So, my wife is on bedrest...

In a word, last Thursday sucked for my wife.

The day before, Carrie told me that her foot was bothering her when she walked. I've heard many stories about pregnant women and swollen ankles, so I assumed it was something of a similar nature.

Nope. It was a stress fracture. I got a "I broke my foot" call at work. And that wasn't the worst of the day.

Carrie has been going through a lot of horse trauma. Chilly got starved by a leaser over the long winter, rescued, and now has Lyme disease. Throw in some angry/hurt feelings and you have a butt-load of stress for my wife. Pregnant + Lots of Stress = the beginning of pre-term labor.

At first, I didn't really believe it was happening. Carrie was only 26 weeks in. She said she felt weird, "like a large cramp from a period." We tried calling the doctor. No response. Twenty minutes later, we started driving to the hospital "just in case" and called the doctor again. I still didn't think anything was happening at this point, but I figured if it just turned out Carrie was just having a panic moment, I could easily turn around. If it was real (and it was) then we would already be on the way. I'm new to the whole parenting thing, but having a baby isn't something you want to take unnecessary risks with.

When we called the doctor again, she seemed annoyed that we were already in the car. However, when we finally did get up into triage, Carrie started having contractions every 3-5 minutes. I remember asking the nurse, Jonni (or something like that), if the blips on a machine were contractions. She replied that Carrie "had been having one for the past 30 seconds." I'm not going to relate the whole night in agonizing detail (I could write a short story on the hospital, the hunt for a wheelchair, empty nurse's stations, and attempting to draw blood from a woman who violently hates needles). Instead, I'm just going to point out that we didn't leave the hospital until after midnight. What's the first thing we do? McDonald's.

That's right, we went on a 12:30 run to the Scottish restaurant on the way home because we were starving. Go sweet tea.

I wrote up lesson plans for a sub (since I was supposed to be up in a few hours) and sent them off at 1:30 AM on the dot. Carrie had already passed out from exhaustion at that point. I closed my laptop, said a prayer, and passed out the moment my head hit the pillow. Carrie's been on bed rest ever since.