What a difference a week makes...

Wow... this time last week I was trying to be patient and this week I am trying to stay awake. Last tuesday I remembered to check my blood pressure since it had started creeping up during my 3rd trimester and it was a little high (138/85) but not to the point I was supposed to call the office. Wednesday when I checked it before Tom left for work it was higher, 140/90, and I promised to call the office when they opened. Of course when I got ahold of the doctor they wanted me to come in to check it out. Repeat at the office was 140/87 (or so), so he decided to run some blood work, hook me up to a fetal monitor to check the baby and finally do an internal exam to see where we were... well once he checked me out he said "How do you feel about being induced, tomorrow?" Wow I definately wasn't expecting that one.

Tom & I arrived at the hospital at 7:30am did some inital paperwork and I was hooked up to an IV & fetal monitor by 8:30am. Not much happened after that... they kept coming in about every 30 minutes to check my IV and increase the dose. I did start having some contractions pretty soon, but they weren't all that bad and I kept thinking to myself - heck, I can do this, I guess I have a pretty high pain tolerance... but as I would find out soon those were only "practice" contractions.

Around 4:30pm the nurse said that since things hadn't progressed there was a strong possibility that we would be sent home and told to come back the next morning to try again.... Tom & I both agreed that we really didn't want to sit around again, but if that's what we needed to do I guess we would deal. While we were waiting for our doctor to arrive, around 6:30pm my water broke and then the real fun began... we'll just say the epidural was a life saver and in 5 short hours my life changed forever.

Benjamin Thomas was born May 29th at 11:31pm....