Another weekend marked with a hospital visit!

Yesterday morning I had an appointment scheduled at the OB office. They took another fetal fibronectin test, and checked everything to make sure I wasn’t dilating or effacing (I wasn’t). My OB office closes at noon on Fridays, so Sue said she’d have someone from the hospital call me with the results of the test when they came in. She wants me to stay off my feet as much as possible, but did mention that if I’ve had a day with slow/light contractions and am really going nuts, I can go out to get some dinner, or go to a movie. PHEW! A reprieve!

So, I waited all day for the phone call. I was feeling pain in my lower regions and the contractions were really hurting. I was sitting or lying down for most of the day, with the exception of the time spent on the caramels (which involved a lot of sitting and waiting for it to cook down anyway). Tim arrived home at 6:30, and finally my phone rang.  I was told that the test came back negative, which was a relief. However, then the doctor asked about my contractions and when I explained how I was feeling, she asked me to come into the hospital to be monitored.  The contractions weren’t too frequent but they were REALLY strong. I was very annoyed at having to go back in, especially because Tim had a migraine and I wanted him to rest and relax.

We arrived at the hospital at about 7pm, and they hooked me up to the monitor. I was only there for fifteen minutes before they saw how strong the contractions were, and immediately they decided to give me a shot of terbutaline, which works faster than the Procardia. I’d had some the first time I went to the hospital. It makes you REALLY jittery, like you’ve had way too much caffeine to compensate for an all-nighter. It slowed my contractions, but they wanted to keep watching me for awhile. They did some other tests/cultures and a quick ultrasound to check on Marco. He’s perfectly healthy, but they commented on how low he was sitting again, and apparently they don’t like it much. :/ ME EITHER!  Tim and I were starving at this point (it was 8:30pm), so the nurse brought me some tomato soup, and Tim raided the vending machines (cafeteria closed at 6:30pm, worse luck).  I don’t think the frozen chimichanga and bagel dog he scarfed down was exactly good for his tummy, but he enjoyed his purchases. We watched some episodes of ‘House’ and I tried to imagine that Hugh was my doctor. I swear I’d be a verryyy cooperative patient…

Marco’s position is the cause of all the stabbing pain lower down, so I have no option but to just deal with it. They were going to keep me there overnight, since I was still having some small contractions; but Tim was in bad shape and I convinced them I’d sleep much better in my own bed. Luckily, they decided it was alright for me to go home, but they gave me one Procardia to take if the contractions picked up again. My doctor is going to call in a prescription of it to my pharmacy, and I will take one every 4-6 hours if my contractions get up to 4 or more per hour. Tim and I finally got home at 11pm and we went to bed (but not before snacking on a few more sea salt caramels, tee hee). It took me a long time to fall asleep, but finally sometime after midnight I made it into dreamland.

Unfortunately, I’ve been awake since 5:30am. I was really hoping to get a good night’s sleep, but it was not to be. Timmy is still sleeping and I hope that he is feeling much better.

I just have to make it a little less than 3 weeks and Marco can be born safely. Come on, dude! My uterus is clearly confused (Micaela officially coined the term ‘confuterus’ for me) about the stage of pregnancy I’m in; fortunately, my cervix is not responding. Hope it stays that way for the next few weeks!