Our first night at the hospital...

Last night Lauren and I were admitted to Rex Hospital to officially begin our journey into parenthood. I say "our" journey...but Lauren's doing all the work! We were originally supposed to come in to the hospital early yesterday evening, but apparently last night was a pretty popular night for women to go into labor. The head nurse here told us there were 7 babies born between 7-9pm...and 18 women in labor overall last night. We finally got the call from the hospital around 9pm telling us to come in, and were able to get admitted and settled into our labor room around 11pm.

The original plan was that we would arrive last night, and the doctor would administer Cervidil to loosen up Lauren's cervix in preparation to start the induction process first thing Friday morning. However, when the doctor performed the physical exam last night, we discovered that Lauren was already 2cm dilated, and that her cervix had started to soften on its own. Our doctor decided to go ahead and start the Pitocin last night! This pretty much advanced our original plans by about 9-10 hours, so we're extremely happy about that.

Our head nurse has told us that the doctor will be in within the next hour or so to break Lauren's water. From what we've been told, that's when the pain starts to get worse and things really kick into high gear.

Right now Lauren is doing great! She's in great spirits, and the Pitocin is working like a charm. She's having regular contractions, but they aren't very intense yet. She wasn't able to get a ton of sleep last night because she's tall and her feet hang off the end of her bed! I was able to get about 5 hours of sleep on the pullout cot the hospital provided. We're both incredibly excited, and will probably post again once her water has been broken and things are starting to pick up.

-Aaron