Confessions of a Crazy Pregnant Woman on Bed Rest!

I was trying sooo hard to believe that my body would do its job and give this baby a nice comfy spot to live for a full nine months. Well, that is surely in jeopardy now. As I have mentioned before, for the last 5 or 6 weeks I have been having Braxton Hicks contractions. Up until this point, they have been pretty sporadic. But this weekend I had a lot of them. They did not come at regular intervals, but I was having more than 4 an hour, which I had been told previously was the cut off number of "normal".  I tried not to worry about it and just allowed my focus to be on the family Christmas' we attended. Other than having lots of non-painful contractions, I felt totally normal. Hence the reason I did not call my OB's office over the weekend.

But when Monday rolled around, yesterday, I went ahead and gave my OB's office a call just to be safe. So I left my dutifully message with my doc's nurse and waited for a call back. The call came back in a couple of hours and they wanted me to be in their office in one hour for an exam and a sonogram. For some reason I was actually pretty shocked and asked if it could wait until the appointment I already had scheduled in 4 days, the answer was 'nope'. At this point, I'm still thinking this is totally no big deal and start rushing to get freshened up--after all, someone was going to be in the hoo-ha. Ya know, you always have to make sure all is on the up and up down there before showing the goods. I also give Kevin a call who had JUST left our house to head back to work after having lunch with me at home.  He immediately says he is on his way home. I protest adamantly that he come to the appointment as I was sure this was just a precautionary thing and there was really no need for him to take off from work. Nope, he was coming. So he rushed home, I got dressed, and we were out of the house within 30 minutes.

When we walk in the office it appears to be a normal day in the OB's office, it was a sea of women with no seats available. This time we have to have our exam first as they were planning on doing an FFN test on me to see if my body is planning on going into full blown labor within the next two weeks. So we do the test, the doc does a vaginal exam and says all looks and feels good internally, and send me over for my sono to check my cervical length. Our lovely Debbie does this sono for us again.
N n
She was there only to check the cervix, not to look at the baby. So all we got to see of the baby was its head pressed very firmly against my cervix, which was causing a lot of pressure, but he/she was moving around a lot. My cervix was measuring a lot shorter than it had 10 days ago. At our last visit, at about 24 weeks, we were in the 3.4 cm range, yesterday our average was about 2.9cm. Now, this is not a super bad measurement, but given that there was so much change and so rapidly in conjunction with contractions, this was no good. This is why our doc told us that the contractions I had been having were "real" contractions since they were changing my cervix. This is the actual definition of preterm labor, which I am having.

So after the sono we go back to see the doc to discuss our game plan. She immediately said this was not great and she was concerned with the speed of the change in my body. She said this means that I have an incompetent cervix and it cannot hold the weight of the baby properly. She can't speculate on how it will hold up for the remainder of the pregnancy, she needs to see more of a trend, but she wants to be very cautious, so off the the hospital for hospital bed rest and meds to stop contraction we went--immediately. Like no going home to grab things, nada...straight there. Well, I still had not eaten lunch and Kevin was concerned about how long it would be before the hospital would feed me, so he insisted that we go grab a quick lunch. SShhhh! We're rebels. But I figured the baby didn't fall out over the weekend, so I'm sure an extra hour wouldn't hurt.

So here we are. In the hospital ..waiting..to find out what our fate is and to meet the neonatologist and have a NICU tour. Wow, this is so much to take in. Am I ready for this. I guess I kinda have to be. At this point we're both in shock. Really, is this happening to us for real? So no trip back home to prepare and gather belongings, nope, to the hospital pronto. UHG!

So our...geez...not everything is "our". I mean MY FFN test came back negative and it's level of certainly is about 95% when it comes back negative. So that's awesome news. That means my body is not gearing up for delivery within the next two weeks.  After getting checked-in, we actually got transferred to about three different areas and beds until we landed in our final resting spot, which is a private room in antepartum in Labor and Delivery. I immediately get put in bed, told to lay down, and they started Procardia to stop contractions. It worked pretty well. It brought my contractions down to about 1-3 per hours through the night.



So what's the latest? A lot has happened today.  Well we woke up bright and early and waited to meet with the perinatalogist, my OB, and the neonatalogist. First was our sonogram with the perinatologist, whom I didn't love. The baby looked great, was measuring great, and my fluid level was great. Yea. I am not dialated and my cervix was still closed as of this morning. He measured my cervix shorter than yesterday at 2.5cm. He didn't measure the cervix as Debbie has been, which is what we are currently using as my delta so I plan to ask my OB about that in the morning.

However, this means that with a lower measurement than we had the day before and last week, this is not good news according to my OB. Although a cervix that is measuring 2.5cm is short, it is typically still kinda okay. However, my OB's concern is that in 2 weeks I have lost about a 1/3 of my cervical length, a very quick drop.

So I get to stay on hospital bed rest for the week with the potential of going home on Friday if my next sono shows that my cervix has not changed at all. LORD, PLEASE!! Kevin has been a dream while I have been in here. He is doing everything for me. He hangs out in the room with me at least 8 hours a day just sitting and talking with me or curling up in my bed cuddling me, watching TV, and serving me. He then goes home with my list of anything I need, takes care of our animals, cleans the house, puts together our new stroller and car seat that we just got (whoo hooo!) scoops dog poop in the back yard, wraps Christmas presents, mails stuff for me at the post office, buys my skin tonor that I ran out of, and picks up my prescriptions.

I am totally overwhelmed but I'm sooo thankful for the amazing support we have received and my amazing husband. As I watch him spending his 7th hour in a super uncomfortable chair in my room, it makes me realize that this is what true love is made of and I'm incredibly blessed to have it in my life partner.