I headed in to OB this morning for my routine "every 2 weeks" appointment and within an hour I was sent to L & D upstairs to be monitored... which turned into a 2 hour event...
All is well, but it did get a bit interesting there for a while...
Through my regular appointment I learned that my belly is now 39 weeks big - I will be 33 weeks on Sunday - so I roughly grew 1/2 cm each week over the past two weeks... (maybe I am slowing down!? yay!) and gained about 5 pounds, which quite honestly I had expected. I have been trying to eat a little bit more each day, maybe it's silly, but if he is going to be premature (which seems to be somewhat of a realistic fear) I want him to be the biggest premature baby we can get! :-) So, I am up to 25 pounds of weight gain - hoping for 10 or less more, but whatever it takes! ;-) The OB reiterated that if any unusual fluid is present/water breaking I am to immediately get to a hospital - I guess they don't think they have told me that enough! ;-)
I was originally sent up to L&D be monitored because my blood pressure was 136/90 when they checked my vitals at my OB appt.; an hour later it had not gone down, thus they were thinking pre-eclampsia had begun. I was likely going to be sent upstairs for my first, of many, weekly non stress tests, however the elevated blood pressure just added to that and confirmed it should definitely be done today.
The non stress test tech checked my AFI - she came up with 31.something; apparently it can fluctuate from one reading to the next if and when the baby moves around.
I was then put in a joint triage room and Baby Dean and I were hooked up to 4 different monitors. One for my heart rate, one that monitored his heart rate/movement, as well as contractions, blood pressure and pulse-oxygen. Baby Dean instantly showed them how active of a little guy he is - even the people on the other side of the curtain commented! LOL After being monitored for about 45 minutes they came in to tell me that Baby Dean was doing fine and my blood pressure, which the machine had been taking every 10 minutes or so, had steadily come down to about 126/86, so that was good, but the twist in it all was that I was having contractions (something they were not really expecting to see!) I certainly wasn't feeling them, although I think I might have a little bit of an idea of what they feel like since I had one while they were talking with me and they pointed it out...
Although my blood pressure was the first concern, with all of the fluid I have and a 39 week belly, they weren't too shocked about the contractions, but with a 32 week 5 day baby, I was deemed as having "preterm labor."
What a heck of a note.... I went upstairs to check on my blood pressure and now I am in preterm labor... okay God you have a plan, so let's see where this is going...
(On a side note - the girl on the other side of the curtain, who was 39 weeks was told she had pre-eclampsia and that she would be induced today... I could tell by the change in the sound of her voice she was a bit shocked and headed home to eat lunch and get her things to come back and have her baby... That really made me think this could be the day... but since I wasn't feeling the contractions I had a bit of realism that told me today can't be the day! ;-) )
With the preterm labor label they did a preterm labor workup on me: of the various things they did, one was the 37 week Strep B test, and another was to check my cervix. The best news of the day... My cervix is closed! WHOOP! No baby today - Thank you God!
In regards to God having a plan... guess who was up in L&D?! My midwife, who I saw from the beginning to about 23 weeks! What a relief to have a familiar face, as well as someone who was familiar with my pregnancy's history, in a time when I was seemingly all alone! :-)
All the while, Nolan is driving the 2 hours back from the Raleigh airport, on little to no sleep, after traveling through the night, changing planes 4 times to get from CA back to NC. Sure hope the Navy/USMC didn't pay much for those flights! ;-)
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