Looking Back - Part I

Monday, March 8th, 2004.

3 days overdue, we had an appointment with Mary Ann, my midwife, at 2:45 PM. First, we listened to the heartbeat, which still sounded great. Then she checked me for dilation. I was still at 1 cm. She was able to get me to 3 cm. with a little magic of hers. Since, we were overdue; we also had to have a non-stress test to make sure our little guy was ok. So they hooked my tummy up with a belt to a machine and had me drink ice water. Every time I felt him move I was to press a little button like the kind they use to ‘buzz in’ on Jeopardy. I was to get 3 movements within their set time frame. Well, even though he had been kicking and moving up until that appointment, he decided that he was sleepy and didn’t move at all for a long time. I was starting to get nervous that we were going to fail the test. Then, near the end, he pulled through, we got our three kicks, and all was well. Once I was disconnected from the machine, Mary Ann told us that she expected us to start contractions within a few hours and we could possibly have our baby by the end of the day.We called our immediate family to let them know and to have them pray for us. We dropped Rocky off at Kim’s K9 who had been on “baby watch” for the past 2 weeks. We then went home and made sure all our bags were packed and ready to go. We called Kari and Andy to come hang out with us. We were pretty much just waiting for the baby to come, so we all went out to dinner for our usual Monday Fahita Night at Chili’s. Chips, salsa and fahitas are probably not the best foods to eat when you are expected to go into labor any minute. By the end of dinner, I was still feeling nothing but a few minor braxton-hicks. We decided to play some cards back at our place over some ice cream. Finally, we determined that the baby wasn’t coming that night and went to bed for what would become our last quiet night in quite a while!