Man, a lot has happened over the past few days. Almost all of it good. Let me recap the events that have taken place since I left off. In the last entry, Heather was still sitting there at 3 cm, and they were increasing her potocin IV every 15 minutes. The doctor checked her around 6:00 and she was still at 3cm. For the record, that was 12 hours of potocin with a 1cm dilation increase. Dr. said that a c-section was looking more and more like a possibility. The baby wasn’t in any danger so we decided to give her a little more time, by now they were pretty much pouring the potocin in with hopes it would speed things up. Her contractions were hanging steady around 50, with the occasional spike to 70, but we couldn’t get enough of the big ones together to push her over the edge. About an hour and a half later (7:45pm) the doctor checked her and she was stuck at 3 still. It didn’t look like we were going to get this baby out the usual way. Once the decision was made, it’s like a tornado came through the room. Within a matter of minutes, Heather was prepped and on her way to the OR, the grandparents were wisked away to the waiting room and there I was, left alone in the room in my fancy blue scrubs. Alone with my thoughts and fears. I realize that they wanted to move quickly to get the baby out, but both Heather and I didn’t really have time to absorb what was going on.

About 10 minutes later I got the call to come over to the OR. Walking in and seeing Heather all prepped for surgery had me worried, yet anxious to meet our new little baby. Doctor got things underway, with a few tugs and pulls here and there we soon heard the cry of our new little girl. Tears of joy on our faces, Heather and I made eye contact and I said to her, “Punkin, we got our little Savannah!” When I got the OK to come over and see her, she was absolutely perfect. It was love at first site… all over again. First it was with her mommy, this time with her.

The doctor said she was looking good. She had an APGAR score of 9-9 because her hands and feet were a little purple, but they’re fine now. I was torn between two ladies in my life. They said they were ready to take Savannah to the nursery, but part of me wanted to stay there by Heather’s side. Heather pretty much kicked me out of the operating room to go be with our little baby girl. I was with her for a bit in the nursery before going out to give the news to the waiting family. When I walked out, you could cut the tension with a knife as my mom & dad, Heather’s mom, Christina, and Connor all waited to hear what I had to say. Being the wise ass that I am, I gave them the thumbs up as I approached the door. I said “Heather’s fine, baby’s fine, I gotta go,” and started to walk away. They pretty much jumped me before I had a chance to move an inch. Once I gave them the news, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room. Including one very proud pappa!

Heather was still in the OR for a while as they finished up her surgery, so I was kinda bouncing back and forth between the nurses station and nursery checking on the two most important ladies in my life. Because it was pretty quiet in the nursery, I was able to bring the waiting family members in to view our little princess, even Connor got to see her (we snuck him in there).

Daytime tv still sucks. Heather’s still pregnant and I’m slowly regaining my lost sleep. Doris arrived shortly after noon and I gave mom a phone call with an update. Heather got her epidural right before Doris arrived and is feeling good. She’s about 3-4 and 80% when the doctor checked her.

Tammy’s still laughing at my comments, which is always a good thing. She’s getting a kick out of watching me try to get comfortable in the “daddy chair” in the room. I spoke with mom and she’s been keeping the rest of the family in the loop with updates. She and dad will probably be here sometime around 3:00ish. I feel kinda bad having them come over this early, there’s not much going on at this point. Heather’s finally comfortably now. Hopefully she’ll get some more sleep before the big event kicks off and takes all the energy she can muster together.

We’ve been here a little over three hours and I’ve already managed to snag a little nap. Hopefully I’ll be able grab another quick one before the show really gets on the road. Dr. D was just in about 20 minutes ago to check on how Heather was progressing. They started her on pitocin around 6:45 and have been increasing the dosage every 30 minutes.

Tammy, our L&D nurse, is great. She’s got a good personality and hasn’t kicked me out yet for making jokes. She’s our third backup cord cutter incase I’m passed out on the floor and Doris is crying too much to make the snip.

Heather’s starting to feel the contractions more and more now that they broke her water when the doctor was in. I slept for crap last night, maybe a solid 4 hours tops. I got up and went into the basement to fart around online for a bit to hopefully tire me out. Heather slept pretty good last night, I think her body forced her to sleep considering the task she’ll have to handle today. We’ve placed an order for two epidurals, one for her, one for me. I have a feeling we’ll only get one… oh well.

I called mom after the doctor was in to let her know how things were going. Of course she’s ready to drop everything and rush right in. I’ve been trying to explain to her that there’s really nothing going on right now so there’s no big rush. Doris went into the office this morning to get some stuff done. Might as well, not really anything to do here but watch tv or sleep. She’ll be over here probably sometime before noon.

One very odd observation I’ve made so far. Since we’ve been pregnant, we’ve been recording A Baby Story on the TiVo and watching them when there’s garbage on tv. The same holds true when you’re in the labor and delivery room at the hospital. I woke up from my nap and Heather was watching A Baby Story… Another observation I’ve made… daytime tv sucks ass. I’m glad I have a job to go to so I don’t have to watch this garbage all day long.

