26 Wks, 5 Days: So Relieved

I had a crazy day yesterday.

It started when I called the home health company nurse. J had me freaked out. I just had the lower abdominal and lower back crampiness, which he said is a sign of preterm labor. That is when they had me put myself on the monitor, and I posted the results of that yesterday. They had me bolus myself with brethine, then I got a normal scheduled bolus an hour later. Then it was back on the monitor for another hour.

Instead of the nurse calling me to say she got the strip, she called to say that they were experiencing heavy storms in Georgia, where she is located, and that she didn't get it. So she made me call my doctor, and it just happened to be the only doctor in the practice I have not met yet. I was sure he was going to tell me to go straight to OB Mecca, but he didn't. I told him I would rather have an aneurysm than go back to the hospital...any hospital. So he allowed me to stay home with the agreement that if anything changed or just felt different, I would go or at least call him back.

I settled in for the night, but somewhere along the way, I noticed that Zachary hadn't moved in quite some time. My very active baby was very still. So I got worried, and I called my friends at L&D, who told me to drink something sugary and/or caffeinated. I sent J up the road to get me 2 bottles of frappucino, since everything I had in the house was sugar-free. And I chugged them, laid down, and tried to count kicks. The home health nurse finally called back to tell me they were up and running, and that my last strip had 17 contractions on it...better, but still too much activity. I told her what was going on with the baby, and she gave me some more pointers, and said she would call back to check.

By the time she did, I had felt him move. Twice. In 3 hours. So she tells me I need to go on in to have it checked out, and she calls my doctor and L&D for me. Off I went.

I get there, and they have me pee in the cup an gown up, like always, and put him on the monitor. There it was...the little heartbeat that can make everything better. And then he started moving. Then and there. Thanks, Zachary! I mean, I was so relieved he was okay. I had been so scared that I had even called my RT colleagues to tell them that if they got a call for a 26 weeker, it was my baby. That is how scared I was. But why couldn't he do that at home? Little stinker!

So they watch me and the baby both for a while. And,well, it's me. I was having contractions every 3 minutes. Some resident buddies of mine were down there, and came into my room to chit-chat and keep me company. They stared at the strip of contractions like I was some sort of medical puzzle to solve, even though they weren't my doctors. Not that I don't think very highly of them, but I have a tough time working with anyone who has seen all of my business. That, and I am high risk and need very qualified OB's and not family practice residents. Everyone laughs at my issues with them seeing me naked, but have you ever worked a code at 3 AM with someone who has had their hand in your hoo-ha???

So I laid there. For 2 hours. Amusing myself by listening to the sounds from the next bed over in triage. The OB nurses had told me there are women out there who fake labor/ contractions. The idea was so bizarre to me. Who would do that, and how??? My friend C said they bare down like having a bowel movement, and it makes the toco jump, but you can tell between it and a real contraction, that real contractions are like rounded waves (she showed me mine on my strip as evidence) and that the fake kind were spiky and went straight up and down. As someone who has contracted uncontrollably through 2 pregnancies, this seems so bizarre to me, but apparently women get sick of being preggers and do this to try to get admitted. After hours, the doctor declares failure to progress, and they either get pitocin or a c-section. Well...The woman in the next bed over was a faker. 37 weeks pregnant and wanting to have her baby. She was asleep, and I could hear her snoring the entire time, until her nurse went behind the curtain to tell her that she was not in true labor and would be going home. Then the tears started, and the fake grunting and heavy breathing. I saw her husband leave the room, and when she was in there by herself, the noises stopped and I heard snoring again. As soon as the husband was back, she started up the act again. Unreal!

So my nurse comes in after she has talked to my doctor, and since it is me, they gave me the choice: stay and have them try to stop the contractions or, so long as I hadn't dilated, go home and call/ come back if anything changed. I knew if I stayed and the contractions stopped, they would just start up again sooner or later. Only a handful of them actually hurt, so I said I wanted to go home. The faker heard. And wanted to know why she didn't have the same choice, because she wanted to stay.

And that is how I was able to sleep in my own bed last night. But I left the hospital stumped. The faker was taken to her room while I was signing my discharge papers, after having thrown a tantrum. And it drove me crazy. She'll probably have her baby this weekend, and I hope it's okay. People just don't realize...

