A night in L&D

I had my OB appointment Tuesday, everything looked great. The babies were active, I did my glucose tolerance test (GTT), we got some other blood work ran, things looked fine. I was a little nauseous, but I thought it was related to the GTT. It was not.

V had caught the stomach flu from his cousin a few days back, but I thought (once again) that I'd dodged it. Keep in mine we just got over the stomach bug, or a similar one, around two weeks ago. I was wrong, obviously. So I went to bed that night feeling really nauseous, my stomach hurt pretty bad. I woke up Wednesday morning at 2:40ish vomiting. It was a pretty massive fit. I tried to go sit back in bed, propped up, and started noticing belly tightening. My lower back already hurt from shopping earlier, so I kind of wrote that off until it started coming with the tightening, got way more intense, and also spread to my sides. At this point it was coming pretty frequently so I knew something wasn't right, and called the on-call OB.

At their suggestion we just went to our local ER, rather than driving the hour to the hospital with a level III NICU. I didn't think I was having real contractions, I thought they were just braxton hicks still. I got checked in and hooked up, threw up again while they were trying to get the monitors on, and they finally got me an IV started. My cervix was closed, they did a FFN test (which came back negative), and they started me on fluids and Zofran (for nausea). I was having contractions every 3 minutes though, so they gave me a shot of Brethine to try and relax my uterus (as they put it).

After the first bag of fluids they did an ultrasound to check my cervix, it was still over 4cm so that was great. Babies looked fine too, they were kicking and punching, and flipping, all over the place the entire ultrasound. They did not stop moving the entire time we were in the hospital. I was still contracting every 2-3 minutes though so they wanted to give me another dose of Brethine, but my heart rate was too high so they had to wait a few hours for it to go back down. In the meantime I had to start my third bag of fluids. They eventually gave me the second dose of Brethine.

I was there from about 4am until 4pm, the contractions had just started to settle down by 3pm. I was still having some when I was discharged, but they said that's to be expected when you're sick. They were really far between, and the ones that happened between them lasted less than 40 seconds so they weren't really worrisome.

I called my OB while I was there (since they don't have privileges at that hospital) and kept them updated on what was happening. I have a follow-up on Tuesday to recheck my cervix, and a script for Zofran to get through the last of this stomach bug. I'm obviously to drink a lot of fluid, and rest.

I wasn't too worried when we went in, but when they told me the contractions were still happening every 2-3 minutes (even after the first dose of Brethine) I did start to panic a little. I was stuck at an inadequate hospital (level II NICU) without my doctor, and these babies need to stay in as long as they can. If something like this happens again (god forbid) we're going straight to our hospital. That morning I just really didn't feel up to it with the nausea and contractions, and I was worried about delaying treatment. When we got there we were more worried about being stuck there, and it just wasn't worth it.

I'm still having occasional tightening today, but it's nothing like yesterday. My Ob and nurse have been really nice and helpful, our nurse called this morning and we set up our follow up scan. She also gave me the blood results from my tests Tuesday, I did pass my GTT, TSH is fine, but I do have low iron. I already starts taking an iron supplement after the last round of stomach flu so I'm just to continue taking that for now. So, here's to hoping for an uneventful rest of the week. I could use it. 29 weeks today, and really wanting to make it at least another 6, although 9 more weeks would be great!