January10

On Tuesday night, Phil and I were sitting in our breastfeeding class at St. Ann's, watching a video on different breastfeeding holds. Suddenly I had the worst "braxton-hicks" contraction that I've had so far. I've had these off and on, but for the first time this one was pretty painful. It was all I could do not to make any noise while it was going on - it was so much stronger than the previous braxton-hicks's that I've had, it just really took me by surprise. It seemed like everything in that area was squeezing at the same time. Pretty soon after that, we had our break and I went to the bathroom and felt much better. The rest of the night, though, I still wasn't feeling all that well. Yesterday morning I woke up and it felt like I was having menstrual cramps. Just an uncomfortable squeezing, over and over again. I started to get a little worried about it, but I couldn't come up with any kind of pattern (it just mostly seemed to be there just about constantly) so I thought, I don't want to be a baby about it, I'll just call around lunchtime if this is still going on. I figured it might even be really bad gas or something like that. At about noon I called and left a message with Dr. Teague's nurse. I didn't even ask to have her paged because I didn't think it was a big deal. At about 12:30 she called me back. She asked me to describe what I was feeling, and asked if I had done all the first interventions of drinking a bunch of water and putting my feet up, then drinking a bunch more water and going for a walk to see if the pain went away, and I told her I'd done all that. After looking at my chart, she saw that Dr. Teague had written last week that my cervix was still closed, but it was soft. (Dr. Teague hadn't told me it had softened, she just told me it was still closed.) So the nurse then told me to get thee to the hospital. (Okay, she didn't use those exact words but I just felt the need to invoke Shakespeare all of a sudden.) She told me to go to St. Ann's right away and go on up to Labor and Delivery, and she said she'd call the hospital and let them know I was coming. I called Phil and told him to meet me there, and I left work. When we got to the hospital, we found out (I'm glad now and not when it was really critical!) that our registration paperwork that we had sent in a couple months ago still had not made it into the system! So I had to stand there, in pain, answering all the questions to get registered that I had already filled out on the form. After getting checked in, I was led to a room where I guess all the women going into labor went to get checked out first. I had to strip down to my underwear and put on one of those lovely butt-bearing gowns. I told Phil that I want to get a nightgown for my hospital bag. Yuck. I was told to go to the bathroom (which was good, I couldn't hardly hold it anymore anyway) and give them a urine sample to check for infection. Then I headed back to my bed and got hooked up to the fetal monitor, and the nurse took my urine sample away to get tested. After glancing at it quickly, she said it looked like I was plenty hydrated (yeah, I'd been drinking water almost constantly!) but it looked pretty cloudy. So it sounded like I might have a UTI. The fetal monitor showed definite peaks for each of my contractions, and as Phil watched the heart rate and what printed out on the paper, it was corresponding with when I felt the "squeezing" get stronger each time. When I felt okay, her heart rate stayed around 140 to 145, but every time I "peaked", it would go up to around 160 or even sometimes around 175 or so. What printed out on the paper was exactly what we learned the early stage labor looked like during our childbirth class on Monday! Of course, here I am hooked up to this monitor in the hospital, and the thought crosses my mind 'Hmm, I wonder if they would let me have some of that monitor print out for my scrapbook?" You know you have gone nuts when... Anyway, I didn't ask. But I definitely thought about it. :) The nurse came back and checked it out, and told us some of the contractions were lasting for around 30 seconds, some for 60 seconds, and some for 90 seconds. And they were coming pretty much all the time too, just like I had been feeling all morning. While we were still waiting for the urine test to come back, she called Dr. Teague and let her know what was going on, and Dr. Teague told her to check my cervix. Oww oww oww oww, this