Baby update…or lack of baby update…

If you have been following my Facebook or Twitter updates then you know we went to the hospital today because we thought today was the day for little Carrie to arrive.

To get the full story we need to actually back up to last week, here is what has happened up until this point…

Some time in January…just kidding…we won’t go that far back.

Last Wednesday (9/2/2009) Mandy began having contractions to the point where they were about 5 minutes apart.  We are advised by the on-call physician to head into the hospital for monitoring.  After running around and getting everything ready to go we head towards the hospital.  We take Caleb to a friend’s house and another friend stops by to pick up Buster.  When we arrive at the hospital we are sent to the OB triage unit for monitoring.  After a couple hours they decide that the contractions are not productive and that the cervix is completely closed.  So we go pick up Buster and head home (Caleb was already asleep so we leave him at the friend’s house).  The next morning we pick up Caleb and go about our merry way.  All during this time Mandy is having sporadic contractions.

On Tuesday 9/8/2009 Mandy has an OB appointment and she is dilated to 1 cm and we are told that the Dr. doesn’t think that this baby will go the full 40 weeks (Yay!).

Fast forward to today (I guess it is technically yesterday at this point, but I haven’t gone to sleep yet so for me it is still today).  Around 9 am, Mandy starts having more contractions.  At 10 am, she is to the point where the contractions are 5 minutes apart and lasting around 60 seconds apiece…so according to our handy dandy discharge papers from last week, it is time to call the doctor and the doctor said no more monkeys jumping…(oops, that’s what Caleb would say) anyway, the doctor says that it is time for Mandy to head to the hospital.  I do the stupid thing and alert the whole world via Facebook and Twitter that today is the day….then we finish packing and head to the hospital all the while making arrangements for our two boys (similar setup to last week with a couple different characters thrown in).  Once we get to the hospital we head to triage again (we know exactly where to go this time) and are checked in for monitoring.  At this point the contractions are still pretty regular but after about two hours (about the time it takes to watch 13 Going on 30) the resident checks Mandy’s cervix and reports that she is still at about 1.75 cm so we are sent “home”.  We decided that instead of going home we will try to get something to eat, then run a few errands so that we can stay close to the hospital in case we need to head back (at this point we are still thinking Carrie is still coming today).  So we go to Panera, Home Depot, Madison Lighting (there is no way we are spending $180 on a light fixture for Carrie’s room to replace the one I broke), Menards (2 for $25 works for us, we’ll replace the one in Caleb’s room also), Josh Wanta’s (from Legacy Custom Remodeling) so that I can drop off a key so he can get started on our basement repair from our basement flooding since I “might” not be there in the morning, then on to Borders so that Mandy can get a new book and I can pick up my door prize for my presentation in the morning.  After we get done at Borders I call the hotline because by this point the contractions are taking Mandy’s breath away and are about 2-4 minutes apart.  They advise us to come back in.  We go straight to triage (we’ve been there before, have I told you that?) and get checked in and set up (in the same room as before).  They hook the monitors up to Mandy, the heart rate is great and she gets rocked by a big contraction right after they put the monitors on, here we go…(or so we think).  Mandy gets one more smaller contraction, then they mysteriously vanish for about an hour (but her uterus is doing something, because it is not happy).  The resident comes in and chats with us about what is going on

and it is decided that we will head home for the night since the contractions are gone.  Mandy was also advised to take the rest of the week off from work, but we will see, she wants to see how she does tomorrow.  We’re not happy at this point because we just want to meet our daughter and had gotten our hopes up and then nothing, but we head home anyway (making arrangements for us to get Caleb and Buster back).  We get not even 5 minutes from the hospital and the contractions start back up.  So the short and skinny is that no one really knows what is going on, but we don’t have a baby girl in our arms yet.

Hopefully you are still around after my long winded telling of the story.  I will try to keep people up to date via Facebook and Twitter as much as possible.