Dominica got practically no sleep at all last night.  She has been having contractions fairly regularly but not enough to send her to the hospital with the “baby coming any minute” but often enough to keep her from sleeping.  I got some sleep but not a lot.  It was a long night.  I don’t think that Oreo got too much sleep either.

We got up and went to Pastel’s for breakfast.  We stopped by GameStop.  Dominica is on a constant hunt for stuff to do while she is stuck in labor.  She looked around for PlayStation Portable (PSP) games that she might be interested but just couldn’t find anything at all that looks interesting.  The lineup of games for the PSP still remains incredibly weak.  Just a handful of interesting games almost all covering the same ground as each other.  She ended up picking up a Nancy Drew game and a Mahjong game for the Nintendo DS instead.

We got home and saw dad for about half an hour before he left for his long drive back home.  His plan, which is, of course, subject to change, is to get home this afternoon and to return when the weather permits early next week around Monday or Tuesday.  Dominica’s parents are coming this afternoon or evening and are probably staying until Sunday night.

At twelve thirty I drove Dominica downtown to the clinic for her appointment with her midwife to get a status and another check on how everything is going.  Her appointment was supposed to be at a quarter until one.  At ten after one she called to let me know that she was stuck not getting in to see a midwife until two but, luckily, she had a book with her so it wasn’t worth running home and back down.

I had some time while Dominica was at her doctor’s appointment and while work was really slow to do some organizing so I did some video game “housecleaning” and updated my video game lists and posted new ones, as everyone has probably seen.  You can only have so many video games so using SGL as a repository for them works really well.  It also makes it extremely easy for other people to look up what games I have in case they want to play something.  I figure that it was also be interesting for my child and potentially for future generations to look back and see what games I played.

While Dominica was at her midwife appointment I got a chance to do some cleaning.  I did the dishes and finished unpacking another box from the dining room and assembled the lamp that has been in the basement waiting for someone to take an interest in it.  I also figured out where the Nintendo DS and Kodak digicam chargers were – sitting on the dining room floor!  They were in the handful of eletrical cables that I had set aside as “most haves” for right away and then a box had been set on top of them so we had lost them.  Now we have them and know where they are.

I picked Dominica up around three thirty and brought her home.  As we arrived at the house her two books, the last two of the Twilight series, arrived at the house.  She has been desperately looking for these to arrive before she has to go to the hospital because she wants to be able to read them while in the hospital.

It is the day before a major holiday so the exchange closed early today.  The afternoon was very slow at the office which was good because everyone was trying to leave early.  I managed to put in pretty much a full day covering all kinds of stuff even with my out of office assistant turned on.  Thankfully tomorrow is a holiday.

Since things were so slow as the afternoon wore on and since Dominica really wasn’t up to doing anything but sitting in the living room reading her book “New Moon” I got a chance to play about an hour or possibly two of Fable 2 on the XBOX 360.  This is the first that I have had a chance to play either the 360 or the PS3 at all in about a week.  It was a nice break.

After Dominica’s midwife appointment this afternoon she pretty much immediately started having contractions.  Probably the stress of the travel and the appointment kicked things into gear.  They were pretty irregular until her parents arrived around sixish and then they started coming pretty frequently and more or less regularly.

For dinner, Dominica’s father and I drove over to the Beach Shopping Center and got Italian take out from Nonna’s (hopefully I got the name correct) and brought it back to the house.  Dominica’s parents have not yet seen that part of town and did not know where the hospital or the shopping center (with the grocery store) were so we figured that taking the drive would be a good idea now.

After dinner it was an evening of waiting.  The contractions continued to get more frequent and more regular.  I kept checking in with the office until ten o’clock when I signed out.  With tomorrow being Thanksgiving there is very little to do tonight.

Katie posted that gas in New Jersey at WaWa was down to $1.57 per gallon tonight.  I can’t remember seeing gas that cheap since I was first working in South Carolina around 2001.  Once, when traveling through Georgia, in 2001 or 2002 I saw gas for $.99.  Gas was over $2 when I was born in 1976 since I was born during the high fuel priced post-OPEC embargo years.  Gas was in between $1.50 and $2 for almost all of my childhood all through the 80s and 90s and had just one or two major dips around 1999 and 2002 (when I saw the Georgia price.)  Since then the prices have skyrocketed.

Now they are back down to levels similar to those seen when I was ten years old – except when you adjust for inflation the gas today is practically free.  When adjusted for inflation, fuel today is the cheapest that it has been for about thirty-five years and maybe for much longer than that.  From looking at the charts and price adjustments on Wikipedia, it is very clear that today’s petroleum in the United States is only a fraction fo the cost that it has ever been since at least 1919!  Our current price is about half of what it was in 1919 in adjusted dollars.  It is amazing that after having gone through two or three years of fuel price panic to now be living in a nation of such fuel surplus.  Now everyone is thinking about fuel costs all of the time even though we have never needed to think about it so little.

At a quarter till eleven Dominica decided that she was exhausted and that it would be better to attempt to get some sleep than to try to stay up until the baby comes.  Her parents decided to stay up for a little while watching shows on Hulu and Netflix over PlayOn on the PS3.  Her dad really likes that service.  They are all set up to sleep in the nursery.  There is an airmattress all blown up and ready in there.

We discovered a crack in the crib tonight so when we get back from the hospital we will need to deal with getting that front piece replaced.  One more thing that needs my attention. 

