Wait, So Is That His Face?

To be clear - this is not my ultrasound scan.

But my doctor did not like Saturday's ultrasound, so I had #4 today. He basically thought the technician did a crappy job, and wanted it done again for a better analysis. And frankly, I kind of agreed. Gonzalo the technician was a little bit weird, and I couldn't understand a word he was saying. Every time I asked a question, he just sort of mumbled something incoherent, and made a weird face. You do not want people making weird faces when they're rubbing gel on your belly and looking at your baby. In the end, he was like, "It's good." I'm not sure he even worked here.

So today's ultrasound was much better. The technician seemed to have real skills in his area of work, was able to identify interesting things (even if at times, I felt like Rachel in that Friends episode where she can't see anything in her ultrasound), and answered our questions in a coherent manner. As a result, we learned that I have a rating of 6.3 out of 8. This is very good. The rating is based on (amongst other factors) the baby's heart rate, movement, size, breathing and sucking, and the amount of amniotic fluid present. I scored perfectly in all areas except fluid amount, which is to be expected when your water has broken. But the amount of fluid has continued to rise since I first came in. I'm at about 6.7 vs. 5.4 the other day. As long as I keep drinking lots of fluids and the baby keeps peeing, this trend should maintain itself.

We also talked to a social worker today, who reassured us that indeed, our health care system is totally screwed up and there's really nothing that can be done to help cover non-hospital costs associated with this "trip." So when I'm wearing last season's shoes, you'll know why. Let's hope the shoe bootie continues to be a trend.

All in all, things continue to be uneventful, which is a good thing. Some fantastic deliveries started arriving today (thank you, Jenny!), and I'm frankly really starting to settle into the hospital as home. I have my favorite nurses - and those I never want to see again. Please note Carleen, who came in as my night nurse very temporarily, only to immediately start bitching about the air mattress leaned against the wall as a fire hazard. Because really, if there's a fire, my greatest concern is the air mattress in the room by the window that is not an exit. She then looked around at all of our things and urged us to "send a lot of it home." If I could have jumped out of bed and bitch-slapped her as I explained I was stuck here from my home in San Francisco for weeks, thank you very much, I would have. Carleen's shift mysteriously ended after that single interaction, and now Nurse Sam will be taking care of me until 7 am.

Thanks again to all for emailing, calling, texting, IM'ing, Facebooking and otherwise sending your good thoughts! I feel very fortunate, and hope that in addition to writing this blog for my own sanity, I'm providing you with some updates you want to hear that occasionally make you laugh.

On that note, today's bowel movement reference (just for you, Jim)... I was threatened with warm prune juice. Guess who magically found constitution tonight? Yup.