We couldn't reach Kara's OB/GYN, so we called the hospital, and they said to come in for an exam. In the heat (and pain) of the moment, Kara left out a lot of detail. I don't think they'll be sending us home. So, it's off to the hospital, and I won't be back on-line until it's a done deal.

Early labor is progressing. Her contractions are still settling down, but are 30 to 45 seconds in duration from two to five minutes apart. It's definately painful, and the only good position seems to be the classic one - on her knees with her upper body on a bed. I'm going to do another round of timing, and then we'll call the doctor and see what she says.

It has begun. Kara woke up at 6:30 with the kind of pain where you just kindof know this is it. Her contractions are still irregular, but are settling into a cycle. She jumped in the shower while she's still able to function, and we'll probably call the doctor when she gets out just to make sure we're doing this right. The rule is, when the contractions are three minutes from start to start, you go to the hospital, but that can take quite a while. If you go in before then, they can and do send you home, which would be a real bummer.

Did I mention that I am really, really ready for this baby to come out? Oh, I did? Hmm.

So the evening went without a hitch too. Only the usual Braxton Hick contractions, and some back pain and so forth. Kara is off to sleep now. I told her before bed that it sure does feel like this is going all the way until Tuesday, but I guess you never know - it could happen at any time. If it does drag out that long, at least we have another test on Monday that will give us an indication. Goodnight all.

The no-stress test went really well this afternoon. The nurse, Maureen, was great. About five minutes after we got there, they had Kara hooked up to a heartbeat and pressure monitor, and took her pulse. The baby monitor shows heart rate, which is normal at about twice the beats per minute rate we are all used to. Apparently babies run in cycles of activity and rest. We caught Katherine at the tail end of an activity period, and into the rest period. Kara had been watching her godson all morning, and hadn't had much to eat, so Katherine didn't have much energy. Several swings in heartrate of 15 to 20 beats per minute over a predetermined period of time are defined "meeting". Meeting means she meets the criteria for a healthy baby. We gave it a good 20 minutes or so, but Katherine looked fast asleep. This triggered a series of actions that could have changed our day significantly. Because Maureen couldn't get a "meets" reading without using a chart, she consulted the head of Obstetrics and Kara's doctor. They are very conservative when it comes to the rules on this. Maureen suggested that Kara might have an ultrasound, and begin treatment for induction this afternoon, in which case she'd still be at the hospital. At one point, the admitting orderly came in, made her sign papers, and put a bracelet on her. However, they were able to get a meets reading from the initial graph, and Katherine started to get very active, probably as the result of some ginger ale Maureen gave Kara to drink. By the time all the doctor calls we made, Katherine was practically doing cartwheels in Kara's stomach. So, all is well. We left after almost two hours, had dinner, picked up a couple of movies, and are settling in for the evening. Kara's back is really hurting her, but she otherwise feels OK.

I'm off to pick up Kara. No calls today, so I assume everythings cool. It is kind of a pain to have to bring everything with me all the time (like my laptop) just in case, but I guess it's a small price to pay. More detail after the tests, probably late this afternoon or evening (we might hit another movie...)

All is quiet on the Kara and Dave front. Katherine had been squirming around and generally making Kara's life difficult, but she settled down just before bed, and a good night's sleep was had by all. Kara is off watching her god son today for half a day, and I'm leaving around 1 to go meet her to go to the hospital for a baby-test.

Well the evening passed without much ado. We had dinner, and then settled into three hours of TV. Just for the record, The Amazing Race was not very amazing, but at least some nice people won. Anyway, no false labor tonight, only Braxton Hicks and some furious kicking. You know, pregnancy and birth is so misrepresented, in my opinion, that I'm constantly amazed. I mean, you hear these stories, or see examples of where a women is pregnant and showing, and the baby kicks, and everybody coos and wonders over the mystery of life. Well, it may be like that at 5 months, but it is so totally not like that that it's not even funny. The baby does not, for example, intuitively kick the front of the abdomen, near where the belly button is like my naive mind assumed. The baby kicks in every direction. I'd just like to point out that there are a lot of internal organs that you should really never be aware of under normal circumstance, but that go on quite happily processing fluids or whatever their function is. In the late-term pregnancy scenario, these really are punching bags for the fetus.

