Crazy couple of days
November 26th, 2004As if the last couple of days wouldn’t have been crazy enough with the Thanksgiving holiday and family get togethers, we decided to throw a couple of hospital visits into the mix. Thanksgiving day we had a good time visiting with the family and eating lots of great food, but on the way home Alex told me she was feeling contractions (cue Ray getting really nervous). So she started timing the intervals - 5 mins between, then decreasing down to 3. So I finally convinced Alex to call the on-call nurse who tells her to take it easy and drink lots of water for an hour. We wait for the hour and things are actually getting worse. So the nurse tells us to come in to the hospital. So we start in around 10:00PM - already dead tired because we never got a nap after all the turkey and its tryptophan. On the way in I start freaking out about not having a crib/car seat/anything else we need to be ready for the baby. Alex calmly reminded me that if the baby were to be born that night we wouldn’t be taking him home until at least January probably (he would have to be in an incubator because it is just too early for him to be out in the world).
A little while later Alex has a bunch of monitors strapped to her belly and we get to see the contractions being graphed out. Kind of surreal — we just aren’t ready for the baby yet. The nurse tells us very matter-of-factly that what Alex is experiencing isn’t the normal Braxton Hicks contractions, but full blown pre-term labor. Thankfully the contractions had not dilated the cervix at all yet. They run some tests - no infections or other things that could make pre-term labor kick in seem to be showing up. They try hydrating Alex really well to get the contractions to stop. Needless to say, that didn’t help stop them or even slow them down because she was already really well hydrated. Finally they decided to give her a shot of terbutaline (a smooth muscle relaxant). The shot slowed down the contractions almost immediately. But it also made Alex sick almost immediately. The nurse had to keep handing her a steady stream of throw-up bags. It also made her heart race — kind of like speed topped off with a double espresso. She got pretty dizzy and just plain uncomfortable. Alex says she never wants to get that shot again. Finally, around 2:00AM, the contractions had subsided and we could go home. Alex was very worn out but still had trouble sleeping because of the drugs.
Fast forward to this morning… Alex wakes up to more contractions after only about 4 hours of good sleep and still feeling sick from the medicine the night before. We start timing the contractions again and they’re about 5-6 mins apart. The nurse had given instructions last night to come right in if Alex started having contractions again, but we really didn’t want to relive last night’s experience. So we just monitored the contractions for a few hours but they kept getting more regular and more pronounced. Eventually we decided we had better call the nurse again, and she told us to come in to the hospital again. We really didn’t want to, but knew we needed to go in and make sure everything was alright still. By the time we get to the hospital the contractions seem to have slowed down (but they are still occurring). Alex gets strapped into the monitors again and gets her blood drawn for more tests. We find out she’s got a 101.1 degree fever. All the test come back negative — no infections or anything else obvious are causing the pre-term labor, but something must be causing the fever. The contractions keep slowing down and they keep monitoring Alex for a while and she gets a taste of boring hospital food. The nurses finally tell us they think they are just regular Braxton Hicks contractions this time. Thankfully Alex doesn’t have to get another horrible shot of terbutaline. We get to go home, but never find out what was causing Alex’s fever. Hopefully whatever it is will pass soon and the contractions will settle down to the normal Braxton Hicks contractions that are obviously just practice ones.
So, we’re back at home resting again with some good homemade beef vegetable soup thanks to my mom. Hopefully we won’t have to make any more trips to the hospital until the baby is really ready to be born. This whole experience has reminded me how uncomfortable I am in hospitals (apparently even labor and delivery parts of them). Kind of ironic that one of the things we said we were thankful for at Thanksgiving dinner was a healthy pregnancy so far.