It's Delivery Day! (Or is it...?)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

An update to the “My Wife Is Pregnant, And The Baby Isn’t Mine…” thread –

At the moment, we’re currently a little more than two weeks away from the projected due date. Last night, as Linda and I were watching TV, she said “I think I might be in labor”. Hmmm…ok, not too surprising. At her doctor appointment last Thursday her doc told her “Ok, we’ll make your next appointment for next Thursday, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing you before then”.

So I got out the stopwatch and beginning at 11:00 last night we started timing contractions while we watched TV. They were eight minutes apart for quite awhile, making their way down to a steady five minutes apart by around 2:00 am. Yeah, this was the real deal, but the timing was very bad. We knew that once we decided to go to the hospital, we were going to be setting a lot of people into motion:

–M&M would be coming down from New York City
–My mother-in-law would have to come and get our daughter
–Linda’s doula (professional pregnancy coach, basically) would have to be called in

So, rather than call all these people in the middle of the night (not to mention the two of us getting zero sleep), we decided to try and get some shut-eye for as long as possible. I got about two hours (in several short dozes) and Linda got about an hour.

Finally, at about 5:00 am the contractions were coming about three to four minutes apart. Ok, this is not a drill – time to make the phone calls!

I packed up my daughter and went to meet my MIL at the halfway point between out houses, about a half-hour away (Shayla was terribly excited by the prospect of a surprise trip to Grandma and Grandpa’s. She was also amazed at the 5:00 am world – “Look daddy…it’s dark!”). Then it was time to zip back home, grab Linda, and get to the hospital.

By about 7:30, all was well – M&M, the doula, Linda and I were all present and accounted for in Linda’s hospital room…and, nothing. Contractions had slowed dramatically, so they had her spend about an hour walking the corridors of the hospital in an attempt to kickstart hard labor. No go, though. After a few hours, it became clear that while the baby would be joining us in the near future, it wasn’t going to be that near. We opted to pack up and head back home, with everyone feeling pretty sure that we’d be back sometime in the next 24 hours.

Now Linda is downstairs making up for lost sleep while I load up the MP3 player we bought for her yesterday (you know…so she could listen to music when she eventually goes into labor). And now, it’s time for me to get in on some of that napping action myself. More details as they come in!

2

Good luck to all concerned. I hope everything goes well!

3

Eee! How exciting! Best wishes for an easy labor for your wife, and my congratulations to everyone involved, especially M&M who I would imagine must be ecstatic. Keep us updated!

4

I was wondering how your wife was doing and how all that was going, but I didn’t want to email you and ask because it might seem like I was stalking you or something when all I was really was curious because I have no life.

So thanks for the update!

5

I was just wondering about this the other day, too. Very exciting! I hope her labor & delivery goes well, when it finally comes for real.

6

M&M must be so excited. Do you, and they, know if it’s going to be a boy or a girl?

7

Oh I had the same thing happen when I had my son. I was having contractions all day. In the evening I finally went to the hospital and nothing. We walked the halls and still nothing.

We decided to go home as well. He was born less than 48 hours later.

My daughter on the other hand was different. I had went for my appointment and my mid-wife told me that it would not be anytime soon. The next morning I went into labor and already having a baby I knew this was no false alarm. I called my mid-wife and she told me to drink some tea or have a glass of wine as it was not likely since she just examined me.

I again knew it was time. We got to the hospital and I was dialated 8 centimeters. A quick ultrasound and an emergency C-section and there she was.

I hope you the baby comes soon as everything goes well :slight_smile:

8

Well? We’re waiting to hear about the wee lamb!

9

Not a lot to report. Yesterday came and went with no baby – we spent the day pretty much just relaxing and watching football. Linda has been in quite a bit of pain, but nothing that would indicate labor has returned. The nicest thing was both of us getting a good eight hours of uninterrupted sleep last night. Been awhile since that’s happened.

So, now we’re just kind of playing it by ear. Everyone is on standby right now…we just came back from walking around Wal-Mart trying to kickstart things, but no go. We’re going to meet M&M for lunch a bit later, and then come back home to watch more football. If labor doesn’t kick in again by later this afternoon, then I’ll be picking up The Littlest Briston from Grandma and Grandpa’s and we’ll be back to playing the waiting game.

It’s a little girl, to be named Maya Lynn* – say “hi”, Maya!
*The “Lynn” part after my wife, which I thought was a really, really nice thing for M&M to do…

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I was wondering how you guys were doing. This is such a generous self-less thing on both your parts. :slight_smile:

I love the 4-D ultrasound pic - so cute! Where did you get it done? I wanted to do the 4-D thing with DoperBaby, but didn’t realize there was a certain window in which to get good a view. So I’m planning (way) ahead for the second. We all live in southeast PA, kinda near NJ.

11

Maya Lynn is a beautiful name.

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Womb With A View – the name makes me want to kick a puppy, but the results are good. There are a couple of locations in PA, as well as Cherry Hill, NJ.

13

Good luck and what a selfless thing your wife and you are doing!
You have already made the world a better place.

14

Hal - you and Linda will be in my thoughts - I hope everything goes well!! This is a truly wonderful thing you and she are doing - it’s folks like you guys that give me a little hope for humanity. :slight_smile:

15

Hey, Hal, just curious – how do you explain this to your young daughter?

16

I agree, but to me, it rhymes with “violin.” Which is fine, but you know some kid on the playground is going to be a jerk…

17

She’ll need to find a friend named Amanda Lynn and they can form a band!

18

There’s really not much to explain. All she knows is that she got to spend the weekend at grandma and grandpa’s getting spoiled to death.

She’s been having a hard time dealing with not being able to climb up on mommy’s lap whenever she wants, but other than that there really hasn’t been an issue. We’re very fortunate in that we have such an easy-going kid. When my wife started showing, we sat Shayla down and explained to her that mommy had a baby growing in her belly, but when the baby came she was going to go live with Uncles M&M. She look at my wife’s belly, poked it and said “Ok…baby in belly. We go watch Boots 'n Dora now?”

Love that kid. :slight_smile:

If she were a little bit older, we’d go with the standard surrogacy explaination line for kids: “[So-n-so’s] belly is broken, so they borrowed mommy’s belly to grow the baby”.

19

Oh, okay. I was just wondering if you’d said anything like, “Mommy’s having a baby but we’re not keeping it…” leaving the poor sweetheart wondering if she would ever be given away… Didn’t realize there was a “standard” line.

Good luck with baby!

20

Another update…

It would seem that it was a good thing Maya decided not to join us the other day. We just received word from M&M – a Pennsylvania judge signed their pre-birth order today. My wife will appear nowhere on the birth certificate – both fathers will now appear on there as “Parent 1” and “Parent 2”.

A seemingly minor point for some, but a very big deal if you happen to be the parents.