The practice run

“Life is what happens when you are too busy making other plans.” ~ John Lennon

I’m sure if you’ve been following us in facebook you heard we took an unexpected trip to the hospital very early this morning. And just to be safe, I thought I’d update everyone rather than assuming you all can decipher the comments in Jason & my facebook pages to figure out how things are going.

If you haven’t heard, this past Tuesday at my final doctor’s appointment I was reassured that I should be able to make it till 38 weeks. However, I was advised to “take it easy” and chill most of the rest of the week. Thankfully I hadn’t progressed much but the baby was laying pretty low, which explains how uncomfortable I’ve been and all the pressure I’ve been feeling lately. I wasn’t put on bed rest, but Jason definitely translated it to that and he didn’t hesitate to remind me to stay on my behind all week while he took care of everything else as the doctor suggested. Most of the week went smoothly aside from me being challenged to sit still and do next to nothing physically all week. But I listened. We waited. And then last night happened.

For those who know anything about pregnancy, it’s pretty obvious that I’m so close to the end that enduring uncomfortable moments and contractions is inevitable and to be expected. Normally they aren’t much to stress about, that is until they begin to come more regularly and more intensely. This week they’ve definitely gotten stronger but it wasn’t until last night that I realized they were happening more often. A few here and there turned into several in a row. Typically I try to rest when they start to bother me and usually this helps them subside. Last night it didn’t work so I got up and decided to keep myself preoccupied and we began to keep count. Before I knew it an hour had passed and about 15 contractions had happened – most of which spanned 3-5 minutes apart and left me feeling more uncomfortable and more nervous. Of course I’m not one to jump up and beg for help when I first begin going through discomfort, but Jason could tell it had been bothering me and we had referred back to all the advise the doctor’s had given us. For a perfectly normal pregnancy they advise going in if the contractions come consistently every 5 minutes for an hour. Of course we’ve had to keep in mind that this is my third pregnancy and the baby has spina bifida. We don’t want to end up in a situation where we’re stuck on the road with me having a baby knowing how important it is to have a c-section to help prevent from further injuring the baby’s spine. Jason came over and peaked at the times I had jotted down for contractions as I continued to try to keep my mind preoccupied and we realized the majority of them were only about 3 minutes apart and were fairly consistent so we decided to take a trip to the hospital to be safe.

It’s pretty common for women to go in to the hospital for this same reason and really the only way to know if it’s time to have a baby is to monitor the baby and contractions and see how much I have progressed. So they hooked me up to all the monitors and then gave me a medication to help me relax which is used often to help determine if a woman is in false or active labor. I was told that if the contractions subsided after two hours and I hadn’t progressed then we’d be okay, but if they didn’t let up that it might be safe to go ahead and begin to plan to c-section. The doctor decided rather than waiting two hours she’d wait until around 6am, about four hours later, because if I had progressed they’d be able to act quickly while I was right there and being closer to 6-8am would be a better time to deliver a baby that they knew had special needs after delivery. So we stayed and tried to rest, something not easy to do in a triage room.

The doctor returned between 6-7am and the medicine seemed to work to help the contractions to subside. She said we had three choices…go home and come back either if it happened again or on Tuesday when our c-section was scheduled, get admitted into a room and continue to be monitored, or go ahead with the c-section realizing that it’s Sunday and it might take longer to get the pediatric neurosurgeon in due to it being the weekend. I hate making decisions like these…Jason and I spent a few minutes thinking about it and talking it over and as ready as we were to just get it over with because I’ve been so uncomfortable we realize the baby does need special attention after birth so unless it was absolutely necessary we agreed it was best to try to wait until Tuesday. Part of me wanted to just stay at the hospital and have the reassurance that if anything happened I’d be right there to be cared for promptly and then I got to thinking…I may be in the hospital several days, possibly weeks, with the baby. I really don’t want to live in the hospital any more than I need to. So we elected to go home, despite how fearful we are that this could happen again. Despite all the stories we may hear about women having kids in a matter of minutes unexpected, the doctor said that given I had only progressed to 2cm’s and that the contractions had let up, she felt it was unlikely I’d progress that much and that fast. Obviously we were urged to continue to monitor if contractions returned regularly and not to hesitate to return if they came back consistently and stronger. But the hopes are that we can make it until Tuesday when the c-section was planned and when we know they’ll have the doctors and medical personal on hand to give the baby adequate care. Before we left the doctor ordered another dose of medicine to help me relax so by the time I returned home I slept and haven’t had any concerns since.

Yes, I’ve heard some overtly anxious, including Hope, for us to have the baby sooner, rather than on Tuesday. Unfortunately, that really isn’t what we want…we can wait until Tuesday. One of the things that definitely helped influence our decision was just the realization that we had final things left to do these last two days. So we’ll sit and wait and pray to make it until Tuesday and hopefully in that brief time we have left we’ll get all the remaining things done before it’s time for us to meet our little one. Yes, we’ve been planning all this time, planning for far longer than I’ve been pregnant, and realizing once again that sometimes plans never end up quite as we expected. But for now we’ll keep hoping that we have just a little more time left to plan.

Thank you all for your continued prayers. Now we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed that we make it until Tuesday.