Home Again

Many thanks to my pinch-hitter husband for posting for me this morning. As he said, I was sent to the hospital for monitoring last night after my 4:30 monitoring session had 15 contractions in an hour. Suffice it to say, it was a fun day all around.

So... off to labor and delivery triage we went. Where we quickly discovered I was still having far too many contractions. The nurses were great, the hospital was boring. My doctor called after a bit to suggest some options. We settled on trying 3 doses of Nifedipine over an hour and half and if I was still over threshold after that, she'd admit me over night for observation, get me on Indocin for 24 hours, and check my cervix in the morning and probably let me go after that.

Three doses of Nifedipine later, and just as many contractions, and there was a room with my name on it. And so, my darling husband went home to get some things for me, including (bless him) a toothbrush/toothpaste which hadn't even occurred to me, but BOY DID I LOVE HAVING THAT! And the fun began. They got me back on the monitors... three fetal monitors and a contraction monitor. Now the ironic thing about that set up is that to keep the fetal monitors in the right place, I had to be laying on my back. But that made the contractions worse. But rolling onto my side disturbed the fetal monitors too much. Finally around midnight, the nurses called my doctor and asked if they could just leave the contraction monitor only on so that I could get more comfortable and hopefully sleep. At 1:30, they came in and took off the three fetal monitors, I rolled onto my side and went to sleep. At 4am I got my second dose of Indocin. At 6am, I woke up and my day started... for the last couple hours I'd only had a couple contractions. Miracle! (Indocin works well for me...it's just that it can't be taken long term)

Anywhozit, around 8 I was brought the world's most disgusting breakfast (kosher hospital food... never a good thing... ick!). and a bit before 9 I was taken down for an ultrasound and to meet with my doctor. My cervix was, at its shortest, 1.7cm... shorter than last week, but not so much shorter than it was 5 weeks ago when this whole bed rest crap started in the first place. She recommended raising the basal rate on my terbutaline pump, adding Nifedipine XR again on top of the terbutaline, and having a fetal fibronectin test done weekly along with the already-scheduled weekly cervical measurements.

She was fully prepared to let me go home and asked if I had any questions. And I said, well, I wasn't trying to be picky or anything... but I was doing the 4x daily finger sticks for blood sugar testing because I couldn't take the three hour test, and since I hadn't had a single blood sugar reading out of the range of completely utterly normal, could I maybe cut back on the number of times I had to test...but I was willing to do whatever she wanted me to. She said I could just do it twice a day if I wanted, but forewarned me that as I got later into the pregnancy, they'd probably still make me return to four times a day anyway. No problem. She went off to type up the ultrasound report and then popped back in and said, "Hey, since you're in-house right now anyway, do you want to just DO the three-hour glucola test?" Uh, YEAH! Except I'd already eaten breakfast. No problem. I had eaten breakfast at 8, so they'd do the test at 4 and I could go home after that, unless I'd feel better staying another night (NO THANK YOU).

And so... I spent the most boring day of my life in the hospital today, internet-less, bored, with limited things to read or do. But on Friday, I should know whether I have to keep finger-sticking myself! And I was home at 8pm tonight. Safe and sound. All is well, the babies are all healthy and fine. The contractions are better for the moment. And life is good because I have my precious internet back. Gawd I'm an addict. Thanks everyone for your kind thoughts. I suspect this won't be the last time I have a visit to the hospital before this is all over, but at least this wasn't a terribly long orientation... :) I'll try to catch up on your blogs tomorrow.