Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Lies That Target Told Me

I first saw this a few weeks ago when I made a Target trip for my wife, and a nursing bra was on the list.  That really should have been its own post, because it was a pretty iconic event: man goes to the store 30 minutes before closing to buy a nursing bra, the little pads that keep milk from soaking through to everything on earth, baby wipes, etc, with no woman or baby along for the ride.  But I digress.

If you're unfamiliar with just what a nursing bra is, as I was, here's the idea:  the front has this quick release hook system going on, instead of being sewn into the straps and whatnot.  Just pop the hook, and you've got easy access to feed that baby.  




So here's the picture above the nursing bras at Target:

                            

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm sorry if this is a disappointment or otherwise comes as news to you.  But if you look like that, you do not require a nursing bra.  Look at those abs.  They did not recently have a child not-so-hidden behind and around them.  Stretch marks?  What stretch marks?  She's well-rested, made up, hair done, tanned, and from the "come hither" stare in her eyes, she's about to give a little peep show, not breastfeed.

I've thought about this ridiculous picture enough times that tonight, when I went to Target, I made a special trip to the nursing bra section just to get this picture.  It's not only ridiculous, it's wrong.

I love my wife, and I think she is beautiful.  I also know that 3 1/2 weeks after giving birth is probably not going to be the best-looking or best-feeling time of her life.  AND THAT IS OK.  See, she doesn't have to be tanned and toned, made up and trimmed, ready to shoot me a seductive, smoldering glance at all times.  But Target, and nearly any other place she's likely to see a picture of a woman, wants her to believe she does.  And they want me to believe that's what I should expect.

This woman is beautiful.  And false.  She's not nursing, and she's photoshopped into perfection in a studio.  This woman does not exist in real life, and I hate that our culture wants my wife, my daughter, you, and me, to believe that she is real and should be what we strive for or expect.




This post could easily turn into a tirade on sexism and objectification of women in popular culture, but who needs that?  Know that I know, and know that you know.  And I hope that any new moms that see this image at Target can laugh at its ridiculousness, instead of cry because you don't look like her.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Some Baby Things That Are Awesome, Part II

Now that I have a baby, I can add another thing or two to this list.

First of all, I want to confirm that the rainbow glow worm sack thing is, in fact, awesome.  Now to the new product reviews (I should look for some ad money here...)

THIS LARGE PIECE OF BLACK CLOTH (MOBY WRAP)


I've seen this before a few times in public, and thought people looked pretty stupid - though not nearly so silly as when they're wearing this thing.  Even so, I judged people for using them.  "Not gonna use a stroller right now?  How about carry your baby, you lazy parent?"


Why would you ever need this?



 Because even little babies are heavy as crap in about 10 minutes, that's why.  Or maybe you might want to do, I dunno, anything else other than hold your baby every now and then.

Enter the Moby Wrap (though the name isn't quite as stupid as many other baby products, I prefer to simply call it "the wrap" in practice).  While the tag says it's made of cotton, it's actually made of magical baby-pass-out cloth, because that's what it does, immediately.  Baby's pissed?  In the wrap she goes, and we're done!

It's 5 1/2 yards of thick fabric, maybe 2 feet wide.  That's it.  But just as a true Drummond can turn six yards of plaid into a glorious display of clan identity and genital freedom, this thing gets swung over a shoulder here, crossed over a chest there, tied off at the waist, and voila!  Your baby slides into a holding sack that is awesome.
Aye, now there's a Drummond!  Now if only we could carry the wee lass in that tartan.....
              
I'm wearing a sleeping Fiona right now.  Why?  Because I can type a ton faster with two hands.  Because I can refill my drink.  And pee.  Because she loves being against my chest anyway.  I might even use it in public.  Maybe.

Target sells this thing for about $45, presumably because it actually is made of magical baby-pass-out cloth, as I suspected, and not cotton.  I got mine, brand new with stickers and the like, at a yard sale for $10.  Another reason why it's awesome.




HOODED TOWELS
I have been jealous of babies for years about hooded towels, but until now, it's all been speculation.  They seemed like a good idea, but man, they are a GREAT idea.

So one thing I learned about babies is that they don't regulate their body temperature too well at first, so when you bathe them they get really pissed about it because (a) you can't immerse them in water until that nasty umbilical cord stump falls off, so (b) they're cold as balls because you made them wet.

