Guess what? I'm at home tonight. "What?!" you may be wondering. "How can you go home when your wife is in labor?!?"
Answer: She's not in labor (well, she wasn't when I left around 10:15pm).
They gave her a dose of prostaglandin gel at 1pm Thursday. Not much had happened by 5pm, so they gave her a second dose at 6pm. Around 8:30pm, the doctor examined her and said her cervix was still only around 1cm or so, and it was long, so it hadn't effaced much yet. While it had softened a bit, there's still a lot of work to do. Given that she didn't get much good sleep last night, they decided that, rather than start her on the Pitocin tonight, they'd let her get a good night's sleep and then start her on the Pitocin early in the morning. Basically, because she hasn't entered active labor yet, they're just going to pause in the progression of events, and give her the night off.
Since the fold-out chair in her overnight room is not very easy to sleep in, we decided I should go home, get some good sleep myself, and re-supply the cats. And in the morning, I'll remember to bring some toiletries with me to the hospital (that's the one thing I didn't think to bring when I ran out the door this morning).
So I'm home, but I'll probably be heading back to the hospital by 7am. I'd like to say that the next time I post to this blog, we'll have our baby girl, but given how frequently this whole process has been on-again/off-again, I'm not making any promises! :-)
Posted by Tom Nugent at March 4, 2004 11:34 PM