1cm and 70%

Hi,

Yesterday was a great day. I started the day by going grocery shopping with my wife at Walmart on Wendover. Then I cleaned the bathroom as she can’t handle the fumes (if this is your first post it is because she is pregnant), washed the dishes, and was going to end the day with a nice supper that I was going to fix especially for her that required me to bake. Yes, I was trying to be a good husband after being away all week. I wanted her to feel special and pampered this weekend as she is 9 months pregnant and she has tried really hard to keep house despite her extreme tiredness as she enters the last bit of pre-motherhood. All was going well and the bates bakery was about to finish the meal when I heard her say “I need to call the women’s hospital”. She didn’t sound really concerned but I knew that I should prepare for anything as she is 36 weeks along. I promptly pulled the supper out of the oven and put it in the fridge, turned off the coffee pot, and headed back to the bedroom for moral support and to find out more. She told me that we would be needing to go to the hospital as she had had a little spotting. She was still on the phone so I decided to do a little research on the subject. This did not help as it posed threats like cervical problems, placenta previa, placental abruption, uterine rupture, and preterm labor. The most common was placenta previa where the weight of the uterus causes the cervix to stretch and allow blood to pass through.

I was starting to worry as we called the soon-to-be grandparents to let them know where we would be. We arrived at the hospital at 8:50pm and despite my pleasantly good parking spot I still required a cigarette to calm me down. At around 9:10 we where seen by the admittance people who told us that we were just gearing up to have a baby and that everything would be fine, she also said that we would still have to be seen by the doctor.

After another 20 minutes or more we where admitted into the hospital and my wife was in a hospital gown. It took another two hours before we where actually seen by the doctor, although we did get to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. She told us that bleeding when we where this far along was normal and that it was due to her cervix thinning out. She did a cervical exam and announced that we where already 1cm dilated and her cervix was about 70% thinned out! She left and said that we could go as well but that we would be seeing her again soon as the baby is getting ready. So it took us until well into the 11th hour to find out that my wife is at the first stages of labor and that it won’t be long (couple of weeks) until we get to hold our baby boy.

After going home and letting all the grandparents know that they could stand down, we finally got something to eat (microwave pizza for me).

I woke up this morning to a very happy pregnant lady saying “Good morning, my uterus is thinning out, how are you?”

David

Change

Hi,

Well the Bates family has been at full steam ahead for the new baby for about two months now.
Everybody is on the countdown with only about 4 weeks to go. We have now had two baby showers, countless phone calls and even a scare of Pre-Eclampsia by the doctors which prompted a week stay by my mother-in-law (Thank you Donna). Jess’s doctor visits are more frequent and the baby is growing bigger and bigger. We can’t wait to see what he looks like. Jess’s belly has grown quite a bit and I have started teasing her with the thought of twins to keep her mood up. In fact she has handled herself quite well being a truly dignified pregnant southern lady in a unusually warm Greensboro summer.

Before I start talking about school I would like to thank everybody who attended my wife’s showers both the one in Floyd and the one in Greensboro. I would also like to especially thank my Mom and my Mother-in-law; You both hosted beautifully parties. Also, a big thank you is needed for my wife’s friends in Floyd, My wife looks up to each and every one of you and you have truly made her feel like the most important pregnant lady in the world.

Class has been going well, I still have a 4.0gpa and am starting to take some classes that interest me. I tried the online thing last term and didn’t like it so I am now back to being a full-time night student. It is hard and the weeks are long but I keep telling myself that this will be the best thing I could ever do for my wife and new son. I hope I am right.

The other night in class was the funnest night I had ever had. We installed Linux on every machine in the classroom (about 25) and the teacher had us set our root password up as password (not recommended) so I decided to have a little fun and logged into a classmates machine via ssh. Needless to say after a few minutes I had people hovering over me asking how I did this and that. I even taught a couple of other classmates how to ssh and change users and passwords on other machines. One girl got a little carried away and I had to kick her off someones machine.

Needless to say the weeks ahead will be full of mystery and surprise.
Well that about it for this time around.
Thanks for reading.
David Bates