Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Another Adventurous Pregnancy

Well, I guess it's official... my body just LOVES having babies early. On Friday the 25th I came home from work, and was planning to go out for a nice dinner with Duke. When I got home, my back started hurting, which is normal. I decided to take a minute and put the heating pad on it and relax before getting up and hopping in the shower. Then I started feeling what I thought were braxton hicks. I was just a couple days away from 28 weeks, and knew that I should start expecting the annoying "false labor" pains any day. I decided just to take it easy and wait for it to pass. But as time went on, the pains got worse. Duke and I started timing them and found that they were lasting about 40 seconds and coming every 2 minutes, which is DEFINITELY not braxton hicks. We called labor and delivery and they told us to come in right away.

Now, I have been very emotional during this pregnancy, and have even been known to over react about things here and there, but this time I was totally calm. I don't know if it was because I had Duke there, which made me feel relaxed and calm, or if it was just that I really thought I was probably just making a big deal out of nothing. But I really didn't expect things to go the way they did once we got to the hospital.

We got to labor and delivery, and they immediately set us up in the trauma room and put the monitors on my belly to keep track of the contractions and make sure the baby's heart sounded good. After monitering for about 30 minutes, the doctor on call came in to examine me. At this point, I was still pretty calm. I think I was more worried that they were going to tell me I was crazy than anything else. Instead though, the doctor did the exam, and then told me that I was dilated 1.5 cm and 70-80% efaced. I immediately lost it. I couldn't believe I was so efaced, and it scared me so bad that maybe they might not be able to stop the labor. I kept thinking back to when this happened with Halle, and kept thinking about the complications we had when she was born, and she only came 3 1/2 weeks early. I couldn't imagine what might happen if this baby came 3 months early.

The nurses took me straight to a labor and delivery room, and started marking their territory all over me with pricks, and pokes and needles and IV's. I HATE needles, so it was pretty much a horrible 30 minutes of torture. Once they got the IV in they started using it to give me magnesium to stop the contractions. Then they gave me a very painful shot in the hip of a steroid to help baby's lungs develop. The magnesium was NOT FUN!!! They compare the feeling from the magnesium to the flu. And that's just how it was, except luckily, I didn't get nauseous. I had to stay on the magnesium for 3 days until they made sure the contractions were stopped enough to start me on a different kind of medicine. Finally on Sunday I was off the magnesium, and they moved me upstairs to the post partum area where I had a more comfortable room, and bed! I was finally discharged on Monday and it was soooo nice to come home.

I'm now stuck at home in bed on strict bed rest. I've done pretty good about finding things to keep me busy though, and luckily we just got cable the week before I went into the hospital, so I'm having fun catching up on all the tv shows I haven't been able to watch for a year!

I keep thinking about how similar this pregnancy is to my first, and I can't help but feel as though my pregnancy with Halle helped prepare me for this pregnancy. I think had I not gone through what I did with Halle, this may have been a much more traumatic experience for me. But the fact that I've gone through it, and kind of know what to expect, it helps me stay positive. It also helps me look at the bright side, because I know as long as I'm careful, I should be able to keep baby cooking for a while longer!! We are so excited to welcome this beautiful baby boy into our lives, and I've had so much fun really bonding with him here in my belly, but he's just going to have to wait a little longer to meet his family!

Thank you all for your love and prayers, and we'll keep you all posted with any new information!