lady was MUCH less gentle than Dr. Teague!!! I was surprised to learn, though, that I had now opened up to 2 cm dilation. So those contractions were certainly doing something! She told me I'd have to get a shot of Turbuline, which would hopefully stop the contractions. And then my test results came back too. Turns out that I did have a UTI; the nurse said I had "a lot" of sediment in there! (To which I responded, "I promise, I really don't chew on rocks and sand") So they hooked me up to an IV (another ouch) to give me fluids and a dose of antibiotics, and then she prepared the Turbuline shot. I had the IV in my left hand, and she put the Turbuline in my right arm. THAT one REALLY hurt!! The needle itself felt like a bad bee sting, or as the nurse described it, like being bitten by fire ants, but then when the medicine went in, it burned SO bad. Phil said he was very proud of me, I was really handling everything so well. (I even really surprised myself, and I hope this is an indication of things to come for the birth. I've always been such a wimp when it comes to pain and hospitals and such, but the attitude I had yesterday was that this was just something I had to do, and I knew it was good for the baby, so I just went with it. Of course, I just experienced the early labor contractions, but still, I feel like now at least I know a little of what to expect and I'm now feeling a little more secure with how I'll react to labor.) So anyway, the Turbuline started working right away. She said it was like a dose of straight adrenaline, and the baby got a big dose of it too! She started rolling around like crazy, and my whole body started shaking as the drug started to work. But on the plus side, I could tell my contractions were starting to subside. Things started calming down (well, not the baby, she kept rolling around for quite awhile longer) and I had to just lie there and let the antibiotic pump into my body. It seems the contractions were caused by the UTI: my bladder is irritated, which started irritating my uterus, which caused the contractions to start, which caused me to dilate. So I (well, the nurse or Phil) had to keep unhooking me from the monitor and walk with me down the hall (with all the monitor cords and the IV bags attached to me, and trying to keep my backside covered with the open gown) to the bathroom every time I started to get the feeling that I had to pee. Going to the bathroom has never been such an ordeal before! At about 4:30, the nurse gave me another dose (a pill this time, thank goodness) of the anti-contraction medication, and they gave me prescriptions for that (actually, it's the other form of the same drug, called Brethine) and a really strong antibiotic (I only take one every 12 hours!) and they said I could go.

We left and then went to get something to eat. Neither Phil nor I had eaten all day, because we had gone to the hospital right at lunch time and it was now almost 5. But at least I had been pumped full of sugar water from the IV, so I wasn't feeling that hungry. Phil was really wanting food by then though! So we went to what has become my addiction, B.D.'s Mongolian BBQ. It was hard standing in line to get the food though, I still felt so weak from everything that had gone on all day. After a bowl and a half, I was ready to go home and sit with my feet up the rest of the night. As the night went on, I still had a few contractions here and there (and I've had a few today still too) but at least it hasn't been anything like yesterday. I've got an appointment scheduled for 1:30 today to see Dr. Teague, so hopefully I'll know more about what I need to do from here after that. I assume I can keep working because I just sit here with my feet up anyway, but I'm not going to push myself. One of the hardest things right now is that whenever I take the Brethine to control the contractions, after it starts working I start getting the shakes again really bad. I have to take it every six hours: I started at about 4 yesterday, and have now taken it at 10pm, again at 4 am, and then at 10 am. Within about an hour to an hour and a half after I've taken it, my hands start to shake like a leaf. I'm just kind of worried that I'll be taking my next dose at 4, just in time to drive home from work during rush hour traffic about an hour or so later! Who knows though, my appointment is for 1:30 today, so I don't yet know what my schedule will be like the rest of the day.



