ALMOST a Baby Announcement Today

Whew!  Rough day yesterday.  It wasn't pretty, but we made it another day, and I'm still pregnant (30 weeks + 1 day now).  I started blogging twice yesterday, but each time things started to get worse, and I had to stop.  Now that I'm feeling much better, I'll give a rundown, and I apologize up front for all of the medical jargon and the length.

We went in for the routine doppler ultrasound yesterday and found out the blood flow is worse.  The absent end diastolic flow (stasis or momentary stoppage of flow with each heartbeat) has reared it's ugly head again.  One umbilical artery had "persistent absent" where every beat is affected, and the other one had "intermittent absent" where some but not all beats are affected.  This problem is the same as what was found on our initial ultrasound six weeks ago, but two rounds of steroids kept it at bay.  The good thing is there is no reversal of flow, and the ductus venosus (in the baby's liver) has elevated pressure but no reversal.  Those would be the next things to go bad as the disease progresses. 

Dr. "Middle" (named because she is the middle of my three doctors on the optimist/pessimist scale) predicted I will probably deliver within 10 days, but it's hard to say.  Given how our little guy has exceeded everyone's expectations so many times, I took that to mean we've got at least another 2-3 weeks pregnant.  I got admitted back to the Women's Pavilion, where ladies on bed rest sit and wait to have their babies. The plan would be the same as my last admission:  twice a day non stress tests (monitoring the baby's heartbeat) for an hour each time, and daily doppler ultrasounds (to check out blood flow) and daily biophysical profiles (to check out baby's tone, breathing, amniotic fluid level, etc).  I sat back and relaxed and tried to enjoy my new view of the athletes training at the neighboring Olympic Training Center, imagining James working out there.

As I was nearing an hour on the monitor, the baby had several decels, or decelerations, where the heart rate drops.  This was concerning enough to rush me over to Labor and Delivery to be close to the OR for a stat C-section if needed.  They hooked me up to continuous monitoring, and then I started having contractions.  They weren't bad, but they were regular, every three minutes. 

Over the next four hours, the contractions continued every three minutes, and they got a lot stronger.  The baby gradually started to tolerate them less and less, and he developed late decels, where the heart rate drops during and after each contraction, a sign of stress, and an indicator that he probably wouldn't tolerate contractions too much longer.  I also started bleeding, and my cervix started dilating, which along with the regular, worsening contractions, indicated I appeared to be in labor.  Most likely my placenta was abrupting more, causing the contractions.  Great.  Add one more issue to our laundry list of problems.  Preterm labor. 

Dr. Pessimist was on, and she said it was looking like the baby would be born within the next few hours, so she wanted to start me on magnesium.  Mag is used for many things, but in my case it was to protect the baby's brain since he's still 10 weeks premature.  It needs to be in my system for two hours before delivery to be effective.  Given the issues with the blood flow, she didn't want to aggressively stop the labor because my body and the baby were trying to tell me the environment in there wasn't good.  The plan was to keep watching closely and head to the OR if the baby became more stressed, or if I fully dilated, try to just "quick push that baby right out." 

I was still outwardly calm, but I realized I was not at all mentally ready to have a baby.  I started to worry about stupid things.  For some reason, I was really concerned because I had left my camera at home.  Then, totally uncharacteristic of me, I worried how bad I would look in that "new mom with a new baby" picture because I hadn't showered that day, and I realized 18 years from now that picture will probably be on display at his graduation open house.  I know, silly, especially when I have gone a lot longer without bathing on hiking trips, and it has never bothered me, and I didn't have a camera anyway.  In a stressful situation, you can't always control what nonsense runs through your head, and I tend to have a defense mechanism where I take my mind off the big issue at hand and think about something minor.  It's easier to think of how my hair looks than to succumb to the overwhelming fear of how small our baby is right now, how he is still at risk of having a bleed on his brain as a preemie, etc.

Joshua 1:9  "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

Right about this time, James walked in the room, and I suddenly relaxed.  He has that effect on me.  He had been home with Jeremiah waiting for my mom and dad to get back to town after a well deserved weekend off in MN.  He was on the phone with me all afternoon, and when Dr. P said "it looks like we're having a baby tonight," he called our friend Rachel from across the street, and she rushed over to relieve him until my parents arrived.

Dr. P asked if I wanted a narcotic for pain, but I said no, I was fine.  When she said it might relax me more and slow the contractions down for the baby to get a little break, I jumped on it.  So, loaded up with fentanyl and magnesium, I started down the road of drug induced stupor.  Remind me never to become a drug addict!  Ew, I sure didn't like that feeling.  Fortunately, the baby liked it.  Magnesium is a muscle relaxer, and one of the side effects can be to stop contractions.  The contractions slowed down and then stopped during the night, and the baby's heart rate normalized with no decels.  I stayed on the magnesium until mid morning today, feeling the continued side effects of being heavy headed with double vision, headache, sensitivity to light, and feeling like a train hit me with each limb feeling like it weighed a couple hundred pounds.  Poor James must have been freezing all night since my room temperature was about 50 degrees because I was so flushed from the effects of the mag.

Several hours after stopping the magnisium, the side effects are finally feeling pretty much worn off, and I have only had a few irregular contractions today.  The baby looked great all day on the monitor, so they recently transferred me back to the Women's Pavilion (WP).  Back to where this all started.  For some reason, when they first transferred me to L & D, I was concerned because it meant I'd have to put on a hospital gown (at the WP we can wear our own clothes and feel more like we're in a hotel than a hospital).  Again, that defense mechanism thing.  I quickly realized that was just the beginning, followed by an IV, foley catheter, medications, continuous monitoring for contractions and the baby's heartbeat, SCD's (pumps attached to my legs that periodically inflate to help prevent blood clots)...it was a far cry from sitting in my own clothes feeling like I was in a hotel!  Now that the crisis has passed, I realize how UNimportant all of that is in the grand scheme of things. 

God has, once again, proven to me that He is right here with his hands around this little guy in a huge embrace, and He isn't going to let him be born one day before He wants him to be.  It's looking like that day will be sooner rather than later, but after yesterday's scare, I'm ready for it now, whenever it may be, so very appreciative of each day I feel this baby moving inside me. 

Joshua 1:5  "...I will never leave you or forsake you."