After a mostly sleepless night for Karen, we're at Mt Auburn Hospital now for the second time in three days. She is dozing between contractions which are getting closer together.

The room is filled with the sound of the baby's heartbeat, cranking out between 130-165 beats per minute (this is normal) over the monitoring machine which also displays the "tone" of the contractions and Mommy's heart rate. The room on the fifth floor overlooks the Charles River into downtown Boston, but since there is a high-rise condo building nearby, we shut the curtain once it got dark outside.

They have some cool toys here. The monitor for the baby's pulse is an ECG transducer, and works wirelessly. This means that Karen can walk around while monitoring the pulse of the baby. So far, this has been limited to the 25 feet to the bathroom in our birth room. Mommy's pulse monitor is not wireless, so she must take that off her finger when she gets around. My pulse is 88 ;).

The food is surprisingly good. The Mt Auburn salad is quite nice, as was the apple pie. We have more food waiting for us, and the price is right (included with everything else). Tomorrow morning, we can dial 3663 (food), and get more.

The "contractor" (hey, she is an engineer) is on a clear-liquids diet for now. Karen's sister, Betsy is here, and the hospital is kind enough to feed her too. They also brought in a cot for us to take turns sleeping on. It's pretty nice have our own personal medical doctor in the room while we wait for the real action to start. It seems like that might still be a few hours off.