False Alarm

When I went into labor with Evan, I had a high leak in the amniotic sac. Once that pops (your water breaks) in any way, doctors generally like to have the baby out within 24 hours or else the chance of infection for your baby greatly increases.

Yesterday I had several "de ja vu" moments between 10 am (yup, that would have landed me right in the middle of CHURCH...) and 3 pm. So with the strong encouragement from my husband and mother, I called the exchange and was sent straight to the hospital, the only place where they could really tell if the water had broken or not.

So at 3:30, Jon had to get on the phone to frantically find someone to fill in for him at youth group that night. Thankfully, Tim, one of the 4th yr seminary students doing his field work at our church, was able to step up. (Thanks SO much, Tim!) We quickly loaded the last few things into our van that I hadn't packed for the hospital (just in case), grabbed our lamaze training DVD that we JUST got in the mail and hadn't had time to watch yet (thanks SO much, Meghan!), and headed off for the hospital. We met Tim about half way to hand off the stuff for youth group, and I was able to squeeze in a fast-forwarded version of the breathing techniques that I haven't seen for over 2 years JUST in case my water had really broken and I would have had to be induced (at this point my contractions weren't really doing anything).

We got to the hospital and headed straight for Labor and Delivery since it was the weekend and the women's examination center was closed due to lack of staffing. After sitting in the chilly delivery room and eerily staring at the bed where the newly born babes are tested and cleaned up for over an hour, a resident doctor was finally able to see us to do a rather painful examination. She was unable to find a leak and she was satisfied with the amount of fluid still around little girl, but she wasn't so comfortable sending me home with contractions that were coming every 3-4 minutes. (Maybe it was the simple act of being in the delivery room that brought them on...who knows?...)

While she went in search of the on-call doctor from my doctor's office, Jon got to watch the football games and I got to catch up on some reading (because I remembered to bring a book this time! yeah me!). A while later a nurse came back with some medication to get my contractions to stop. An hour after administering the meds, my contractions had slowed down a bit but hadn't stopped, so they wanted me to stay longer under a 2nd dose of the medication.

This whole while Jon and I were secretly wishing to hold our little girl in our arms. I mean, we were already at the hospital...we had all of our stuff...my toe nails were freshly painted...contractions were already happening...but alas, she just wasn't quite ready. And so we have to wait a bit longer so she can grow a bit bigger.

Five hours after being admitted we were finally given the OK to leave. I'm not on bedrest so to say, but my activities have been limited strictly to keep this little girl in for at least another 2 weeks. Fun. So we wait. And we're glad that everything is ok. :)