An Update From Yesterday

Yesterday was a doozy. It was emotional and stressful, I'm extremely happy things didn't turn out worse.

So at about eleven in the morning yesterday, I started feeling really tired, so my mom sent me to bed to rest. Ordinarily while I'm sitting or laying down, the baby starts moving and kicking like crazy, but yesterday he hardly moved at all in the hour and a half while I was laying there.

I went inside at around 12:30, just as Lincoln was getting up from his first nap. I began to have lower abdominal pains when I walked or sat up, so I curled up on the couch for an hour to try and feel better.

When that didn't really help and the little guy still wasn't moving a lot, I decided to call my doctor. As soon as I sat up to call, my Braxton Hicks started coming uncontrollably.

To make me more irritated and freaked out, my doctors office wouldn't pick up the phone so I could ask them if I should be checked out or not.

Over the course of two and a half hours, I had over 25 Braxton Hicks (you're not usually supposed to have more than 8-12 in an hour, I counted 18 in one hour) and baby still wasn't very active. I finally decided to go and get checked out at the hospital down here in Provo.

It was about 4:30 when we got there and about 5:15 when we finally got into a room. They stuck me on the fetal and contraction monitors. By the time I got in there, my Braxton Hicks had almost all gone away.

Or so I thought.

I soon found out I was having contractions, most of which I didn't even feel, every 2-4 minutes. Talk about scary!

They took a fetal fibronectin swab, a simple test to check the likelihood of going into natural labor and my nurse also checked my cervix for any change.

While the swab was gone being tested, I was told by my nurse that I was at a 1 1/2 with 50%  effacement. Lucky for me, I only dilated a half centimeter more than when I was checked in my doctors office last week.

My mom and I waited around for an hour before my nurse came back. She reminded me that my contractions weren't slowing down, so the resident doctor ordered a medication ordinarily used for pregnant patients diagnosed with high blood pressure. It helps bring down the severity and frequency of contractions. I had a 100mg dose every fifteen minutes for four doses.

Luckily, it worked like a charm! My contractions almost completely stopped!

By then, my nurse had a negative result from the fetal fibronectin test, meaning I had almost a 100% guarantee that my body wouldn't go into labor on its own for at least two weeks. It was a sigh of relief since the whole thing was seeming like déjà vu from what happened last month.

After that, I was given a prescription of a lower dose of the same medication they gave me earlier and I was discharged at around eight at night. My mom drove me to Walgreens to get my prescription filled, and then we went to JCWs to get me some dinner.

My dad kindly picked up my prescription and I took the first dose at 11:30 last night.

What does this all mean for mine and my baby's immediate future? I have a doctors appointment with a new doctor on Tuesday next week, and until then, I need to take the medication I was sent home with every four hours, as needed, to keep my contractions under control.

Hopefully everything will go smoothly and baby will keep baking until at least 35 weeks!

Thanks for reading!

Mackenzie