ok, so I have been meaning to do this for a few weeks now, but have not had time.  Our little Morgan is three weeks old today and the weekend before her birth was very interesting.  I am wanting to document that weekend here so we can tell her about it when she is older.  It was rather comical now that I think about it. One of the last minute things that happened was that I was going to be induced due to some scarring on my cervix.  The doctor convinced me to change hospitals the week before I was due from Memorial to St. Elizabeths, neither Andy nor I were very happy about this, but I thought the Dr knew best.  So we were scheduled to go to St. Elizabeths at 8 am on Sunday, August 23.

So here goes…..

It was friday, Aug 21 and we decided to invite some friends over for one last movie night before we had a little one in the house that we had to think about.  So there were a handful of people over and we decided to all have taco bell for dinner and watch Blazing Saddles (one of the guys had never seen it).  During the movie I was a little uncomfortable, but that is to be expected when one is 9 months pregnant and due the following day.  I went to the bathroom and had a little gush of water, was not sure if it was my water breaking or the baby pushing on my bladder as it was after I had already gone to the bathroom and was standing up.  I did not do anything at this time, but change my clothes and go back out to watch more of the movie.  After the movie most everyone had left, only two were still here - Dan and Pierre.  I noticed some blood when I went to the bathroom (as I was spending a lot of time in the bathroom these days).  I called the hospital (Memorial, as I was very comfortable with them and had been there several times prior for Non Stress tests), told them I was not sure if my water had broke and that I had some blood, they told me to come in to be checked out.

Now I need to preface all of this by saying that I had woken up that morning at 4 am and was unable to fall back to sleep.  I had gotten up with Andy and cleaned house and “nested”, thinking that I would take a nap later in the day.  Well I never got tired so I did not have a nap.  So by this time, its after midnight and we are gathering all our things and heading to the hospital.  The bag was not ready, so we were still gathering things to put in it and stuff.  One would have thought we were moving in as both Andy and I each had a bag plus we had my laptop.  hehe  We registered in the ER, they wheelchaired me to Labor and Delivery and got me set up in a room.  The nurse we had is one I had seen on a few occassions for the Non Stress Tests I was doing every Monday.  She checked to see if my water had broke, however the initial test was inconclusive so she did another test that she sent to the lab for results.  Those results came back saying my water had not broke.  During the wait I started cramping pretty bad, or as I found out later having minor contractions.

The nurse called my doctor, he said to go ahead and keep me for observation, see what happens.  So I laid there all night, hooked up to monitors (one for baby and one for my contractions).  Cramping got a little worse, but not to the point where I wanted drugs or else.  Neither Andy nor I slept much thru the night, but we tried.  We also tried walking and rocking.  By early morning the nurse said I had dialated a little and she could feel the baby’s head, so she called the Doctor on call.  He would be making his rounds at the hospital later that morning and would come can check on me, until then we waited.  Keeping in mind I had not had anything to eat since 8 the night before.  The doctor showed up about 10 that morning and declared that I was not making any progress and that the best they could do is send me home with some benedryl to help me sleep.  The Cramping/Contractions i was having were “minor” (although to me they were a bit more significant, I was on the verge of asking for pain meds).

W discussed the reasons why we were at Memorial and not at St. E’s as he had spoken to my doctor and was curious.  He was not sure why my doctor was set on using a particular drug that only St. E’s had, and did not completely agree with my doctor.  It was enough to get both Andy and I on board with coming back to Memorial to be induced if they had room for us.

So they sent me home, finally around noon with a dose of benedryl and directions to get some rest and show back up at Memorial on Sunday at 6 pm.  We headed home by way of McD’s for a cheese burger.  When we got home I went to bed and slept for 6 hours.  By the time i woke up my cramping had decreased considerably.   We had dinner (Outback Steakhouse carryout) and then i headed back to bed.  I was soooo tired.  On sunday we did some running around, went to the mall then came back home to take a little nap before heading back to the hospital.

See the next entry for the epic story starting from when we get to hospital and ending at the birth of our beautiful little girl.