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Hospital Stay

I haven’t updated since Monday (as you can tell!) because life has been, well, life.

I began school Tuesday. I don’t start my student teaching until next week so I only had classes in the afternoon. While sitting in my first class, I began to have some contractions. Then they were accompanied by cramps, and they were not stopping as the afternoon went on. By the time I got home at 5pm, they were coming closer together and becoming more uncomfortable. I was supposed to attend a lecture series Tuesday evening, but I did not feel well. I told TJ that I was staying home and calling the doctor.

My contractions have never been regular with any of my labors, so of course when the doctor called back an hour later, I could only tell him I was having more than 6 per hour. He thought it was best for me to go to the hospital, so I *tried* to get TJ to move a little faster at putting the boys to bed (it was after 8pm at this point). T.G. was in bed, although not sleeping, but at least she wasn’t crying. While he was finishing up with the boys, I began going down my list of people to call to help with childcare, all of whom are from our church.

The first person I called had sprained her ankle that day and could not walk. No, I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to come here with having to walk up steps and such. The next person on my list I couldn’t reach. I called her house and was told she may be at work (she works a second job at a pottery studio). I called the third person on my list and she was available. I hated to have her come because it was storming so badly outside and she lives across town, but at that point I really needed to get to the hospital and didn’t want to have to go alone or with all of my kids. She agreed to come right away (I am so thankful!)

I went back upstairs to relay the plan to TJ and again talk him into speeding up the bedtime process (they were watching video clips on his laptop- ugh!). I finished getting my bag together and such, and made sure everything was ready to go for Th for school in case I ended up staying. TJ came down and a few minutes later the sitter arrived. Of course, Ta was not asleep (if you know Ta, he is not my best sleeper) so we ended up taking him with us because he was upstairs throwing a fit. Th had fallen asleep already and T.G. was still making some noises but not crying or anything like that.

When we got to the hospital I was put in the triage room for observation. I was hooked up to the monitors and then asked some questions. About an hour later the nurse checked me and I was a little more than 1cm dilated. I was monitored longer and of course my contractions were still very irregular. At about 10pm I was given some water to drink to see if the contractions were due to dehydration. I had to drink 1 liter in 30 minutes. I did, and they didn’t slow any. The nurse came back about 11pm and said that I was staying the night and going to be given an IV for fluids, along with some medication for pain so I could sleep. I was transferred to a room about midnight, and hooked up to the IV line. As soon as the nurse gave me the pain medicine, I was asleep in a matter of a minute or two.

The contractions were still coming very hard and strong, waking me from my sleep periodically. I don’t remember (because of the medicine) what time they finally slowed down, but when I woke at 6am, they were still coming but not nearly as strong or as often as they were the night before. TJ and Ta were sleeping on the couch, so I woke him so he could go home to get Th ready for school, etc. At 8am the doctor came in and checked me, and I was dilated 2cm plus a little more, so I hadn’t made any real progress (it took all night to dilate from 1+cm to 2+cm) so I was able to come home.

But, I was told that more than likely since I keep having contractions with cramping, that with each “episode” I am dilating more and more. So, I asked how I know when to come back to the hospital. The response- when the contractions are so hard/often (which is why I called the doc the night before in the first place!); I feel the urge to push; or my water breaks. I am praying my water will break because with my history of irregularly-timed contractions, they make it difficult for me to know “real” labor vs. “false” labor and once I feel the urge to push, the baby is literally only minutes away from being born and I honestly don’t think I’d make it to the hospital in time (I barely did with Ta!).

There have been some ramifications from our kids by us going to the hospital. Th slept the entire night so the only way he knew I was there was when I wasn’t awake in the morning to take him to school. I found out Thursday night when I was putting the boys to bed that Th woke up Wednesday night and came in my room to check on me. He woke up and was worried that I wasn’t there again. I asked him what he was going to do if I had been gone, and he said he’d go downstairs and call me using the phone number list that I leave out for babysitters (how sweet!). Last night he said he was worried about me because he didn’t see me in bed when he woke up (I was in the shower) so he asked TJ about my whereabouts. He is adamant about coming to the hospital with us next time, and I told him if he didn’t have school the next day, that I would think about bringing him.

I had some more long, hard contractions with cramping last evening that lasted for about 3 hours. TJ joked with me that if my water didn’t break so I knew definitively to go to the hospital, he was more than likely going to end up delivering this baby at home since this baby has not followed all the other usual signs of labor for me. I think I am going to buy a “Survivor’s Guide to Child Birth” book for him as a baby gift; I have a feeling he’s going to need it!

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