Here's a way to visualize it that I've been thinking about. Imagine that you are sitting in a chair, feet pulled in arms relaxed. Now extend both legs and arms as far apart as they will go. Think about how much larger your profile gets. Now imaging that you are the size of a small cat, and you are enclosed in a thick, liquid filled rubber balloon inside the abdomen of a women, with your head towards her groin and your feet towards her lungs, and you are randomly moving about. Oh god, I just can't even image what it's like.

So anyway, Katherine apparently gets very agitated when Kara's plowed through a half box or so of Mike and Ikes - the current favorite snack. And she starts kicking. And they are the kind of kicks where she'll hit a kidney, or the bladder, or some other basically very relevant part of the stomach cavity, and it will cause an immediate, sharp, and sometimes shooting pain. That's what tonight was like. No labor. Lots of sharp shooting pain as Katherine moves around as if ready to leave.

Oh yeah, and I'm going to the 2PM test, so I'll probably post in the morning, and then after the test tomorrow.

Arg. I just wrote this all a few hours ago, but blogger was down, so I have to retype. Anyway, Kara had a doctor's appointment today, and without going into the mysteries of effacement, it seems unlikely that Katherine will be making an appearance today. However, they have decided to induce on Tuesday if she doesn't go into serious labor prior to that. She has a non-stress test tomorrow at the hospital, and an ultrasound on Monday to boot. I suppose the good news in all of this is that the baby is healthy and has a normal heartbeat. Katherine does, however, continue to grow, and is not really in a great position. Ironically, after she got home from the doctors, a friend called with a sick baby, and Kara went over to help pick the kid up from day care and so forth. So I'm taking her out to dinner to indulge her. In a way, we keep thinking that the best way to "provoke" labor is to be out and active, because it will probably happen at the least advantageous time.

Last night turned out to be pretty quiet after the events of the evening. Kara's false labor continued into the night, but she was able to sleep through it. Don't ask me how. I can't fall asleep if my pulse is too fast, let alone having a baby sloshing around inside and an abdomen taking some practice shots. At any rate, the false labor subsided sometime during the night, and the good news is that she was actually able to get a really good nights sleep. She woke up in a crabby mood, because she was disappointed that she didn't go into labor last night, and she's got a whole 'nuther day to deal with. However, she is leaving for the doctors office in a few minutes, and that's about the only positive thing going right now, since she hopes to get more feedback on how she's doing.

Oh by the way...Counselor, if you're reading this. We got your message tonight. It was a little crazy, and it got a bit late, so we didn't call back. Unless something changes tonight, Kara will be around part of tomorrow (she has a doctor's appointment in the AM).

