Well, I posted about my doctor's appointment on Friday and my "irritable" uterus and how bad I was feeling. Little did I know I'd be in Labor & Delivery the next night.
It's so hard being pregnant for the first time because you don't know what you're supposed to feel or what's normal and its hard to ask other people because everyone's pregnancy is so different. On and off for the past few weeks I've been having an extremely tight abdomen. I didn't know these were contractions. I thought it was where the baby was positioned. It didnt really ever contract and soften up, I felt like it'd stay like that for hours at a time. I kind of blew it off and wish I hadn't.
When I went to the doctor on Friday they hooked me up to the fetal monitor and detected about one contraction and then some "irritability". She checked my cervix which was still closed and decided to do a fetal fibronectin test. A negative result on this test meant that the chances of me going into labor in the next 2 weeks were less than 5 percent. Thankfully, the doctor called me on Saturday to try to "put my mind at ease" and let me know the test was negative. That was great and all, but I was feeling much worse than I did on Friday.
My poor belly was so tight all day Saturday and now I had a new symptom, crampy achy feeling in my lower abdomen. I was pretty miserable, but tried not to let on just how miserable, as Rob and I were supposed to attend a friend's wedding in Winston-Salem that evening with my parents. I put my party dress on and we headed out. It was good to see family and friends, but I still felt pretty bad. I tried to pretend otherwise and even was on the dance floor for 2 songs (idiot)
Driving home to High Point was rough, I had a bad contraction. I knew this was a contraction and not just my tight belly. I could barely breathe and it hurt. When we got home, I told Rob with all the pain and discomfort and the brownish blood mucous I had found earlier (gross, I'm sorry) that I thought it'd be a good idea to call the doctor on call. Dr. O'Keefe told me to go on to Labor and Delivery to just get checked out. Couldn't hurt!
Rob and I went upstairs, changed out of our wedding clothes and did a practice run to the hospital. I'm kinda glad we did this as we had no idea where to go and tried 3 different entrances to the hospital. You apparently have to go into the ER. They treat pregnant people like queens though and get you out of that ER area as soon as possible.
They checked me into a room, the nurse asked me a bunch of questions, I got into a gown and hooked up to the fetal monitor. What I saw on the monitor totally freaked me out... contraction after contraction... coming 3 minutes apart. What?! She called the doctor and he told her to give me a shot to try to stop them... it felt WONDERFUL after that. I was calm and relaxed... for about 30 minutes and they came back. She called the doctor again and he said to give me a dose of Procardia every 20 minutes for an hour. This helped too, but I was still having some contractions. She called the doctor again... this time he said to hook me up to some IV fluids to see if dehydration had anything to do with it. She emptied a large bag into me fairly quickly and again, this felt good and I was able to sleep for about 30 minutes. After all of this, I was still having some contractions, so he decided to keep me over night and keep me hooked up to an IV. Lovely. I couldn't sleep. I was scared/worried/delirious. Luckily there were some good late night movies on. I slept on and off, but because I'm pregnant and had a constant IV drip, I was calling the nurse about every 30 minutes to unhook me from my wires and let me go to the bathroom. It was the worst part of the whole thing!
By the time morning came so did a new nurse. She let me know the doctor should be coming to the hospital to do his rounds and we would decide what to do next. FINALLY. I just wanted to know what was going on and what we were going to do about it. He finally arrived about 9:30 and let me know that I was having pre-term contractions, but not pre-term labor. The main difference being that in pre-term labor you have changes in your cervix and my contractions weren't causing any of that... now. He decided to give Emmy a steroid shot to speed up lung function in case she came super early. That made sense to me. He also started me on Procardia.. a blood pressure/heart medicine that is supposed to control the muscles of my uterus. I take this in the morning and at night and I think its helping. He told me to come to the office on Monday to get my second steroid shot and another check/ultrasound.
I slept the best I ever had on Sunday night, I was so exhausted. I was very anxious Monday morning to have the ultrasound and see if anything was changing. Luckily, my cervix was still long and closed. YAY. And we got to see baby Emmy's face. She is a cutie... and BIG... she is measuring around 5 pounds already. I thought this was great because she may be here sooner than later. I got my second shot and talked to the doctor for a while. She assured me it was okay to work, but just to take it easy. If things change, they would figure out another plan of action. All of this reassured me and made me feel better. They said the contractions don't really bother the baby but are more just annoying and uncomfortable to me. Sweet.
I'll leave you with a picture of that sweet baby's face. (she has a hand in front of it) 
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