Room 3110

Well my 30 week appointment did not go as planned-I had been having more back pain recently and just felt "off" a couple days prior to the appointment.  My cervical length had shortened even more and I was dilated to 1 cm.  This bought me a trip to Mercy Hospital, Room 3110.

After being hooked up to the monitor for a little bit, it showed I was having contractions-about 6-7 per hour.  I was given a shot of Terbutaline to help stop the contractions.  For someone who doesn't drink any caffeine, this medication makes you feel like you've just drank a pot of coffee in 10 minutes!  My heart was racing and beating out of my chest for the next hour and a half.  The medication worked for about an hour, but then my contractions returned (although they were practically painless).  The next step was to place me on an intravenous drip of magnesium sulfate.  From all the horror stories I had read, this is not a fun medication because the side effects are horrible.  Although I wasn't thrilled with the idea of having to start this medication, I knew it was the last resort to stopping my labor.  I did not want to have my babies at 30 weeks gestation.  Although I knew their viability was over 98%, they were at risk of multiple complications due to being 10 weeks early. 

The magnesium was started and I was kept on it for three days.  It makes you feel achy/flu-like and flushed.  It caused the worst dry mouth you can imagine and I could not drink enough water or eat enough ice to quench it.  Which meant I was up going to the bathroom 1-2 times an hour (at least this decreased my risk of getting a blood clot-that was my thinking :)).  I even asked one of my night nurses if she could find me some hard candy to suck on to help-I had to force myself not to drink so much during the middle of the night so I could at least get an hour and a half of straight sleep.  By the second day of the infusion, my vision was blurry (another side effect) so it was difficult to read, surf the internet, or bascially do anything that I was doing to help pass the time.  So I pretty much laid there listening to the television.  A couple good things about hospital bed rest was getting to know my nurses and patient care technicians as they checked on me every couple of hours.  It was nice to chat with someone during the day (as opposed to bed rest at home, where I spent many hours by myself).  It was also nice having every meal delivered to me-the food was actually pretty good and there was enough variety that I didn't get sick of it. 

At this point in my pregnancy, there wasn't much room for food so I often got full after a few bites.  I most importantly tried to eat/drink as much protein as possible as this is what helps the babies grow.  This included a lot of chocolate milk, protein shakes, cottage cheese, greek yogurt, and meat.  It took a few weeks after my pregnancy for any of that to sound good again...

28 weeks (2 weeks before hospital admission)-ignore Alena's mismatched jammies :)