Anyway, I’d recently reconnected with a friend of mine from college via Facebook.  She is a lawyer who has decided to pursue professional photography full time, specializing in family shots.  Based on her amazing pics of her own two lovely children and her steadily increasing portfolio, it is easy to see that she’s on to something.   By the way, I point out that she’s a lawyer only to emphasize that she’s passionate about photography, obviously.  It’s hardly a lucrative pursuit starting out. 

She saw my post in May and offered to take some shots of Elizabeth.  I eagerly accepted.  See the links below for pricing and her policies.  She’s one of the nicest people I knew back in college and that’s important — being relaxed during a shoot will make for great shots.  If you’re in Chicago or Chicagoland, look her up!  Tell her you saw it on BlatheringOn.com!  (just kidding)

Jessamyn North Photography (nee Bagley) – http://www.jessamynnorth.com/

NOTE: I JUST SAW THAT SHE’S RUNNING A SPECIAL TO BUILD HER PORTFOLIO WHICH ENDS 9/30/09 - RUN, DON’T WALK ON THIS ONE!  http://www.jessamynnorth.com/rates.html 

In the examples below, she was only able to take indoor shots, by the way, due to the weather.

He’ll turn one day in about a half hour and he’s already been circumcised! When he came back from that (took about 20 minutes), he wasn’t even crying. Whatta first day!

We’ve been transferred to our recovery room on the 12th floor and we let them take Luke to the nursery so Elizabeth could sleep.  However, after three hours, they’ll bring him back to feed… and then three hours after that!  I stepped out to hit the 24 hour cafeteria which is where I am when I’m writing this.  Still, my eyelids are getting droopy and I know I better get back upstairs for some listless sleep.  I couldn’t sleep at all Sunday night, I doubt I’ll sleep much tonight.

He’s a beautiful little guy, as you can see.  I think he looks pretty cute for a newborn (some pictures I’d seen…).  He’s got a bit of fuzzy hair — a dark brown perhaps, with some red in it?  Hard to tell just yet.  I have to say that I think he looks like me!

In a way, this was our worst nightmare — that she would near kill herself and end up have a c-section anyway. But if she hadn’t tried, we would never have known. I know she is extremely dissapointed but after discussing the situation with her doctor and nurses, she has no other path. I should add that I have not been much more than a spectator (and sometimes irritant) through all of this.

She is getting her epidural replaced as I write this (7pm CST) and I don’t know when the operation will take place.

Elizabeth tweaked her back in a horrible way that really threw a wrench into things. She was suffering more from that than the contractions. She was eventually able to change positions and help a bit.

As for Luke, he’s still taking his time. Not a whole lot of progression but there are a few positive signs.

He is still a little high but we’re hoping that progresses also.

The problem is, when you ask the doctors and nurses whether they think it’s a good time to get it, they are wishy-washy in their answers.  Basically, the reason is they don’t want to tell a patient NOT to get one because it’s up to each individual where their threshold is.  As one nurse said, they’re not erecting statues to honor women who don’t get epidurals, so don’t feel the need to be a hero.  However, a main concern is that once a woman gets the epidural, she can no longer leave her bed.  If she has a long way to go, she’s going to be stuck in one place the whole time. 

Things got progressively more painful over the last hour, however.  She’s no wimp — due to her history, she is affected by this kind of pain much more than the average woman.  Anyway, because the epidural procedure must be done in a sterile environment, everyone dons their silly puffy hats and the dad must leave the room for about 20-30 minutes.

By the way, here are some stock photos of the rooms, etc., at Prentice.  This place is only about a year old and we’re very lucky to be here.  Of course, our only way of comparison is from movies we’ve seen of maternity wards.

It was comforting to meet another couple just like us when we were waiting.  Actually, they were the induction scheduled at 8:30 (we were 6:30) and we probably chatted for 45 minutes or so.  That gives you an idea how long we were waiting.  The other couple was also past 41 weeks with little progress.  In the interim, we watched another couple arrive after us and get assigned a room long before us.  When we inquired, we were told that inductions were lowest on the list, beneath women arriving at the hospital in labor and pre-term women.   However below us on the priority list are are elective inductions, people who just decide they want to induce, even though it was not deemed necessary by her doctor.  In fact, they were possibly going to tell the scheduled 10:30 induction that their appointment would be postponed due to lack of available rooms.

So as of 8am, Tuesday morning, things are progressing, albeit slowly.  We decided to postpone an epidural because Elizabeth is still fairly comfortable through her contractions (she is now, anyway).  My favorite aspect of this very nice room is that there are multiple computer monitors which show the real-time status of women and their babies in twelve rooms.  You can see the contraction patterns and the respective baby’s heartbeats.

We’re on our third nurse now.  Our first one , Diana, was drawn away at about 3am when her other patient went into full-on delivery.   Basically, the nurses get assigned two women and they become permanently assigned to the first one who actually delivers (until their shift change).  So as I dozed off in the hubby bed, I noticed a new nurse, Tracey, come in.  She saw us through until about 7:30 when there was a shift change and we were introduced to Lisa, who is assisted by Ashley.

Who's Who. If you know anything about inducement, then you'll be able to interpret the "plan" section.