31 Week Update

Well, I have officially made it to 31 weeks! While we’re hoping for several more, I can’t say how grateful I am to be this far along.

On Monday I had my after-discharge-from-the-hospital-checkup with Dr. C. I’ve only seen him once before, and I have to say it was like seeing a completely different doctor. I don’t know if I caught him on a terribly busy day the first time or what, but he hardly looked up from my chart–he stood against the counter facing the wall, and in the two minutes he spent with me, I think he turned slightly toward me a total of 3 times (one of those to listen to the heartbeat).

This time he was amazing! Very thorough. Super friendly. Telling me “we’re here 24-7 and I want you to call anytime you have a concern!”

After getting out of the hospital, I did have a couple concerns.

Disclaimer: If you’re a guy or if you hate it when women discuss pregnancy stuff openly, this post isn’t for you. You should definitely skip the rest of this post. It is just TMI and will probably gross you out. It would have definitely grossed me out before children! But I’m here on bedrest, blogging–about bedrest. So (Warning!) there may be a few posts like this over the next few weeks.

I keep googling “procardia side effects” and “17p hydroxyprogesterone side effects” and “labor after progesterone shots” and “pregnancy after preemie” to learn about other women’s experiences, so I figure maybe someday, it may actually interest (and possibly even benefit?) someone in the same circumstance. I don’t know. But I hope so!

As I was saying . . .

First, on Saturday, I had a bit of “bloody show.” Not a huge amount, but what I remembered early on the morning that Micah was born (when I was over 5 cm dilated), which made me a little nervous. My contractions were not increasing though, in either intensity or frequency (as they were when Micah came). So I decided labor couldn’t really be progressing and maybe it was due to my cervical exam on Thursday.

Second, in the early hours of Monday morning, I woke up with severe nausea and diarrhea. It was horrible. I never actually threw up, but I was sitting there on the toilet heaving and holding the trash can because the nausea was so strong. None of my family was sick; and we had all eaten the same things on Sunday, so I ruled out food poisoning and stomach flu. I’d been struggling with the opposite problem (constipation) because of my progesterone, so this experience was definitely “something different.” I couldn’t sleep for about two hours. Again, my contractions were pretty normal (for me): several each hour, but nothing increasing in intensity or frequency. After about two hours, I felt well enough to go back to sleep. So I decided to wait and tell the doctor in the morning. But this was another symptom that was similar to the morning-of-delivery with both Mara and Micah.

As far as the nausea and diarrhea, Dr. C laughed when I said I was on both progesterone and procardia. He said, “You’re on progesterone and procardia?? That’ll mess you up!”

Thanks, Doc.

Then he added, after the constipation, this must be a welcome change, right?! Riiiight! (Hear my sarcasm, PLEASE!)

He said between pregnancy and medications, he would guess my body is just a bit out of sorts, trying to figure all this out. I can accept that I’m definitely out of sorts these days.

Little Boo’s head is still down (still pulling for a VBAC!!) and Dr. C said the “station” was -2, up from -1, which the resident told me last week. Isn’t it supposed to go the other direction? I guess that’s good news. The baby is now farther away from delivery (yay!).  I don’t know if that tells me anything at all, or just that the whole cervical exam is pretty subjective.

Dr. C said I was still at 1 cm, which was very encouraging! It seems unreal to me, during every cervical exam, when they say “1 cm” because as many contractions as I have had every day for almost two months, it seems like we would definitely be seeing some dilation going on! (Not that I’m complaining!–Just surprised—every time!) The real test will be next week–the week I was 3 cm with Micah. . . if I am still 1 cm, then all the progesterone, procardia and bedrest will really be paying off!

Dr. C did say however, “I wouldn’t say you’re 100% effaced, but once you start dilating, you’re pretty much effaced.” (How do you translate that comment into a percentage? I took it to mean I’m almost completely effaced.) Which indicated some progress since last week at Thursday’s cervical exam when I asked about effacement, and the resident said, “Nope, you’re still nice and long.” The change in effacement could explain my concern about the “show.”

Dr. C said the 1 cm was what he was most concerned about at this point. No dilation since I left the hospital. So they will see me every week from here on out, and they’ll be doing a cervical exam each time.

Like all the obs, he said I need to be looking for “something different” and calling if I have any concerns, because I’m already experiencing such frequent contractions that I can’t really use that to determine when to go to the hospital.

“I imagine you’ll be making a couple more trips up to the hospital before you actually deliver,” he added.

While that’s not particularly encouraging, at least we know: they’re expecting to see a lot of me!

I’m still left with the daily dilemmas of bedrest: How many contractions is too many? How close together is too close? And: was that just a side effect of a medication? or was that “something different”?

Time will tell. For now, we are taking one day at a time.

Thankful to be at week 31 and counting . . .