OK, there's some exciting news at the end of this, but you have to read the whole thing. Bwahaaahaa. Kara and I couldn't figure out what to do this evening. I mailed out all the Christmas gifts today, so we're pretty much done with that. By the way, if you're worried about security at the post office, this story won't help you out at all. The nearest UPS facility I could find to my office was in Chelmsford. But I mistook the USPS building for the UPS building. I drove around the USPS building twice, because there was no door that looked like a customer counter. So finally, I drove around back and went into the first door I saw. Bang, I'm on the sorting floor of the U. S. freakin mail. To be fair, I was approached fairly quickly, but mostly because I was sort of looking for help. No security there at all. But I digress. So we're trying to figure out what to do, but Kara feels a bit different that she has, she thinks she's dropped. She plays around with her stomach, and shows me all the space that she can move around up top that used to be baby. She can feel pressure down below in her cervix, and she has to pee more often. There's been a few other hints, but I won't go into those to protect her dignity. She will, after all, read this blog at some point, and I don't want to end up in the mother of all doghouses. I've got like a million brownie point credit at this point in the pregnancy, and I figure I'm already at risk of that reducing to a negative million during labor. Anyway, so we go out to see Spy Games, but as we sit down to watch the movie, Kara is looking uncomfortable. She's having contractions, but they're different from the Braxton Hicks contractions we've been having. They're not that frequent or uncomfortable, however, so we figure it's so far out that we can finish watching the movie and go home. She keeps signalling to me that she's OK during the movie, although there is clearly something going on. I, however, cannot really concentrate, and though I think the movie was probably decent in hindsight, I was somewhat bored by it, and very distracted, primarily by Kara, but also because they didn't really shut the lights off. So the movie gets out around 9:45, and we book out of there, and as we're walking to the bathroom on the way out, she recounts that she's had a bunch of contractions during the movie and that they are coming from a different place, and wow, she might just be in labor. Alas, it is too good to be true. Although she is still having contractions as I speak, it appears to be textbook false labor. They vary in duration and frequency, and although they are different from Braxton Hicks, they don't meet the sensation-profile for true labor. However, we are still a bit jazzed at this point. We realize we really had probably put together the suitcase for the hospital and stuff, because even though this is not a sign of true labor, it really feels like we just took a big step closer.

Well, I'm just about done with work for the day. I talked to Kara a few hours ago, and she feels totally not in labor. So off I go, to home, and maybe there'll be a baby tonight.

Still nothing. It was a pretty quiet night, except it's hard for Kara to sleep with 8.5 pounds of Katherine floating around in a warm bath in her stomach. She's also pretty congested, which doesn't help. She was exhausted this morning, and stayed in bed as I went off to work. Luckily, she doesn't have anything to do today, so she can just relax at home. Unfortunately, there really is no way to relax when you are that pregnant. I suppose an analagous situation might be staying home from work with the flu. Sure, you can lounge around on the sofa, but you feel like shit, so there's nothing pleasant about it.

Still no movement today. Kara had a perfectly normal day, well, except for being completely pregnant and ready to go. It's starting to get difficult, because she can only put up with it for so long, and yet, there's nothing really she can do about it. Still, she's handling it really well. We're starting to think about setting up a phone chain, because we're getting a lot of calls. My dad has been great - he calls every night even though he knows I'll call him first when things start rolling. I'm still thinking about Christmas looming in the near future, but we just can't worry about that. The next big milestone is her doctor's appointment on Thursday. We pretty much anticipate that she'll have to go to the hospital and have the baby monitored, since she's past due. I suppose it's possible that they'll just say, stay here, we're going to make this happen now, but I'm not holding out hope for it.

Kara's latest projection is that she'll go to the appointment on Thursday, have to go to the hospital for tests a few hours later, then get home, and go into labor late Thursday afternoon. I don't know how much woman's intuition is behind this scenario, but I would be happy for it to happen that way. We're all dressed up with no place to go.

Kara's due date was today, well, yesterday I guess is more accurate. Nothing happening. We expect her to be late, we just don't want it to be too, too late. She's really big, and we're both ready to move onto the next phase. In the meantime, I keep the cell phone closer, and pay more and more attention to every discomfort or complaint that she has. The baby's already pretty big, so it's pretty scary to think of what might happen if she gets much bigger. And Christmas looms. I have mixed feelings about our daughter's birthday being so close to Christmas. On the one hand, I think it would be pretty special if she were born on that day. She might as well be, we'll have to deal with the birthday problem any way you look at it. However, neither Kara or I feel great about having to be in the hospital over the holiday, and have concerns over the quality and quantity of staff available over the holidays. If she's born really close or on Christmas, we've decided we'll have to celebrate her birthday halfway through the year in order to make it more special.