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October 8, 2008

Due date

So I'm writing this while in labor, I'm not sure how well it will turn out because of the crushing contractions that are currently coming every 3 minutes.

Today was my due date, I had a Dr's appointment in the morning, got some fetal activity monitoring done during the time when the kid is usually least active... and thusly the dr was a little concerned about what she was seeing. So we went to the hospital for additional monitoring. That went much better because I had some food and the kid had some time to wake up. I agreed to allow my dr to order up some medicine called cervidil which apparently helps "ripen" the cervix, get you to dilate, and sometimes just encourage the onset of labor.

It is a relatively mild and more natural way to sometimes jump start a process that is almost ready to begin on its own. The only drawback is that you have to be IN the hospital for 12 hours while the medicine is given, and intermittently monitored to make sure everything is going alright. So I did this, starting at 12:30pm and I was surprised how fast time passed. By 9pm I had enjoyed the presidential debate, and was settling in for a double header of the Daily show and the Colbert Report (featuring my friend Opus! yay!). It was a nice evening, though no consistent contractions were happening or anything.

Then what seemed like out of nowhere, I started seeing that I was infact registering some contractions... about 8-10 minutes apart, but I hardly was noticing them. It was about 10pm when we noticed this... and around 12:30 I got checked, and sent home (where I wanted to be). Before I left the hospital I was having contractions about 6 to 8 minutes apart. Only now 1 hour later I'm up, writing this... and they are already only 3 minutes apart. As soon as I put my head to the pillow they just got so fast.

Who knows, maybe this means I'll be up all night in labor having a baby sometime soon... or maybe It'll end, and undoubtedly start up again tomorrow sometime... Either way... I am clearly having a baby. SOON.
YAAAAAy.

Holy crap these are strong contractions, its exciting to finally know what real ones feel like.

Time now: 1:48am on October 8th - 3 minutes apart.

We'll update tomorrow, I imagine.
Wish us luck, we promise we'll keep you posted on any noteworthy developments.

Posted by jenredstar at 1:50 AM | Comments (0)

October 2, 2008

Nope, not yet...

So I thought I'd be early. Why not, all the other women in the family had babies a bit early.. plus, this baby is going to be big and he'll run out of room, right? Naw... I guess not. He must be enjoying himself in there too much to come out just yet. My due date is in only 5 days, and I'm completely ready. Waiting around for labor to start is alright because I'm feeling pretty great still. I do find that at times my impatience and hormones make me feel grumpy though.

Last week I started going on walks, at least twice a day for awhile, up the hills around my house. Its the only time I can be sure to experience contractions, and I want more of those. I get the strongest ones at night so I walk long and slow for at least twenty minutes. I recently borrowed my sister's birth/exercise ball and now I'm using it as a chair. Hoping it will help the baby to drop down some more so we can get this going. I've been getting acupuncture treatments to hopefully help things along.

If you want to know when we have given birth, you can check here, or if you want up to the minute reports I assume Ryan will be using Twitter to make announcements from the hospital etc. Don't worry, when something happens we'll let you know...

Posted by jenredstar at 11:51 AM | Comments (0)