Day number seven at the hospital...and counting

Today is my 7th day in the hospital. I'm sorry I haven't written before now but I can't for the life of me figure out how to post blog entries from the funky internet system at the hospital. My wonderful husband is going to post this one and any future hospital posts for me from home.

We went in last Thursday for a routine ultrasound. The babies looked great- they are definitely my little girls- you can tell by the nose. We were hoping they would get my family nose, so it's nice that we've seen them in 3D and it's pretty obvious they do have that nose. Anyway, their fluid levels looked great and so did their heart rates. But then the tech checked my cervix... I could tell as soon as it appeared on the screen that things didn't look good. I had started to dilate. The doctor (this was at the high risk clinic) came and checked my cervix manually and she said I was about a centimeter dilated. So they got in touch with my OB's office and the doctor who was already here came down and admitted me.

They wheeled me up to the third floor and put me in my room- which had to be one of the smallest rooms they have. It was tiny, but they told me that they would try to get me into a bigger room once one opened up since I would be here longer than most of their other patients. At this point we were under the impression that there was no way I was going to get to go home until after the girls were born. Things seemed pretty bad to us.

Thursday night was a tough night. Ben left for awhile to go home and get me clothes and stuff for my hospital stay. Then he came back and stayed with me until pretty late- he had already decided he wasn't going to work on Friday. Unfortunately, I only got about an hour of sleep Thursday night. I woke up about 1:40 and I don't think I really fell slept at all after that. Around 4 I started feeling contractions. I kept hoping they would stop, but after about half an hour of feeling them pretty regularly, I called the nurse. They hooked me up to monitors and sure enough I was having contractions. They actually had to get a labor and delivery nurse to come over to get both babies on the monitors at the same time. Well, she talked to my doctor and she said for them to take me to labor and delivery for continuous monitoring. So they wheeled me over there...

Over in L&D they gave m a shot of terbutaline to try to stop the contractions, and that slowed them, but didn't stop them, so then they started me on a medicine called Procardia. It's normally for high blood pressure, but it also works to relax the uterus and stop contractions. That did the trick. I'm now taking that every 8 hours. I was also put on IV fluids while in L&D , which made getting up to go to the bathroom an adventure. Anyway, the other OB in my practice came by L&D to see me on Friday morning. She's the one that had been examining me, so she checked my cervix. She said that she didn't feel much of a change from the week before and that I was really only about a fingertip dilated. That made her feel better, which in turn made me feel better. Around noon on Friday I got moved back to my room in the post partum area. By that time the contractions had stopped and Ben had gotten here.

The rest of Friday was pretty uneventful. My parents came up for awhile, and Ben was with me most of the day. I was so tired, though, that the simplest tasks, like eating, had me in tears. By dinner time I was too tired to eat, but I knew I had to, so I forced myself, crying through the whole meal. Ben promised to stay with me until I fell asleep, which helped me a lot. I took Ambien that night (my new favorite thing). and I was snoring by the time Ben left. He said he actually had to wake me up in order to kiss me good night. I slept great that night- for about 6 straight hours until the alarm on my IV went off because it was out of fluid. And then I went right back to sleep after that- and a bathroom trip.

Saturday was a MUCH better day. Dr. Zaita came by Saturday morning and she had good news for me. They had gone over the results of my ultrasound from Thursday and things didn't look nearly as bad as they had been told. Yes, my cervix is thin and starting to funnel, but it was not as extreme as they thought it might be. She told me that if they could keep me stable for a week or two and keep the contractions under control, I might get to go home. That was like music to my ears. Just knowing that going home sometime fairly soon is a possibility made me feel 100 times better about everything. It's also been reassuring that my doctors don't seem too concerned about my condition. Dr. Zaita even told me the other day that she didn't see any reason right now that I couldn't go to 35 or 36 weeks with this pregnancy. That was nice to hear.

I had a bunch of visitors on Saturday, too. Ben was here- of course, and my parents, Ben's parents and Beth and James also came by.

Saturday night I got moved to a bigger room. This room is over twice the size of the other one. It's actually designed as a double room, but it's set up as a single room- and I'm alone in it. It's much nicer than the tiny room I was in before. Ben spent the night with me Saturday night. It was so nice to wake up and be able to see him right away. It was also nice that he was here when Dr. Zaita came by so that he could talk to her and ask any questions he had.

The rest of my days here so far have been pretty unexciting, which is exactly what we want. My mom or Ben's mom have been coming up and spending the day with me while Ben works. Then Ben comes over in the evenings. I've gotten into a bit of a routine here. I know what to expect now, which makes it much easier to deal with. I'm also getting a lot of the same nurses over and over, which I love. And they're all very nice.

My nurse on Sunday was awesome! She used to be an L&D nurse and she has 15 year old twin boys. She talked to us a lot and made us feel better about things. She was put on bed rest at about 28 weeks with her cervix in the same position mine was when I was admitted. She ended up not delivering until almost 38 weeks! And her boys were both about 8 pounds. Oh, and she had gestational diabetes, and she went to UVA. What more could we ask for in a nurse? Well, she only works one day a week, but when she does work they give her the twin moms, so we should get to see her every time she's here for as long as I'm here.

On Tuesday Dr. Zaita ran a couple of tests on me. She did a Fetal Fibronectin test and a rRoup B strep test. Both came back negative! That's especially good news about the fetal fibronectin since that indicates that I only have a 2-4% chance of going into labor in the next two weeks! So that's great news!

Yesterday they were picking up some minor contractions on my morning monitoring, so I ended up having to go back on the monitors in the afternoon. They picked up a few more then, but Dr. Hodges said that my uterus is probably just irritated and he's not worried about the contractions. There was talk of putting me on a third time because the babies had not been cooperating and didn't want to stay on the monitors, but, thankfully, Dr. Hodges said it was fine, so I avoided being on them even longer.

That's my news from the hospital for now. Hopefully things will continue to go well and they'll let me go home next week after my growth ultrasound. It's hard to believe that I'll be 31 weeks on Saturday, but it's great that I'm already so far along!