The Hospital Saga

Late Tuesday night, I ended up calling my doctors office to let them know I was having severe, painful contractions.  Brock talked to the nurse and doctor because I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe.

We headed into the hospital, and they gave me a bed in the Triage unit, so they could asses the severity of my symptoms and decide what to do from there.

Within five minutes of being hooked up to the contraction monitor, they had admitted me, moved me to a labor and delivery bed, and started me on the highest possible dose of “stop labor” medicine.  I was given pain killers, anti-nausea medicine, put on strict bed rest (which meant a foley catheter) and had to be woken up every single hour to check my vital signs. 

Every three or so hours the pain would start beating through the medicine, and I would be writhing in agony until they figured out what else they could give me.  Every time they gave me something new, I would throw up anything I had managed to get down in the past few hours. 

Wednesday morning, one of MY doctors came to see me (the physicians that I work for.)  They are the high risk doctors, and they consult on any severe or scary cases that come into the hospital.  They did a quick ultrasound to determine whether or not my cervix was changing, and how likely I was to go into ‘real’ labor.  My risk was very low, my cervix unchanged, and the biggest fear of having this baby at 27 weeks went away. 

My doctor immediately had them take me off of the magnesium, and started giving me mild oral painkillers which seemed to help just as well without making me loopy.  He made them take out the catheter and move me back onto solid foods. 

As my symptoms seem to be going away more and more, we’re realizing we might never really know the cause as to why I was in so much pain, or why it set me off into having so many contractions.  The contractions are nearly gone now, and the pain is almost unnoticeable.  I think they’re going to let me go home.  I’m ready to go home.

This was really scary… terrifying to realize how quickly something can happen and get out of control before I could even blink.  But the baby is fine, he’s still cooking away on the inside, and it’s looking like I’m going to be fine too!

Sorry that everyone has to hear about this in retrospect… I wasn’t really in the condition to be sharing news before.  Next time, I’ll give Brock my Xanga log in and have him post updates for me.