Enter the hooded towel.  A totally enveloped baby is a happier baby, and the hood helps keep them warmer until you dry them off better and get ready for some skin-to-skin warming time.  This has been some of my best time with Fiona, because Tori has bathed her (and subsequently pissed her off) every time, but I've been ready to snuggle her up close and get her warm again.  Daddy saves the day, and hooded towel gets honorable mention.

I don't really need to be telling you about them, because I have this:
Yep, that's Fiona expertly swaddled in a hooded Tigger towel.  Everything about this is good.  They need to make adult sized ones, though, because I am still a bit jealous.




And even though he's already made the blog twice, he deserves a spot on this list:
THE JABBERWOCK


Oh, you know, she's just in uffish thought.


Thursday, September 20, 2012

What I Learned Today:

Do not switch to cloth diapers when your child is too small for her legs to fill the leg holes completely.





I've been pooped on twice today.  The first time, I'd just gotten home, and, excited to see my little girl awake, picked her up and set her in my lap, in time for her to DESTROY her diaper, and both of our clothes.  It was awesome.  Bath time all around, and since the umbilical cord stump came off earlier today, Tori decided that post-bath was a perfect time to break out the cloth diapers.

You may already know that this was nearly the only thing I've been afraid of as a parent.  I'm sure you can imagine my enthusiastic agreement.


"It goes all the way up past her belly button, she's not gonna blow it out," she said.

"See how many sizes you can adjust it to?  We can make it really tiny," she said.

"It'll be fine," she said.





Then, she left.





Within 10 minutes, I heard the rumble, and felt an all-too-familiar warmth on my arm.



It was only when changing her into another cloth diaper that I noticed the problem: while I could indeed get the waist as tight as I like, the leg holes were a bit too roomy, even on the smallest snaps.  We all know what happens next.  So baby is back in the disposables.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Reclaiming Fatherhood, or Some Other Equally Impressive Title Regarding an Unrealistically Complex Issue for a Blog Post

One of the ways my pride manifests itself is a strong desire never to let anyone point out a shortcoming or mistake without having already pointed it out myself.  If I dressed in a hurry, and put on a brown belt with my black shoes, I'll make sure to point it out to you, so that you have no opportunity to ridicule me first, and so that you won't leave questioning my ability to dress myself.  That's a dumb example, but a true one, and it happens at all levels of importance in my life.  So the unnecessarily long post title is a continuation of that defense mechanism - of course, it's ridiculous to think that in a single blog post, I can identify exactly what's wrong with our collective idea of manhood and offer a solution.  I want to point that absurdity out before you think it, and maybe even diffuse the situation with a bit of humor so that I don't come off as overly defensive. So now that we're all on the same page, let's continue.  I start you with this:

First of all, this is funny.  But it's funny for the same reason that Seinfeld was so funny: because it's satirizing what we have grown to collectively accept to be true.  This is what men do...manly things.  But we also recognize (at least many of us do) that you don't have to constantly be taming wild beasts, eating red meat, and shooting things to be a "man."  We still look up to the figure caricatured in the MANtage, but we don't think he's all that realistic.  This is the man we've begun to think of as more "real:"


Modern Family's Phil Dunphy is the latest iteration of the inept father figure we've come to know and laugh at, from Al Bundy, to Homer Simpson, to Peter Griffin.  Over the last few decades, it seems like our culture has accepted the idea that the father is the comic relief in the family, while mothers run the household.

Phil Dunphy is subservient to Claire, who is the responsible one.  He comes up with stupid ideas that she has to re-ground in reality.  She does all the parenting, while he focuses on trying (and failing) to be cool to his children.  He shares a tight bond with his equally-strange son, who serves as his comic relief co-star, but he doesn't have the faintest hints of understanding either of his daughters.  A large part of his time and energy at home is devoted to trying to cover up or clean up a problem he created.  He loves his wife and children, and aside from making frequent passes at his father-in-law's attractive Colombian wife, he's fiercely loyal to his family.  In almost every other way, though, he is a total failure when it comes to displaying the marks of manliness and fatherhood.  And we eat it up!  In my almost absurdly busy life, Modern Family is the only show I make sure to catch every week.  So it is the Seinfeld principle at work again?  Do we believe that the world (at least the suburban middle-class American version of it) is filled with Phil Dunphy?

