Week 30

Even though I'm late, I wanted to recap week 30 before delving into the current one.

An unexpected baby milestone this week was they both learned to hiccup. Baby A started them first on Thursday and they lasted about 5 minutes. A couple of days later, Baby B joined in on the fun. They both seem to get them at least once a day. I feel kind of bad since they've probably gotten their sensitive diaphragms from me. I tend to get the hiccups a lot and any little thing sets them off. Poor babies.

On Saturday we met up with some of J's family at a fish restaurant. It had been about a week since my last visit to the hospital, and predictably my contraction count that night was high. I took a turbutaline and that helped. The next night was the same thing but by Monday, the pills stopped working. I was sent to the hospital.

The upside of having turbutaline pills is that they kept me at home for 2 more days. The downside is that eliminates the shot from the list of things they will try once I get to the hospital. So, they put me on magnesium sulfate by IV. They also started the first round of steroids for the babies' lung development. This sealed my fate for at least a 3 day stay. By this time I was contracting about every 2 minutes.

The first time I had the magnesium, that week in March, I just felt lethargic. This time it made me sick. I spent the night failing at keeping anything in my tummy, even though I was really hungry and thirsty. The last thing I had successfully kept down was breakfast on Monday.

By Tuesday morning I must have looked pretty bad since the first thing the doctor did was turn the magnesium down. He also prescribed me an anti-nausea medication. That seemed to help a lot and I ate lunch. It's unfortunate that they didn't think to give me anything during the night before, but I don't think they expected me to react that way. The contractions still hadn't slowed down as much as they liked. I was still having them every 5 to 10 minutes.

By Wednesday they had dropped to 1 or 2 per hour. They took me off the mag and IV but kept me overnight for observation. Thursday morning I did my monitoring strip and waited for the doctor to take a look at it. This was around 9:30am. Unfortunately my normal OB was stuck in a surgery. My MFS was also out of contact. Finally around 5pm, the nurse got ahold of him. He wanted me to do another strip. It didn't turn out very well because I'd missed lunch, thinking I'd be going home. Luckily the doctor let it slide and released me.

Even though I've been taking it easy for months now, J and I decided it was time for me to do a more strict bedrest program. My little trips to anywhere but the doctor are over. No more making myself a snack or climbing the stairs more than once a day. I pretty much just sit on the couch or lay in bed now. Hopefully this will work and I won't need to go back to the hospital until it's baby time.