And suddenly...

Ignore the blog for a few days, and suddenly "expectant father" takes on a whole new meaning.

Tuesday morning we dropped off my sis at the airport to fly home, and went to the OB for a regular checkup. It was a madhouse -- the usually tiny waiting room was double-packed, to where I went out and sat on the porch of the OB's office and read a 2 week old Sports Illustrated. When we finally got in, the nurse (not the usual awesome-cool nurse, but the other one) took Ruth's blood pressure, didn't tell us what it was, but asked Ruth for a urine sample.

Uh-Oh, said the worrier in my head. Our OB hasn't asked for urine since we first got there. If she's not telling us the blood pressure, and asking for urine, that sounds to me like a warning sign for Pre-eclamsia. But I'm no doctor.

The OB was in the room before Ruth could go to the bathroom. He told Ruth to relax, no biggie, he's just going to take her blood pressure again. After the reading, he said, "OK, you're done here. Go over to the hospital. The birthing center will be expecting you, they'll run some tests. Go ahead and make an appointment for here next week before you leave...but that might change."

So we go to the hospital, in a mental state of "Oh crap we so do not have it all together for this baby yet." Luckily the nurses talked me down. We did a non-stress test -- they hooked Ruth up to a fetal monitor, which watches the baby's heart rate, watches for contractions, and watches Ruth's blood pressure and heart rate also. They took blood and urine to the lab for tests.

After a couple hours, it was pretty clear that things weren't great, but not so bad that we would be staying at the hospital. They sent us home with orders for Ruth to stay off her feet (which went over not at all well) and to come back Thursday. They also set up a 24-hour urine sample, which means she saved all her urine from 8am Wednesday to 8am Thursday, which we brought back to the lab today.

So Tuesday I spent my time trying to keep Ruth sitting, if not laying down. It's not easy. She seemed to think bedrest was a synonym for "Homework, appointments, long walks...whatever you normally do, superwoman."

Wednesday I went to Providence and finally passed the hated Cisco exam, then did a bunch of baby shopping "just in case." Ruth spent the morning in bed with as stomach complaint, which was bizarre because normally her stomach only goes off when she overeats, which she definitely didn't do on Tuesday. A quick look at What to Expect... says that unexplained stomach pain is a secondary sign for...pre-eclamsia.

So this morning we got up and I had a funny feeling I should start packing a bag, which I did.

We went to the hospital, where the lab monkey forced us to "register" before we would be allowed to hand them two jugs of Ruth's urine, even though said HAD THE FUCKING ORDER TO PROCESS THE URINE IN HIS HAND, and the urine jugs clearly had the same name on them as the order, so God forbid you're missing a piece of fucking paper. I had my usual "you fucking paper pushers will all be sorry if we get single-payer healthcare and you're out of a job" outburst and we went to registration, where the bureaucrat quite unhelpfully told us we were just here on Tuesday. Really? FASCINATING.

We went to the hospital's birthing center, which is a haven of actual attentive, service-oriented people in the vast healthcare wasteland. Our OB, who gave birth to dry wit long before he delivered any babies, happened to be in the center -- "Good Morning. Do I want to know why you're here? Probably not." After a replay of Tuesday -- non-stress test, blood tests, urine tests -- the staff decided Ruth's blood pressure and lab results were worse than Tuesday and Ruth needed to stay the night for more testing. I went home to finish packing the bag while they set up Ruth in a room.

When I got back, another blood pressure test was worse than the one before; there was now clearly a pattern of her blood pressure rising, rather than falling, despite bedrest. Ruth also felt like crap, more so than the last couple days.

At about 5pm, the doctor came by to say, "Well, you have pre-eclamsia. You're 37 weeks along, so the baby is full-term. Since the only cure for pre-eclamsia is delivering the baby, we're going to do some labwork in the morning and then talk about delivery."

Then he felt up my wife (in a very medical way), stated she was 2cm dilated and effaced enough that we could go ahead tomorrow with induction and vaginal birth.

So...72 hours ago I was thinking in terms of multiple weeks of just the two of us...now, as Ruth is finally sleeping in the most uncomfortable bed in the world, I'm looking at just a few more hours before this all gets started.

After everything we've been through, it's still a shock to finally be staring parenthood in the face. I know I should be sleeping to prepare myself for tomorrow, but I can't sleep. Even after all the time we've spent thinking and preparing and talking about it, this is still too much to put my head around.

Kid, I can't wait to meet you in person instead of playing morse-code through Mommy's belly. And you're almost here.

Wish us luck...