Chapter Four - This was not in the infomercial

Whilst traveling through the hallways of the hospital, I continued in my attempt to time Kim's "contractions", both the time between them and the time that they were lasting. Not being one to wear a watch, I had to resort to another mechanism. The iPod, though carried by many, it is not known for time keeping abilities1, but it was all I had. I have to admit that I was doing a pretty lousy job at recording our data, but to my defense, everything was happening pretty fast, including the contractions. At this point Kim was having a contraction about every threem minutes or so, and they were lasting somewhere around fifty seconds to a minute2.

Our journey through the inards of Tallahassee Memorial took us to meet a nice young lady named Alicia. Alicia helped us get checked into labor and delivery. There were a few papers that we had to fill out and forms we had to sign. It ws a bit of a special case because we were out of towners. She was a super nice lady, and found it funny that I wanted to take her picture. I kept making Kim laugh, and Alicia said if I could keep that up, that it would be good for Kim. Obviously, I didn't find that very difficult to do.

After a very short wait, we were called into triage. I wheeled Kim into the triage area, where we were directed to have Kim change out of her clothes and into a hospital gown. Once we accomplished this task, we were to go into the room next door where we would be seen by a nurse. We got Kim all changed, and we made our way to the room, and Kim laid down on the bed.

Soon after, we were visited by a nurse. She lt us know that she was going to be putting two monitors on Kim; one to monitor contractions, and one to monitor the baby's heart rate. After working through a bit of trouble getting the monitor to stay where she wanted it, the nurse informed us that what Kim was feeling were indeed contractions3. Upon verifying that Kim was in labor, the nurse decided that it may be a good idea to check Kim out to see how far along she was. A second hospital worker person, maybe a NP came in to examine Kim. After examining her, I think her first word was "Wow."

It is worth mentioning that I paid pretty close attention in the Preparing for Childbirth class, and having a pregnant wife, you sort of pick up on baby/pregnancy/labor lingo and jargon. So, when the examiner followed up her "Wow." with "You are 7 cm dialated."4 I couldn't help but laugh.

My first words were, "This is not how it happened in the video."

1. back There was a time when I was unsure why Apple had decided to include a stopwatch as an "extra", but I guess they knew that some day some random dude might need to use it to time his wife's contractions, or more likely, someone would need to time an a Sumo wrestler doing a shuttle run.


2. back I couldn't, and still can't, remember what the length of the contraction was supposed to tell me, but I felt like it was something I was supposed to know. Yet, another reason I should have found the Preparing for Child Birth book.
   NOTE: We still have not found the book. I'm begining to believe that a leprachaun stole it, or maybe a knome. I hear they are very sneaky.


3. back My deer-in-headlights look may have shifted towards the-kid-who-can't-find-his-mom-in-the-mall look at this point.


4. back For those not in the know, dialation only goes up to 10 cm, and it usually takes women, especially on their first baby, a long time to get to 7cm, we're talking like 8 hours, not 1 hour.