Well, as of midnight last night, I had no idea if I would be preparing to write my 35 week update or a birth story today. We had yet another exciting, contraction-filled evening, this time worrying us enough to end up in a late night/early morning visit to Labor & Delivery.
I've been noticing more and more contractions over the past week. Some come with a menstrual cramp-like feeling, some are just the painless Braxton-Hicks. I didn't think too much of it until last night when a couple of them took my breath away. They started getting more frequent while we were all sitting down watching our back-log of Hulu shows, and I finally decided to start keeping track around 10:30. Between 10:30 and 11:30, I'd had seven contractions--some with the crampy feeling, some not. But we decided to call L&D and see what they recommended since my doctor had told me to come in if I had more than six in an hour.
Unfortunately, when I called, the nurse on the phone told me that he couldn't triage over the phone, but if I felt concerned enough to call in, he'd recommend I go ahead and come in for a check up. At this point, it was close to midnight, and I hemmed and hawed over whether everyone needed to get loaded into the car for what was probably nothing. But Colby was pretty adamant that he was in favor of going in, so I went to wake my mom and let her know that the baby bus might be leaving soon if she'd like to get on board. I had packed most of my hospital bag last weekend after Scare #1, so I just had a few last minute things to round up and throw in, and by 12:05 we were on our way to the hospital.
We made it through the gates after a short stop for a random vehicle inspection (of course!) and got settled into one of the labor rooms. They strapped on two monitors to keep track of the babies' heartrates and another one to measure my contractions. It was simultaneously fascinating and wearing to watch the monitor over the next 30 minutes. Every time I had a contraction, we could watch it climb to the peak and then fall again, and there was a definite difference on the screen between the painful and painless ones. I also got anxious every time one of the girls' heartrates would suddenly drop off, though it was just due to their movement. I can't imagine laying in that incredibly uncomfortable bed with the itchy straps on my stomach for hours on end, listening to and obsessing over all of the monitoring. Ugh.
After my 20 minutes of monitoring, they on-call doctor came in to do a quick ultrasound and cervical check. One of the girls is head down or "vertex" still, but the other one has flipped back up to transverse after being head down at my last two ultrasounds. This led to a short conversation that has me very worried that I'll end up with a C-section if transverse baby (we're pretty sure it's Annabelle, although he didn't refer to either one as Baby A or Baby B during his check) doesn't flip back down for go time.
He did tell me that I'm 2-3 centimeters dilated, 50% effaced and that the vertex baby is already at a -1 station. She was so low, he couldn't find her head on the ultrasound monitor. In case that is all gibberish to you, which it would have been to me a few months ago, 2-3 cm is how wide my cervix has opened--a woman who's ready to push out a baby will be 10 cm. 50% effaced refers to the thinning of my cervix as the baby begins to drop and essentially stretches out the muscle. And the stations are just markers for where baby is positioned in relation to the pelvis. It's measured from -5 to +5. A 0-5 station is a baby whose head is engaged in the pelvis and +5 is when the baby is crowning.
So, while I've known lots of girls who stayed 2-3 centimeters dilated for days or weeks on end, the combination of factors seemed to make my doctor think that things were definitely brewing. He sent us back home and told me that I could continue with normal activity as I felt comfortable, but said that he'd expect things to progress over the next couple of days. I woke up through the night with a couple of contractions, and have had plenty of Braxton-Hicks this morning, but so far nothing that's making me overly anxious for the short-term.
We're heading out to run some errands today, and I'm planning to get the nursery as organized as possible this afternoon, but hopefully they'll give us a little more time to get ready, and themselves a little more time to develop. I have two Non-Stress Tests this week, one on Tuesday and one on Friday, and I have my next growth scan with my MFM on Wednesday, so we'll see how far we make it!
SO excited for you!! :D
Posted by: Megan | October 22, 2012 at 03:49 PM
eeek! This is the crazy time!!! Hope they stay in longer :)
Posted by: Solange | October 22, 2012 at 06:33 PM
Eeek it's almost time! So excited for you guys. Hang in there!
Posted by: Jessica | October 23, 2012 at 02:35 AM
so exciting!!!
keeping you in my thoughts!
Posted by: erin - heart in ireland | October 23, 2012 at 02:41 AM
Oh my goodness!! I'm loving these updates :) Hang in there!
Posted by: Sara | October 23, 2012 at 04:04 AM
Oh my goodness! What an update! Hope the babes hold tight a little longer! So exciting though!
Posted by: Deidre | October 23, 2012 at 02:13 PM
Oh wow, it won't be long now! Hope the girls continue to stay in and grow until they're ready to come out. Hope you can rest as comfortably as possible until then!
Posted by: Jen | October 23, 2012 at 04:13 PM