Toddlers and Scholars

Here’s the more upbeat blog entry I promised:

• Only eight more hours for our baby to be born on  Leap Day.
• Just got an email from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter writing a story on the re-emergence of the evangelical left. That’s a good sign for my dissertation and career.
• Lisa’s proposal defense went reasonably well this morning.
• Only one person in our family threw up in the last 24 hours!
• My parents called last night to tell us that they’re on their way to watch babies and make food for us this weekend. What a wonderful surprise!

Ok, three down, one (Andrew) to go. Last night I was the latest to succumb to the ghastly bug. Thankfully, I didn’t go into pre-term labor because of it. I’m slowly getting better today, but it was not cool at 1 a.m. this morning. Lisa is doing better, enough better that she’s actually off at school while the boys take their afternoon nap. Tomorrow–if she’s still feeling alright–is her thesis proposal defense. Pray that the meeting doesn’t leave her reeling with lots more work.

Here’s a picture of what the boys aren’t doing quite enough of:

Starting tomorrow, this blog will do a little less whining. I promise.

–David

Lisa is awake! She slept from 2 a.m. Tuesday morning to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon. Then from 7 p.m. Tuesday until 10 a.m. Wednesday. Now she’s eating some crackers, eating some wonderful chicken noodle soup brought by the Hatches (thank you!), drinking lots of juice and water, and catching up on email.

It seems as if the flu bug has passed.  A lot less nausea and very few contractions anymore. If she can get through the next couple of days, spring break awaits!

Here’s a picture of the Lisa and the boys from the weekend:

It’s noon, and Lisa is still in bed. She woke up briefly to drink some juice and say hi to the boys. But she’s fast asleep again. I think the traumatic night and the drugs have done her in.

It’s becoming more clear that she caught the bug that made Jonathan throw up so much on Sunday. She feels less nauseated today, so hopefully she’s getting better. There are still contractions, but they’re not as intense anymore. Maybe we can keep this kid inside for a couple more weeks!

Last night we put the boys to bed, and then I went to a small group meeting while Lisa suffered with a lot of nausea and some mild contractions. At 8:30 I got a call to come home. She was throwing up and the contractions were a lot worse. At 9:30 we called the doctor, who was worried that she was dehydrated and that this was causing pre-term labor. So we took off for the hospital, just a five-minute drive away.

We got back home at 2 this morning after Lisa got three bags of fluid through an IV at the hospital. They also gave her some Phenergan to stop the nausea so she could drink again to keep hydrated and hopefully stop the contractions. Unfortunately that gave her a bad reaction. She got the twitches. She would fall asleep for about 20 seconds, and then jolt away with her head and arms sort of flailing. That happened over and over and over–with lots of contractions throw in there for fun–for a couple of hours. It was really quite bad and horrible. When that got under control (and when they got more convinced that she wasn’t going to progress beyond one centimeter dilation), they let us come home. Lisa again threw up all over the driveway when we got home (looked like a cool Jackson Pollock painting against the snow). Amazingly, one she got inside, she was able to go right to sleep and is still out now at 8 a.m. So we’re very thankful for that.

Anyway, that’s the story. Good news that the baby is still inside. But it certainly wasn’t a fun evening for Lisa. Thanks so much to Joel for spending half the night here–and to David B. for being ready to relieve him this morning.

–David