Well November 26th is over and no baby today.  With the intensity and frequency of Dominica’s contractions there is no way that this is going to last for very much longer.  We were pretty sure that we were going to be going to the hospital tonight and that is still possible but right now it is looking a bit more like it is going to be in the morning.

Keep a look out on the Twitter feed for the latest updates as they happen!

Damp.  That is how things are around here today.  It rained all night and it is raining very steadily this morning.  We are pretty sure that there is some minor roof leakage coming down to the living room ceiling.  It is nearly impossible to tell but I think that the “wet” area is slightly cooler than the rest of the ceiling indicating trace amounts of current water there.  That is better than the plumbing being the problem; I think.

I started work at eight thirty this morning.  Dominica slept in until almost eleven.  She was really exhausted after spending the entire afternoon and evening at the hospital last night.  Nothing like adding stress and exhaustion to the woman who is past due to have a baby.

At eleven this morning, Dominica’s water broke.  It looks like the baby has finally had enough and is ready to come out and greet everyone.  Dominica called the midwife and we need to go in early for a few things but nothing urgent.  Could be a long time before labor really starts but because Dominica needs an antibiotic we need to actually be at the hospital.  News will probably be rather slow as we will be just reading and relaxing for quite some time.

Bob’s delivered our dressed at twelve thirty.  That was the last thing that we needed to wait for.  My out of office assistant is turned on and I have signed out from work.  The announcement has been emailed out and we are heading to the hospital!

I don’t know if I can update SGL from the hospital or not.  But I can update Twitter so keep checking in either here (Twitter in the top left) or go directly to Twitter for the latest news.

Posting just before we leave.

We found out that we were pregnant in April on the weekend when we went to Dominica’s parents’ house and my father drove out to visit with us.  We found out the in the morning before driving up there so it was rather an excitable weekend although we hadn’t seen a doctor yet so we did not announce it to our families just yet – although Francesca knew right away.

Today is our third ultrasound appointment although the two previous were just early screenings.  Today is the “big” ultrasound where they do all of the careful measurements and everything and when the doctor knows what the sex is of the baby.  We were, of course, rather nervous about the appointment today even though the previous screenings went well.

Everything went really well today and all indicators point to the baby being completely healthy.  We were successful at not finding out what the sex of the baby is as well.  So we are probably going to be able to be surprised in late November.

We had a bit of a scare about two months ago when an early blood test informed us that Dominica is a carrier of cystic fibrosis.  CF is a common disease among people of European decent and extremely common among those with Celtic backgrounds.  As Dominica is part Irish and I am part Scottish this caused some concern.  CF cannot manifest itself unless both parents are carriers but when they are the chance of it manifesting is 25% which is extremely high.  That is why I had to have blood work done recently.  Fortunately, I am not a carrier of CF so there is only a 25% chance that the baby will be a carrier and an immeasurably nominal chance of CF manifesting – requiring a failure of the known laws of genetics.

For those who follow SGL regularly you may have already realized that we are house hunting with the intent of moving somewhere by November 1st when our current least at Eleven80 in Newark is up.  Our decision to move back to New York State and to move up the Hudson Valley towards better schools, more open space and lower travel time to our parents’ homes are mostly based on the fact that the baby is coming at that same time.  It is causing a bit of a panic, however, that we will need to move “somewhere” just twenty days before the due date!

Our emergency backup plan, should we not manage to buy a house before our time runs out, is to leave Newark and to move in with my dad near Rochester so that we will have a stable home right when the baby comes.  We will stop house hunting for a month or two and then start looking again as soon as we feel that we can handle moving if we were to find something.  My job is alread prepped for the possibility of my needing so physical location flexibility and everyone is on board.  We are hoping that we can find a house before them, though, and be moved in in late October, but buying a house is a long and complicated process so we are trying to be realistic.

Yes, we do have names picked out for the baby whether it is a boy or a girl but no, we are not announcing them.  We do have ultrasound pictures to show but no scanner in New Jersey so we will post them to the Flickr feed as soon as we are able to get them scanned – most likely this weekend if we go to my dad’s house for the weekend.

I got up early, around seven, and started working from home right away so that I would have some time in and all of my work “caught up” before needing to leave for a while to go with Dominica to the doctor’s appointment that she had this morning.  I worked for a little over two hours before we left just after nine thirty.  The doctor is right next door to an IHOP and her office – literally all on the same block – which makes going there extremely simple.

After the appointment we ate a late breakfast at IHOP and then I dropped her off at work.  We are very thankful that my job gives us the flexibility for me to deliver her to and from the office when we need to do so rather than making her run me back to Newark and then to drive herself back to Totowa.  She would never have been able to get to work or else I could not have gone to the doctor’s with her.

I worked the rest of the afternoon and then had to run back to Totowa to pick Dominica up from work as I had the car for the day.  Oreo appreciated getting to spend the day with us either in the car or at home with me in the afternoon.  He had a nice long weekend.  He is only going to be at daycare for two days this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, as Dominica and I both have Friday off from work as it is the Fourth of July.

Dominica and I got back to Eleven80 and I worked for another couple hours since I had had so many long interruptions today.  We got dinner from Blimpie down the street and relaxed most of the evening.

And, of course, please remember to vote for Andy’s OrbTrak contest entry in the Dice Tech Challenge.