Marie's pre-labor saga

Hello everyone! This is Pete... I apologize that it has been almost two months since the last post... Marie has been a bad blogger!

Anyway, I just wanted to give everyone a quick update on how Marie is doing... On Saturday evening, Marie was not feeling well, and was vomiting just about every hour or so from around 11 pm to around 7 am on Sunday morning. Because of all of the vomiting, Marie was feeling a bit dehydrated, which made her Braxton Hicks contractions a little stronger than usual... However, there was no regularity to them and even though they seemed to sometimes increase in severity, they also waned quite a bit as well. So on Sunday morning, Marie called the doctor and they said to come to the hospital to make sure that everything was okay.

So Marie, her mother, and I packed up all of our stuff and headed off to the hospital around 7:30 am on Sunday morning. They put her on an IV to rehydrate her and checked her dilation. Marie was still at around 2 cm, but they took some blood and urine samples and let her get a little sleep. Around 1:30 pm, they came back saying that they were a little concerned about her blood pressure and the potential for preclampsia (pregnancy induced high blood pressure, which leads to birth complications). So they basically said that they needed to monitor her urine for a full 24 hours, and that she had a choice of going home and staying on bedrest, collecting her urine, or she could stay at the hospital and they could do it. She decided to stay overnight at the hospital.

In the meantime, Marie's father was flying in to the Dayton airport at around 4:00 pm, so I went up to the airport to pick him up. After picking him up, we came back to the hospital to see how Marie was doing. She was in good spirits and just wanted the baby out. Dad and I went back home and got a good rest... I went to bed at around 9:30 pm and let me tell you that it was one of the most restful sleeps that I have had in some time!

Anyway, I went to work Monday morning and was so busy that I didn't get a chance to talk to her until around 11 am or so. When I talked to her, she said that they were going to induce her! Well, let me tell you, I was like "Don't you DARE have that baby without me!" She assured me that she would not, and that I had plenty of time to finish up work. So I left work around 1:30 pm and headed to the hospital.

So I got to the hospital and Marie was doing well. They had started her on an IV drip of Pitocin, which is a chemical that induces labor and contractions. Her contractions were getting slightly more intense, but not unbearable. They checked her dilation and after 6 hours of Pitocin, she had only dilated up to 3 cm. So around 9:00 pm, they decided to manually break her water.

After her water broke, the contractions started getting a bit more intense, so around 11:00 pm, she decided that the pain was enough that she wanted to get an epidoral. She did great with getting the epidoral and afterward was feeling no pain.

At this point, there is not a lot to report except that I am tired and getting a little cranky. She is lying in bed and says her legs feel like heavy marshmallows. Mom is sitting to my right, sleeping in the fold out bed-chair and Dad is to my left stretching out between two chairs. I am sitting in a rocking chair, putting my feet up on a footstool, and am starting to get a little grumpy and wish that I had a bed to lay out on. Other than that, there is no news to report... I am really hoping that Charlie comes soon. I will try to keep you all posted as much as I can!