Monday or Tuesday's update...not sure which day it is!

it's the wee hours in the morning here at the hospital and I'm enjoying the quiet moment. In a few minutes the nurses will start coming to take my vitals and the resident on staff will come in to check me and my day of tests and checks on me and our baby will begin.

This whole experience is still surreal for me. It's like I'm living this life in a hospital, but it just doesn't seem real. I guess that's the definition of surreal though.

I started having some contractions Monday morning around 3am which woke me up. I had two back to back within 3 minutes of each other. The pain was very moderate, but it did make me quite nervous. I had another one around 5am and the nurses and doctors said this was fairly common. And apparently, I'm having contractions that I can't even feel. They did a NST (non stress test) on the baby yesterday where they hook me up to a couple of monitors and watch the baby's heart beat and measure my tummy - the nurse would say, did you feel that contraction? That was weird.

In yesterday's ultrasound the estimated the baby to weigh 4 lb 3 oz. which is lower than the original estimate of 4 lb 7 oz, but still pretty good for a 32 week old.

Other than being on complete bedrest and only being allowed to get up to go to the bathroom or shower, things are great here. I'm actually not going stir crazy yet - I have enough work and then some to keep me occupied and then there's my busy schedule! Vitals at 5 am, doc visit at 6am, blood test at 7 am, breakfast at 8am and so it goes.

A faux paus from the other day...Tony took me for my wheelchair ride around the hospital. We were getting out of the elevator to go back to my room and there were two policeman there waiting for an elevator with a young woman in scrubs - handcuffed. Apparently Tony didn't see the woman handcuffed when he said, "Honey, you're busted." And THEN he saw the girl - maybe because she started crying right then. It was funny and sad, but mostly we were curious what the story was. I asked my nurses and they said they'd try to find out the scoop. We figured it was probably a drug stealing thing - felt sorry for the girl though..

Thanks everyone for your calls, emails, texts and well wishes. It's nice to break up the day when I hear from friends and family.

We feel very blessed. We feel calm and peaceful., We feel hopeful.

Love to you all,
Natalie, Tony and Baby Smart