Monday, June 9, 2008

Four AM Field Trip

A trip to the hospital is a good way to start off my 34th week, don't you think? No, me neither. I started feeling contractions and cramping on Sunday evening, plus I had an upset stomach. The contractions were about 10-12 minutes apart, but some of them were actually a little painful, which is a new thing for me. It went on for about two hours, and after a lot of water and laying down things got quieter and I went to sleep.
Then this morning at 3AM I woke up feeling a small contraction. I went to the bathroom, drank some more water and laid down. I felt another and looked at the clock to see if they could be timed. Then I felt another one pretty quickly and looked at the clock again. Five minutes. OK. I waited, and felt another. Again, five minutes. At this point I don't want to second guess myself so I called the doctor, who told me to go the hospital for some monitoring.
When we got to the hospital at 4:30 I was no longer feeling regular contractions (of course) but they hooked me up to a monitor and checked my cervix just in case. My cervix was closed but I was still having intermittent contractions so they started an IV. About an hour later they gave me a small shot of terbutaline, which is a drug that will calm the uterus down but the side effects are an elevated heart rate and jitteriness. It was not as bad as I expected, and did its job to quiet the contractions, and I was discharged an hour later.
I felt bad for my mom, who came down for lunch on her day off, and we couldn't go out anywhere. We ended up having grilled cheese and tomato soup (on a ridiculously hot day! still delicious), watching TV and chatting.
So far I have been feeling much better. Still drinking water, and now it's time to get back to laying down.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

where are the pictures?love, m