Still pregnant!

But I wasn’t totally off the mark, as yesterday was a rather new and different day.

I called my OB’s office to report the new pressure I was having, mostly to ask if I should do anything or ask for anything special while I was already going to be at the hospital. My doctor wasn’t in, but my favorite doctor (ha!) from a few weeks ago called back and said I should come by the office after the NST for an exam, presumably to see if my cervix was dilating. Sounds like fun!

Off to the hospital. The BPP ultrasound went just fine, both babies dutifully practicing their breathing motions, still plenty of fluid, all of that good stuff. The non-stress test started rough, though. For some reason, little miss really likes to sleep during those, so it’s been taking a while to get her to be “reactive.” We keep ending up needing to zap her with the little buzzer or poke her to get the heartrate variation we want. Once we finally had the results we wanted, the nurse was almost ready to let me go when she realized she had never taken my blood pressure. And then it got interesting. I never heard the actual reading, but it was apparently high enough that they decided to keep me a bit longer for monitoring, especially since it was taken after an hour of me lying down. The on-call doctor ordered blood tests to see if I was developing preeclampsia. Basically, if the bloodwork didn’t come back with good results, it was going to be birthday time. Yikes! Thankfully, it all came back just fine, kidney and liver function were good. Four hours after the start of the NST, they sent me home. I had missed the opportunity to go in and get checked at the OB’s office, so I was instructed to call her in the morning.

Of course, as soon as I left, the back pain I had been experiencing in the uncomfortable hospital bed turned into pressure, and soon I was having regular cramping. By 7:30, it would start as a low back pain that wrapped around my lower belly like a really bad menstrual cramp. Hubby and I started timing them, and they were about 9-10 minutes apart, with sometimes a lesser aftershock at 4-5 minutes. I remembered my OB saying I should call anytime I had anything regular and painful, so call I did. The on-call doctor sent me back to L&D, so at nearly 11pm, off we went. The cramps indeed showed up as contractions on the monitor (it’s not all in my head), and babies were good and active, not distressed at all by these new developments. They were still relatively far apart and somewhat irregular, though. And when the nurse did my very first internal exam (short fingers! OW!!), we discovered I was not even a little bit dilated. The contractions, fun though they were, were not making changes in my cervix. So at about 1:00am, back home we went. I had been worried about a “false alarm,” but the nurse reassured me that I had done the right thing to call and come in, and not to worry about it.

Unfortunately, the contractions stuck around all night, ranging between 4 and 20 minutes apart. And these were not the painless braxton hicks I’ve had for the last many weeks. These hurt, enough that I had to really concentrate on breathing through them and not tensing up the rest of my body. Needless to say, it was an awful night’s sleep.

I talked to my OB this morning. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a big part of me that sort of hoped she’d tell me to head in and just deliver today. But as the contractions were still irregular and not close together, she wanted me to stick it out and wait at least for tomorrow’s growth check at the peri’s office. Much as I’d love to be done, the babies are still officially premature at this point, so we need a better reason than discomfort to justify delivering them. She was kind enough to say that she half hoped that tomorrow’s ultrasound would show slowed growth so I could get it over with, but in the meantime, the plan is to just kind of suck it up. (No, she obviously doesn’t want my babies to not grow well! She just understands how “done” I am…)

After a few more contractions this morning, they more or less petered out by about 11am. I’m still having some low back pain, but it’s definitely not the contractions I was having earlier. I’m resting and drinking my water like a good girl, and hopefully will get in a good nap to try to make up for last night.

Tomorrow at 11 is the big (final!) growth ultrasound, so we’ll see how it looks. If either of them has slowed down or stopped growing, it may very well be delivery time. If not, well, I get to keep on hanging out until I either go into labor on my own (which is feeling more likely!) or make it to August 9.

Things are getting interesting around here!