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 ⇐   March 27th, 2011   ⇒ 

Copyright 2011 Michael Anttila

Part 2 - "Monitoring and Waiting"

After our midwife appointment with Heather, one of our midwives, we went to the hospital and met with Carol, our other midwife. She ordered some tests and set Angela up with a monitoring device that charts the baby's heart rate, and also charts contractions.

Because of the specific set of problems that Angela was having, her care had to be transferred over from our midwives to an Obstetrician. The OB on call that night was Dr. Elliott, and she recommended that Angela start on an induction drug called Prostaglandin (Cervidil). That is when the wait began.

First, they monitored Angela and the baby for two hours, to get a base line for how things were going. Then they sent us home for the night and asked us to come back first thing in the morning to see how things were progressing. We didn't get much sleep that night, due to the fact that this was all so unexpected.

The next morning we headed back to the hospital for another two hours of monitoring, which turned into about five hours of testing and monitoring and waiting. The OB on call that day was Dr. Fraser, and he pretty much agreed with Dr. Elliott's plan. After a lot of waiting, with the constant 140 bpm thumping of the baby's heart on the monitor, Dr. Fraser sent us home and asked us to come back at 10pm. This time, we had a suspicion that we might not see our bed again for a while, so we took a 5 hour afternoon nap to get ready for our late night appointment.

At our 10pm appointment with Dr. Fraser, he said that not much had changed. At this point, Angela was starting to feel contractions, but they were very minor. Dr. Fraser said that he would send us home again for the night, but then changed his mind and admitted us into a birthing room in the maternity ward. He also gave us the ominous warning that if things didn't progress by morning, there was a high probability that they would perform a C-Section.

After many many hours of waiting in the triage area, we finally had a private room where we could put our stuff and settle in, knowing full well that we wouldn't be leaving the hospital without a baby.

Stay tuned for Part 3!

Technical details: This photo was taken with my LG Pop.

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