04:00 Regular strong contractions start steady every 4-8 min…. but they are not totally breathtaking. So we wait until it gets more frequent and stronger. We have a doctor’s appointment at 13:50 with Dr. Kagan anyways so we try to stay home until then. Shortly before we left the contractions get weaker. Maybe this is related to the shower
which Ana took.
13:50 Dr. Kagan’s office does a stress test and the baby moves happily but we are also having contractions every 2-6 min. They are not very strong but regular. The dilation at this point is 4 cm and the doctor decides that we should walk over to the hospital because Ana is in labor. Great, finally we get to get the baby.
15:30 .. we are answering all the incoming patient questions again. Our nurse is Kari this time. She seems to be experienced. Dr. Kagan is the doctor at the moment. Ana got a nice much bigger room, 106, than before (101). We have two nice large chairs for Mum and me. The air conditioning is blowing cold air all over the place. We adjust it to some more reasonable level maybe 65 F? The baby is moving happily around as usual and Ana so far is still very
relaxed. We had about 10 contractions in the last 25 minutes. The baby seems to be a sleep because his heart rate went down to 120.
15:45 Kari puts a infusion into Ana’s hand to keep her hydrated and for possibly adding medication afterwards….
Mum and I are discussing what hari the Ivan will have ….
Mum says: dark hair and green eyes I say: dark hair and dark eyes (added today May 5, 2011) I was right :-)
Now the contraction patterns are getting very regular and we are all set up for the baby to come.
17:00 Mum and I go and have a quick salad to be able to hold up for the night together with Ana.
17:30 Ana still look svery good and is ‘riding the pain’, but the contractions become more frequent.
18:00 Dr. Kagan broke the water bag and Ana is getting an epidural injection to help the pain. Ana is getting a little tired.
18:25 Epidural injection is put in place by the anestisiologist. It worked very well and Ana feels almost no pain after a short while. The nurse rolls her over a litle bit on the side to make sure that baby support (cord) is not blocked by the permanent position on the back. In an hour or so ‘a pipeline to the restrooms’ will be put in place.
19:00 Nurse Kari has finished her shift and is leaving and Laurie is next. Ana is content and lets me take another picture ;-). We are probably looking at another 5-6 hours until the baby is out. Huuuuhh. Let’s get this sucker out ;-).
19:25 The catheder is put in place without problems. It looks like that the baby does not like turning to the other side, heart beat rate goes down to 70, so we leave Ana on the original side. The dilation is about 6 cm now.
19:36 The delivery table gets set up.
21:35 Another try to roll over but the baby does not like it. We go back to the same side. The dilation has grown to 8 cm which make the estimated time close to 23:00. Ana is somewhat tired but in good spirits. I would have thought she would be worse by now. Mum and I are sitting here in our blankets and waiting for the arrival of little Ivan.
23:27 Laurie does her usual check. Dilation is 9 cm by now and the pressing should start around 12:30. The doctor (Dr. Heimburger) is going to do the delivery, Dr. Kagan has left already. When the name is mentioned Mum is suprised why people talk about food until she realizes it is the doctor’s name. During the checks the baby’s heart
rate monitor kind of looses connection. We use a new monitor to connect to the baby’s head to have a more precise measurement. Meanwhile Dr. Heimburger comes by and cross checks and find the same result as Laurie. Great, he is going to be back once all is ready to go.
Mum has meanwhile passed out as a “mummy” with her white blanket in her chair, but she is back in business if anything really is going on. We are watching the tonight shows on NBC, Jay Leno is over, Conan O’Brien is starting on right now and probably we are having first pressing when Carson Daley is in his last parts of the emission.