Home, Sweet Home

I was finally discharged from the hospital today! They were keeping me for extra time because my gastric system hadn't woken up quick enough for their liking (and the gas pains were pretty horrific) and they needed to treat me for that (on top of everything else). I know you've all been waiting for pictures, and now that I'm home I can finally upload them to my blog. So here goes!

This is a picture of the happy family. You can ignore the fact that I look like something the cat dragged in...


This is a picture of my daughter. We named her Chana Brocha.


This is a picture of my son, who won't be named until his circumcision.


That's all for now. I believe my brother-in-law has much better pictures. :-)

Holy Moley

One of my fellow bloggers just got an incredible unexpected BFP. Chicklet has been trying for 3 years and has 3 failed IVFs under her belt (there's more to this story, but I don't know all of it). Anyways, she was on a "medical intervention" break this past month and just got her BFP this morning. Go leave her a big congrats comment and pray that this baby sticks!!! WOOOO!!!

In other news, I am going home! No change to my cervix--still 3cm and paper thin, Baby A is at a 0 station. Doctor says come in when I'm in labor. :-)

Update

I saw my OB this morning, and she says that she'll send me home on Friday if there's been no change. It's infinitely easier to be at home for Shabbos than at the hospital, and she knows that. I'll probably go back in to see her on Monday and possibly will be re-admitted for next week. That's obviously if I don't go into labor first. We'll see! The contractions I do have are stronger than my previous Braxton-Hicks, but they're not regular and even if I have a whole bunch in an hour, they'll stop altogether after a little while. I'll let you know if anything interesting happens in the meanwhile!

I actually had a relatively decent amount of sleep last night. I slept from 1am to 6am straight w/ no interruptions. At 6am my bladder was at its exploding point, so I got up briefly for a bathroom break. I got back to sleep at 6:30am and slept almost straight until 8:45am (with a brief half-wakeup around 8am when they checked my blood pressure and brought in my breakfast). 7 hours and 15 mins is not too bad!

Hospital Again

Well, here I am, back in labor & delivery. I came in Friday morning for my scheduled non-stress test and haven't left. The babies did great during the non-stress test, but the doctor didn't like that I was contracting so much, so they admitted me for longer monitoring. The contractions continued--not painful, sometimes I didn't feel them at all--and eventually the doctor came in and checked me. 1cm and 90% effaced...oops! The doctor was a bit concerned about my cerclage and decided to keep me overnight until my OB was in the next morning.

Saturday morning my OB came in and decided to take out the cerclage and start me on IV fluids. She checked me right before she took it out and I had progressed to 2cm...oops again...and the cerclage was basically hanging off, not really doing much. I don't even think she needed scissors to cut it, so she just pulled it off. It didn't hurt at all--I've had pap smears that were worse--and I only bled a teensy bit. She checked me again and now I was 3cm and 90 % effaced...big oops. She and the nurses were convinced that I was just going to go into labor, so they moved me to a bigger room. They were wrong, though. After getting the fluids my contractions basically stopped. When they checked me later on in the day I was still 3cm. :-)

So, I'm still here. Amniotic sacs are both intact (yay), and I believe my mucous plug is still hanging in there, although I don't really know how... The doctor says she may send me home if I reach 34 weeks (on Tues) and haven't progressed at all. So, I'll be in the hospital until further notice. We spoke with a neonatologist yesterday and he reassured us that babies born at this point do very well (especially since I got the steroid shots last week). The babies would have to stay in the NICU until they get released from the hospital, and that usually happens between 36 to 38 weeks gestational age--most likely closer to 36 since they're not *so* early. As the neonatologist said, "There's preemie and there's really preemie." There's also a difference between pre-term and premature.

Well, that's all for now. Back to watching Harry Potter weekend on ABC Family. :-D

Eventful Week

Sorry I've been such a bad blogger, but I've been SOOOO busy. Firstly, I've been helping the Jewish day school in my community with a project, and it's taken up SO much time this week. Secondly, my mom came to visit. So any time I wasn't working for Torah Academy, I was spending time with her. Thirdly, I've spent nearly the last 24 hours in the hospital. Urgh!

So here's what happened. Yesterday morning I had an OB appointment that went perfectly well. My belly measures 46cm (eeps), my blood pressure is great, I'm on antibiotics for another UTI and the babies have super heartbeats. She did another fetal fibronectin test as well as my group B strep test (no speculum). Later on in the day, I noticed that I was spotting! Not a lot and it was brown, but I called the doc to see if she thought it was from my appointment earlier or if it might be something else. She basically told me to get my tush down to labor and delivery. :-) So my mom and I came on over to the hospital. They did a speculum check and low and behold I'm dilated to 1cm! Whoops that's a change from being "tight as a drum" last week. As of last night my cerclage is still holding well and isn't pulling, but they wanted to keep me over night to make sure that 1cm doesn't turn into 2. I'm STILL waiting to be checked, and if it's fine I need to make it home before Shabbos. We also decided to go ahead and get the steroid shots, because now that my cervix is *really* not behaving, we want to be safer than sorry. So far so good! No weird side effects from the first shot.

Now, the reason I haven't been checked yet is because my doctor (actually a med student) came to see me this morning and he just so happened to be someone I went to Brandeis with. lol He's doing med school at Tufts and is doing his OB rotation here. In order to prevent the incredible awkwardness of having him check me, he transferred my care to another doc...but I still haven't seen her yet. She is supposedly going to come in about 10 mins to *finally* check me. I'll give an update then!

UPDATE: Still 1cm and will be going home in time for Shabbos! I just have to wait to get my second steroid shot and then I'm all set.

Too Much Excitement

Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been lazy the last few days. :-) On Friday evening I went to bed pretty early (like 9:30pm) and then woke up about 2 hours later. I got up and went to read for a while, and the whole time was having contractions (annoying and a teeny bit painful, but nothing I couldn't handle) about every 5 mins or so. Now I wasn't really worried that I was in labor, but with having frequent contractions, I was nervous that it might be affecting my cervix and therefore my cerclage. So, my hubby and I packed up and went to the hospital at 3AM. We got there, I was put on the monitor and checked. My cervix was closed and my cerclage holding steady, but we were watching the contractions on the monitor (and I had the pleasure of feeling them). They told me to try drinking more (even though I honestly had had a ton to drink the night before) and let me try to get some sleep. Shmuel (sort of) slept on two chairs that he made into a makeshift bed and I (sort of) slept on the bed. At 7AM we both woke up, so they checked my cervix again and it hadn't changed. YAY! My doctor came in and told me I was good to go, but she wanted me to get a steroid shot to help the babies' lungs just in case I went into labor. After much debate, my husband and I decided to forgo the shot because my fetal fibronectins were all negative (which means there's a very low chance of labor in the next 2 weeks) and because the shot really only makes a difference if the babies are born from 2-7 days after the shot is given. With my chances of delivering in the next week being so low, I didn't feel the shot was really necessary. Besides, after talking with the neonatologist from the NICU, it was obvious that if the babies were born at this point respiration is not the biggest issue. Their stay in the NICU would really be for other things, like temperature regulation, putting on weight and figuring out how to eat via mouth. For the first 24-48 hours they might have some trouble breathing, but after that it really shouldn't be an issue. We then went home, had lunch and then pooped out completely. I've had plenty of contractions since, but not with the same frequency. And THAT was my weekend. :-)

Grosgrain has another adorable skirt up for a giveaway. Check it out here: Blushing Buttercream Pettiskirt