Paul Has Arrived

So I'm a little slow in posting, but it's rough with a new person on the team and a big holiday where everyone is home! Unfortunately, we're already falling into the trap of the second child - not quite so many pictures as we had of Penny by this age. But here's a little to whet your appetite and a link over on the right to the pictures they took at the hospital.

I had had my hopes up early with some reasonably strong Braxton-Hicks contractions a few weeks prior to Paul's due date. While I didn't want to head to the hospital on a false alarm, I had some promise of a quick labor, so didn't want to chance being stuck on the wrong side of the Verrazano Bridge at rush hour. On Thursday morning (-2 days from due date), I had a nice round of strong contractions 4 minutes apart and 30 seconds long, so that seemed like a good time to head to the hospital. Now, I had mentioned this to Dan, but he was getting ready to head to work and figured it would take me a while for my contractions to get to the 2 minutes apart 1 minute long phase. Again, big nasty bridge and morning rush hour, so I insisted on going to the hospital with him right then. He helped me put on my TENS machine (fun little electro-stimulator thing that desensitizes me to the contractions) and we hopped in the car. Wouldn't you know, as soon as we crossed the bridge, the contractions stopped cold.

After a lovely breakfast at the hospital cafeteria, we decided we'd do like we did with Penny and walk around the mall for a bit. I had kinda already done in his work day by making him miss morning rounds at his hospital. Not being totally familiar with Brooklyn, we hopped on the mall we knew was subway accessible - Atlantic Terminal. I was still having contractions and was generally uncomfy and tired, but there seemed to be some signs of progress. While he explored Best Buy, though, I took a bit of a nap break on a bench. We still had a few hours to blow before my regularly scheduled Thursday non-stress test and midwife appointment and I wasn't quite sure I could make it there without a nap.

As we contemplated where to nap in Brooklyn, we thought of our good friends, Brent and Celeste, who had just moved to the area the prior week (in time to make it to Penny's birthday party). Penny didn't seem to recall that she always cried in Brent's presence for some reason when we were down in Grenada, because they hit it off quite nicely at the party. In any case, Brent very graciously allowed us to interrupt his work and hang out for a bit. He fed us some lovely lunch, introduced us to their vivacious kitten and allowed me to borrow the bed briefly as I recovered some strength in the afternoon. Then he even drove us back to the hospital for my non-stress test.

The non-stress test was extra revealing. Apparently, I was having twice as many contractions as I thought. There were little ones in between each one I felt, so I was perhaps a bit further along than I believed. They asked whether I wanted to check into the labor and delivery ward right then and there. It still seemed a little early to me, so we decided to just walk down the street to the midwife with the results to see what she thought about timeline. It was about 4pm and I was starting to require more breaks when walking from place to place. The midwife seemed to wonder why I hadn't already checked in 4cm dilated and plenty of contractions, but was willing to let me walk around the neighborhood a little more if I wanted to. I told her I needed to at least stop and have some dinner because I was starving. She reminded me to not wait too long - no more than a couple of hours at the most - before I checked into L&D. Dan and I walked one block to the pizza place, which was the equivalent of three different contractions. Hmmm...we grabbed a couple of slices of pizza and a nice loaf of bread to go, then headed over to L&D.

Though supposedly there were no rooms available when we arrived, once the midwife showed up at the hospital, I got a room right away. It's such a nice big room at NY Methodist! We settled in and debated when the best time to grab my delivery room bag from the car would be. Kind of a moot point when you're already in the delivery room. My TENS was still serving me well and apparently was the first most of the staff had ever seen in action. Got my antibiotic IV going, but once that was all done, I got off the IV. I was pretty much untethered except for occasional monitoring. I loved being able to be untied!

My midwife was awesome. She gave me this great back massage that helped increase pressure on the cervix at the same time. The only problem was that it was the awesomest back massage I've ever had in life. She told me to just let her know when I felt like pushing and we'd take a break and do some pushing. Why would I ask her to stop such an amazing massage? My back has been killing me for months now! Eventually, I figured I had to let the massage go and get on with the birthing action. She asked Dan if he'd like to deliver the baby himself. Dan very politely asked me whether I wanted him on my end for moral support or the baby's side of things to deliver. I told him I'd be ok, so he could deliver the baby if he'd like. Apparently, he'd never actually gotten to deliver a baby when he did his ob/gyn rotation. So the midwife took charge of positioning me and ensuring I didn't tear anything (as I had with Penny), while Dan took charge of catching the baby. He may have dropped the slippery little squirt as he emerged, but it was a short distance to the bed, so Paul was ok. It was 8:43pm and our little Paul had finally arrived.