August 25-26th
I don't want to make our three day hospital stay into this gigantic boring blog entry, so I'll try to summarize our last two days and end with some quick observations.
When Saturday morning came, we were anticipating the doctor to come and let us know what exactly was going on. At this point, we had no idea whether or not Lisa was going to give birth to our little doppelgangers. Just before 1pm, the doctor came in and was ready to inspect. I even got to help him out by tearing a bag of lube for him. I tried to make a joke about how we rarely have to lube, but he just stared at me. Un..com..fort..able.
So Lisa's on the bed surrounded by the doctor and a nurse while I stayed on my little pseudo-bed near the window. With one gigantic thrust, the doctor jammed his fingers up Lisa's coin purse. You'd think it was the entire hand by the face Lisa made (think leg cramp with a touch of constipation). After pulling his fingers out of the taco shell, he proclaimed, "Eighty percent effaced and 2 cm dilated."
Unfortunately with this diagnosis, he wanted us to stay one more night in the hospital and would check Lisa again Sunday morning. At this point we still weren't sure what to think. The doctors and nurses reinforced to us that even if the babies were born in the next few days everything would be okay, but it would be better if they could stay in a couple more weeks. I interpreted this to mean that if we waited a few weeks the kids would be completely healthy, but if they came now they might be missing an eye or possibly a few fingers.
The remainder of the day consisted of watching tv, reading, and waiting for the next contraction. Some of our friends (Paul, Michelle, Bernard, and Joyce) came to visit and brought us food and things to entertain us. Before you knew it, I had another sleepless night and Sunday morning arrived (as well as that damn seagull).
Surprisingly, the doctor arrived at 9:30am. Not surprisingly, the doctor did not ask me to help him open up a tube of lube. I think the doctor was a little more gentle this time with the handling of Lisa's innards because she only did a quick gasp and a wispy sound like a deflating clown balloon. Doctor's diagnosis? NO CHANGE!
He told Lisa she could return home and a prescription would be written for pills to control her contractions. But the biggest surprise for us is that he strongly recommended to us that Lisa delivery the babies naturally. We always planned a c-section because Lisa's pelvic bone was broken years ago and healed in a way that might cause the birth canal to be blocked. The doctor poo-poo'd the broken pelvic bone because he says that is rarely a problem and if we did deliver soon the babies would be small enough to squeeze through. I could tell Lisa was taken aback by this because there was a quiver in her voice when she asked the doctor, "You're expecting me to f(*&ing push two g(*damn babies through my g*^damn vagina? F*^* you, Dr. McF^*%face!" And within the hour, we packed up our stuff and made our way back home on the crowded 405.
And now for a couple of last random observations:
Statues are freaky. All throughout the hospital corridors were these freaky little statues of saints and sisters and nuns and little men in robes (yes, kind of like jawas). Try taking a walk at night when the hospital is totally quiet and it's only you and a porcelain nun staring you down with a switchblade underneath her habit.
CVS sucks. Every time I have gone to CVS to pick up a prescription the wait has been long and the experience quite unpleasant. The 45 minutes I was at CVS waiting for Lisa's prescription I saw two verbal fights.
The most interesting one happened to the woman standing right in front of me swaying to the piped in tunes of the Four Seasons. This rather large Persian woman came barreling down the aisle. Now don't jump all over me because I'm guessing the woman was Persian, but not only did she have an accent, but she was eating a kabob and smelled like saffron. She started yelling at the lady, "You are a baaad driver! You scared me! Why you do that to me? I have your numbers! You are a baaaad driver. Oh yes oh yes! I am going to call and report you to the police. You should not be driving. Baaaadbaaaad!" It was like a bad Middle Eastern Lou Costello impersonation.
Lisa likes drugs. And she can tolerate them really well too! We have a friend who wasn't able to take the pills that Lisa is taking because it made her too jittery. But not Lisa. Bring it on, Lisa says! You need to shoot steroids into my ass? No problem! Bring it on, home nurse!
I could go on a little longer, but will stop now cause I feel like I've been rambling on. Since we are both rested after this hospital trip I 'll try to post a little more regularly again. I'll put up the next poll tomorrow and will give you a brief explanation of our doctor's appointment last week!