Yup, still pregnant. And still in the hospital. I have been officially transferred from Labor and Delivery to the Antepartum Unit. This is a good thing, it means they are no longer worried that I will deliver any minute, but I still need some help to keep labor from proceeding. I’m still dilating – about a half cm every day or two. So it’s slow, but it hasn’t come to a stop. The good news is that I’ve made it into the 34th week which drastically ups baby’s viability, and we also got the steroids in so her lungs have a better chance of functioning on their own if she just can’t wait till term.
It’s really just a waiting game. There is a chance that they will send me home tomorrow – that depends on how far the dilation has progressed. They’ll check again in the morning. Part of me is excited at the prospect of going home to wait out the rest of my pregnancy, and part of me is terrified. I like knowing that the experts are just a button push away.
That’s right, I’m in the hospital right now. Saturday night was a tough night for me with lots of intestinal cramping and nausea. I was up all night. The next morning we started going through all the boxes we hadn’t unpacked yet looking for the booklet on pregnancy and childbirth from our doctor. When we finally found the booklet and thumbed through it and noticed on the page with “Warning Signs” – I could go down the list and check off a pretty good percentage. That warranted a call to the consulting nurse who said “Come on down.”
That led to six hours in the Labor and Delivery Triage room. When I first got there, all of my symptoms disappeared. Why does that happen?? It’s so frustrating to sit there with a Doctor or Nurse and try to describe symptoms you’re no longer having – In fact, most of the time in triage, I felt great but a little embarrassed because I came in with no symptoms. They put me on a monitor to track my contractions and the baby’s heart rate. I didn’t feel a single contraction, but as it turns out, the monitor showed that I was having pretty frequent contractions. They checked my cervix after a few hours and I was dilated to 1 cm, 2 hours later I was dilated to 2.5 cm. That’s when they told me they were preparing a room for me.
I honestly thought we would go in, they would check me out and then send me home with orders to call them if the cramping and nausea comes back. Not so much. Instead the plan is to put me on medication to slow down the contractions and steroids to beef up the baby’s lungs in case we’re not able to stop labor from proceeding. It wasn’t really sinking in what was going on until the doctor started telling me about how my baby was most likely viable at this age, but if she was born now, she would go straight to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Since I was admitted Sunday night, the baby’s heart-rate has remained steady, and so have the contractions. It still strikes me as extremely weird that I can’t feel the contractions. I’m hoping that bodes well for delivery. The baby also continues to be very active, which makes me feel good.
They are going to check me again in the morning to see if dilation has stopped or continued. If it stopped, I get to go home with orders to stay off my feet. If dilation has continued, I may be in here a while.
Baby seems to be active and feisty and raring to get on with life, which I think will be helpful to her if she is born with a hurdle to overcome – such as being premature. I hope she can settle down and wait a few weeks and use that exuberance for getting on with life a little later.
I’m still here and still very pregnant. The move went as well as, or even better than expected. We had one group of friends and family members show up on Saturday morning and the worked till about 8 that night moving the big items and most of the boxes – and a second group of people showed up the next day to get the last little bits and seriously scrub down the old apartment. I was really concerned about how I was going to be able to do all that scrubbing. Instead it was two days of people telling me to “SIT DOWN!” Yes, I know I’m not supposed to be carrying big stuff around when I’m this pregnant. But it’s really hard to sit there and watch other people clean my home. It just doesn’t feel right.
The new place is a little bit bigger than the old one with a nice big balcony and hook-ups for a washer and dryer. Mom found a used washer and dryer in great shape at an estate sale for $100 so we’re in business. No more carting loads of laundry two full blocks to get them washed. On the downside, the kitchen is tiny, tiny, tiny, so I’ll be looking for interesting places around the house to hide the non-perishables that wont fit in the kitchen. And no dishwasher. But the fridge is nice and big. Oh the joys of institutional living.
I’m a little disgusted with the downstairs neighbor with the loud music, empty beer cans littered around his front and back door, and the fact that twice in the past week my entire apartment has smelled like pot (not that I would know what that smells like…). But all the other neighbors seem to be really nice. You have to have kid’s to live in this apartment complex, so I’m surrounded by other parents. I’m looking forward to making friends with people with kids. It’s so weird that my none of my local in-the-flesh friends have kids.
The biggest frustration we’ve had at the new place is the fact that we still don’t have internet access. That will not be installed until Thursday. In the meantime, I lug my laptop down to the local wifi cafe, stick my pregnant belly out as far as I can, and hover like a vulture until someone gets creeped out and decides to let glaring fat lady have their table. Then I sit down, wait forever for windows to load, and then do my homework as fast as I can and hopefully get it all done before my battery dies. Return home, recharge battery, repeat, until I need a nap.
I hope to get back to a more regular posting schedule after I have internet access at home. Hope all is well with you.
cardboard,
tape, knife
sharpie;
colorful life
packed
in brown boxes
Not that I didn’t have enough going on what with the pregnancy and sinus issues and papers due at school, but I just thought I’d let you know that we’re moving this weekend.
Yay! Really, it is a good move, I just don’t want to do all that work.
Just so ya know, I may not be posting much for a while. I’ve got my hands full.
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