	January 10, 2002 Week 34 The good news is, when I left the hospital yesterday, the baby I brought home was still snuggled in my tummy and not my arms. As much as I want that, it's still too early. The bad news is I went into early labor yesterday. I'm now on medication to keep away contractions, and I'm dilated 2 cm, so I'm just hoping the drugs work and Natalie has a little more time to cook before she makes her appearance! Just on Monday night at our first childbirth class, we learned about early stage labor, and then yesterday I got to experience that in reality. I guess maybe Natalie likes hands-on learning and not just theory. Okay, I'll start at the beginning now. On Tuesday night, Phil and I were sitting in our breastfeeding class at St. Ann's, watching a video on different breastfeeding holds. Suddenly I had the worst "braxton-hicks" contraction that I've had so far. I've had these off and on, but for the first time this one was pretty painful. It was all I could do not to make any noise while it was going on - it was so much stronger than the previous braxton-hicks's that I've had, it just really took me by surprise. It seemed like everything in that area was squeezing at the same time. Pretty soon after that, we had our break and I went to the bathroom and felt much better. The rest of the night, though, I still wasn't feeling all that well. Yesterday morning I woke up and it felt like I was having menstrual cramps. Just an uncomfortable squeezing, over and over again. I started to get a little worried about it, but I couldn't come up with any kind of pattern (it just mostly seemed to be there just about constantly) so I thought, I don't want to be a baby about it, I'll just call around lunchtime if this is still going on. I figured it might even be really bad gas or something like that. At about noon I called and left a message with Dr. Teague's nurse. I didn't even ask to have her paged because I didn't think it was a big deal. At about 12:30 she called me back. She asked me to describe what I was feeling, and asked if I had done all the first interventions of drinking a bunch of water and putting my feet up, then drinking a bunch more water and going for a walk to see if the pain went away, and I told her I'd done all that. After looking at my chart, she saw that Dr. Teague had written last week that my cervix was still closed, but it was soft. (Dr. Teague hadn't told me it had softened, she just told me it was still closed.) So the nurse then told me to get thee to the hospital. (Okay, she didn't use those exact words but I just felt the need to invoke Shakespeare all of a sudden.) She told me to go to St. Ann's right away and go on up to Labor and Delivery, and she said she'd call the hospital and let them know I was coming. I called Phil and told him to meet me there, and I left work. When we got to the hospital, we found out (I'm glad now and not when it was really critical!) that our registration paperwork that we had sent in a couple months ago still had not made it into the system! So I had to stand there, in pain, answering all the questions to get registered that I had already filled out on the form. After getting checked in, I was led to a room where I guess all the women going into labor went to get checked out first. I had to strip down to my underwear and put on one of those lovely butt-bearing gowns. I told Phil that I want to get a nightgown for my hospital bag. Yuck. I was told to go to the bathroom (which was good, I couldn't hardly hold it anymore anyway) and give them a urine sample to check for infection. Then I headed back to my bed and got hooked up to the fetal monitor, and the nurse took my urine sample away to get tested. After glancing at it quickly, she said it looked like I was plenty hydrated (yeah, I'd been drinking water almost constantly!) but it looked pretty cloudy. So it sounded like I might have a UTI. The fetal monitor showed definite peaks for each of my contractions, and as Phil watched the heart rate and what printed out on the paper, it was corresponding with when I felt the "squeezing" get stronger each time. When I felt okay, her heart rate stayed around 140 to 145, but every time I "peaked", it would go up to around 160 or even sometimes around 175 or so. What printed out on the paper was exactly what we learned the early stage labor looked like during our childbirth class on Monday! Of course, here I am hooked up to this monitor in the hospital, and the thought crosses my mind 'Hmm, I wonder if they would let me have some of that monitor print out for my scrapbook?" You know you have gone nuts when... Anyway, I didn't ask. But I definitely thought about it. :) The nurse came back and checked it out, and told us some of the contractions were lasting for around 30 seconds, some for 60 seconds, and some for 90 seconds. And they were coming pretty much all the time too, just like I had been feeling all morning. While we were still waiting for the urine test to come back, she called Dr. Teague and let her know what was going on, and Dr. Teague told her to check my cervix. Oww oww oww oww, this lady was MUCH less gentle than Dr. Teague!!! I was surprised to learn, though, that I had now opened up to 2 cm dilation. So those contractions were