I don't have any degrees to back up my claims, but it seems logical to me that our own fathers often serve as the first (and maybe most deeply rooted) model of fatherhood.  As a Christian, my ideal for manhood and fatherhood is taken from the Bible (for example, this) and from the teachings of the Church.  A man is meant to lead his wife and his family in practical matters, as well as leading them spiritually.  That does NOT mean I have to make more money than Tori, make all the decisions myself, or that she's somehow less than me.  Anyone who knows her knows that she's not any of those things.  But you get a sense of what I'm talking about here.  And none of it is present in the Phil Dunphys of popular culture.  It's not just Phil - be on the lookout this fall as Christmas commercials ramp up - you'll see a whole host of un-engaged, inept fathers bumbling their way across your screen.

I write this tirade now, not because I've just noticed how men are emasculated or falsely masculine-ized in our culture - I've pointed this out to young men for several years, and will likely continue all my life.  I bring it up, because I'm writing this with a 2-week-old baby sleeping in my lap, and I want her to have a model of fatherhood that is better than that.  Fiona will need a dad who understands her, who leads her and instructs her, tells her no and means it, protects her, screens her dates, helps with her homework, prays with and for her, and who loves her.  I want it to start now.

I'm also writing this during our first time alone together - Tori is out to lunch with a friend.  She asked me, almost hesitantly, if I felt OK with her by myself for an hour or two, and I jumped on the opportunity.  I know guys who went months before facing their first few hours alone with their baby, and went into it with trepidation and uncertainty, but I didn't want to be that guy.

Phil Dunphy would have made a disaster of this morning.  The baby would have started screaming as soon as mom left, and he would have come up with all sorts of charmingly ineffective ways to placate her.  He would have wanted to surprise his wife by cleaning the house while she's away, and ended up instead spilling his coffee on the baby and knocking down a shelf or something.  And it would be up to Claire to swoop in and fix it, first scolding him for holding the baby upside down, while she takes her in one arm and cleans up the mess with another.  While they'd make up by the end of the episode, and she would see the good will in his debacle and love him for it, Phil would have proven that he's incapable of handling any of this alone.

I've also realized this: the mark of a life well-lived is almost never in any sort of heroic acts.  I don't need to clean the house and potty train Fiona in a day in order to show that I'm a good dad.  The mark of a life well-lived is found in doing the mundane, every-day things well, and with purpose.  So we're sitting here, not learning to talk, but sleeping peacefully, with the occasional lap around the house for a coffee refill or to quell a spell of fussing.  And if she screams, or blows out a diaper, I can handle it without Tori needing to swoop in.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Midnight Musings

Since it's actually a bit past midnight, today Fiona is officially two weeks old.  She's still awesome.  Eats, sleeps, and poops like a champ (traded in the marmite poop for bright orange, liquidy poop.  weird, but also doesn't really smell....I promise that's the last description of her poop on this blog unless it's actually funny).  She doesn't cry all that much, and while we started with her eating every 2-3 hours or so, she's already stretching the sleep sessions out to as much as 4.5 hours sometimes.  She's doing great.

One thing she's not really down with yet, is sleeping without being held.  Not her jam.  What that means for us is, sleeping any kind of normal hours has become a thing of nostalgia.  I find myself squeezing in naps at 5 or 6pm, and staying up until 2am on school nights.  It's kind of like continuous jet lag, without the being on vacation part.

Last time I was up this late on the regular was college, where there were a bunch of other people up this late, too.  There was a fairly accessible supply of mischief to get into, and bonds were formed over late night adventures.  Well now, there's only one other person around, and she's pretty short on ideas for late night hijinks.  And words.  So I have to seek alternatives.  Like this:
Beware the Jabberwock, my daughter - the jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
That would be the Jabberwock.  And that would be Fiona, around 1am, galumphing happily underneath her manxome foe.  Why?  Because it's funny.  And this is my idea of conditioning - I love Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," and want Fiona to love it, too.  So my scheme includes acquiring this terrifying stuffed creature, and having her interact with it from a very young age.  Maybe he will end up as her favorite stuffed animal.  He'll certainly be the only one capable of whiffling.  She'll want to hear the poem as a bedtime story. I imagine Jabberwock at tea parties, or sleepovers.  "Why Jabberwock, what lovely eyes of flame you have!"