24 wks, 3 days: Terror and Good Coworkers

Sunday morning, I was trying to sleep the day away in preparation for a night shift that night. I had to run a one-hour strip on my monitor like I do everyday, so I plugged myself in and let it do the work while I dozed. I remember it beeping, and in a sleepy haze, handing it to J to transmit the recording to the company. A few minutes later, J is waking me up, thrusting a phone at my face. It's the home health nurse, and she wants to know my pulse. So I wake up and count it for her. But then I can't go back to sleep. So I get up. Errrrr, I tried to get up.

What happened next was so quick it was a blur. I remember my toes getting caught on a rug beside the bed. I know I sailed through the air, landing flat on my belly, my head just inches from the closed bedroom door. J and E both barge in, wondering what the awful sound was, only to find me there, still on the floor. It wasn't a big deal at that instant. Pregnancy makes the most graceful of us become foddering and clumsy. When I was pregnant with E, my favorite pasttime was falling down stairs. We've since joked about it because it happened so often that I would automatically shout out "I'm okay!" from my landing at the bottom, to keep J from panicking. This hasn't happened during this pregnancy. Or at least it hadn't.

J was frantic. He rushed to get E dressed, and was running around the house like a mad man, explaining to E that Mommy would have to go to the hospital. I kept telling him I didn't, that I was fine. I just felt like I was being punched in the stomach, but it wasn't the excruciating pain that marks a placental abruption, which is what one would worry about in a time like that. (In truth, I don't know what it feels like to be punched in the stomach, but I imagine it to feel like I did!) I called my doctor more to appease J than I did out of concern.

The doctor calmly asked my blood type, and told me to go to the hospital, where they would be expecting me. He explained that they would do some blood work and just check things out. So we went.

They drew labs, something called a KB Test. I had no idea what this was, but I was okay and the baby seemed to be okay. As a matter of fact, I giggled at the sounds of him swimming around in there. He was happy as a lark. They said the test would take about 2 hours to come back. Okay. Whatever. But of course, this is me we are talking about. I should wear one of those "Hello, my name is..." stickers afixed to my chest, but instead of A, for the time being, it should instead say "Obstetrical Anomaly". Of course I was contracting and of course the nurse had to report it to my doctor. And thus my relationship with magnesium sulfate (for this pregnancy, anyway) started this past weekend. The poor nurse didn't even have to tell me what she was going to do. She came back from speaking with the doc, and just frowned. I knew what that meant. "He ordered mag.", I said. She just nodded.

If you have never been on mag sulfate, it is hard to describe. The minute the stuff starts hitting you, you feel like you have an intense sunburn, with heat trapped beneath your skin, unable to escape. Some people get weak. Some people vomit. I don't do either of those, but just feel miserable, generally. And hot. Very, very hot. But I've been down this road before. I know it is the big dog for preterm labor. I was on and off of it for a month with E. It is, by all rights, familiar territory for me. I consent to it, but tell them I want to able to eat. I am starving, after all. They let J come back to see me, and I give him a Mickey D's order, and send him running for it.

That is when it happened. Right then, when my husband was in some silly drive-thru getting me a stupid cheeseburger. Every nurse on staff in L &D (or so it seemed, as there were 5 of them) was suddenly at my bedside, clutching at my wrist to check my pulse, feeling on my belly to find Zachary. His heart rate had decelerrated to a point where they could not distinguish between his slowed heartrate and my quickend one from the brethine pump. But my time in my profession, where I have been called on to resuscitate newborns has taught me enough. I knew a decel like that meant fetal distress. I was hysterical. J was getting a damned cheeseburger for me. And they were muttering sentences about "delivery". And me? I wasn't rational at that point. I got on the phone, in the midst of that flurry of activity, and called my department at the hospital to let them know I would not be there. I'm glad I did.

I don't know how long it took, but before I knew it, as I was sitting there with the nurses thinking Zachary was seriously in jeopardy, 3 calm and smiling faces popped up from behind the curtain. My coworkers. To check on me. The one I had spoken with on the phone had heard my tone of voice and had called in the troops to come and make sure I was okay. God bless those girls. They calmed me down and reassured me until J was there again.

Zachary was okay. Whatever had caused the decel went away and his heart rate picked back up. I was admitted on my mag sulfate drip. But for the first time in all of this, I really truly had to think that my baby was at risk. For a few minutes, I had to think that this was not just me being me, contracting like I do. This has been going on for over 5 weeks now, but I took for granted that I would deliver a healthy baby in the end, like happened with E. This experience showed me that nothing is a given.