A little humbling...

is apparently what I needed.  I was getting a little whiny about having to be in the hospital and not being able to be at home on bedrest, so I got to see how things could be worse.
Monday I woke at 3 am with horrible contractions and cramping. The nurse gave me some medicine and after an hour it finally started working, but on and off for the rest of the day they would come back. I had cramping and lower back pain all day and by the evening I was getting really stressed out. They had upped both of my meds to every 4 hours alternating so that I was getting something every 2 hours, but that was still barely controlling it. So when I was doing my monitoring session that night we noticed that every time I had a contraction the baby's heart rate dropped. It only took two of those before the nurse started freaking out and came in to help me adjust and change positions to see if that helped. As she was doing that she noticed his head was down really low and his heart rate dropped on another contraction so they were worried his head was in the birth canal getting squeezed with each contraction. The nurse checked me and said I was dilated 2-3 cm on the outside and 1 cm on the inside and 50% effaced. They had to stop the contractions or deliver the baby, so they put in an IV of Magnesium Sulfate. Oh...my...word. I'd heard people say it was awful, and they were not kidding at all! Basically it relaxes your entire body, all of your muscles. So immediately after they gave it to me I threw up everything since my stomach was now relaxed and didn't want any food in it.(Maybe if it had known it wouldn't get to eat or drink for two days it would have kept it in!) It also makes you feel like you're burning up, so I had to have cold, wet rags on me for two days. And it makes you sensitive to light, so they took me over to labor and delivery and for two days I had to lay flat in a dark room and do nothing except feel like I was burning up. Every now and then I'd start to feel panicked and like I just needed to get up and do something but you can't really move much when all your muscles are relaxed. In fact I could only open one eye at a time, if I tried to open both of them everything would go out of focus. And it makes you super drowsy so you keep falling asleep, but they have to wake you up and talk to you every hour and ask about contractions so it's not like you ever get good sleep. The first day was a little bit better, but I was still having 6-8 contractions an hour so they decided to up the magnesium. The contractions finally calmed down, but the side effects got worse. Luckily the baby was doing fine through all this and never dropped his heart rate once after that. I couldn't really watch tv very well because of the light but I would turn it on and listen to it for a few hours each day when I was feeling particularly stir crazy but any time a food commercial would come on I would hurry and change the channel since even Cheerios commercials were now making me drool. The doctor came in Wednesday afternoon and did an ultrasound and, while I am dilated and he said I'm now 75% effaced, my cervix is still 2 cm long, still short but long enough that he thinks if the contractions calm down I can hopefully keep the baby in till next week when I hit 28 weeks. I about wept with joy when he said they could take me off the magnesium and start a new medicine in addition to my old ones and see if that combination would keep things under control. Well, I'm happy to report that for a full 24-hours now it has done just that! I've only had a few contractions an hour and they haven't even been painful at all! They put me on a low dose of this medicine so that they can keep me on it longer. It can reduce your amniotic fluid though so they have to do an ultrasound every few days and make sure we're okay there. The other drawback to this medicine is that it makes you nauseated, so when I got off the magnesium Jonathan brought a bunch of treats over for me to eat after 2 days of nothing and unfortunately all I could eat was crackers and ginger ale. Thank heavens my nurse gave me Zofran today! Anyway, after all my whining about wanting to be at home, I'm now so grateful just to not be on magnesium and I will gladly lay in a hospital bed for two more months if I have to as long as I don't have to go on it again! While I was on it though, I started thinking about how things could always be worse. I'm sure there are plenty of women who would spend 9 months on magnesium if it meant they could have a baby, and here I am complaining about 2 days! I also thought about what's going to happen to this little boy in the NICU once he comes out, and I realized that his time there will be very similar to what I was experiencing. While he won't be burning hot, he'll have to work hard at keeping warm on his own. He also won't be able to eat or drink anything and will have to be tube fed, and there will probably be plenty of times when he'll be thirsty but he can't tell anyone that. My arm is all bruised up because I had to have my blood drawn every 6 hours to check my mag levels, but he'll be getting poked for weeks. I was bummed because I had just gotten my IV out and I had to get a new one in, but he'll be getting several IVs and a PICC line to get his nutrition from, and all in his tiny little veins that will probably get blown and he'll have to be re-poked somewhere else so they can try again. My sensitivity to sound and light is nothing compared to the overstimulation NICU babies experience. Unless he makes it to 32 weeks, I am not even supposed to touch him and talk to him at the same time because it's too much. His muscles will be just as weak as mine were and he'll probably get sick of lying in an incubator hooked to so many wires and monitors after being in his nice swimming pool where he could move freely and be comfortable. My heart aches and I want to cry when I think about what lies ahead for him. We took a tour of the NICU the other day and I saw a 2lb 9 oz baby and all I could think about was how badly I did not want to have that tiny of a baby! The ultrasound said he's 2 lbs right now, so I'd really love to keep him in for weeks and weeks more! So I'll do everything I can, even if I have to go back on that horrible stuff, if it means he doesn't have to go through it as long. This one's for you little buddy! I'll stay here as long as you stay in there!
And ps, this post is not a cry for sympathy, I know plenty of women who've been on magnesium and some who've been on it for weeks, so I'm not feeling sorry for myself or anything. It could always be much, much worse. I really feel lucky that we've made it so far and that it looks like we'll be able to make it even farther! I'm still convinced it's because of all those wonderful prayers you all send our way. Thank you so so SO much for that!