Nitty Gritty #1

Now that more then a week has passed I am feeling up to telling the tale of Elizabeth's birth...

On Friday July 28, 2006, I got out of bed at about 9:15am. I decided to have one of my all time fovorite breakfeasts, cold pizza. While sitting on the couch eating my pizza with a glass of orange juice I started to feel an odd sensation reminicient of my menstral flow, it was 9:30am by this time. I casually got up and saw that I was sitting on a little wet spot. Karly, who was watching cartoons next to me noticed it right away. I went into the bathroom and had a look, I was definatly wet. I put on a pad and hummed and hawed for a few minutes then decided to call the doctor's office. They advised me to go to the Labour and Delivery ward of the hospital and get things looked into.
At this point Gramo thought I was imagining things and Mom decided to get ready with glacial slowness. (Sorry Mom, but you really did seem to be draging your feet with that second cup of coffee and all.) I gave Patrick a call at work and told him that I thought my water may have beoken and that I was heading in to be checked out. We decided that he should stay at work until noon and then come home. I wasn't sure if my water had broken at this point or if I had just lost the mucus plug. At around 10:00am I had what I think was my first contraction. It was very mild but it was enough to make me want to get to the hospital sooner rather then later.
We drove to the hospital in Aunty Vicki's Mustang, this baby arrived in style I tell you. After checking in at admitting I was allowed to walk to the elevators and head up to the third floor where all the action takes place. The nurses up there were surprised that I had been allowed to walk, most expectant moms are loaded into a wheel chair. I was happy to walk.
Some of the details are starting to be a little fuzzy in my mind from this point but I will do my best.
We had to wait a few minutes for an examining bed to become avalible but I was occupied by peeing in a cup and gowning up. Once they had me in bed the nurses straped a fetal heart monitor and a contraction monitor to my belly and wraped an automatic blood pressure cuff around my arm. The monitors were ok but something was off with the blood pressure thing since it just kept getting tighter and tighter until my arm turned a lovely shade of purple. At that point Mom or Aunty Vicki got a nurse to fix it . Watching the read out on the contraction monitor was a really neet way to track my progress. Almost from the begining my contractions were about five minutes appart.

I have no idea how long I was in bed before the Doctor came and had a peek but it only took him about 1 second to announce that my water had broken and that there was Myocum, (baby poo), in the amniotic fluid. This is not a good thing but fairly common and they can deal with it no problem. I guess that by this point they had decided that I was in until Baby was out since they stuck an IV in me. I needed to have IV antibiotics because I had bladder infections during the pregnancy. It was not long after the Doctor's visit that I was transfered to a private delivery room. The privacy was nice but I had been enjoying listening to the other expectant mom's conversations. For a while there was a little boy in the bed next to mine who kept calling his Daddy a "Dirty Plumber." It made me laugh.