The Waiting Game

So, tomorrow I'll be 37 weeks! That's considered full-term! Which is great since I went into pre-term labor at 34 weeks. Yep, we almost had a premature baby. So about 3 weeks ago I woke up on a Saturday morning and was having some back pains in my lower back. They were really uncomfortable and kind of rhythmic, it was really weird and they weren't going away after a few hours of waiting it out and laying down. I remember I had read something about getting lower back pain like this when your pregnant, so I looked it up because I couldn't remember what I had read about it. Well, turns out it is a sign of pre-term labor! What?! Yeah, so I started getting worried and convinced David that we should go to the hospital and get it checked out at labor and delivery. David didn't want to go, he thought I was overreacting and being silly, but he humored me and we headed off to the hospital.

When we arrived they let me in and took me to a room and had me change into a hospital gown. They put monitors on my stomach, one to monitor the baby's heartbeat and one to monitor contractions. They did a cervical exam to see if I was dilated at all, took a urine sample and then just had me lay down. I wasn't dilated at all in my cervical exam, but I was having a lot of uterine irritability and I started to have some pretty regular contractions, probably every 2 to 5 minutes apart. After about an hour or so they came in to check my cervix again to see if there was any change, well, there was, I went from not being dilated at all to a 1+! So they kept me there and watched me for a while longer and pumped me full of meds to try and stop my contractions. I hated those meds because they lowered my blood pressure a ton and skyrocketed my heart-rate! At one point my heart-rate was up to 150 beats per minute! I was super shaky and it felt really weird. And the meds weren't really doing anything to stop or slow contractions. David and I were just watching tv and chilling the whole time, it was pretty boring, but it was ok. My back was hurting me the whole time, but I didn't want to take anything for pain because it wasn't unbearable or anything and I'm pretty used to my back hurting, so I just dealt with it. Well, after we'd been there for about 3 or 4 hours and giving me all that medication they wanted to do one more cervical exam before deciding to send me home for the night. Well, the nurse came in and checked me again and I was dilated to a 3 and 80% effaced! Holy cow! That's when they decided to admit me and told us we were going to have a baby that night! Yeah, didn't expect to hear that! It made us a little nervous, but the nurses and doctors were really reassuring about the fact that I was already 34 weeks along, which I guess is kind of a mile marker in pregnancy, because if a baby is born at 34 weeks she may be in the NICU for a few weeks to monitor her ability to suck, eat, gain weight, breath effectively on her own, and maintain her own body temperature, but she will have no long term problems, so we weren't really too worried, we just felt peaceful about the whole thing and knew that if our baby girl was coming that night, then everything would be just fine.

Well, they kept me all night, I decided to take the pain killers so that I could try to get some sleep, but although it helped with the pain, I wasn't able to sleep at all! They gave me a steroid shot in my hip to help with the development of the baby's lungs, so that was good. What was weird about the whole thing though was that overnight my contractions basically stopped altogether and when they checked me again in the morning I was still at a 3 and 80% and had had no more change. They kept me until about noon and after I still didn't have any more change they decided to send me home! Weird huh? To progress that much in such a short amount of time and then just completely stop! Well, it happened! They sent me home on bed rest, I had to quit my job a whole month before I had planned to and stay home, in bed. Well, it hasn't been too bad, I mostly have just watched shows on tv and played Nintendo 64. Somehow I have managed to keep myself pretty entertained. I learned why they want me to stay down, because on days that I try to get up and do stuff I start to have a lot more contractions and it gets really uncomfortable. I think they are mostly just braxton hicks contractions because as soon as I sit down again they usually subside, they aren't regular, and they aren't terribly painful, just a little painful and really uncomfortable, but they don't get increasingly more painful.

35 weeks.

35 weeks 6 days. Even though I'm on bed rest, I couldn't miss my best friend's baby shower! Her due date is the day before mine, March 21st.

36 weeks, didn't think I'd make it this far!

Well, ever since they sent me home on bed rest we have been expecting our little girl to arrive any day! You get kind of excited when they tell you that you're going to have a baby that night and then you get impatient when 3 weeks later you still don't have one! I mean it's good because now she will be full-term and shouldn't have any health issues, so she should be able to come straight home with us! I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow, so since I will be full-term tomorrow, I'm going to ask if I still have to be on bed rest, and hopefully they'll let me off and grant me some more freedom.

David and I are so ready for our baby girl to get here! We just want to play with her and cuddle with her and give her all sorts of lovin'! She is going to be one spoiled little girl! We still think she can come at any time, the only thing that we're worried about now is that David left town this morning and won't be back until Sunday morning... So she can't come until Sunday afternoon at the earliest! We have been really nervous about him leaving town because we haven't had the baby yet, so we've just been praying really hard that we won't have her until after he's back. He flew to Indiana to visit Purdue University, he got accepted there and they paid to fly him out there for the weekend to meet with the professors and other graduate students and tour the labs. He'll have the opportunity to meet one-on-one with the professors he's interested in working with, and hopefully he will get offered some funding to work with some of them. I'm super proud of him and I know he'll do great this weekend and impress the snot out of Purdue. I miss him already though, this will be the first night since we've been married that we will spend apart. My mom is coming up to "babysit" me (because apparently nobody thinks I can be alone) and keep me company while he's gone, but I still can't wait until he gets back! And then I can start looking forward to our baby again instead of being paranoid that she'll try to come while her daddy is out of town.