The whole truth, part 1, pre-labor

Something crazy happened yesterday...God gave us our first child, our son, Nicholas Andrew Grindy, almost exactly 3 weeks early! 7 pounds, 0 ounces, 20 inches of a beautiful, healthy, Grindy hairball. Seriously. I know some of the hair sluffs off, but he's already got plenty of dome fur and a thick coat of back fuzz. Enough about how manly he already is, let me give you the run down. It will be in timeline format, of course, broken into three separate posts, pre-, at-, and post-labor. Only pre-labor tonight...I'm exhausted.

Oh, and as a courtesy, this will be kinda long so you could stop now and come back later since you got the gist. There are quite a few funny stories that will be posted as separate posts for posts sake (I know that doesn't make sense, but what good is it to give it all away now?!), but, I'll post one after each of the history posts described above, just to keep you interested!

Wednesday September 3, 2008 - 2:30pm - I had the day off, actually the previous 4 for some crazy required day off sequence and the next day as well for a nice 6 days off in a row. Katy had a doctor's appointment where her OBGYN checked her cervix for the first time which I always love going with her and can proudly say I've only missed one pre-natal appointment due to a court case running late. When we saw her doctor, Dr. Nomeland, he prefaced the visit by saying the stats of the check were not an indication of when she would go into labor, merely stats. That being said, she was 70% effaced, 2cm dilated, and -2/-1 station line. For what that means, check out WebMD or whattoexpect.com.

9:00pm - Katy, my dad Tim (who was visiting for a few days and planning on leaving in the morning, sort of a last ditch chance to see his son without his grandson, aka golf time), and I were all sitting in the living room watching X3 on FX, the world premiere. Katy got up and walked toward the bedroom, stopped in the hallway door, turned back toward the living room, and beckoned me into the bedroom. Feeling like I was about to get lucky, I quickly followed. Once in the bedroom, she shut the door behind me and I thought I really was going to get lucky. She looked at me seriously and said, "I think I'm going into labor." "Are you sure?" "Pretty sure, I'm having contractions and they're way more intense than Braxton Hicks (again, WebMD) contractions." "Ok, well let's start timing them and see how close together and long they are." I went back into the living room, with her blessing, and sat down and finished the last half hour of X3. Of course.

10:00pm - I went back to Katy to see how it was coming. Everything matched up with what the books were saying, 4-7 minutes in between contractions, all around a minute in length. So, I did what any grown up 27 year old about to have a son would do, I went and got my daddy. He said it did sound like labor and he did it with a Cheshire cat grin on his face. I began to pack (contrary to the picture), which we had kinda done already but not too seriously. While I took a shower my dad was awesome and kept counting the contractions with Katy while I did all that. Lucy however, just looked at us solemnly from the bed. We prayed with my dad and left for Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
11:30 pm - Some might be wondering what the trip to the hospital was like and I'll tell you how I thought it would be. I figured I'd be at work on the south end of Santa Barbara county, approximately 60 miles from our home in Buellton. I thought I'd drive at a buck thirty to the office, throw off my uniform, and drive a buck thirty home, pick up Katy, slow down and drive a buck twenty to the hospital, just in time to avoid having to deliver the baby myself on the side of US-101. Not quite what transcended. A lot safer and easier. I drove at 75-80, classical music station playing in the background to keep Katy calm, and we talked about how we thought it would probably be false labor. Definitely wasn't false since I'm looking at Nick as I write this. We even had time to swing by my office and grab some things I needed.

Thursday September 4, 2008 12:00pm - We parked in the parking structure and not at the front of the ER where a valet would have taken our Civic. This was because we had a bunch of stuff that we didn't want to take into the hospital if we were just going to be sent home again. We walked 3 blocks to the front of the ER where we were greeted by one of the nurses I know from going in there all the time for work named Jeremy. Jeremy grabbed a wheel chair for Katy which she thought was completely unnecessary as is evident by the photo. Jeremy got us in super quick and we were sent up to the labor and delivery floor of Cottage. The nurses there were awesome and really made us feel at home, right as they took over pushing Katy around. We couldn't have been more blessed with their hospitality. We even tried to apologize since we thought it was probably false labor. They said that was ridiculous and it was always better to be on the safe side and keep Katy's mind at ease.

12:15am - We settled in to a triage room, a little odd to be honest. Emily became our night shift nurse and was with us until 7am. She was awesome with Katy, same demeanor and personality, making it extremely easy for Katy to feel comfortable at home.
Emily did a cervix check and found out Katy was dilated 3cm, up 1cm since 2pm the day before. She hooked Katy up to a contraction and baby heart rate monitor for about 20 minutes, proving that Katy's documentation of her contractions earlier were pretty darn close, 4-6 minutes apart and all around 1 minute in length. We got up and walked for an hour around the hospital with the intention being to see if Katy was progressing.
1:30am - After discovering every corner of the 6 floor hospital, finding a baby's name for every letter of the alphabet on the handprint plaques outside the NICU unit, and getting $20 in $1 coins at the cafeteria, Katy came back to the triage for her 3rd cervix check in 12 hours and is at 4cm with the bag of waters significantly low. Basically...here comes baby. A different nurse hooked Katy up to an IV which for those who don't know, assuming most, Katy has a slight phobia of needles since she got spinal meningitis as a junior in high school and was poked a thousand times. So putting an IV into a pregnant lady who hates IV's, a scary proposition, but Katy and the nurse handled it like champs. After the IV we got moved into the room where we would deliver, LD 6. The call to our parents was interesting since they were all sleeping and somewhat in disbelief. I went and moved the car to the valet and grabbed all our stuff, hauling it all up to get settled in for the long haul. So, almost 12 hours exactly since her doctor's appointment the afternoon before, we were finally ready to really get started...
continued in The whole truth, part 2, at-labor