We had been living in the hospital for over a week under a consistent routine. I was taking my ibuprofen every 6 hours, the progesterone suppository each night before I went to bed. It was not very exciting...but the plan was to go home on Saturday, November 28th...when I reached a gestational age of 26 weeks. As long as everything was good in an ultrasound on Friday morning, we would go home.
Friday morning, I woke up around 7:30...which is sleeping in for my regular life. I thought I should probably start to rally, given that the day-time nurse would be in at any time. The nursing staff works 12 hour shifts and the shift changes are at 7pm and 7am. Every day between 7:30 and 8:00am, and 7:30 and 8:00pm, a new nurse comes into my room and checks all the usual vitals, asks me a series of questions about my bodily functions, and hooks me up to the baby monitor for a half hour to listen to the heart beat. It is a routine that I have become accustomed to. This morning was a little different...
Laying there, I was in heaven listening to the sweet sound of our baby's heart beat and the fun rumble of the monitor that happens each time the baby moves...and our baby moves often. I had grown to look forward to these times of listening to the baby. It is as though the bond between us strengthened with each beat.
About 15 minutes into the routine 30 minute monitoring, I felt my tummy tighten...I was having a contraction. It wasn't painful...they never were, but this one definitely caught my attention. As I was coming down from the contraction...so did the baby's heart rate. It went from 158 beats per minute, to 140s, to 120s...all the way down to 105. It then began to slowly climb back up. Within a couple minutes, the nurse came back in and from the look on her face, I knew that she was concerned too. "Did you see the heart rate drop?" she asked. I told her that I did see it and asked what it means when it follows a contraction. She indicated that she didn't see a contraction, but that the monitors don't always pick them up. She told me to trust what I felt over the monitor.
Apparently, it can be especially hard to get the contraction monitor in good placement when I also have the baby monitor on because my belly is so small. (It is funny to think of my belly as small right now...I guess it is all a matter of perspective.) "Well, it is a little concerning that the baby's heart rate would decelerate like that, so we are going to keep you on the monitor for a while." I soon learn that "a while" actually means for at least 24 hours. They wanted to watch the baby and make sure that it was just a fluke. If they didn't see any more decelerations, there was still a chance that we would be able to go home on Saturday. No such luck...
With a few more decelerations on Friday and 4 over a 6 hour period on Saturday morning, the high risk pregnancy doctor didn't feel comfortable with the information they had. She wanted to see more data. They did admit that they weren't sure if it was "normal" or not. It is not common that a woman at 25-26 weeks is on 24 hour baby monitoring. So for all they know, it is caused by the position of the baby, possibly pinching the umbilical cord, and it isn't a big deal. But the ruling was that I would be monitored for another 24 hours. If the decelerations decreased in frequency...and baby looked good in another ultrasound on Sunday morning...there was a chance that I could go home on Sunday.
Having both monitors on was a little more of a pain than just the one. It meant that there were two cords that I had to unplug each time I got up to go to the bathroom. And two cords that I had to plug back in and reset. It also meant that I wasn't going to sleep very well because every time the baby moved and left the range of the monitor, the nurse would come in to readjust the monitor. Let me tell you...there is nothing like waking up to a nurse that comes in and wakes you up by adding more goop to the monitor pad and rubbing it all over your abdomen until she found the heart beat again. My favorite part was when she told me that there was no need for me to do anything to help and that I should just try to keep sleeping. Yeah...I am sure that most anyone can sleep with a stranger rubbing a plastic disk around your entire belly. It is not awkward AT ALL!.
Day 10 in the hospital started as they all had. I woke up around 7am and patiently waited for the nurse to come in. She did and completed the normal checks. All was good so far. Around 9:15, Dr. Francois came in and said that she felt confident that the decelerations were just because of position and as long as the baby looked good, she would feel good about me going home. I withheld any excitement. I didn't want to get my hopes up. After all...10 days ago I was admitted for 24 hour monitoring. She left us to wait for the ultrasound.
Within a half hour the orderly was there to take me down to the ultrasound. This was my fourth ultrasound in 10 days. The 3rd one that I had had in the hospital. However, this is the first time that I wasn't taken by gurnee. I actually got to ride in a wheelchair instead. In my first entry of this blog, I spoke of the horrible feeling I had having to sit in a wheelchair. But by day 10 and a couple field trips by gurnee...a wheelchair didn't seem so bad.
Don, the tech, is a super nice man who made every effort for us to see the screen, and explain what he was doing and what we were seeing. His assignments; 1) measure my cervix...still 1.5 centimeters. CHECK! 2) Measure the fluid in my uterus...still looking good. CHECK! 3) Do a Doppler reading (yep...like the weather) of the baby's heart and the umbilical cord. He thought it looked good...but he wasn't 100% sure what the flow level was supposed to be for a baby at this stage...so it wasn't something we could check off yet. We were taken back up to our room to continue the waiting game.
Just before noon, our nurse came in. She had a big smile on her face when she told me that she shared the results with the doctor and I was being released to go home. It would still take a while to get the paperwork together. But it would also take a little while to pack up all the stuff in the room that had made our temporary residence a little more home-y. About 2:30, the nurse came in with my release papers, the list of things to watch for and respond to if they should happen, and my marching orders for bedrest at home.
