too early, too much excitement

Th Jul 6th
Well today has already been a very interesting and surprising day. I spent it in the hospital! I am home now and stabilized and hopeful things stay calm for the next few weeks. Here is the story so far.....

yesterday morning I woke up and noticed my belly seemed a little lower and thought it was impossible that the baby had "dropped" already and concluded that I must be seeing things. However by 5pm I was starting to feel pretty uncomfortable and less able to move around than I had previously. Also I had a strange, sort fo constant pain in my lower left pelvic area. However I went about things as normal-food shopped then went to Bill's soccer game then made dinner. But by 10pm I was feeling pretty uncomfortable and the pain had started to be on my right side as well. I slept pretty badly and still was having pain. When I woke up in the morning and still had pain and pulling in my pelvic area, I knew something was not right, so I called the doctor's office. They started asking me questions about the nature of the pain-was it contractions? like mestrual cramps? stabbing pain? ligament stretching? I had a really hard time describing it b/c I had no idea what contractions feel like and all I could think was that if it was not contractions then it could be 1 of 10 or so other things I had read about-none of them good. So when the nurse said it was probably just my ligaments stretching and I should stop worrying and wait until the next day when I had my scheduled 2 week doc appt, then I realized that I had a gut feeling something was wrong and I wanted to see my doc right away. It happened that my doc was on service at the hospital for the week so the nurse paged her and my doc said I should just come in to the hospital to labor & delivery triage.

This was weird for Bill & I b/c we felt like a fraud b/c it was just way to early for us to be there but after we got checked into a room and the nurse hooked me up to the baby monitors we knew my gut feeling had been right-I was having contractions that were only 2-3 minutes part!!!!! The baby's heartbeat was healthy and normal but the contractions were real and so the doc checked my cervix-it was not dilated so they started me on IV fluids in hopes of slowing the contractions and did blood tests and tests (fetal fibronectin) to detect whether amniotic fluid was leaking.

While we waited for the tests results, they checked my cervix again and thought it might have opened a bit so they started telling me that they would check again in 2h and if it was opening then I would be given steroid injections to force the baby's lung to develop sooner in case the baby came early and that I would need to stay in the hospital a few days to be given drugs to try to stop contractions and labor. When we heard this we really started hoping things would slow down soon b/c we just could not imagine having such a tiny baby-a preemie. I never thought this would happen to us. All the nurses and docs kept reassuring us that 31 week babies turn out fine and it would be OK if he came early. Of course every week the baby stays inside is 1 week much better so if necessary they would give me drugs to hold off birth as long as they could.

After 6h I had had 4.5 IV bags of fluid and the contractions had slowed to intervals of 5-7 min, they checked my cervix again and it was the same as before!!! yeah great news. also the fetal fibronectin test came back negative which indicated that I had only a 0.3% chance of delivering the baby in the next 7 days. also great news!!! so they said we could go home for the night and the doc would check things again the next morning. So we went home and my parents came over and made us dinner. I felt crappy the whole night with continued pain but steadily decreasing contractions. thank god.

Fri Jul 7th
The next morning at the doc appt I still had pain but my cervix had not changed so we would not need to go back to the hospital for injections or treatments. However my white blood cell count came back pretty high so the doc thought I might have some sort fo asymptomatic infection-maybe a bladder infection that had triggered the preterm labor. So she put me on antibiotics. We also did an ultrasound to check the placenta and see if the baby's position in my uterus was contributing to the problems somehow. Indeed this was the case. my placenta looked great and was at the top of my uterus under my stomach and seemed to be pushing the baby into the lower half of my uterus. the baby was head down and butt up but somehow he had all 4 limbs crammed down into my left pelvic area and was causing my bladder to be squeezed into 2 lobes. The doc thought this was contributing to the pain when I stood up and also may have caused a bladder infection that induced contractions. she thought it was weird that the infection was not showing up in my urine samples but I opted to go ahead with the antibiotics anyway b/c of the white cell count. the doc siad I should drink 5-6 L of water and gatorade a day and stay off my feet as much as possible until further notice.

So Bill & I left the doc feeling much more reassured but I was sore and now the possibility that the baby could come early-real early was now a reality we had to think about. Hopefully all goes well from this day forth, the infections are cleared up and I carry the baby to term.

Sat Jul 8th
Today I am feeling better and have less pain. The baby is moving around all the time and has some powerful movements that sometimes cause pain but otherwise it is a comforting reminder that he is there and maybe more ready to come into the world than any of us would like. I really hope this is not a sign of what his personality will be like-if he is always rushing and pushing it will be very tiresome. of course that would be justice b/c I think that is pretty much how I was/am.