12:00 am
Liz came in to check vitals. Everything still looking good, she got Rachel a little fan for her face and a hot pack for her now pretty crampy back
4:00 am
Another vitals check. Still looking dandy. Her blood sugar dropped a little low so we got some orange juice in her. Still just gonna try and get some sleep. Really fun that our background white noise is just baby’s heart beat :)
7:00 am
Our new nurse (Anna) came in to wake us up (wake me up, I slept like a dog, Rachel… not so much). She took some vitals, then we pulled out the cervix softening medicine and checked again. Now ~70% effaced and not really dilating at all still. Still this meant Rachel could take a little break and get off the baby heart monitor she had to wear all night
7:30 am
Rachel got a shower and ate some breakfast from the cafeteria. Waiting on doctors decision now for what next steps will be. It might be more cervix softening medicine, it might be jumping to pitocin.
8:15 am
Still just waiting from the doctor, we got Rachel settled back into bed and feeling a lot better. Still cramping and uncomfortable, but at least now fed and clean.
The nurse came back while I was typing this. We are going to do another round of softening, this one will only be ~4 hours.
8:30 am
Becky got here, contractions are ~5 minutes apart. Still gonna do one more round of softening.
9:00 am
Medicine back on. Monitor back on. Settling into another 4 hours of just waiting and watching.
10:30 am
Forgot to mention that doctor jones came in to check on Rachel and talk through some plans. Just the same things the nurse already told us.
11:00 am
Still just hanging out, Rachel got a yoga ball to sit and spin on, that felt really good. She’s pretty tired and going to try and get some rest, so while we wait we’re going to play a little betting game. Anyone who sees this, fill out your guesses for what baby will be, send your guesses, whoever gets closest gets to be the godparent. Jk, but we will use your name for the baby’s middle name. Jk not that either. You can have bragging rights though, and we’ll let you take a picture holding the baby at some point.
12:30 pm
Rachel got some lunch in her, just barely in the nick of time, cause as she was eating the nurse came in to start the pitocin, so that is flowing now too. The monitor is still running, the baby’s heart is beating strongly and Rachel’s contractions are already starting to get more and more regular. Still kind of a waiting game, but the plan now is to let pitocin run for another hour or so then the doctor will come back in to check on the cervix dilation and probably manually break her water.
We are loving all of these guesses you guys are sending, so keep em coming!
1:00 pm
Anna just came back and upped the pitocin levels. Rach is definitely feeling these contractions more now and is being such a champ
2:30 pm
Pitocin levels keep going up, contractions getting more and more regular. Rachel’s feeling them pretty strong now, but still doing really good. We’re doing our best to distract her from the pain, and to distract her from the screams coming from the other rooms around us. Today’s entertainment has been mostly a reading of “And then there were none”. In hindsight, a mystery novel was a poor choice if my goal was to help her fall asleep, but it is at least somewhat distracting.
3:30pm
Contractions started to get a lot more consistent and a lot stronger the last half hour. Pain has gone up a ton and now the Doctor wants to come manually break her water. Rachel decided to call for the epidural before the doctor breaks the water first to help with the pain that will only get worse. So we’re just waiting on the anesthesiologist now.
4:00 pm
Epidural is in, the contractions are all 2 minutes apart at this point. Rachel did so good, bled quite a bit with the epidural but is settling in comfortably now. We upped the pitocin a little bit too. So contractions are still very regular, but she’s feeling them a lot less. Plan now is to have the doctor come in to break the water once she’s comfortable. We haven’t done a cervical check since early this morning, so we don’t really know what her dilation/effacion is at this point, but doc will measure when he comes in to break the water.
4:30 pm
Rachel got very comfortable and was able to take a little nap, which was some muuuuch needed rest.
5:00 pm
Anna came back in to check on things, she is still only 2cm dilated, but both the nurse and Anna said it’s feeling a lot more thin, and very soft, which is really good. The doctor broke her water as well, which will help move things right along and help this whole process speed up. Baby’s on its way, just taking its sweet time. Looking like tonight. Fingers crossed. (But genuinely we’re so grateful everything has gone so smoothly, baby can take as long as it wants and needs, just as long as it gets here healthy and mom stays healthy too)
6:00 pm
We’ve now stayed through 2 whole nurse shifts haha, we got a new nurse, her name is Jess, she seems nice. Just poked her head in to say hi. Things are pretty calm right now so we’re both just relaxing. Going to try and get a little sleep
7:00 pm
Just woke up to the beeping of Rachel’s epidural cause it was running low. We both got about an hour of sleep which was so so nice. Jess came in to check vitals, fix the epidural beeping, and do a cervical check. Rachel’s progressing, just still pretty slow. Probably gonna be a late night, pacing to not come til the morning most likely.
8:00 pm
Jess noticed that the baby’s heart rate kept dropping a tiny bit right after the peak of Rachel’s contractions. It was pretty consistent, which could maybe indicate that the cord is getting compressed by the contractions and cutting off the baby’s blood supply for a few seconds till the contraction stops. So to monitor things closer and more accurately we are switching to the intrauterine sensor, which I guess also is pushing some more fluid up by baby to help soften the contraction pressure on the cord. Right before making that switch Rachel got pretty nervous, so we had a family prayer together that was really powerful and comforting. Feeling very confident that baby will be just fine, it’s being slow, but it’s happy and healthy, and everything is going to be good with Rachel too. Powering through this slowdown.
9:00 pm
We were able to get the baby into a much better position and monitor it really well. The heart rate drop thing is no longer really an issue, but we’re keeping an eye on it. The bigger concern now is that Rachel’s body is just not contracting as hard as they would want it to be. She is just so exhausted which I’m sure is contributing. Epidural is helping with the pain, and she’s been able to doze off here and there, but the exertion from the constant contractions is just a lot
10:00 pm
Jess came in to do the next cervical check, we are actually looking on pace now for what we were expecting. Dilated up to a 4, which is fantastic. Baby’s heart is still looking good, and the contractions have been really stable at around every 2 minutes. Next check will be at midnight, so we’re taking the next couple of hours to try and get some fluids with some flavor into Rachel, then we will plan on her getting some sleep while she still can.
10:30 pm
Luke swung by to bring me some dinner and to bring Rachel some Chicken broth (really the only hearty thing she can have on her clear liquid diet, and the stuff they have here is a nasty goop that you mix into warm water). Shoutout Luke for that. The pain started to kick back in, so Rachel pressed the “give me more” button on her epidural machine a little while ago too, it helped with the pain 1000%, but it also made her feel pretty nauseous, so we got here some nausea medicine and she gonna try and sleep for the next little while to rebuild some strength and get through this nausea. Still on a good pace. Hoping for a new little Bailey Baby sometime this next morning the way things are looking right now.
11:15 pm
Rachel is resting/sleeping right now. Wasn’t gonna have an update except for a company wide comm announced just now a full hospital lockdown. Not sure what happened but the Parking lot (which we have a great view of from our window) flooded with cops and firetrucks. This was immediately after another hospital wide comm calling the trauma team to the ER. The nurse that came by to check on us thinks there was an attempted killing, and the person followed the ambulance to the ER to finish the person off. She had no clue though, so take that with a huge grain of salt
11:30 pm
They just lifted the lockdown, police are starting to clear out. Still no word as to what happened, but it resolved quickly, and we were completely unaffected. Rach mostly slept through it all, or at least would have if her IV pump hadn’t started blaring in the middle of it.
