Yesterday, Friday, we had our level 2 ultrasound appointment with the perinatologist at 8:30 am. We ended up arriving at the hospital about two and a half hours early for this appointment.
My doctor changed my meds on Wednesday because I was taking Motrin, and I should not be taking that after 32 weeks. She prescribed Procardia in its place, which is a high blood pressure medicine, but works for pre-labor to relax smooth muscles, heart and uterus both being smooth muscle. My initial thought was she wanted to take me off the Motrin a week early because of the babies' small size, in case of an emergency c-section, or in hindsight, maybe she wanted to see how I would react to the Procardia. I started my first dose of this stuff around 2pm Thursday. After the second dose around 8pm, I started to feel a little weird, anxious, like something was wrong, with a dull, persistent headache. And I started to contract more than I had been for 2 weeks.
We went on to bed and slept for an hour before the rain woke us up as it was spilling over our brand new gutters onto our bedroom window and the sidewalk below. At which point my husband, who is constantly worried about the functionality of the gutters, decided to take a flashlight and a broom up to the dormer window above us to see if there was a blockage on top of the gutter guard. Apparently there was a wet pile of leaves and crud sitting on top of the guard which John proceeded to knock off while hanging out the dormer window with the broom. I could hear him in our room, thinking he was actually on the roof, I naturally started to freak out (mind you, the dormer window is 3 stories off the ground in the back of the house). I know I should not doubt my husband's intelligence by assuming he is barefoot on the super steep roof in the middle of a thunderstorm, but I am also not in a rational state of mind at this point.
The headache was much worse by this point and my skin was crawling. I wanted to go outside in the rain myself and run around the house 50 times. And the contractions were getting worse. I went on to take the 3rd dose of this medicine, which I now regret. We were up the remainder of the night. Me in excruciating pain and anxiety like I've never felt, and poor John trying to talk me off the ledge in order to get me and the contractions to relax. I didn't want to take anything for my head because I wasn't sure I could. I hate that I'm pumping myself full of all this crap to begin with, it can't be good for someone that weighs 3 pounds.
Around 5am, and some pretty heavy contractions that I had to breathe through, I called the doctor. "Go to labor and delivery." Ugh, here we go again. We called the lovely sister-in-law to sit at the house while the p-nut slept the rest of the morning, and off we went. Kathy proceeded to take wonderful care of our toddler, taking her to breakfast and onto daycare for us. Family is great.
6am at the hospital, I get attached to baby and contraction monitors, at which time, my contractions completely stop and the babies look great. I realize as it approaches 7am that my last does of Procardia must be wearing off a little because my headache was back to dull. The medicine was working in the way it should be for blood pressure because my always normal pressure was down to 90 over 50. Not good, and apparently why I had the headache.
My doctor checks me at this point and finds that my cervix hasn't really changed but just slightly, and I am apparently not in preterm labor this time, no contractions whatsoever. Great news. Also great news, they have to take me off the Procardia because basically I "don't react well to it" as I have a barely beating heart when taking it. We decide the stress of this and the headache are likely why I started contracting again. She puts me back on Motrin for another week until I'm at 32, and then I go off of it completely and just hope that rest is all we need to not go back into labor.
Since we were already at the hospital, they just notify the perinatologist that we are there and they wheel me into the office for the scheduled ultrasound. The tech begins with baby A, 3 pounds 6 ounces, much better than just 3 pounds. Baby B however is 2 pounds, 13 ounces instead of the 15 ounces they got at the doctor office 2 days prior. The problem with baby B is his belly is measuring about 3 weeks behind, bringing him down in percentile. The peri is not really concerned about this because everything else looks so great. His heart, movement, placenta, fluid, cord blood pressure are all very normal and good.
The peri sends me on with direction to rest a lot, as I am doing, and continue to eat right. Both will apparently help to send more blood to the placentas with the right kind of nutrients. So I am trying to concentrate more on my protein, which is absolutely my least favorite thing to eat, in order to get these babies to maybe gain a little more bulk. She also prescribes another round of steroids for the babies lungs and schedules another level 2 ultrasound in 3 weeks, after speaking with my doctor.
We come away from all of this feeling pretty good. Generally, the measurements are an average and quite possibly not correct. So all we can do are the few things directed by each doctor and hope the babies are a little bigger than the educated "guess" from ultrasound. And if both doctors think an ultrasound in 3 weeks is actually doable, that makes me feel good about our original goal of 34-35 weeks. At 34 weeks they will not try to stop labor, which will be a huge stress relief, other than babies born 6 weeks early will most likely need some NICU time, but hopefully not too long.
Today I feel great, rested after a normal night's sleep (minus the hail storm that nailed us last night) and back to normal just taking the Motrin again. Contractions are back down to a few a day. So 32 weeks, here we come!
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