See, this is why I say it's a weird experience.

Other late-night inspirations have been slightly more useful - one may even turn into an article I try to publish in a music journal.  But mostly, these late nights have been more like the Jabberwock photo shoot, or watching soccer matches I'd missed, because I don't have the attention span to do anything mentally taxing.

Really though, so far parenthood has been pretty easy.  Working part-time has really helped that, to be sure, but all things considered, this ain't half bad.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

L&D and Everything After, Conclusion

I guess this could have just been called "Everything After."  If I kept up the same level of detail from here out, I'd not only lose readership and my own interest in typing it, I'd also never catch up to the present day.  So here's the highlights version.

At 8lbs, 10oz, and 21.5in, Fiona Mae Drummond was the biggest newborn in the hospital.  She was also the best looking.  Newborns look a lot like aliens most of the time, and can come with such attractive qualities as cone heads, baby acne, scaly or flaky skin, blotches, beady eyes, and myriad other generally weird-looking traits.  Fiona has none of those - she is a babe in the making.

The rosy cheeks are from eating - she takes it seriously.

They keep babies and moms for 48 hours after delivery as standard protocol.  Fiona had some extra tests to make sure she didn't get any infections from the long labor (all good), so she got pulled out of bed at 1am both nights to get stuck with things.  I learned that they draw blood from babies' feet.

We had a regular parade of visitors, though many of them were repeat customers (parents mostly).  Fiona was a gracious hostess in her hospital room, allowing most anyone to hold her and flash cameras in her face with minimal grimacing.
Well, maybe a little grimacing.  But look at that tight blanket burrito...nice work!


With everything going on, I didn't pay attention to my school's calendar (yes, I have a school!  More on that in another post), and showed up to teach on the wrong day.  Oops.

In the hospital, you're not allowed to go anywhere out of your room while holding your baby.  She had to go in this clear aquarium-looking bed thing with wheels.  When mothers are discharged, they must leave in a wheelchair.  This is perhaps the strangest part.  Not only can I walk with my baby wherever I please immediately after leaving the hospital, Tori got up from her wheelchair when we got to the car, leaned in, and strapped Fiona into the car seat herself.  The irony.  Anyway.

I'd also like to let it be known that I changed Fiona's first two diapers (no, they are not the only two I've done.  I change many diapers).  I also learned that newborn poop looks like the blackest, most foul evil ever to emerge from anyone's butt hole.  In a bizarre mode of cognitive dissonance, it is both sterile and odorless.  I kid you not.  No smell.  And tar-like, so it's kind of concentrated in one spot.  Really, it looks like marmite, this nasty tar-like substance Brits and Aussies eat on toast.  The marmite poop goes away after two days or so, and now I kind of miss it.


Gross.

So we've been home several days now, and each one is different.  She has no routine, other than eating, sleeping, and pooping.  She doesn't know what she likes best, so when she's upset it's hard to know what will help.  One day she's nice and placid and seems content.  The next, she is either passed out asleep, or screaming.

We like the passed out asleep.  We wish it would happen at night sometime.
She is ALWAYS hungry.  She's supposed to eat every 2-3 hours right now, which is already pretty crazy, considering that it takes 30 minutes or more to do a whole feeding session.  But not long after, she starts doing what the doctor called "rooting," and which we've come to call the "little bird face," which means she's looking for something to suck on.  Sometimes it's her own hand.  Sometimes it's your arm.  Tori has a hickey on her chin, where a hungry Little Bird got too close and latched on.  No one had to teach this one how to breastfeed - she definitely has the mechanics down (not so sure she knows when to use her skills though).

Little Bird Face.  She's about to latch on to my collar bone.

So we're parents.  We don't sleep much at all.  We have a hard time remembering things like where we parked the car.  We laugh at stupid stuff like how loud and often my little girl farts, and we drive to nowhere at 1am, hoping it will make her stop screaming.  We're struck a dozen times a day at how effing cute she is, and are so thankful that God gave us this screaming, pooping, tiny Little Bird.

