48 hours of labor?

Well, 2 PM has come and gone. Things are still moving very ... very slowly. Erin is on pitocin now to try to get this moving. They are increasing the dosage slowly, so we are going to be at this a lot longer. Hopefully tonight, maybe tomorrow morning. I'm tired, I can't imagine how she feels. She's sleeping now. Baby is doing great, very healthy, just not ready for the big scary world yet I guess.

Pain meds are good

9:30 AM. Life is better. Went to the hospital at about 3 AM when contractions reached incredibly painful. At about 8:30 AM we saw the doctor, who said that Erin still had a long way to go. After 5+ hours of near constant excruciating pain, with probably 5 more hours to go, it was enough. Epidural time! Erin got all drugged up at around 8:45 and was able to sleep for the first time in two nights. Much better. She is doing well now, I'd guess baby time is around 2 PM. But who knows.

Jake

Probably not today - No Joke!

Saw the doctor this afternoon. Erin is progressing well, but this is likely to take time. We are back home now. Most likely scenario is to go back to the hospitaly EARLY Thursday morning, but who knows! We'll see. I'll keep you all updated.

Jake

Progress...?

Things are still about the same as they were this morning. Erin has a scheduled doctors appt now anyway, so we are going to head to the hospital, I imagine that they will keep us. When there's news, we'll let you know.

Jake

3:30 AM

For the last 2 hours or so, I've been awake. At first I was timing my contractions in bed to be somewhere near 6 minutes apart. These feel a lot more "real" folks. While not exactly painful, they are definitely intense and very uncomfortable; I need to pause and breathe through them as I write....

So here I am, awake and moving around, eating a little cereal, sending off a few work emails with files and folders on my projects to those that will own them going forward, finishing up some power point presentations, and I have my handy-dandy contraction timer website (geek!) open in another tab. Here's a look at the results:

Start Time --------End Time -------Duration ---Frequency

4:25:20 AM -------4:26:35 AM -------1:15 -------5 m, 46 s
4:19:38 AM -------4:20:47 AM -------1:08-------5 m, 38 s
4:13:50 AM -------4:15:01 AM -------1:09 -------6 m, 03 s
4:07:43 AM -------4:08:36 AM -------0:53 -------5 m, 19 s
4:02:23 AM -------4:03:20 AM -------0:56 -------6 m, 27 s
3:55:56 AM -------3:57:15 AM -------1:18 -------6 m, 48 s
3:49:09 AM -------3:50:22 AM -------1:02 -------4 m, 44 s
3:44:15 AM -------3:44:57 AM -------0:51 -------4 m, 39 s
3:39:26 AM -------3:40:22 AM -------0:55 -------4 m, 20 s
3:35:06 AM -------3:35:52 AM -------0:45 -------3 m, 43 s
3:31:23 AM -------3:32:21 AM -------0:57 -------4 m, 11 s
3:27:12 AM -------3:28:24 AM -------1:01 -------4 m, 50 s
3:22:33 AM -------3:23:28 AM -------0:54


So what do you think, should I wake Jake up? This could keep up for awhile....is it possible there will be a *third* April Fool's Day baby in the family???

I can't get any bigger.... right?

One False Start

What a weekend!

Most of the day Friday through Saturday early morning I enjoyed what is often refered to as "false labor" which basically equates to most of the fun and none of the rewards....

I knew it wasn't the real deal, because although the contractions were 3-10 minutes aprart, lasting 30-60 seconds, they weren't very painful, I could still go for a gentle walk and talk with Elizabeth, and I think I made a semblance of happy conversation over a wonderful dinner and a movie ("Australia") with Levi and Sarah Friday night.

Exhausted, I slept very well late Saturday morning and even took a nap Saturday afternoon before going for a walk with Jake. Saturday night I was still having some contractions off and on and we decided to employ ol' Murphy's law and went to see the movie"Duplicity"- sitting right in the middle of the theater. (Good movie, by the way) No luck.

Sunday was a day for catching up on housework and going for yet another walk, enjoying an easy dinner and an early bedtime.

So, for all of you who voted that the baby would come this week, I think you have a good shot at being right. We are making "progress" but don't have any more certainty than we did before....

We'll keep you all updated here!

Snow Days

Erin again...In the last 24 hours we've had 12 inches of snow, but a lot of it has melted almost as fast as it could fall. What remains is heavy thick stuff, perfect for snowmen. I tried to suggest Jake let me shovel the driveway (seemed like a good way to induce labor!) but he gallantly refused. Not only did he shovel our driveway (twice yesterday, and again this morning) but did our equally pregnant neighbor's driveway as well, since her husband is out of town. What a guy!

So, time for more photos....Last weekend we had another game night and pot luck, with a small crowd this time....and it turns out that the most fun game was decorate Erin's belly! Who knew office labels could be so handy? The baby started kicking pretty hard during the decorating, but Anneka and Zoe were so intent on their artwork they didn't even notice!

And we throught I'd dropped....

Yesterday I visited the doctor, who was swamped with several women in labor (barometric pressure was dropping from the storm coming in) plus regular patients, with most the doctors in the practice out on vacation for spring break. Lucky for her, I'm still only 50% effaced and that means baby likely won't be making an appearance this week. Jake will be able to go skiing in the fresh powder we got overnight. He may even take a "snow day" on Friday. I have to admit that while I really didn't think the baby would arrive this week, which would be 2 weeks early, I was disappointed to hear the news. I'm getting less and less comfortable, baby is "engaged," and I am ready to hold him in my arms. At the same time I am certain I'll miss feeling his movements inside me, so I'm trying to treasure what time I have left. Pregnancy is a bag of contradictions.

We went out to dinner last night to celebrate David's birthday (Happy Birthday David!) and I did find out that while our son is enjoying life on the "inside", others can enjoy the benfits of having an extra chair around that is "just my size." Isn't Leah adorable? She really is a sweet little girl 95% of the time... but 10 seconds later she was crying her heart out because it was way past feeding and sleeping time. Seemed perfectly reasonable to me, and I decided she had the right idea- it was time to find my own bed, too.

A few more McParland family photos

A day at the park...

When Kate was due with McKenzie, Meg and I put her on the swing. Kate decided turn-about ws fair play. It was a lot of fun.... but I'm not sure it encouraged the baby to make his appearance any sooner.

Grandma had a way with balloons

Playing with Otto and Blitz