By about 2:45 I was in the passenger seat of my car and Nick was driving us home...
Friday morning, I woke up around 7:30...which is sleeping in for my regular life. I thought I should probably start to rally, given that the day-time nurse would be in at any time. The nursing staff works 12 hour shifts and the shift changes are at 7pm and 7am. Every day between 7:30 and 8:00am, and 7:30 and 8:00pm, a new nurse comes into my room and checks all the usual vitals, asks me a series of questions about my bodily functions, and hooks me up to the baby monitor for a half hour to listen to the heart beat. It is a routine that I have become accustomed to. This morning was a little different...
Laying there, I was in heaven listening to the sweet sound of our baby's heart beat and the fun rumble of the monitor that happens each time the baby moves...and our baby moves often. I had grown to look forward to these times of listening to the baby. It is as though the bond between us strengthened with each beat.
About 15 minutes into the routine 30 minute monitoring, I felt my tummy tighten...I was having a contraction. It wasn't painful...they never were, but this one definitely caught my attention. As I was coming down from the contraction...so did the baby's heart rate. It went from 158 beats per minute, to 140s, to 120s...all the way down to 105. It then began to slowly climb back up. Within a couple minutes, the nurse came back in and from the look on her face, I knew that she was concerned too. "Did you see the heart rate drop?" she asked. I told her that I did see it and asked what it means when it follows a contraction. She indicated that she didn't see a contraction, but that the monitors don't always pick them up. She told me to trust what I felt over the monitor.
Apparently, it can be especially hard to get the contraction monitor in good placement when I also have the baby monitor on because my belly is so small. (It is funny to think of my belly as small right now...I guess it is all a matter of perspective.) "Well, it is a little concerning that the baby's heart rate would decelerate like that, so we are going to keep you on the monitor for a while." I soon learn that "a while" actually means for at least 24 hours. They wanted to watch the baby and make sure that it was just a fluke. If they didn't see any more decelerations, there was still a chance that we would be able to go home on Saturday. No such luck...
With a few more decelerations on Friday and 4 over a 6 hour period on Saturday morning, the high risk pregnancy doctor didn't feel comfortable with the information they had. She wanted to see more data. They did admit that they weren't sure if it was "normal" or not. It is not common that a woman at 25-26 weeks is on 24 hour baby monitoring. So for all they know, it is caused by the position of the baby, possibly pinching the umbilical cord, and it isn't a big deal. But the ruling was that I would be monitored for another 24 hours. If the decelerations decreased in frequency...and baby looked good in another ultrasound on Sunday morning...there was a chance that I could go home on Sunday.
Having both monitors on was a little more of a pain than just the one. It meant that there were two cords that I had to unplug each time I got up to go to the bathroom. And two cords that I had to plug back in and reset. It also meant that I wasn't going to sleep very well because every time the baby moved and left the range of the monitor, the nurse would come in to readjust the monitor. Let me tell you...there is nothing like waking up to a nurse that comes in and wakes you up by adding more goop to the monitor pad and rubbing it all over your abdomen until she found the heart beat again. My favorite part was when she told me that there was no need for me to do anything to help and that I should just try to keep sleeping. Yeah...I am sure that most anyone can sleep with a stranger rubbing a plastic disk around your entire belly. It is not awkward AT ALL!.
Day 10 in the hospital started as they all had. I woke up around 7am and patiently waited for the nurse to come in. She did and completed the normal checks. All was good so far. Around 9:15, Dr. Francois came in and said that she felt confident that the decelerations were just because of position and as long as the baby looked good, she would feel good about me going home. I withheld any excitement. I didn't want to get my hopes up. After all...10 days ago I was admitted for 24 hour monitoring. She left us to wait for the ultrasound.
Within a half hour the orderly was there to take me down to the ultrasound. This was my fourth ultrasound in 10 days. The 3rd one that I had had in the hospital. However, this is the first time that I wasn't taken by gurnee. I actually got to ride in a wheelchair instead. In my first entry of this blog, I spoke of the horrible feeling I had having to sit in a wheelchair. But by day 10 and a couple field trips by gurnee...a wheelchair didn't seem so bad.
Don, the tech, is a super nice man who made every effort for us to see the screen, and explain what he was doing and what we were seeing. His assignments; 1) measure my cervix...still 1.5 centimeters. CHECK! 2) Measure the fluid in my uterus...still looking good. CHECK! 3) Do a Doppler reading (yep...like the weather) of the baby's heart and the umbilical cord. He thought it looked good...but he wasn't 100% sure what the flow level was supposed to be for a baby at this stage...so it wasn't something we could check off yet. We were taken back up to our room to continue the waiting game.
Just before noon, our nurse came in. She had a big smile on her face when she told me that she shared the results with the doctor and I was being released to go home. It would still take a while to get the paperwork together. But it would also take a little while to pack up all the stuff in the room that had made our temporary residence a little more home-y. About 2:30, the nurse came in with my release papers, the list of things to watch for and respond to if they should happen, and my marching orders for bedrest at home.
By about 2:45 I was in the passenger seat of my car and Nick was driving us home...
Yippee. I am so proud of you and how strong you seem to be. We are fighters! You are a very strong woman...I wish I was half as tough as you. I will keep checking up on you. Let me know what you need.
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