And that, my friends, is the story of how she got here.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

L&D and Everything After, Part III

So it's been a LONG 24 hours since Tori's water broke.  I am aching, stumbling around from exhaustion and stress, hungry, and my hands are shaky from the excess of coffee that's kept me awake. But respite has finally come in the form of powerful medication delivered into my wife's spine.  It's as weird looking at it sounds, and it made her pretty much numb from the waist down.  The angelic creature that was our nurse, having carefully supported us all the way through this ordeal, kindly helped me when I couldn't figure out how to convert the chair in the room into a fold-out bed.  She really made a world of difference that night - thanks, Skye.  We both settled in for a solid 3 hours of sleep.

Tori reminded me of another lovely detail that happened just before the epidural - I guess I'd blocked it out because it was terrible.  She asked for some lesser pain medicine, to see if we could take the edge off of these contractions, but not do an epidural.  So they gave her demerol, a fairly potent synthetic opioid drug, in her IV.  Not only did it not take her pain away, it made her throw up, almost immediately.  If you know my wife, you may know how she'll do

We were awoken at 7:30, just before shift change, so the doctor could check Tori's progress again.  After her seven hours of misery, she'd barely progressed, and was at just 20% dilation at 3am.  But by 7:30 she made it to 50% - a huge milestone, and the beginning of "active labor!"  I wasn't awake enough at the time to recognize the irony of "active" labor arriving in her sleep, while all the squatting, standing, back-rubbing, chair-rocking, moaning awfulness was not considered "active."  Anyway, what that meant was, we were getting somewhere, and were now likely to be getting there faster.  Great news!

I went out to tell everyone, because despite making multiple beds at our house (5 miles away) for family to stay in, they stayed in the waiting room chairs all night.  Dad did go to the house eventually...only to sleep on the couch.  So they were very excited, and my parents and I ate breakfast with a side of hope and optimism.

A little after 10:00, the new doctor on duty came in to check her out again.  She got down in front of Tori and started to laugh.  "Well, I don't need to talk in centimeters - I can see hair.  Let's deliver a baby!"  Tori had no idea.  This is the weirdest part to me - I guess it means she had some pretty powerful drugs.  I know we didn't want to use them, and some of you women reading this had natural births.  But you weren't there, and can't know how awful it was.  That night, God's mercy was truly manifested in a chemical being dripped into my wife's spine.  And being able to relax, her body was able to do its work, and the baby was all but out.

It was REALLY strange to see the top of a head sticking out of my wife.  But I didn't have time to contemplate it.  Nurses were quickly called in, and we cut in line in front of a c-section next door.

I think the pushing part is the worst part of labor for a great many women.  I've heard of pushing for multiple hours on end.  Thankfully, for Tori, this could not have been easier.  She pushed for under five minutes - literally three big pushes, and Fiona was out!

If you've never seen this happen, it's an incredible thing.  This little girl, who spent nearly 10 months as a lump inside a belly, is now out in the world.  She has never breathed before, but she starts.  She has never pooped, but that happened within 5 minutes, too.  She's never seen the world, never touched anyone.  It all just happens.  It's awesome.

It's also weird and gross and kind of unsettling.  I have much fonder memories of my wife's ladyparts than delivery, I'll tell you.  And while it's awesome that the baby is out and all humanoid, she's also grey.  Not just because she's covered in grey stuff, which is nasty, but her skin is grey for a few minutes.  She's wet, slimy, discolored, and the cord sticking out of her belly is kind of off-putting at first, too.  I cut it.  But it hangs on for days, and at first I was afraid to touch it.

All that grossness was vastly outweighed by how grateful we both were that she was out, and both mom and baby were safe and healthy.  And when I got to hold her in those first minutes, I cried several times.  I loved spending the first few minutes holding her all wrapped up, just whispering to her all the things I've wanted to say for months.  This was worth the terrible night, and more.

Friday, September 7, 2012

L&D and Everything After, Part II

4:00pm Sunday, we've just checked into the hospital.  Not much happening just yet, so I started to read, distract Tori, and wander in and out to update and entertain my family, who was camped out in the waiting room.  You have to ring a bell and get buzzed into the hall every time you go out, so that happened a few dozen times that night, but after the first time or two, they knew who I was and I didn't have to announce my presence anymore.

Contractions weren't happening with any regularity, and it had been over 12 hours since water-breakage, and they wanted it going to reduce infection risk.  So they gave her pitocin, a synthetic version of the hormone that induces contractions, and we went to work.  That is, after the fifth person trying to stick the IV in gave up and called the anesthesiologist to do it, finally making it happen.  And when they came, they came HARD, and pretty frequently.  And that's when this turned into one of the more awful experiences I've had.

