Waterboarding, Labor, and other Torture

I'm blogging from the hospital.

At 2:45am Shannon has been having contractions about two minutes apart for about seven hours now. Technically, it's not labor because she has had very little cervical change – some, but very little. The lack of progress may get us sent back home.

They're keeping us until 6am at least. And now they've drugged Shannon, so maybe she'll sleep a little. Birthing centers contain specially designed furniture to prevent fathers from sleeping. It's some kind of punishment, I think.

If we don't see some kind of progress at 6am, they'll send us home. But this has been outrageously painful for Shannon, so there's no way we could have known to stay home – she ought to know labor pain.

We're all concerned that when it truly hits, the baby may come very quickly, perhaps too quickly to drive here again. I'd feel better if things just started moving along…

Update: It's 7:25am and we're waiting for the doctor to tell us something. Shannon has had contractions for about 12 hours now, but they haven't checked us in hours.

Update: It's 9:55am and we're going to be sent home. After all of that pain and fuss, we finally saw Shannon's doctor a few minutes ago. He could definitively say that we weren't in labor, in spite of all the contractions. In fact he predicted that Shannon would struggle like this for another week or two before the cervix began to change.

Final Update: It's 11:25am and we just got home. We're exhausted, demoralized, and defeated. I'm sending Shannon to bed, the boys outside/upstairs, and Grandma home. I'm going to crash on the couch for the afternoon. Hopefully every evening will not be so rough.