A Little Rumbly in the Tummy

Last night I'm driving home at around 11:30pm and Joy calls me to tell me that her contractions are pretty consistent and a bit stronger than normal.  So, the doctor and nurses are concerned.  I told her to keep me posted and told her goodnight.  A few minutes later she called and said they are going to move her back to the 5th floor.  Oh boy! So I headed back because they were going to do an IV to try and stop the contractions.  In addition, I needed to collect all of her stuff and move it down stairs.

By about midnight they had an IV in her and were taking blood etc.  Poor Joy was so nervous.  She hates IVs and drawing blood.  In addition, we didn't know if we were going to deliver or not.  It all depended on what was going on and they didn't have enough information.  The doctor checked her cervix and she was 1cm.  They set the IV to wide open and pumped 1L of fluid into her.  This didn't really seem to help the contractions.  They were still 1-3 minutes apart.

The next step was to give her a drug to try and calm the contractions down.  I think this eventually helped but she was still having them.  I can't remember if it was the nurse or doctor who told us, but they said they would not be delivering and they were going to try and manage the contractions.  Our perinatal happened to be on staff that night and dropped in.  He kept an eye on the NST strip and at one point there was a decel on Baby B which concerned them.  So they kept her on the NST monitor until 7 or 8 this morning I suppose.  I got home around 330am or so to take care of the dogs and get some rest for work.

Poor Joy, she was tossed into a gown, stuck in bed with an IV she hates, and the monitoring bands wrapped on her for about 8-9 hours last night.  The doctor gave her a slight pain killer to try and dull the contractions a little.  I don't recall if that helped or not.  The contractions are not terribly painful, but it was enough to make her back feel a little sore and so frequent she could hardly sleep.  Not to mention the nerves of everything going on and not knowing what will happen.  In the end she only got about 1 hour of sleep and this morning she was still just 1cm dilated.  I believe this means she is probably not in pre-term labor. The doctor said she touched one of the babies' heads while checking and that they moved out of the way (um creepy!).

It is not unusual for multiples to cause contractions.  The uterus is growing like crazy and I guess this is how it shows its displeasure with growing so fast.  I suppose the concern is the frequency and that they have gotten a little stronger over the past few days.  We are still shooting for July 11th, but things just got a little more interesting.  I don't know if Joy will be on bed rest now.  I know if she does it will become a really hard stay.  It has already been 4.5 weeks and to wrap up with 1.5 weeks of bed rest, followed by the 4 days after the c-section would really stink.  So let's hope they can calm down the contractions and at least let her move around.

In addition, they moved her back to the room they just moved her from so she is back to the 7th floor.  I guess I didn't really need to move everything.  I did bring home a few bags of stuff, since she could be in a constant state of shuffle now.  I don't know why they were okay with her staying on the 5th floor for 3 weeks doing just routine NST monitoring and such.  Now she is a little more progressed and they send her back to the 7th floor?  I don't follow the logic there.