It's been a long week...

Monday came in like a lion,  and stayed that way. I arose before the kids Monday morning, and it was a rather easy day. Until 11am hit. Starting then I was getting regular contractions and within the hour after taking a shower, drinking water, and laying down they only seemed to get worse and I could feel our little girl pushing down. With that I knew something was up, by 1 I had called the doctor and Caleb and I loaded up the kids to head to the doctor's office.

My CNM checked me, and although what mattered the most was closed she could feel the baby's head and that it was indeed engaged. They hooked me up to the monitor in the office for a non-stress test, but laid me on my left side. Her heart traced beautifully, but they weren't picking up the contractions I was having so they moved me onto my back and sure enough I was indeed contracting about every 3-4 minutes. So off to the hospital we went.

Since Caleb and I had the girls with us, once he dropped me off at the hospital I sent him on home with the girls and went on in by myself. Once I got up to Labor and Delivery they hooked me up to the monitors and within the first hour I was freaking out.

What I did not expect after being hooked up the the monitors was a second nurse rushing in to tell my nurse that our little girl was having heart beat decelerations, and this one lasted for three minutes. They moved me onto my left side, placed me on oxygen for about 45 minutes, and decided to lay off on watching the contractions for a bit.

After that fiasco I was put on IV fluids, given a first steroid shot to boost the baby's lung development as a precaution, and had blood drawn for labs(only to find out I was anemic - boo!). They laid me back on my back again and monitored me throughout the night, and due to the most active baby in the world they kept having to move the monitor ever 5 to 30 minutes(makes it awfully hard to sleep!) The little lady ended up having two other one minute decelerations, one before I ate supper(about 7pm) and one while I was sleeping(about 4 am). Those two didn't require oxygen, but it sure was startling to wake up to two nurses I hadn't met yet moving my monitor at four in the morning. The hefty contractions eventually dwindled out on their own about 11 pm, and only showed up from then on out as irritation.

Tuesday morning about 5 I was finally able to catch some much needed zzzz's when the nurse finally just took me off the monitor. Then until 7:30 I was asleep, until my day nurse woke me up for breakfast, to say that I was going to be put on the monitor again, and that the on-call doctor would be in shortly to check me. There wasn't any change from the previous day, luckily, so they only required that I be on the monitor for about 20 minutes every 4 hours. Which that 20 minutes turned into about an hour and a half because the little one kept moving. So it came down to me holding the monitor onto her for about half an hour, and they finally had a good enough of a trace to take it off. I was lucky to have a friend in the hospital that came to talk to me during lunch. :) It got lonely in that quiet room.

Throughout that afternoon it became more of a sit and wait, nap, watch incredibly boring TV, nap some more, and eventually I was coming up on my time to be released. I was also lucky to have my mom come to get me and bring me home. When mom walked in, I was just getting my second round of the steroid shot(which hurt like crazy! Both did!).  And after waiting on my discharge papers for a bit, I was allowed to leave. I was tired, and ready to be with my little family again.

Once I got home, settled down, and got a chance to watch a movie with Caleb, as I was getting ready for bed I noticed that my cheeks were red and warm. Fun. Turns out that it was a reaction to something I was given at the hospital, likely the steroid shot. Right now, I'm feeling pretty good, tired, but good. I start Fall classes next week and hopefully it'll be a good semester. A quiet semester after this stint in the hospital. I'd like for this whole scenario not to happen again. I want very much to hold in this little girl until her due date. As much as I would love to hold my beautiful little girl, I would love to hold her a LOT closer to her due date.

Here's hoping that this week only gets better. :) We hit 25 weeks today! 15 to go!