"20 Minutes..."

Another day done, and still no wife and no baby.

Claire is still at the hospital in the same ward that she's been in since Monday evening, but there has been signs of progress, namely, that is ready to be moved to the delivery ward, where they'll be able to break her waters.

Yesterday I mentioned that Claire was going to have a second amount of the 'special gel' - well, she did, around 06:00 and by the time I got there at 10:00, the gel was starting to do its stuff.

By 11:00, Claire has having contractions and things were starting to look good when we were asked to take note of the time between each one, and the length of time that the contraction lasted. This was a great job for a soon-to-be-dad in the room, namely me. I wrote down the time that the contraction started and then simply waited for the expression on Claire's face to revert to normal again before writing down that time too. Then, by the time I had worked out the length of time that the contraction lasted for (Time B - Time A), she was almost ready to go again! The hours flew by - literally.

Claire was being monitored too, by a trace-graph machine sat constantly by the bed, with two squiggle-graphs being drawn on the same sheet of paper being fed out of the machine. One was to record the heart beat of the baby, and the other to record the intensity of the contractions. This monitoring went on ALL day, on and off.

The only thing that was a bit of a nuisance, was the fact the midwives, (whoever happened to call in at the time) looked at the output graph, would write something on it and then mutter words to the effect of "I'll be back to check that in a few minutes" - a few meaning "multiples of 20" minutes. Then someone else would come, write something else on it, and say they'd be back in a few minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This went on all day, dragging the day out a bit, except for when we were playing time-keepers. And having contractions, of course. But the time-keeping part was good for both of us (I think!!) as I felt like I actually had a role in all of this, as up until then, I could only watch as Claire fought the pain emanating from her belly.

We're now in the position that Claire's ready to have her waters broken, or for them to break naturally, and the next step is baby-related, rather than pregnant woman-related. But it seems that today is a popular day to give birth, meaning that the Colorado River cannot be recreated with Claire's help, as there's nowhere to put her on that ward.

Before leaving, we collared one of the night-shift midwives and asked about the next step, which is getting her on that other ward. Providing there's a space on that labour ward, then Claire will be awoken at around 06:30/07:00 and informed that she'll be moved. Then, they'll crack on and break the dam that'll flood a very small village, very possibly even before I get there.

If they do move her, then I'll be notified and I'll be straight over there. If not, and she stays where she is, I'll be allowed into the current ward at 10:00 tomorrow morning, and not a minute before.

But before I go, I'd like to say that Claire's doing a sterling job so far. She's taking each 'hit' of the contraction each time that they've come and she has done really well. Girl done good.

I'm sure tomorrow she'll be great too.

Sweepstake news: Again, it seems that this sweepstake list is getting shorter and shorter. Could this be the end of Mr. Scott's fantastic entry? Will Mr. "cunning" Kanwal take the lot...!?! Tune in next time for another exciting episode of "Urgh, it's a baby - get it out of me!"