Another Day in L and D

I was so hungry at lunch time Tuesday that I bit into a piece of pizza that I knew was entirely too hot. And I burned my lip. Significantly. And now I look like I have the herpes. Or better yet, like I have a cigarette burn on my lower lip. So these babies are just going to have to wait to be born until this heals, because I can not have my daughters meeting me for the first time looking like I have lip leprosy or scorched myself with my crack pipe. They will probably take one glance at me and put themselves up for adoption. Lovely.

Yet another doctor's appointment today, now I will be there every week. The appointment went pretty well, although when I told them about the wicked but occasional contractions I have been having followed by the babies being very quiet for 30 minutes or so, the doctor suggested a trip "upstairs" to labor and delivery for a non-stress test. Poor Dearest, he was originally not going to go to the appointment at all, but he got some stuff moved around at work so that he could go, figuring it would just take an hour. Wrong-o! It is next to impossible to get two babies on the monitor simultaneously, or at least impossible to get my two stealth ninja escape-artist babies on the monitor. The poor nurse would get one, and then the other one would some how quietly slip out of my uterus, tiptoe down the hall, and head towards the cafeteria. Then we would find that baby, and the other baby would climb under my ribcage, up my spine, and into my skull. Or something. It literally took a TEAM of nurses poking, prodding, and cajoling the darlings into submission to get their hearts both on the monitor at the same time. I mean, my belly is only so big people, and the babies are nearing six pounds a piece, how far could they really go? Anyway, eventually we pinned 'em down, and managed to get them both traced for the requisite 20 minutes. By now it's been 3 hours since our adventure began. The good news is that they "passed" the non-stress test. I go back for my next one Tuesday.

Sophia's Heart Tracing:


Olivia's Heart Tracing:


Olivia's Profile:


The triage nurse in charge of the monitoring was great, and on the way out she gave me this:


My OWN biohazard! I KNOW! It RULES! OK, it's not really a biohazard. It's just the straps that held on the monitors, and since I am going to have several more of these stress tests, I get to have my OWN set! In a BIOHAZARD bag! Not really the kind of cute thing I can work into a scrapbook layout, but I am looking forward to going back Tuesday and when they are like, "Hang on, let us get out some straps for the monitors," I can be all, "That's ok, I actually travel with my own straps. I have them here in my BIOHAZARD bag."

There is one thing about this hospital that I think bears mentioning. I understand that the cafeteria in our little local-yokal hospital can not possibly compete with the big big downtown hospital, which had like a Starbucks, Freshens, etc etc in it, BUT there is no excuse for the condition of the vending machines there. Come ON. I don't ask for much in my vending machines, just Cheetos, Twix, and possibly Swiss Cake Rolls in a real high-end vending environment. THESE vending machines, at the hospital where I shall be giving birth, feature 4 types of beef jerky and 3 varieties of SunChips, one of which was Black Peppercorn Ranch. What? Also many kinds of "Captain's Wafers" featuring a variety of gritty fillings that are of no use to me. This is not good. Where are my Cheetos? Where is Little Debbie? And it's between a soda machine and one of those coffee machines that drops the cup and pours the coffee in. No juice? At the hospital? Hmmpf. So much for the instructions to pack lots of change in my hospital suitcase for the vending machines. Forget it.

This visit to L & D brought the reality of what is about to happen a bit closer. There were BABIES, ACTUAL BABIES in the nursery, and they were so so tiny, laying there in their little tiny diapers waving their little arms under the warmers, and something about seeing those babies made me go "Wow. Soon the little new babies in the nursery that everybody is oohing and aahing over are going to be MY babies. Crazy." Also we had to fill out forms for the birth certificates today, and there is a line that says "Mother's Name." I truly had to stop myself from writing MY mothers name. I am the mother. Something about writing my name on that line seems so huge. I am the mother. I pointed out to Dearest this evening that not only are we the mother and the father, we are also the tooth fairy, the easter bunny, AND Santa Claus. Woah. That's a lot of responsibility.