Discharge

10.03.14

       The next morning was another surprise visitor. One of my favorite nurses that I am so thankful for, Gail, came in to see us. She was just coming on shift and immediately took charge of my care (which makes me laugh even now!), writing her name on the board to replace the night nurse's name. She also gave me her cell phone number and told us that if something happened between now and Halloween (when we were scheduled and all of our previous nurses had scheduled themselves to work to be with us), to text or call her and let her know so she could swing by.
        About 9 in the morning, Dr B came in and looked at the strips from overnight. They had started a medication at 10 pm that was to be taken every 8 hours, so she had a good chunk of time to see if the medication had worked to stop the contractions. Luckily, it had.
        "So we'll go ahead and discharge you on this medication and I'll see you in the office on Monday," she told me as she picked up the long stretch of paper that had been printing off our contractions and heart rates over night.
         Fear.
         "If something happens over the weekend..." I said quietly.
         "Don't hesitate. Come back in to L&D and we will hook you back up again."
         "That scares me. I mean, you have plenty of time there where the contractions weren't affecting her heart rate? There's no reason for you to keep me longer?" I almost begged. I didn't want to go home and be responsible for deciding when it was "emergent" enough to come back to the hospital.
          "Well, we can't monitor you like this indefinitely," she said gently. "This medication is really effective, and you'll be on it every 8 hours but if you start having breakthrough contractions at the 6-7 hour mark then you can move it up to every 6 hours."
           "I'll just take it ever 6 hours then, I really don't want to mess around with this," I told her hesitantly.
           "That's no problem. You'll probably still have a contraction every now and then, but nothing this regular for a long period of time. Our goal is still to get you to 38 weeks before we deliver."
            Ugh. Four more weeks of this. I wasn't ready.
 
             The rest of the day I pretty much tried to recover from the excitement of the hospital. Mom and Dad decided that they weren't needed and left to go to Austin, and Alex headed to work that afternoon to not miss too much of it.
             And I went back to my notecards. Reminding myself every time I got scared that I wasn't in control, the baby's days were already written, and that our God is good.