Friday, May 16, 2008

The second longest week of my life





Wow...it's been another crazy couple of weeks. Since my last blog entry, we've spent a lot of time between the 7th floor (high risk pregnancy's) and the 3rd floor, the birthing unit. Every time I would start contractions, they would rush me downstairs again to try and stop the labour from continuing. It was really tough. Because normally when you start labour, you're excited...contractions come on, and if they are too painful, you can have an epidural and life is great. I never wanted to deliver because it was too early. So I would go through all the pain of the contractions, and the stress everytime, thinking that today was the day....and I wasn't going to have an epidural...because I didnt' want it to be over. I was so lucky to have the care that I had, and to have some control over the contractions with medication. I remained relatively stable up until the night before my birthday, but then contractions started and down I went again to the birth unit. I was started on the quick acting Atelat again, and one dose of Indocid, plus Morphine. I was stable, and able to spend my 30th birthday up in my room on the 7th floor.
I have a really great family, I'm so lucky. My brother's both married wonderful women, Tammy and Danielle, who have been so supportive along with everyone else in my family. Mom and Dad came in to visit in the morning (they've been here with us these past two weeks, thank goodness), and then they all came along later in the evening (minus dad because he was away for the weekend) for a little party with all the kids. It was as good as it could be when laying on your back...yummy cake and good company. The nurses on the floor had a cake made and came in singing happy birthday in the afternoon. Little things like this really made my day. Also my best friend Heather came to visit from Moncton for the afternoon with her little boy Cooper, it was so good to see her.

But it wasn't very long before contractions started up again Friday night, so I went back down, then came back up Saturday evening, back down Sunday morning, and remained there. The pain was getting worse everytime, and starting to last a little longer. Friday they started me on a Nitro patch which is something new for relaxing the uterus from studies done recently. I'm not sure if it really worked on me or not. My uterus was so irritable at this point...even checking the babies heart rates seemed to irritate me. The pain always started as rectal pressure for contractions...so as you can imagine, the anxiety I had from any type of bowel pressure, not to mention the embarrassment of using bed pans. Every time my bowels moved, the contractions started.
Friday morning I had an U/S to check the babies as the contractions first started up. The babies were still doing well, but very little fluid around Phoebe, around 1cm (below 2cm is dangerous for development), and over 9cm of fluid around Ursula. Again...an amnioreduction would have brought on labour most likely...however may have also reduced the pressure on my cervix...so there was that fine line.
Sunday afternoon/evening...the contractions were the worst, and even though I had been on Morphine all day, the pain would not go away later on in the day. Another U/S was done. Ursula had over 10cm of fluid, and poor little Phoebe had barely 1cm, very scary. It was getting to the point where I really couldn't handle the pain anymore, so they gave me EVERYTHING they could to control the contractions and pain....finally after a LONG time, the last dose of morphine made the pain bearable. By this time, it was too late...my water had broke, and we had to decide how we were going to get the babies out.

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