After a lengthy delay, I'm going to continue the day-by-day account of our eternal stay at the hospital.

Sunday, August 13, 2006: After spending another oh-so-comfortable night at the hospital, we woke up Sunday morning and immediately began looking for ways to keep from boring ourselves to death. We figured that we had more than 24 hours until the baby would be forcibly removed from his comfortable womb, so we were just going to wait around until the time came. As nurses tend to do, they interrupted our sleep continually through the previous night; as far as I can tell, their main goal was to turn the lights on and talk in loud voices while I huddled on my chair-bed and tried to sleep. I think they also took Tina's blood pressure, brought her medications, and looked after her every need...okay, so that stuff's important, and I shouldn't complain. By the time Sunday morning rolled around, Tina's blood pressure was consistently too high. At around 9:30 or so, Dr. Gebert came into the hospital room and pronounced that, because of Tina's elevated blood pressure, it was time to deliver the baby NOW! (Alright, he didn't SHOUT it, and I'm not even sure that his pronouncement would have been followed by an exclamation point, but I have a flair for the dramatic.) He predicted that the baby would be delivered by around noon. Poor Dr. Gebert was dressed in his white shirt and tie, apparently ready for his Sunday church meetings, which he ultimately couldn't attend. It was a strange feeling, having the baby's delivery pushed forward one day...I mean, it's not as if we were at the hospital just to visit a sick relative, just to have a doctor tell us that Tina was pregnant and was going to have the baby NOW! You'd think that we would have been more emotionally prepared for the shock of having a baby...NOW! All in all, I think that we took the news in good stride, and Tina was wheeled out of the hospital room within about half an hour. She was taken to a recovery room, where she was prepped for the c-section. This required a phenomenal amount of effort from several nurses, and much of the time was spent typing stuff on a computer next to the hospital bed. According to the nurse, she was entering information on Tina's charts, but I have my doubts...I'm pretty sure she was IM'ing people and sending emails. LOL! I'm sure Tina will expand upon the surgery-prep process, but the part she hated the most was the magnesium sulfate IV drip. She had to endure the "mag" because of her elevated blood pressure; its purpose (apart from making pregnant women feel sick) is to prevent seizures before/during/after the c-section. One of the side effects of the "mag" IV was to make Tina feel like she had suddenly contracted the flu. Not a pleasant experience. Once the IVs and the catheter (also fun!) were in place, I was given a full-body set of blue scrubs. One of the nurses gave my cool blue scrubs the derogatory nickname of "bunny suit." I didn't care for that mistreatment. Tina was wheeled to the O.R. (for those of you that don't know, it's kinda like the E.R., but without the TV show named after it), where the epidural/spinal was administered. I was not allowed into the O.R. for this process...I'm still not sure why. In the meantime, I had about 15 or 20 minutes to kill in the recovery room, and I had a chance to play around in my "bunny suit" and take pictures. (Evidence of said goofing-off can be found elsewhere on this website.) Eventually, I was summoned and ushered down the hall and into the OR, where the baby was born and I became a dad.

Okay, I'll provide more detail about the actual birth, but it'll have to wait until another night.