42 Weeks...Earthquake

...almost!

We were booked in to start the induction process on Tuesday however another massive earthquake soon put a stop to that.  We were on our way to the hospital at 12:50pm when Hamish thought he had a flat tyre so pulled over.  The parked buses in front of us were swaying side to side and I thought it was just super windy but quickly realised it was another huge earthquake.

Not knowing the seriousness of the situation and the amount of destruction that had occurred we continued to the hospital which was being evacuated as we arrived.  We left soon after and a normally 5 minute drive home took roughly 40 minutes in the chaos and road damage.

The amount of death and destruction after this quake has been incredible.  The death toll currently stands at 98 with a further 226 missing.

So the hospital obviously cancelled all non-urgent procedures to make room for the inundation of trauma patients which meant that we had to wait until things were back to somewhat normal.  Our midwife visited yesterday to check on the baby who was still fine, wriggling away and still high up lol.  Told us we might just have to wait things out, could go three weeks over and she'd check back on us on Friday.

Some pics Mum took of earthquake damage are here.  We came home from the hospital to a smashed fish tank and some minor cracking to our concrete courtyard and so far only spotted one crack to the house cladding.  2 fish survived and have since been rehomed.  The carpet is slowly drying out and we're still picking bits of glass out of it.  Monty has hung around and we are very lucky he's such a laid back cat.  Our family are all safe though a lot of them have extensive damage to their homes and streets with Nanna and Grandy's street unable to be driven down as pictured in the following video.  They have a huge amount of liquefaction on their property as well, including their fishpond which is now all silt and the fish would have all suffocated.  They have no power or water and are sleeping in the lounge again refusing to move out despite many offers of more comfortable places to stay.

We are lucky to have power and access to water though no running water at home.  Sewerage is a problem as we're not allowed to flush toilets and any drinking water must be boiled for three minutes.

Baby update

Got a call from the midwife at about 1pm this afternoon saying the hospital could fit us in at 3pm for the Prostin gel but no time for monitoring. So it was all go again!

We made it to the hospital without incident this time.  Had to wait til 4pm to be seen as they were busy but had a good view out the window.  We were put on the CTG machine for 15-20 minutes first to monitor baby's heart rate and movements, then got the gel and monitored a further half hour.  Everything was good and docs didn't make us go back for more gel tonight which was nice lol  Back first thing in the morning with the midwife for further gel and they will try to break the waters then start Syntocinon drip a few hours later.  Fingers crossed for a baby tomorrow!

Proud parents to be

CTG machine

Read out ~ Baby heart rate on left, movements as I feel and then computer picks up in middle, then contractions on the right

BabyMcB decides to squirm for the camera, listen as his heart rate increases from his wee workouts :)