Not much change

We pretty much hit real labor at 1 am. Things have been carrying on pretty much without very drastic change since then. They'd been coming every 3-4 minutes, intensifying a bit but not having changed much since this morning. However, the duration has been sliding downwards, so they're getting much shorter. The doula came over and gave us some advice -- Stephanie is probably still not very dialated, especially since not many of the contractions have been a minute in length.

Stephanie was getting tired, so we packed her in the bath and she napped a bit after eating lunch (thank you Jan!) in the bathtub. (Very funny because she made me eat in the bathtub when I did the ice baths after marathon training long runs, so it's a really great thing to be able to return the favor. Only difference besides water temperature is that instead of dealing with whinging about how the ice is cold and the toenails are coming off, I'm helping her work through contractions.)

The bath made the contractions less frequent, though the intensity of the ones she did have ratcheted up a bit. She's now showering off and going to try lying down a bit to get some more rest, so that we can try a couple of things (nipple stimulation and more walking) once she's feeling like she's getting a second wind.

We're going to go to the hospital to have things checked out at 8:30 pm after the shift change. If things haven't picked up by then, we'll discuss some interventions and options when we have more information about how far along we are.

Having a doula is awesome. Spirits are still high. I think we can do this.