certainly doing something! She told me I'd have to get a shot of Turbuline, which would hopefully stop the contractions. And then my test results came back too. Turns out that I did have a UTI; the nurse said I had "a lot" of sediment in there! (To which I responded, "I promise, I really don't chew on rocks and sand") So they hooked me up to an IV (another ouch) to give me fluids and a dose of antibiotics, and then she prepared the Turbuline shot. I had the IV in my left hand, and she put the Turbuline in my right arm. THAT one REALLY hurt!! The needle itself felt like a bad bee sting, or as the nurse described it, like being bitten by fire ants, but then when the medicine went in, it burned SO bad. Phil said he was very proud of me, I was really handling everything so well. (I even really surprised myself, and I hope this is an indication of things to come for the birth. I've always been such a wimp when it comes to pain and hospitals and such, but the attitude I had yesterday was that this was just something I had to do, and I knew it was good for the baby, so I just went with it. Of course, I just experienced the early labor contractions, but still, I feel like now at least I know a little of what to expect and I'm now feeling a little more secure with how I'll react to labor.) So anyway, the Turbuline started working right away. She said it was like a dose of straight adrenaline, and the baby got a big dose of it too! She started rolling around like crazy, and my whole body started shaking as the drug started to work. But on the plus side, I could tell my contractions were starting to subside. Things started calming down (well, not the baby, she kept rolling around for quite awhile longer) and I had to just lie there and let the antibiotic pump into my body. It seems the contractions were caused by the UTI: my bladder is irritated, which started irritating my uterus, which caused the contractions to start, which caused me to dilate. So I (well, the nurse or Phil) had to keep unhooking me from the monitor and walk with me down the hall (with all the monitor cords and the IV bags attached to me, and trying to keep my backside covered with the open gown) to the bathroom every time I started to get the feeling that I had to pee. Going to the bathroom has never been such an ordeal before! At about 4:30, the nurse gave me another dose (a pill this time, thank goodness) of the anti-contraction medication, and they gave me prescriptions for that (actually, it's the other form of the same drug, called Brethine) and a really strong antibiotic (I only take one every 12 hours!) and they said I could go. We left and then went to get something to eat. Neither Phil nor I had eaten all day, because we had gone to the hospital right at lunch time and it was now almost 5. But at least I had been pumped full of sugar water from the IV, so I wasn't feeling that hungry. Phil was really wanting food by then though! So we went to what has become my addiction, B.D.'s Mongolian BBQ. It was hard standing in line to get the food though, I still felt so weak from everything that had gone on all day. After a bowl and a half, I was ready to go home and sit with my feet up the rest of the night. As the night went on, I still had a few contractions here and there (and I've had a few today still too) but at least it hasn't been anything like yesterday. I've got an appointment scheduled for 1:30 today to see Dr. Teague, so hopefully I'll know more about what I need to do from here after that. I assume I can keep working because I just sit here with my feet up anyway, but I'm not going to push myself. One of the hardest things right now is that whenever I take the Brethine to control the contractions, after it starts working I start getting the shakes again really bad. I have to take it every six hours: I started at about 4 yesterday, and have now taken it at 10pm, again at 4 am, and then at 10 am. Within about an hour to an hour and a half after I've taken it, my hands start to shake like a leaf. I'm just kind of worried that I'll be taking my next dose at 4, just in time to drive home from work during rush hour traffic about an hour or so later! Who knows though, my appointment is for 1:30 today, so I don't yet know what my schedule will be like the rest of the day. One comment Phil and I had yesterday was that it was pretty ironic that we had just learned about early stage labor on Monday, and then we got to live it yesterday. At next week's class, we'll be learning about the next stage of labor, and in week three, the next stage. Here's hoping I get to keep to the theory version ONLY for the next month or so! Another comment Phil made yesterday is that he is now very glad we got busy and cleaned out the office last weekend! His office is now all moved down to the kitchen, and the nursery is painted. All we need to do now is get the border up and all the furniture and baby stuff put in it, and we will actually be ready in case Natalie does decide to show up early! I think for the first time yesterday, Phil started understanding some of the "gotta get ready" things I've been feeling for the last couple months! And we are VERY glad that this weekend and Tuesday are the baby showers - not a minute too soon after yesterday's events!