It's go time

For the past week or so I've been feeling like someone who's been told they are going to be in charge of co-captaining a spaceship. Problem is: "we can't tell you when, exactly" and I've never captained one of these things before. I've been on one, seen a couple flown, but I didn't exactly take notes. I read about half a book too, hope that will come in handy. In the end it just seems like a learn on the job type thing. Attempt to make the mistakes small and learn from them quickly.

It's about 3:00 AM on 7/6 right now, and we are getting ready to leave for the hospital. Mom is doing great handling things so far. I hope that the lack of sleep doesn't hurt her too much. Here's to hoping it's the real thing, and all goes well.

Contractions started on the evening of 7/5 shortly after my mother-in-law arrived. I am certainly impressed by their German sense of timing. On that day Roger Federer won his 15th Grand Slam title against Andy Roddick at Wimbledon.

Update 7:00 PM. It has been a long day so far. We arrived at the hospital a little after 3:30AM. As soon as they hooked Sydney up to the monitors and started watching her, the contractions lessened dramatically. We got up and walked around for about 40 minutes, during which time the contractions returned to being pretty normal and strong, but once again when they put her on the monitors and into the bed the contractions stopped again and she was still only 2cm dilated. They gave us the option of going home or staying for another hour to see Dr. Crookes (Olivia). I was leaning toward going back home but Mom wanted to stay and see the doctor. Luckily we stayed because within that hour the labor seemed to accelerate and "turn the corner" as the nurses and doctors said. By this time the pain was very very strong and the decision was made to take the epidural. This took a while to receive because the anesthesiologist was seeing to another patient who was having an emergency C-section. In the men time she was given a sedative to help "take the edge off". Finally we got the block, but this seemed to slow the contractions again and little progress was seen so a Pitosin drip was started. It was finally at about 6:00PM that they checked again and she was 6cm dilated. The nurse wasn't encouraged by this and seemed to think it meant we would be needing a C-section, but the doctor came by and said she thought the signs were good and that we could check again in 2 hours. I am watching the monitors now and it appears to me that she is in the "transition" phase of labor, which is the immediate predecessor to the "pushing" phase of the labor. This has not been confirmed, but it is what I believe.