Painting, false labour and random thoughts

Hey Guys,

So I took a few days off last week in order to paint the nursery.  My wife was off on Friday and could therefore approve paint colours etc.  We go to the hardware store and buy a bunch of painting equipment.  I have never painted before.

Instead of clearing the room I decide that I can just push everything to one side, paint that side, then push everything to the freshly painted side and paint the rest of the room.  I won’t bore you with the details but let’s just say that plan didn’t work at all.  If you have to paint a room, just clear it out completely.  Then you can actually work without having to constantly step over shit.  Anyway, it looks good now and I’m pretty proud of the job I did.  If I had a smartphone I would post some pictures, but I don’t.

I chose to do an accent colour for the window sill and trim (duck egg blue) and left those bits until the end.  The reason I chose duck egg blue despite the fact that we’re having a girl is because I also found duck egg blue curtains, and no daughter of mine is going to sleep in some non-colour co-ordinated, Frankenstein of a room.  I put the first coat on around 10pm.  I wanted to get everything finished that night so instead of applying the second coat in the morning I stayed up until 2am waiting for the first coat to dry.  I finished the second coat around 3am.  It looked awesome.  I am the best dad ever.

I am hastily awakened at 6am by my wife who tells me that she thinks she is going into labour.  Despite having gotten three whole hours of sleep, I decide that I need a little more and just roll over to continue my slumber.  A few minutes later she wakes me up again (and quite rudely I might add) and says it’s time to go to the hospital.  Due to lack of sleep I was unable to be my argumentative or logical self, so I dutifully complied.  We drive to the hospital where they admit her and nothing happens.  She was in there from 7am until 7pm and, literally, nothing happened.  Thankfully I was able to return home for a few hours where I got some sleep and watched Any Given Sunday.

Remember when I told you guys about the pre-natal class?  The midwife told us that when chicks go into labour, three things will happen (not necessarily in this order):

1. Their water will break (it might be only a cup of water though, it’s not like on TV)
2. Her mucous plug will come out (this holds the water in).  It is sometimes called a show or a bloody show (remember the movie Knocked Up?)
3. She will have regular contractions which are like 5 or 10 minutes apart (my wife’s were 40 minutes apart and sporadic)

Just to recap – None of these things happened to my wife.  What did happen was she started to get Braxton Hicks contractions.  Had I been fully awake at the time of her self diagnosis, I would have been able to rationally assess the situation, calm her down, and convince her that she was not going into labour six weeks early.  So I guess what I’m saying is, if your wife suddenly makes the proclamation that she is going into labour you need to stop and ask her why she thinks she is going into labour.  Calling the hospital is useless.  In order to eliminate the risk of being sued, they always tell the woman to come in and see a doctor.  Anyway, if none of the above three indicators have happened, she is not in labour.  Also, the odds of spontaneously going into labour at 34/35 weeks are slim to none (this survey has it at 0.11%).

Side note: Don’t stay up too late.  When the kid does arrive it may be at some ungodly hour like 5 or 6am.  You will kick yourself if you were up til 3am the night before, beating off and/or playing Madden.

 

John