On Friday morning, after a very busy week with doctors appointments and balloon releases, I went in for my last NST before the weekend. I was really happy I had asked for the extra appointment because it just eased my mind that our baby girl was tolerating my irregular and weak contractions okay.
Twenty minutes after they hooked me up to the monitor, Dr D's medical assistant came in and took the strip back for analysis. Within about 5 minutes she came back and told me that everything looked good, just one semi-strong contraction but the baby's heart rate was just fine with it.
I went off to work and covered one of our afternoon cases locally. After my first bout with preterm labor, I discussed with my managers that I needed to stay closer to our hospital instead of driving my regular 30-45 minutes away to cover cases. They had been 100% supportive and it made it so much easier to make my biweekly (or in this case, triweekly) doctor visits.
The case that afternoon was a bit long, and I ended up finishing up at about 4:30. The nurses I worked with that day were the same group that had come to Kaitlyn's memorial service, and they had been nothing but sweet and supportive the entire pregnancy. This time, one of the male nurses asked me how I was doing with everything and I gave him the update on my most recent NST results.
"I'm so ready," I told him as I was packing up my stuff. "This baby could come tonight and I would be just fine with it. I'm tired of waiting and all these meds make me anxious."
"I bet!" he laughed a little bit at my boldness.
On the way home I called my mom, which is a typical drive home for me. As I was talking to her, I felt a contraction that was pretty strong.
"Did you drink enough water today?" she asked me.
"No, I probably didn't. I'll go home and down a big glass and get off my feet and all that jazz," I responded to try to ease her mind. Some people may not know this, but dehydration can actually jump start labor.
I asked my mom how my grandmother was doing and she let me know that she thought my grandmother probably wouldn't make it through the night.
My mom has a true gift (which she'll never admit to) with helping people pass away peacefully. Unfortunately, she's had a lot of practice with some really good friends. I remember when I was a senior in high school, one of her good friends had terminal cancer and my mom served almost in a hospice nurse capacity, spending hour after hour at her friend's bedside and helping with the housework. Weeks before Alex and I got married, another best friend lost her battle with cancer, and weeks before we lost Kaitlyn, my mom lost another friend in a freak accident.
As soon as I got home, I parked it on the couch with a big glass of water and waited. Ever since I had been put on the medication to make the contractions stop, I had kept a note on my phone so that I could track the break-through contractions to see if I needed to talk to Dr. B about increasing the dose at all.
While I sat and waited, I started to notice that my list of times for contractions was growing faster than it ever had before. When I first started tracking them that afternoon, they came every 15 minutes, but before it was 5:30, we were down to every 3 minutes. About that time, Alex got home from work. I had given him the short version of what was going on, and as usual he was playing it cool.
"So, do you want to go see a movie or something?" he asked, gauging my reaction to how serious the situation was.
"Yeah that's what I want to do..." I replied a little sarcastically. "Maybe some salted down popcorn will make these contractions stop."
"Hmm, what's the plan then?" he asked.
"They say that you have to have contractions for an hour before you call the doctor, and I'm 30 minutes in. So let's wait another 30 minutes and see if they go away. Otherwise I'll call the on-call doctor and see what we should do."
So we waited another 30 minutes, my notes on my phone growing with the times of contractions still 2-3 minutes apart. When my arbitrary deadline approached, I nervously called the number to reach the on-call physician. I left her a message, and was sure to mention Kaitlyn so she would know that I would be a nervous patient when she called me back.
After about 15 minutes or so, my phone finally rang. It was Dr D, the same doctor that had read my NST that same morning. I repeated what was going on and waited to see what her suggestion was.
"I'm still not convinced this is true labor, so let's wait another hour and if they don't go away call me back," she said kindly.
"Okay, no problem," I said, somewhat relieved to have a plan.
We sat on the couch and waited. Just like clockwork, the contractions kept coming every 3 minutes and I kept charting them on my phone as they came and went.
"I want to go to the hospital and make sure she's okay," I said firmly. "I feel her move after every contraction, but I just want to make sure she is tolerating the contractions okay."
"Okay," he agreed, and we hopped in the car to go to the hospital. I called Dr D and left her a somewhat short message telling her we were going to L&D just to make sure everything was okay, and she called back to let us know that she would meet us there.
It was about 8:00 when we checked in to L&D, and it felt like de ja vu from two weeks ago. I got hooked up to the monitor and watched and listened to the little one's heart rate, and sighed with relief that there didn't seem to be any fluctuations in her steady rhythm as the contractions continued on.
"Okay," the nurse said. "We're just going to keep watching you for a little while to see what is going on. I'll be back in about 10 minutes to check on you."
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