Before you get all indignant and contraction-nazi on me, dear child-bearing reader, I fully realize that this night was far worse for my wife than it was for me.  But the fact that someone else was having a worse time than I was doesn't mean it wasn't awful, so save it - guys don't get to express this part of labor very often.

In this contraction stage, there's no pushing to do, nothing that the woman is supposed to do, per se, so the goal is to relax, breathe through it, and allow it to happen.  In between contractions, the goal is to relax as much as possible, save up some energy for when you really do need to do some work.  So my role in this is to try and help her relax.  Except she's in terrible, and ever-increasing, pain, with ever-decreasing intervals between it.  We spent about seven straight hours doing really powerful contractions, with two minutes or so in between them.  Remember that day in practice in high school when the coach made you do sprints, and didn't give you much recovery time in between?  When you get to the 3rd or 4th one, it starts to really suck.  Then do that for seven hours.  That's what I had to witness, and was powerless to stop.  My only job was to put pressure on her back, because that helped ease the pain.

So we're talking about doing this well past 3am.  Remember, we've both been up since 4am the previous morning.  I'm horrendously tired, and time is CRAWLING.  My back and neck really hurt, but I'm not in a situation where I'm allowed to talk about pain.  I'm hungry, and feel like I need to sneak food because my wife isn't allowed to eat.  I'm not allowed to sleep, I need to be there for support.  And on top of my discomfort, I am watching the woman I love suffer for HOURS, with no way to fix it.  Everything about this sucks.

3am, time to check on progress. Despite all that pain and contraction, there's barely anything happening.  She was about 10% of the way dilated when we checked in, and at 3am, had only made it to about 20%.  Tori decided she had to make a change, and we called for an epidural.

While they are inserting an epidural into your wife's spine, do NOT take that opportunity to google "epidural."  I did, and it was a big mistake.  I won't go into details, but it did not bring me the comfort it eventually brought her, I'll tell you.

The upswing of it was, by 4:30am, we finally got to sleep for a few precious hours, and Tori was not in pain anymore.

Stay tuned for Part III!

Thursday, September 6, 2012

L&D and Everything After, Part I

I'm sitting on the couch with a lovely sleeping Fiona Mae in my lap.  This is awesome.  Over the next few days, I'll relate (in not-too-great-and-nasty detail) how we got to this point.  Someone told me that a key to getting people to read your blog is posting shorter, and more frequently.  So we'll start with the beginning, and instead of focusing on the medical details, or giving you weird uncomfortable pictures, I'll focus on what I learned or how I reacted.  Because this is my blog, after all.

Fiona was born on a Monday morning.  The Thursday before that, Tori started to feel contractions in the night, and I thought we'd be getting an early baby.  Apparently feeling contractions does not mean you're in labor.  Apparently you can have many parts of "labor" happen, without being in labor.  We spent the weekend pretty much just waiting around for more.  Sunday morning at about 3:45am, Tori's water broke.  It's weird and your wife becomes leaky.  But apparently that doesn't mean you're in labor, either.  Even if both have happened together.

Movies with pregnant women in them have never taught me any of this, so I spent several confused days this weekend.  In the movies, the way to initiate labor is to go out to a nice dinner or some other place where amniotic fluid does not belong, and then the woman's water will break in a gush of activity (that you never actually see), signaling that she is immediately in a fairly advanced stage of labor, and the baby is imminent.

This is false.  But I digress.

So, back to 4am.  I got up with Tori, because at any time, we might be headed to the hospital, I was sure.  I got all cleaning-happy, taking out the trash, doing the dishes, folding clothes, I even started organizing the garage.  Bags in the car, floors vacuumed, 8:30am rolls around, and we start the sit-around game.  Luckily there were several Premier League matches to be seen.  Lots of texts/calls from mothers.  Waiting.  Noon.  2:00.  Three soccer games.  Eventually we called the doctor to get her opinion, and she said we should come to the hospital - once the water breaks, the seal is broken and there's a chance of infection that only will increase as time goes on.

So, we checked in at about 4:00pm Sunday, and started the next phase.  Stay tuned!