Broke My Flash, But Look, Here's A Hospital Bed

Or, 36 weeks, still not in labor 

Um, yeah, not sure how I have done it but my camera's flash isn't working. It is just the camera's built in flash, and it acts like it will flash but then doesn't. It is possible that I have just inadvertently messed with the settings, but a more likely scenario is that I gunked up the works by carrying my camera around in my purse with all the other crap I keep in there (pens, wallet, peanut dust..) Time to bust out (and charge up) the back up camera if we want any non-fuzzy photos of the twins first moments.

All of this is to say: these photos come without the benefit of a flash, and are thus a little blurry. I'd worry more about it but right now we are waiting to have a baby and trying to buy a car.

So, onward to the pictures:

four hats, no waiting

Karen is visiting, so we roped her into the photo-taking. Chris is wearing a hat my parents brought us from Turkey. Ada has on Chris' usual winter hat. My hat is a weird old ribbon and fur hat that looks suspiciously like a brioche. Karen is wearing a straw hat that I will probably use next week if the twins don't show up first.

The belly feels a bit beside the point in this picture, though it continues to be impressive enough to stop traffic and scare children. As I get larger it is harder to motivate to take the ton of pictures really required to get a few good ones. So this will have to do.

About the hat: a stamp inside says it is a Duchess hat made in Italy. Inside the band is a tag reading Created by Mr Theodore, Chicago. No hat close ups today. We took the pictures during the day, but now that it is evening and the light has faded, I won't even attempt to capture the hat alone without a flash. This is probably a good thing, because the hat is a bit stained.

To make up for the pregnancy pictures, I offer the following other picture:

monitor and bed: non-stressful, huh?

This is the bed where I had my first real notable contraction (as in "wow that hurts" painful contraction) while undergoing a non-stress test (NST).  This contraction served as a quick reminder that I do not want to be lying down during labor. It was all I could do to not jump off the bed during the contraction, and it was only six minutes and at its peak maybe a 4 on a 1-10 scale.

Apparently the boy's heart rate dipped during the contraction, though it appears to have bounced back quickly. The dip was worrisome enough to the doc overseeing the NST nurse that she sent me to the hospital for some more monitoring. It wasn't worrying enough for the NST folks to balk when I told them I was going to stop at home first. (Home is between the doctor's office and the hospital, and neither Chris nor I had eaten since breakfast.)

The hospital test was uneventful, and I managed to nap through part of it while Chris sat next to me and worked. I have another routine NST on Thursday, for which I need to bring a lighter book. (I know, who decides to pick up a 1,000 page book days before they go into labor?)

The best part is that if I really had gone into labor or the hospital staff had decided they needed to admit me after the second NST, I would have looked like the most committed employee ever. Usually my office has a weekly meeting on Mondays at 11, but due to some legislative hoo-ha, my bosses were not available until about 12:30. I had asked to be conferenced into the meeting, and took the call as Chris drove me to the hospital. I was fairly sure that the test would be fine, but as we approached the labor and delivery unit I told my colleagues that I needed to get off the call because I'd gotten to the hospital. If I'd had the babies on Monday, I would have been an office legend, working up until moments before the birth. I don't need that kind of fame, but the idea did amuse me for a while.

So there you go, a little post on the weekly belly and a little story about what else my belly did this week.