Danielle's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

Wednesday, the day I turned 35 weeks, started out great! I went and got adjusted at the chiropractic clinic and then went to Hobby Lobby for a few odds and ends. I had 3 strangers tell me how cute I looked so I was feeling good about myself. I came home, grabbed some lunch, and thought I'd check the mail. Who knew getting the mail could be dangerous?

I was walking back to our apartment after picking up the mail and caught my toe on an uneven spot of asphalt. I stumbled and hoped I'd recover but with how unbalanced my body is, I went down pretty quick. Yes that's right, I did a superman fall in the middle of the parking lot and unfortunately, my belly was there to catch my fall. I instantly panicked and finally mustered up enough energy to gather up the lame ads I had just gotten and my keys and went to sit in my car for a little while. Of course my doctor's office was closed for lunch at the time so I called my mom so I'd have someone to talk to. We laughed a little and I cried and then I prayed everything would be ok. 

{The culprit}

When my belly finally relaxed a little and I felt confident that I could walk up the stairs to our apartment I went up and laid down in bed with my stethoscope desperately searching for heartbeats. I had never felt so grateful to feel any movement, hiccups, or hear heartbeats. By this point my doctor's office had opened back up so I called to find out what I needed to do. I was told to go to the hospital to get monitored. I didn't know what all this would entail but I hoped it would only take a few hours and I'd be back home, but just in case, I threw a few things into a bag, called Jesse to let him know what had happened, and drove myself to the hospital. 

After finding out what floor labor and delivery was on I headed up there and was checked into my room. I then had to explain to anyone who walked in about how difficult it is to walk on uneven ground when you can't see your feet. I was so embarrassed that I had fallen and of course emotional; worried something would be wrong with the babies. I put on my gown, got an iv, was hooked up to the heartrate and contraction monitors, and was told not to eat anything... just in case. It was finally about this time that I evaluated my battle wounds and when asked what my pain level was I had to say 0 except for my knee which was closer to a 3. My doctor came by and said I had won an overnight stay and they were watching for contractions, bleeding, signs of placental abruption, or any other complications that would necessitate a c-section now. I was definitely not ready to have babies that day so I hoped everything would be fine.

 

{This happened through my pants!}

{My knee was (and still is) really tender.}

{It's hard to see from the picture but I scraped my hands up a little bit too. My parents were very relieved that I had scrapes in various places because hopefully that means my hands and knees helped break the fall a little bit.}

It quickly became evident that I was contracting pretty regularly, about every 5-10 minutes, and even though they were not hurting I was given a shot of terbutaline to slow down those contractions. It worked for awhile but the contractions started back up, so in with another dose of terbutaline. This cycle repeated itself a couple more times and I got up to 4 shots of terbutaline. By this point I was beginning to worry that we would really be having babies the next day. Luckily Jesse got off earlier that day than he sometimes does so he was able to come be with me. I just cried when he came because I was scared that this stupid fall was causing me to go into labor and that we'd have to deliver our babies earlier than we thought. Jesse was so sweet the entire time and even offered to stay the night on the lovely L&D pull out couches. His sense of humor was still intact as well which came in handy. At one point my feet were freezing and he asked why I wasn't given the gripper socks because I was obviously a fall risk! haha. 

{I'm sure Jesse would have preferred spending his day off doing something more fun than sitting on this couch but he was a good sport about the whole thing.}

My doctor ordered bloodwork and an ultrasound to check things out and I tried to lay very still for the rest of the evening and overnight so the contractions would stop. The four doses of terbutaline seemed to help and I was able to get some food late that night (finally!) and a little bit of sleep. Around 6:00am though the contractions had started back up again so in went another shot of terbutaline. I was not excited about that and figured they probably couldn't give me many more doses so I either needed these contractions to stop on their own or we'd potentially be having babies. 

{For whatever reason I REALLY wanted donuts. So Jesse brought me some the next morning when I was able to eat regular food again.} 

Luckily my contractions slowed down to about one every half hour and continued to slow a little more as time went on. My doctor came by again the next morning and said that the ultrasound did not show any signs of placental abruption and the bloodwork came back good which was such a relief. She said she'd continue to monitor for a few more hours and if the contractions didn't pick back up I should be good to go home. That was music to my ears! So it was a waiting game once again for a few hours. Then my doctor came back to check on me one more time and she felt comfortable sending me home! Yay! She also mentioned that she went ahead and scheduled me for a c-section for next week. I asked her what the likelihood would be to have our babies come home with us if they were born at 36 weeks and she told me they have a 95% chance of coming home! I know there's still a chance they'll have to spend a little extra time in the NICU but that number was encouraging and I'm really hoping they'll be able to come home. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. For whatever reason little boys often have a harder time with everything so let's hope they're tough little guys instead of little wimpy ones! :)

After a few more questions, I hurried and changed out of my clothes and gathered up my stuff to head home. Jesse had a prior commitment that happened to overlap with my discharge time, plus we had two cars there since I had driven myself, so he left just before my nurse came in to do discharge teaching. When she asked if he had gone down to bring the car around, I had to break the news to her that I would be driving myself home. She said "so I'm going to take you down in a wheelchair just so you can drive yourself home?" Yup, that's about it! She wasn't overly excited about it but she wheeled me right out to my car in the parking lot and told me that was a first for her! haha. 

I still have an appointment with the perinatologist early next week so unless he feels comfortable waiting any additional time we will be having these little boys next week! Over the next week I am definitely taking it even more easy, keeping my feet up, drinking water, watching contractions, and making honey-do lists so we'll be even more ready for these babies. We're getting really excited now that we have a date we're shooting for. It makes it seem so much more real and we cannot wait! Jesse even took a couple of walks down past the nursery and he'd tell me about the babies and it got both of us so excited to meet our little ones!  

This is it. The last week of our family of two.