I started having contractions at 1:00 yesterday afternoon. I didn't think much of them, because they had happened randomly in the past couple weeks and stopped when I drank a ton of water, took a hot bath or lied down in bed. We told our perinatologist (Dr. Watson, whom we lurrrrve) about them, and he said to expect them to a certain point because of my previa and that he wasn't worried unless they got pretty strong or constant or weren't relieved my any of my contraction solutions.
Let me backtrack, because I realized I haven't updated in awhile and I am getting ahead of myself, which is typical and how my brain works... I am now 28 weeks along. At our last week's ultrasound, Noah weighed 2 lbs, 11 oz (which is big for his age, yippee!) and looked awesome. Every time he gets an ultrasound or doppler, they always comment on how overly active he is. Part of it is that he cannot stand any type of monitoring at all and follows around the probes kicking/punching them as hard as he can. Seriously annoyed. So he looks good, but my previa hadn't moved at all. Still smack dab over my cervix, basically centered. Super awesome. So we were given a bunch of different scenarios and here's how they go:
1. I am now on bed rest. I can go out to dinner or to a movie, though, and can shower and feed myself from the fridge, which is nice. No working, which is a WHOLE 'nother can of worms. The point of bed rest is to minimize the weight of Noah on my placenta/cervix so that I can hopefully last longer without a major bleed.
2. Starting now, I can expect a bleed at any time. It will happen because of Noah's weight on my cervix and as the cervix softens. The farther along I am, the more likely I'll bleed. It could be where it starts light and buys me time to get to the hospital, or, more likely, where it just starts gushing like a fire hose. Awesome. I think McSexy almost passed out over that description. We are hoping for the slow trickle where we have time to drive 15 minutes to the ER without getting our new car (PILOT peeps, super happy) completely bloody. We'll see.
3. If the bleeding starts, they'll try to stop it and if successful, keep me at the hospital on bed rest as long as possible (until 1. I bleed again or 2. get an amnio and his lungs are strong enough for delivery). If they can't stop it, they'll deliver him right away, no matter how far along we are. Boo. Too leeetle.
4. If I make it to 33 weeks (Jan 30th), I get another ultrasound to see what is happening, his position, etc. If things look good, I'll get an amnio and deliver soon after that, around 34 weeks.
5. Best case scenario and one we want specific prayers for: no bleeding, and then amnio w/ good result and delivery at 35 weeks. They won't let me go beyond that because then you are basically asking for hemorrhaging and an emergency section, which would really suck.
So, that is the situation. Alot of scenarios, and difficult for me to deal with, because I am a planner and hate not having a sure timeline, but there's literally nothing we can do....
So anyway, back to yesterday. Jason is out buying me a new car at a dealership about 30 minutes to an hour away depending on traffic. I start having contractions, and proceed with all of my usual tricks - bathing, drinking water, lying down, etc. But these feel a bit different than before because even when I am not contracting, my lower back is KIIIIIILLLLLIIIIINNNNNGGGG me. Like a achey muscle at best, being stabbed with an ice pick at worse and there is constant dull pain punctuated by the sharp pain of the contractions. We were babysitting Boo Boo, and he and Madison were standing over me - she licking and pacing, him howling right in my face. It was lovely. They were freaked out (don't ask about Duke - he was sleeping in a little egocentric ball). When I moved to the tub, Madison literally would not leave my side. She stood by the bathtub staring at me. But I kept thinking - oh, they'll go away in a bit, lalalalalala. I'm a moron.
Well, actually, they did subside for a little bit. "Take that beetches!" was what I was thinking. Sort of in the middle of this, Jason and his dad drove the car he wanted to buy out to me to inspect, and I was having contractions the whole time. My commentary on the car went like this, "The exterior is really great, I would say excellent condition.... OH MY F-ING GOD I AM GOING TO DIE whooo whoo whoooo... But I wouldn't rate the leather as "excellent" condition and they need to fix the vents so you need to talk them down... THIS SUCKS THIS IS NOT NORMAL I AM GOING TO DIE!" I would say gold star for me for checking out the car during those episodes. Jason was SLIGHTLY freaked out, but I was OH SO SURE they would be subsiding soon that I sent him on his way to put an offer on the car and so on and so forth, with my friend Becky on call in case something happened.
They did go away for an hour, like I said, and I thought I had one upped them. The problem was when they came back. By the time I realized that they were happening closer and closer together, I called Jason to see where he was on the drive home and he hadn't even left the dealership. WTF?!!! He dumped the paperwork there and left right away but by then I was crying in pain. I tried the bath again, no avail. Jason called me back to say that he had called my friend Amy's husband to come get me and take me to the hospital because he was super stuck in traffic. CJ came within a few minutes and Jason met us at the hospital. Thank God for CJ, but now I think he's never going to let Amy have a baby. Sorry, friend.
So, I'll hurry up now because this is a boring story anyway. We were whisked away to labor and delivery (a small perk of a high risk pregnancy - no time in the ER). I WAS having contractions, which at least I was right about that. Being the first time I've had them, I wasn't sure, ya know? My uterus was super "irritated" and showing constant little tiny motions between the larger peaks, so that is why the pain was pretty much constant with not much relief. Noah was kicking away and letting everyone know he was NOT pleased with the monitors, but the nurses were thrilled by him, so he really got the opposite reaction that he wanted. (Sidenote: my nurses were INCREDIBLE! Explained everything, were so, so nice, waited on us hand and foot, gave us a ton of good advice and info about previa. Oh, I loved them so. So glad we will be there for delivery!) Anyway, they got a hold of my doctor, who basically said there is nothing they can do other than wait for a bleed. I guess that uteruses don't approve of previa and express that by contracting and causing lots of trouble so I'll just continue to have these episodes up until delivery. They could have given me meds to stop the contractions, but we didn't want to do that if possible. They couldn't check my cervix because that is a big no no with previa, so everyone basically just flies blind until the bleeding starts, which they didn't think was going to happen unless I kept contracting like that for another day or so.
So we went home. Jason got me McDonalds and I spilled my fries all over the car and then I cried. BUT this morning the contractions had stopped so I am laying here, still as ice, praying that they never come back.
The end.
