Never a dull moment.....

Just when I think this pregnancy will be "textbook" the rug is pulled out from under me again.

On Monday, January 14, I got up and went to work just like any other day. I was tired all day, but other than that, felt ok. I finally e-mailed my boss at around 3:00 that I was going home early to rest. I made it home, took two Tylenol and sat down on the couch, when I felt something "odd". Jumped up and ran to the bathroom and saw that I was bleeding - not just spotting, but GUSHING. I have never been so scared in my life - ever.

I screamed at Kevin - the way he came flying down the stairs, he must have heard the terror in my voice. I cleaned myself up as best I could while he called the doctor and we jumped in the car headed for the ER. Looking back, he really shouldn't have been driving me - he was terrified, I was terrified and hysterical, and it was 5:00, so traffic was pretty heavy. Thankfully, we made it to the hospital in one piece and in record time - it's a miracle we weren't pulled over, I know he ran at least a couple of red lights and cut off several people. I think he was living out his "Grand Theft Auto" fantasies. :-)

I insisted he drop me off at the ER entrance and I'd go on in while he parked the car. I got in and both receptionists were with other patients. Now, normally, I could understand that, but neither of these patients looked like they were in crisis, yet here I stand, very obviously pregnant, holding my stomach, tears streaming down my face and they just SAT THERE. I finally had to yell at them to ask where I should go. Then, they started fiddling around, one of them got a wheelchair and got me seated, and SAT BACK DOWN at her desk, where she and the other receptionist proceeded to ARGUE over who had to take me upstairs. I was one second away from jumping out of that chair and WALKING myself up to L&D, when a security guard finally came and got me to take me upstairs.

As I was wheeled up to L&D, the only thing I could notice was all the pink and blue balloons on the doors to all the rooms, and thought to myself "will I ever get that now?". I just knew I was losing both babies, and it was sheer torture as we went up that hall - it was like slow motion. They wheeled me into a triage room where I was met by my OB an anesthesiologist, and a host of nurses. I stripped down and got in bed where they immediately did an ultrasound. The OB told me they'd already notified the NICU and that they were prepared to deliver right then if necessary. She did the ultrasound, and I saw the most beautiful wiggling babies I'd ever seen. She continued checking them, noted that they looked just fine and then took a look at my placenta. Turns out I have a very low lying placenta, and that appeared to be the cause of the bleeding. A small part of the placenta had started to separate itself from the uterine wall (placental abruption).

I was admitted, put on continuous monitoring, no food (in case they had to do an emergency c-section)and told I couldn't get out of bed for any reason until the MFM came to see me the next day. We had an fun night of "find the babies", which kept me up all night long with nurses coming in and out to try to get them on the monitors. By morning, I had so much ultrasound gel on my belly that the hospital gown literally had to be peeled off me each time they had to move the monitors. By morning, the girls had done well all night and my bleeding had slowed a lot, so my OB gave the order to let me eat, but I still had to wait on the MFM to come by and do his ultrasound.

The MFM had patients at two different hospitals that he had to go consult with at lunch, so he sent his u/s tech to come do my ultrasound and give him the report - thankfully, he looked at the report pretty quickly and took me off the continuous monitoring and allowed me up for bathroom breaks (YAY!!!) He reduced the monitoring to one hour per shift, as long as the monitoring looked good, that was all he needed - at this point, they weren't too worried about the girls - they were thriving and seemed to have suffered no ill effects.

My next monitoring time was when the night shift came on. The nurse came in around 9:00 to hook everything up, and I thought I was home free. Turns out my little girls had gotten in a good nap that afternoon, and decided they did NOT want to be monitored anymore, so they fought, and fought, and fought. She tried for two hours straight to get them on the monitors, and finally gave up at 11pm and said she'd let me rest a few hours and they'd try again. She came back around 2am, and tried for ANOTHER two hours, and nothing. She finally just left the monitors on and said they'd take what they could get, which turned out to be about 30 minutes on Natalie and absolutely nothing on Kate. The day shift nurse came in to try again and still couldn't get them to cooperate, so she finally gave up and said she'd talk to my OB. My OB came in and decided to just do an ultrasound to check on the girls, and if everything was ok, since my abruption seemed minor and the bleeding had stopped, would send me home.

She did the ultrasound and it was the sweetest thing. Natalie (baby A) is breech with her head up towards my ribs, and Kate (baby B) is sideways across my ribs. Natalie was using Kate's belly as a pillow. They looked great, and my bleeding had stopped, so I was sent home on bed rest.

At this point, we're still hoping to make it until the end of March - I'll be 36 weeks then and the girls will be good to go. My doctors have all warned that this COULD happen again, but every day we can make it, the girls will be better for it. They gave me the steroid shots to mature their lungs, just in case, but I'm optimistic that we'll make it a while longer.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers - we could use all we can get. Our OB said the girls are "viable" at this point, but it would be a long, difficult road if they had to be born now, so please pray that we can hold off delivery for several more weeks.