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!