40 Weeks and the BIG Tease:

Today is due date day and we are still in limbo. My chance to have an "on-time" baby (for once) is slowing coming to an end and it is looking more and more like another scheduled induction. If he's not here by my appointment next Thursday afternoon we'll be heading to the hospital that evening to start the process. It's pretty much what I had thought all along (as you can see from my baby pool guess).

There is, of course, still a chance he could come on his own terms and he's already shown us that maybe he could do just that. Labor started on Sunday afternoon only to stall out after being sent home early Monday morning. Below is the story of Evan's big tease:

Sunday April 18, 2010:
Sunday morning began with a delicious breakfast of eggs, pancakes and bacon at one of our favorite breakfast restaurants. About 10:30 I got a call from my friend asking if we wanted to join them at the movies to see "How to Train Your Dragon". Since it was cold and rainy it seemed like the perfect thing to do to get out of the house for a bit. After we settled on the show I started to feel what I assumed to be Braxton Hicks contractions. I blew it off until they continued. They started to fall into some type of rhythm that we contemplated cancelling our plans to go to the movies.

We decided to go anyway since we had already told David and he was really excited to be going to the movies again. Besides, nothing about these contractions told me I should be really worried. I did continue to time them while at the movies and found that they were coming (on average) every 15 to 20 minutes. It wasn't until 5:30pm that they started to feel different and become closer together. The Doc and I continued to track and time each one and found that it was becoming more consistent and slightly stronger at every 10 minutes. This continued for the next hour and we decided it would be best to have MIL come down and spend the night, you know, just in case!

MIL got here about 8:30 and I decided I should finish packing all the things I would want to bring with me in case we ended up going into the hospital. I also took a nice long hot shower which was really nice. As they kept going, I was trying really hard not to get my hopes up. It was challenging though, since David and Shaun were both scheduled inductions, and this was the first time I had every experienced anything like this.

At 10:30 I thought it would be a good idea to try and go to lay down, but who was I kidding? I couldn't really sleep, so I continued to time the contractions and realized they were starting to feel slightly more uncomfortable and they were getting closer together at about every 6 minutes. This continued for the next hour while the Doc and I went back and forth on deciding whether we should go into the hospital. Since this is baby number 3, I was advised by the NP that I should probably go in once they were like 5 to 8 minutes apart. So around midnight we decided that we would go.

Monday April 19, 2010 (Midnightish):
We pack up the car and head over to L&D and get checked in. We were set up in a triage room where I was hooked up to the monitors. The nurse told me she was seeing contractions every 4 minutes! I was pretty excited to hear that. It wasn't much long after she said that that the intensity of those contractions picked up significantly. They were intense enough that I needed to focus and breath through them. The resident came in to do an exam and found that I was only a centimeter dilated. I was a little disappointed and was hoping for better news. She told us she would re-examine me in a couple hours and said that I was free to walk around. So we did. The Doc had some emails to send for work to get coverage for his shift in the morning.

When we returned we waited for the resident to come back to recheck me and unfortunately nothing changed much. With that in mind and the fact that even though I was having strong contractions (just not strong enough or long enough) her recommendation was for us to go home. I was crushed. I really didn't want to go home. She left to talk with the Attending but ultimately they asked us to leave. The concern was that since things were moving slowly that it would be very easy for the morning team to push some pitocin, which they didn't want to have happen.

I was so upset because, in my opinion, my contractions were pretty intense and I was confused by how much more intense they would have to be before I was to return. I was advised to take a hot shower and get some rest. So a little after 4am Monday morning we packed up all our stuff and headed back home. Needless to say I was devastated. Here I was thinking this is it and I, of course, got my hopes up that this was the real deal. My contractions continued with the same intensity but I noticed them getting farther apart. I took that hot shower, mostly because I was wired and needed to clear my head. After the shower I decided to lay down. Apparently I was much more tired than I thought and ended up falling asleep and that was pretty much the end of my labor. When I woke up the contractions were back to what I was feeling earlier in the day Sunday and eventually they stalled out.

And that brings us to Friday April 23, 2010, due date day. We are still hoping that he will be joining us really soon (like tomorrow would be nice!!) but at least we know for sure he'll be here by the end of next week!