Not much else to say right now. Gonna try and grab some more zzz’s while I still can.

We just got back from the hospital for another ultrasound. My wife has gestational diabetes and this far along in the pregnancy, she has to do weekly Non-Stress Tests to check on how the baby is developing. Well over the past 4 weeks, the baby passed 1 with flying colors the first time. The other 3 (including tonights) landed us over at the hospital to have another ultrasound done to check on the baby. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster having good weeks and bad weeks. Talk of induction, talk of letting nature do it’s thang.

As bad as this sounds, we were kinda hoping things didn’t go well with tonights US and they would have kept us overnight and induced Heather. Well, we kinda got the best of both worlds. The baby is doing fine on the ultrasound and after the tech talked to the doctor, he wanted to speak with us. He asked Heather what her thoughts were on induction, her response was “lets do this”.

I’m kinda in freak out mode here. They say to go home and get a good nights sleep… uh.. yeah right. I think I was sleeping better not knowing when the baby would arrive, knowing that it’s less than 12 hours away before they get things going has me a little on edge.

Fear, excitement, nervousness, shock, anticipation, fear again, are all rushing through my body right now. I probably won’t be sleeping much tonight, so keep an eye out for me at 3am. Tonight I think Heather and I are going to go out, have a nice dinner, maybe catch a movie and just try and cherish our last night of peace and look forward to the joyous bundle that will be joining us sometime tomorrow.

Keep us all in your prayers and we’ll keep you posted. I won’t have web access at the hospital, but I’ll be sure to get pictures posted when I get back home.

Well our trip to L&D on Wednesday was a day of mixed emotions. We were mentally and physically prepaired to possibly be bringing home a new baby. If the NST on Wednesday did not come back with good results, there was a chance the dr. would have induced her labor. So we had the bags packed, loaded in the truck and ready to go. The hospital called and asked if we could possibly come in a little later as they had a full house in the L&D department (partially because of the nasty thunderstorm we had earlier that morning). When we explained that this was a doctor ordered NST, they said to come on in at our regularly scheduled time and they’d make room for us.

They ended up wheeling a fetal monitor down to the postpardom/recovery section of the L&D ward and set us up in a room over there. As the test progressed and the nurse said everything was looking good, we were very happy, yet emotionally disappointed. We’re happy the baby is doing fine, yet sad that we’ll have to delay the meeting of our little Lumpy. Wednesday afternoon we kinda just chilled out at the house and slept. We were emotionally exhausted and the night before I woke up around 2 with nerves and whatnot.

Throughout the week Heather has been having more and more contractions throughout the days. Nothing really painful or long enough to time, but hopefully that will change soon. Without getting into detail, “stuff” is happening down yonder that signals labor is coming soon. We’ve been going for nightly walks to see if that helps “jumpstart” labor, as well as some of the other “urban legends” to get labor started All I can say is I’m feeling like a piece of meat, but it’s a small price to pay for the end result.. haha j/k.

We’ll be posting more as the pieces of the baby delivery puzzle start to fall into place.

Who ever came up with that name for the test obviously doesn’t take the parents stress level into consideration. We have about 9 days to go until Heather’s projected due date. Personally I don’t think it’s going to go that long. Over the past 3 weeks of appointments, Heather has had to do a NST at each visit (because of the gestational diabetes). Two of the three tests have ended with us going over to the hospital to have additional ultrasounds done to check on the overall health & development of the baby. Yesterday, Heather had another NST and the doctor didn’t like the results the baby was coming back with so they sent us over to the hospital again to check things out. According to the ultrasound tech, the test should have only lasted about 30 minutes. We were there for over an hour and the baby wasn’t showing any signs of lung movement/activity. Granted the baby doesn’t need to “breathe” in there, but they want to see the diaphram moving around and the lungs practicing breathing. We didn’t see any of that on the ultrasound. Everything else on the test was fine, the baby was moving around and the heartrate was good, but no movement.

The tech paged the doctor to deliver the results and the doctor recommended that we head up to L&D to put Heather on the fetal monitor to run another NST. Needless to say I was kinda freaked out. The Dr. said that because of the poor results from earlier in the day, and the results of the ultrasound, it was best to err on the side of caution and check on things some more.

We got up to the room, they got the monitors on Heather’s belly and we pretty much just chilled out for another hour. Heather had her “game show buzzer” that she’d click everytime she felt Lumpy move. They called the doctor after about 45 minutes or so and he said he would come into the hospital to check things out. He said the test results once we were in the room were better. He also did an exam and last night she was about 2cm’s and about 50% effaced. He wants us to come back to the hospital again on Wednesday morning for another NST to see how things are going. I think if they don’t like the results on Wednseday, they might induce her (she’s close enough). That has me worried, yet a little relieved.

I made a bunch of phone calls last night to the Grand Parents ToBe and put their minds at rest (well, as best I could). Hopefully things will work out ok over the next few days. Heather’s been feeling more and more contractions throughout the day so, I have a feeling it’ll happen any day now.