Our Little Drama Queen/King

First of all, Happy Birthday to Aunt Laurie, whose 50th birthday we enjoyed celebrating in Kemah this weekend… where it all began. A delicious dinner at Babins on the Boardwalk, followed by a fun boat ride on the bay, which Kaeta had been looking forward to all day (she kept blurting out “Go BOAT RIDE!” at random times).

The boat ride started out fun. Kaeta had a blast dancing around and eating up all the adoring attention everyone lavished upon her…. But then the drama began. Let me just say that I have been having harmless Braxton-Hicks contractions for the last several months, so when the contractions began I didn’t think anything of it. Until I noticed that they were coming fairly close together, fairly regularly. So I started keeping track, mostly just to prove to myself that it was nothing. After all, I’m only 8 months pregnant. Not time yet. But after about an hour with the contractions five minutes apart or less, Derek convinced me to call the doctor. The doctor said we better head to the hospital. The nearest hospital.

Here is Derek’s rendition of what happened next (he tells it so much better):

I went to someone who worked on the boat — he looked to be about 20 years old — and told him, “My wife’s having contractions. We called the doctor, and he said we need to get to a hospital.” His eyes got wide and his face paled. “Yes, sir,” he said, and went to the captain. All he said was “his wife’s having contractions,” and then the boat lurched forward as the captain pushed the throttle. I’m sure he was thinking, “No way we’re having a baby on this boat!” We were at the dock in 2 minutes.

So after adding quite a bit of drama to the boat ride, we proceed to the hospital in Houston. At this point it’s about 10:30 pm. We’re both still in disbelief that I might actually be in labor, but the contractions are suggesting otherwise. This is where the story gets a little anti-climactic. We were admitted to the labor and delivery ward, where after about two hours of monitoring, it was determined that I was not in labor, and that the contractions were likely caused by not getting enough water that day. The nurse had me drink plenty of water, and the contractions slowed down, but never went away entirely. So at 1:00 am they let us go.

We decided it would be best to go on home so that if something more happened, we would be near our hospital. Yep, we drove three hours in the middle of the night, as though we hadn’t had enough excitement for one night. Kaeta was great the whole time. She fell asleep on the way to the hospital, and slept through the whole thing… until, of course, we left the hospital, and she spent probably half the trip sleeping and the other half still going on about “the boat ride!” and how much fun that was. Thankfully, she went back to sleep when we got home, and we all got to sleep in the next morning.

So from all this, we have learned something very important. This baby, while still in utero, has already figured out that the best way to compete with Big Sister Kaeta’s charm and beauty, is to make as big a scene as possible. Because apparently being melodramatic is the only way this kid is going to get any attention around here.

So in light of our baby’s character trait (which we were fortunate enough to be warned about early), we are trying to think of names which might be more fitting. Like maybe Kemah for a girl, or Hamlet for a boy….. Anyone have any other suggestions?