So here I am.... uprooted from home, and placed in this twin size white bed....bored.
Friday morning I had a regular checkup with my awesome OB doctor, Jane Brunner. I had a pretty full morning planned with my glucose test, an ultrasound, and a checkup. Jason, the boys and I were packed up and ready to head out to Michigan after my appointment...All we needed was the "pass" from the Doc. :)
Dr Jane decided maybe she would check my cervix for the first time so that she could be comfortable with me going to Michigan for the next two weeks...
"Um, you are 75% effaced and 1cm dilated." She tells me. For those who are not familiar with effacement and dilation, You are in full blown labor when you are 100% effaced and 10cm dilated. So she proceeds to tell me that she better get ahold of the perinatal docs and see what they think... So I hang around the area for the next 30 minutes, (having lunch with my sister Jamie Lynn), and Jane calls me to say, "they are waiting for you at the office to check you out themselves". At this point Jane gave me the notion that I probably WOULD NOT be going to Michigan... *sigh*
So I head over to the perinatal office for them to basically do the same thing my doc just did, but the only difference here was, they said, "your going upstairs (Their office is a part of the hospital I will deliver at) to be on bed rest for a while..."
My heart sank. Caught off guard. Not planning this today. Within minutes, plans changed. I'm not even going home to prepare for this.
So the nurse wheels me upstairs into an antepartum room and says "welcome to your new home for a while".
By this point, I am beginning to feel overwhelmed, I had been in contact with Jason over the phone with what was happening and the next phone call I made to him, I just broke down.... not sure why.... just cried.
Out of the blue? yes. I have not had any pain or contractions at all. How could I possibly be in pre-term labor? That was the extent of it....I was in preterm labor without even knowing it and we needed to stop this now.
So...I was strapped up to the baby monitors right away and stayed in those all day and night. Things at this point are fine except that I need to be off my feet and just in bed.
Since that day (last Friday), Nothing has changed. Nothing has progressed, everything is at a stand still. I can't recover what has happened, but we can certainly try and stop the preterm laboring process. And that is why I am here.
I sit here in the hospital instead of at home because at this point with me being only 30 weeks along, if I start having any substantial contractions or labor (without knowing it) they can stop the labor so that the babies stay inside and continue to grow... If I go home where I can't be strapped to the monitors a couple times a day to be sure of things, then progressing into pre-term labor would go unnoticed and reach a point of no return where they would not be able to stop labor and babies would be born WAY prematurely....
So here I sit. Looking for things to do. Thanking the Lord that I had an appointment the morning before we left. Had I gone to Michigan without that checkup, I probably would have gone into labor there, delivered two baby boys and been hanging out at the NICU for a couple months in Michigan.
Thank you JESUS for looking out for this growing family!
My new hobby? Taking care of these babies inside the womb.
