AC Capehart capehart

7:00 water broken by midwife with big, blue, plastic hook. Mom and dad quite emotional.

At 6:00 the midwife wanted to break the water. She had done a test and we were stuck at 4cm. We managed to get an hour’s reprive, which is just about up. I hope we’ve progressed enough to further forstall it, but we’ll see soon enough. The contractions are still irregular and manageable.

For a while recently, Carolyn was having what they were calling “late decells”. Meaning that baby’s heart rate was dropping (_decel_lerating) during the late part of contractions. This apparently means that baby is not tolerating the contractions well — not getting enough oxygen during them so the heart rate declines. So, at the moment, the pit is off, Carolyn’s on oxygen and resting. I’m going to see if I can cat nap too.

We had a bit of drama recently. The pitocin (actually oxytocin) level had been gradually pumped up to 8 mili-units. The contractions were coming a bit more regularly, but were still well under controll. Carolyn had been having some twinges of lower back pain, so the doula suggested a hands and knees position to try to pull the baby forward some. In that position, Carolyn felt no contractions at all, and none showed on the monitor.

Carolyn is now on pitocin. They just upped the dose from the minimum they started her out on about 20 min. ago. The contractions are more frequent, but still pretty managable. She can talk through them. She greeted the most recent one with “Oooh, here’s one.”

No Internet access at the hospital. Will have to use my phone for subsequent updates. I really should have bought that keyboard for it. Oh well. We got checked in after a crazy afternoon of finishing packing and a quick meal at the local Mexican joint. Already, it’s far more medical than I was prepared for, though I mean it’s a hospital, I should have known. But she’s had 3 vials of blood drawn, I don’t even know for what.

We’re in a bit of a collective freak-out at the moment. We went in for our usual “non-stress” test and Biophysical profile (ultrasound) today. The BPP score was a 4 out of 8. They didn’t see sufficient movement, nor fetal breathing. (I wish we’d had the other ultrasound technician.) So, even though our non-stress test was fine, the doctor feels like the baby is now in a “better out than in” place.

I find myself, at 10:00 in the evening, sitting in the basement illuminated only by the monitor and a small desk light, blasting techno through my headphones, and programming. Sometimes, life is gooood.

We had Donna and Rebecca over for dinner tonight. They are the two amazing women who put together the wonderful baby shower for Carolyn, helped me paint rooms in the house, etc. They’ve been quite a treat to have in our lives. Anyway, Rebecca brought over a CD of photos that she took at the event, so I uploaded them into the photo gallery. Also, this week, I got a couple of pictures of my friend David.

Today, I received my Official Coach Card indicating that Carolyn and I have completed our Bradley Method training in preparing for a “natural” birth. I (and I believe Carolyn) certainly benefited greatly from Tera Nelson’s training, and feel much more prepared now than I(we) did even a scant month ago. Still, there’s a twinge of nervousness (sometimes more like panic) about this very physical and quite unknown (to us) process that we have coming up.