In the hospital

Quite a lot going on here; Tuesday has been the busiest day we've had in a long, long time.

We went to the hospital at 6:45 AM and were settled into a room by 7:30.  The Pitocin started up shortly after and we were off!  We've lost track of exact times for anything I didn't explicitly write down after that point, so I'll just stick with general events.

The baby monitor just wouldn't stay in place well, causing me to freak out a bit on occasion.  It didn't help that Jenn had to keep moving around to try to keep both the baby happy (watching the heart rate drop is scary) and Jenn's blood pressure under control.

The doctor broke Jenn's water pretty early on.  From the look on her face, I'd guess it to be quite an unpleasant event.  The contractions started coming more quickly and more painfully, so we called in the anesthesiologist and got Jenn an epidural at around 11:40.  I really had a hard time listening to Jenn while the contractions were happening pre-epidural, the Pitocin is supposed to make the pain worse.  Things got much happier after the epidural, for both of us.

By 12:20 Jenn was 5-6 cm dilated, and by 1:15 she was practically completely dilated.  After some waiting around and just a little bit of pushing, the doctor and the entire birthing team was called in at about 2:00.  And at 2:17 Gwen was out and being taken care of.

Apparently I was looking a bit pale about the time everybody started filing in, so they made me stand in front of a chair.  I felt fine, though.  Silly nurses.