Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Who knew this could happen?

The first 5 months of my pregnancy were rough.  OK, that is kind of an understatement.  I had to be taken to the ER for dehydration and put on a medication to keep me from puking my guts out every time I SMELLED food.  I managed to get by on peanut butter sandwiches, pasta with sauce and instant mashed potatoes. (I keep it classy)  I was having severe back pain but figured I'm pregnant, of course I have back pain.  Of course, I wasn't really that big yet (around 20 weeks) so I don't know why I thought I should just deal with it.  We went through back massagers and I tried laying in different positions to alleviate the pain.  By the end of the day, every day, it was all I could think about.  You would think that the intense pain would place this issue at the top of my "list of things to talk to the doctor about" when I had my ultrasound at 24 weeks, but no.  Because I was so focused on seeing the babies (I had just found out I was having a boy and a girl) I completely forgot about my back pain.  Probably because I was getting ready for all of the self sacrifice you do as a mom - or because shiny things distract me, either/or.  Anyway, as I was getting dressed, Spreadsheet guy mentioned my back pain to the ultrasound nurse.  She looked at me funny and told me to lay back down.  She examined me and her eyes got really big.  She told me I was in labor (technically my cervix was effaced). 


I kind of sat there in shock, what does that even mean?  I am only 24.5 weeks pregnant.  So they put me in a wheelchair and took me over to the hospital.  I was admitted to labor and delivery and the nurses hooked me up to a ton of wires and monitors.  Turns out I was having back labor.  They immediately put me on magnesium sulfate and it knocked me out.  The next three days were a blur. I know there were a lot of doctors and nurses trying to tell me what was happening, but I was so drugged up I just nodded and assumed they would fix everything.  I had some shots, took some pills and they upped my dosage of Magnesium sulfate.  I drifted in and out of sleep and the nurses came in and checked on me every three hours.  I was admitted on Tuesday.  On Saturday it seemed like they had stabilized me.  They decided to put a Terbutaline pump in my leg and keep the Magnesium flowing.  After all of that fun, they moved me to a regular room.  I was moved into a room with another pregnant girl.  A girl who didn't want her child.  She was ranting and raving about how she wanted the doctors to get "it" out of her.  She was giving the baby up for adoption.  This was extremely hard to deal with.  I was sitting there, on the other side of the curtain, staring at an ultrasound picture of my little girl, willing myself to stay pregnant longer, and I had to listen to this?  Then I was lucky enough to get a PIC line put in for the magnesium.   Luckily a room opened up in the antepardum wing and I was moved down there.  I was even lucky enough to get a room with a private bathroom.  Unfortunately, that bathroom did not have a shower, so on days when my contractions were a little further apart I was allowed to get in a wheelchair and go down to the shared shower, put my pump in an "water proof" bag (that always leaked and made the pump stop working) and try to give myself a shower without triggering more contractions.  Which was hard because I started getting anxious every time the pump stopped. 

I will spare you the details, but I ended up in that room for 10 weeks.  A few scares here and there, tours of the NICU and visits from the neonatologist. The nurses were great, they teased spreadsheet guy, were very nice to me and even taught me how to knit.  I have some unbelievable things I made while on bed rest -  and by unbelievable I mean unidentifiable.  Knitting while on large doses of magnesium kind of throws you off a little.  It's funny though, at the time I thought I was doing an awesome job. 

My doctors were great, they explained things every step of the way, and decided to take me off of the medication once I hit 34 weeks.  Well, 34 weeks and one day.  34 weeks exactly would have been on the same day as the Superbowl and my doctor even warned me not to go into labor until Monday morning because he really wanted to see the game.  Um, OK?   After way too many hours of labor they had to do a c-section.  I had my tiny guy first.  he was so peaceful and sweet.  Then my little girl came out.  My doctor thought it would be funny to hold her up over the curtain so I could see her screaming little face right away.  She was red, screaming and crying with her tiny bird-like arms and legs flailing around everywhere.  They brought her over next to my head so I could see her and she made her brother cry with her hysterics. 

Somehow we were lucky enough to have two healthy children.  they were tiny (both at a bit over four pounds), but doing well.  They did have to stay in the NICU for two weeks, but we didn't have too many issues.  My buddy was jaundice and had to wear those cute little Velcro glasses for a while for his treatment, and silly girl would violently rip out her feeding tube and then cry because it hurt (duh).  She would also stop breathing every once in a while just to make sure she got more attention than her brother.  They both came home on the same day, and the adventure began.

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