My Mother's Day at Troy Beaumont

For those who haven't heard, I spent the last two days in Labor & Delivery. Little Baby Tenney is still currently cooking, but is being a little stubborn.

Saturday evening I had noticed that I was getting quite a few contractions. At first I thought they were Braxton Hicks, but as they started becoming more regular and stronger, I called our on-call doctor. I was getting contractions anywhere from 2-6 minutes apart and over 15 an hour. So he told me to go straight to L&D to get checked out.

We started out in triage where we got good news and bad news. The good news was the fact that I wasn't dilated at all and my cervix was still hard and closed. Bad news was the fact that I was going to have to stay at the hospital for at least 24 hours for monitoring and to stop the contractions. So they ran a bunch of tests and then moved me over to a real room to get me started on treatment.

I had a rough first night there. Evidently I was dehydrated (which none of us can figure out how that happened because I drink 70+ ounces a day) so they were having trouble finding my veins to hook me up to the IV. After busting one of my veins and poking me two more times, they eventually put the IV into the inside of my elbow. I guess that's not an ideal spot for them because they use a thicker IV than most other areas of the hospital so if you bend your arm at all and cut off the medication, machines start going crazy with beeping. So for the first 6 hours at the hospital, I'd have to call in the nurse to reset everything at least twice an hour. Once they got the IV in me, they started me on magnesium to stop the contractions. It's a 24 hour drip and the first half an hour they triple the dosage to get things started. It's quite an uncomfortable medication to have in your system. It's basically a muscle relaxer so for 24 hours I wasn't allowed to get out of bed. They also gave me a steroid shot in the butt to help progress the baby's lung development in case I did go into labor. So the first night was rough, especially with sleeping. I finally kicked Josh out of the hospital at 1:00ish while I tried to get some rest. At 1:30 they brought in a CRNA to see if she could find a better vein for my IV since it kept going off so much. After half an hour and 4 more pokes, they still couldn't find one to use so they just tried to adjust my current one. Thankfully, that did the trick and I didn't have any more problems for the rest of the stay. I did sleep about 1-2 hours the first night.. It was my first ever over night hospital stay and between having to call the nurse for the bed pan every two hours to pee and all of the different noises, it was difficult trying to rest.

Josh came back up in the morning around 8:00. My doctor came in probably about half an hour later. My cervix was still hard and closed, about 2-2.5 cm long, which is really good. He went over all of my test results, and the biggest one was the Fetal Fibronectin test and that came back negative. This was a major relief for us because when the test comes back negative, it means you have a less than 1% chance of delivering in the next two weeks. So our biggest concern was just getting the contractions to stop. The doctor okay'd a clear liquid diet for me while I was on the magnesium, which was pretty good. It was nice to get something besides ice chips in my stomach.

After that, we had a pretty quiet day. Both of our parents (and my sister) came up to visit with us. Thanks to my sister, she brought up the Mother's Day gifts I had for our mom's, so we did get to celebrate a little bit, even if I was stuck in the hospital.

About 5:00pm the magnesium was really starting to bother me. It was causing chest tightness and I was getting hot flashes. The nurse turned the temperature down to 55 degrees in the room and they still had to put wash cloths dipped in ice water to try to cool me down. They ended up stopping the magnesium about an hour early since I was struggling with it so much. On top of the symptoms from the magnesium, I was also dealing with extreme heart burn from the lack of solid food. Once I got off the magnesium, I did start to cool off, but I also started shaking really badly. After an hour I was allowed to try to eat solid food and allowed to use the bathroom with assistance. Getting up the first time was rough - I was quite dizzy and not very steady, but quite excited about being able to use the toilet! Hahaha. It took me almost two hours just to eat a little bit of fruit, half a yogurt and half a ham sandwich. The shaking did subside after a few hours, and with the help of an antacid, while I was sitting the heartburn went away. Although when I did lay down for the evening I still had some of the effects of the magnesium so my chest was still tight. At 11:00 I got another steroid for the baby. Around 11:30ish they gave me a fairly strong pain killer that was safe for the baby but would also help with the remaining contractions that I was having and help me sleep. Unfortunately it made me incredibly dizzy, but I was able to sleep most of it off. Josh went home right after I got the pain killer since it was obviously knocking me out, plus he had to work today. So I finally got to sleep last night. I slept for about two hours a time, only waking up to go to the bathroom. Throughout the night my contractions got a lot better. I was only having one or two an hour and they didn't even wake me.

And that brings us to this morning! My doctor came in around 9:00 and did a quick exam. While she said that my cervix felt a little soft, it was still closed and long. I was discharged and I am on modified bed rest. Basically I have to be laying down at least one hour every morning, afternoon and evening, and the rest of the time I can be sitting with my feet up. I'm not allowed to do any chores (poor Josh) but I am allowed to get up to make myself meals and go to the bathroom. I'm also allowed 5 minute showers. I have to make an appointment for later this week where I'll get an ultrasound to check the baby and cervix (although the baby did quite wonderful throughout this whole thing - s/he never got stressed at all). I'm sure there will be lots to discuss at my next appointment - I've already started a list of questions to ask. I'm sure I'm going to be watched carefully from here on out.

So there's the latest news. While I would have rather not have all this happen, we really did have a great experience with the hospital. Everyone there were all wonderful and we were never out of the loop. I've already even met the lactation specialist and we discussed what would be expected for nursing if I do in fact have this baby early.

I think I've covered all of the big stuff - And since I'm home for good now, I will try to update this more frequently, especially as we start getting more news about what will be happening with the baby.

Hope this finds everyone well.