Mochi Is Coming

Mochi’s due date was last Sunday. She was still fully closed and Mochi had not yet dropped.

Apparently dilating my wife’s cervix is like trying to break into Fort Knox. She went into the hospital for her first dilating gel on Tuesday night, and they had her return to the hospital on Wednesday morning, but then turned her away because they didn’t have any beds available. Wednesday afternoon they called her in and inserted another gel. At 4pm, I went to pick her up from the hospital, and we went though the Harvey’s drive through and then sat in Starbucks to enjoy some Frappacinos. She joked around about the Starbucks employees giving her a hard time about eating a Harvey’s burger in their establishment, and about how she’d threaten her water breaking all over their floor…. Walking back to the car, she had a strong contraction, and then while she breathed through another contraction seated in the car she felt a big guuuuuussssshh! We checked her pants and they were wet, despite the giant pad she was wearing. On her next contraction, she felt another guuuussssh! 

Clearly, her water had spontaneously broken. 

I downloaded a contraction-timing app, and we started timing them. They became more regular, and were lasting about 45 seconds on average. I drove home and she took a hot shower, changed into some clean dry clothes, and I gathered some last minute items and packed our pre-made meals.

 At home, DW sat on the toilet and experienced another big guuuussssh, complete with bloody mucus. She must’ve lost her mucus plug. 

Her contractions were consistently 2 minutes apart and lasting 50 seconds, so we thought that we should head back to the hospital. 

At the hospital, and she was admitted at 6pm. They hooked her up to an IV of antibiotics because she’s GBS+, and then we didn’t see a doctor until 2am, at which point she was 1cm dilated.

Late night hospital selfie

To recap:

Tuesday 8pm: cervix closed, gel inserted afterwards

Wednesday 1:30pm: cervix closed, second gel inserted

Wednesday 4pm: water broke

Thursday 2am: cervix 1cm dilated

Now, I was wiped from the weeks of sleep deprivation, and not a lot was going on, so I went home to nurse Dumplin’ and had a cat nap. It was nice getting to snuggle my boy and even take a little nap with him. I missed him so much. I felt so torn between being at the hospital with my wife, and home with Dumplin’. As it turns out, he had been doing really well with my MIL and FIL. He went down nicely for naps and for bedtime, and took milk from his sippy cups and MAM bottle. He also took some tablespoons of puréed peas and pears. They went out on walks, played lots, read books… Overall, I’ve been relieved with how well Dumplin’ is doing being taken care of by people other than us. 

Missing my boy.

So here we are on Thursday, now on a pitocin drip and an epidural. At 11am her cervix was 5cm dilated, and we’re just waiting for it to keep dilating. So much waiting…. 

DW’s hooked up to a catheter draining her bladder, and the bag is sparse but contains dark, bloody urine. They think that Mochi’s head is finally starting to come down, but that it’s ginormous (like Dumplin’s was), and stressing her bladder, hence the blood and low volume of urine passing through. What is with our babies and injuring our urinary tracts!?!!

Update: 

So it’s 3pm, and DW is fully dilated, but Mochi’s head has still not descended beyond a station -2. 

It’s been called- we’re waiting for an operating room for a caesarian-section.

Stay tuned.