31 week scare

Being a mom naturally you fall to the back burner. That is how motherhood is. There is always errands to be run, dishes to be done, laundry to be folded, bathrooms to be scrubbed. For the past 5 weeks I have been on "modified" bed rest I have been trying my hardest to stay down. Let me just tell you... it hasn't been EASY!





Tuesday rolled around last week (Dec.1) and I could just tell that something wasn't right. I had been contracting pretty regularly but hadn't timed them. I didn't have time to time them. I could just tell my body wasn't right. I even felt that I was dilated (call me weird) . So late afternoon rolls around and I called my doctors office. Needless to say, they called me crazy and told me to come right down and be checked. Well... I couldn't just drop everything and come... I had two kids with me... like I was going to go to the office with two little boys in tow? Well.. I did it anyways.



By time I got to the office I could barely stand up straight due to major back pain but I played it off just thinking it was my sciatica nerve.



M doc checked me and I was a 3 and 50% effaced. She ordered me straight to the hospital. When I walked in, I was treated like a scene from the show ER. I was immediately injected with a steroid shot to help the boys lungs develop.

They hooked me up to a monitor and I was literally in full-blown labor. My contractions were 2 minutes apart and pretty intense. Good thing I really couldn't feel the intensity for some reason.

They rushed me from triage right into labor and delivery. Where I called home for the next 6 days!

Normally they'd treat me with Terbutaline but when I got to the hospital my heart rate was extremely high and my blood pressure was extremely low. It stayed like that the whole 6 days I was there. Since Terbutaline increases your heart rate, I couldn't have it.

So they gave me Magnesium Sulfate aka the drug of death. I was on that stuff continuously for 5 days. It wasn't too bad but made me sweat like none other.

3 times the doctor tried to wean me off of magnesium and put me on another type of drug but there was no such luck. Every time, without fail, my contractions would come back to about 3 minutes apart.

It was starting to look as if I was going to be in the hospital until I delivered which could have been 3 weeks plus. I was just so ready to come home. 6 days without being in my own bed and without seeing my children really took a toll on me emotionally. I was done.

Luckily, my doctor had one more trick up her sleeve. She consulted another doctor and together they came up with a plan of action to get me home.

They went ahead and gave me an injection of Terb with the mag still running through me. It worked! As soon as the terb hit my system, my contraction line went flat! Which wasn't even happening with the mag in me. With the mag I was having 6-8 contractions an hour. With the terb it went down to 2-3 per hour. The next day they slowly weaned from the mag and it worked! So now I'm just on a really high dose of Terb. As for my heart rate, it is still high. But I am alive and the babies are doing great.

While in the hospital I got an ultrasound and both babies are head down!! YEAH!

Also, they were both showing signs of breathing on their own consistently for 20 seconds. Pretty neat that they can see all that from ultrasound.

Now I am just to sit here and await the arrival of our sweet, anxious children. We are still aiming for the first week in January but my doctor says she'll be surprised if I make it 3 more weeks. We don't want Christmas babies so I am flat on my back doing nothing.

This past week has been such a trying week for me and for my little family. I was gone/absent for 6 days without my boys and Tyler. That alone just about killed me. Just when I thought I couldn't handle anymore I then realized that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Friends and family have gone ABOVE and BEYOND to make sure that my children are cared for and loved that we have a nice hot meal for dinner every night. Words cannot describe the feeling of being on the other end of service. I know that this will be just a short period of time in my life where I really am helpless. I am really grateful for all my friends and family and for everything that has been done to make life just that much easier so I can stay flat on my back. Thank you, thank you, thank you!