Well... that was fun!

Hello everyone!

It has been a VERY long and HARD day here. This morning around 1:30 I was woken up by contractions- very painful contractions! I timed them for about half an hour then called my nurse because they were getting more intense and closer together. I was put on the contraction monitor to be sure that they were indeed contractions- which they were. They were ranging from 6-9 minutes apart. Max was then put on do be sure that he was handling them well- which he was. The resident was then called and he wanted to check my cervix- OUCH! He was a small Asian guy and he kept saying, "I sorry, yah!" I thought I could have slapped him. Anyway, I was less than a centimeter dilated. I was given a shot of Brethine to see if it would stop the "labor"- which it did. At this point it was about 3:30am and I had one heck of a time falling asleep. I only got about a total of 2.5 hours :o(

I woke up feeling very queasy and overall like crap and by 8:30am I was feeling the contractions again. My growth ultrasound was at 9:00am so I got up and got ready to go down for that. (Max is measuring 5 pound 5 ounces, but his fluid levels are a little less than 1cm. The doctor is very happy with his weight gain and his monitoring and would still like to try to get me to 36 weeks).

Once I got back to my room, the contractions were increasing in intensity. I was put on the monitor and it only picked up a few of the many that I was feeling. I started to wonder if some of them were really bad gas pains. So I was given something to alleviate that- it worked a little bit. By noon I was in some major pain, but I stuck it out until about 2:00pm when I was put back on the monitor to see if it would pick any of them up. Once again it picked up some of them, but not all. My nurse kept feeling if my belly was getting tight when I had one and it wasn't- very wierd. She called the resident who told her to give me another shot of Brethine and something through my IV to get my bowels moving and to stop my nausea (at this point, I had not eaten anything except 3 graham cracker squares). I layed on the monitor for another hour after the shot and my uterus finally started to calm down, for now. The contractions came back. My nurse came back in and said that the doctor on call said to start me back on IV fluids and to give me another shot of Brethine. Once again, I was finally comfortable again.

Around 4pm after 2.5 hours of being on the monitor and finally some relief, the doctors decided to start oral doses of Brethine 4 times a day to hopefully get me to 36 weeks. This drug makes your heart race which causes me to get the shakes and get VERY hot. I was told I will become more immune to it and it won't make me feel this bad. It is definitely better than contractions though. I now have a ton of respect for those women that go natural. You ladies are some tough cookies!

I think that is it for now. By the way, the date has once again changed for the c-section. I think it is being scheduled for Monday, May 19. I am still running on very little sleep, so I am going to lay here and watch Lost and fall asleep. Have a good evening and I'll keep you posted!