby is so close!
They knocked the dosage of pitocen down a bit since they expected the broken water to make a big difference. They also put in an internal monitor to track the contractions. This means that Peggy basically can’t get out of bed until she has the baby.

8:30PM: We watch some Mythbusters…..good times…..and the contractions got stronger! FINALLY!

It’s now about 9:20PM, and Peggy’s definitely progressed a lot. I’m writing all this between contractions, which are coming about 3 or so minutes apart….not much different from earlier, but they are MUCH MUCH stronger! We’re starting to think this may happen after all!

Ok, time to get my hand squeezed a bunch more! I should have brought gloves or something!

10:00ish: The contractions were getting really really strong. Peggy was told anytime after her water broke, she could have an epidural. She was being a tropper though, and holding out as long as possible. She was afraid that if she had the epidural, that the contractions would stop.
At this point, Peggy was between 3 and 4 centimeters. The nurse told her that she had already made it quite a ways past what most women do before they get the epidural. I think that put her at ease a bit. She made it until around 10:15 before she couldn’t take it anymore. I could just see it in her eyes, so I told her it was time, and she agreed. I went to get the nurse.
10:30PM: The nurse and anesthesiologist (Bill) came in. We already had Peggy in position. Bill was an interesting character to say the least. First of all, you could hardly understand what he was saying….no, not because he’s foreign, but because he spoke fast….really fast. Peggy asked him if he’s an auctioneer on the weekends. Haha, at least she still has her sense of humor. I’m not sure he appreciated it too much, but oh well.
They also put the catheter in at this time. Peggy was pretty excited that both of these procedures didn’t hurt as much as she had heard.
We were then told that we should try to get some sleep.

11:00PM: We started to get some sleep. And get sleep we did! We spent the next 5 hours getting sleep on and off. Ashley came in about every 30 minutes or so. Peggy’s contractions did not level off, and just got stronger (although they don’t hurt anymore!). She also progressed from about 4cm at 11:00ish to about 8cm by 5:00AM. She’s making progress! Peggy’s temperature has been an issue a couple of times during the night. They’re keeping a close eye on it.

November 20th, 2008
It looks like we’re going to have a November 20th baby after all! If you had told us coming into the hospital that we wouldn’t have a baby on the 19th, I would have called you a liar!

4:00AM: They put Peggy on some oxygen to keep the baby moving. The baby still seems to be doing fine, heart rate is doing well.

NOON: OK, folks. Since they never got the wireless connection at the hospital, Grandma is finishing up at home.

Peggy didn't make much more progress by 8:00, so they decided to do a C-section. Here she is--Abigail Jane arrived at 9:14 am, weighing in at a hefty 9 lbs 3.7 oz (Peggy guessed 9-4) and 22 inches long! Of course, she is BEAUTIFUL, and baby and mom are doing great (Dad's pretty great himself!) So, without further ado, here she is: