BUT! That only lasted
until ~5:00am.
That’s about the time I started to feel sharp pains on the
right side of my belly. I was in such a
deep sleep, that when I first sort of woke up, I wasn't sure what the pain
was. It came on, I felt it, woke up a
little, readjusted thinking it was the way I was laying, and then tried to go back
to sleep. Just as I was dozing off
again, I felt another sharp pain start to come on. I readjusted myself again, rubbed my belly where
the pain was coming from, and tried to fall back to sleep. This happened one or two more times before I
was fully awake and wondering what the heck was going on. I got up to go to the bathroom – sometimes when
I wait too long between bathroom trips, my stomach will start to cramp and
really hurts. I even thought maybe I
just had really bad gas. I laid back
down again after my bathroom break, and tried to get comfortable to go back to
sleep. I was still fully awake though
when the next wave of pain came on. That’s
when I realized that no amount of gas or poor sleeping positions would make
such a strong pain come on in periodic waves. That's when I thought to myself - I think I'm having contractions.
I was completely awake now.
I grabbed my phone and started to time the frequency and duration of the
bouts of pain before waking Henry up. Two
more went by and then I woke him up. By
this time it was about 6:30am and I had had around 5-6 contractions in the last
hour. We weren't sure if they were real
contractions or just Braxton Hicks. I
did know that they were strong enough to make me feel nauseous every time the
intensity peaked. I drank some water
before laying back down, and I was laying on my left side taking deep breathes –
basically doing everything they tell you to do to make Braxton Hicks contractions go
away. But they didn't go away. These contractions (real or not) coupled with
the pressure I was feeling throughout the week convinced us that calling my
doctor’s after-hours number was probably a good idea. I called and Dr. Parnell (my OB) happened to
be the doctor on call that night/early morning.
I left a message describing my pains with the operator and Dr. Parnell called
me back within about 10 minutes. He told
me to go straight to Labor & Delivery at the hospital to get checked out. He didn't sound super alarmed, but was
concerned that I was going into early labor, and at 24.5 weeks, that would be
bad. So Henry and I got up, washed up,
got dressed, and we were on our way to Medical City just before 7:00am.
The L&D nurses were waiting for us when we got there – Dr. Parnell had
called to let them know we were on our way.
They put us in a L&D room right away, gave me a hospital gown to
change into, and told me to lay on the bed as soon as I was done changing. So I did.
The nurse came back in shortly after and strapped me up to four
different monitors – one monitor for each baby’s heartbeat, one monitor to
track my contractions, and one to monitor my blood pressure.
We were there for a total of 3.5 hours. The nurse asked me a million questions, and
then ran tests to check for a broken/ruptured water bag and kidney infection. And all the while she kept
fighting with the babies’ heart rate monitors because the girls kept moving so
much and their heartbeats would fall out of range of the monitors. I had
seriously never felt them move so much!
They were bouncing off the walls in my belly the entire time. The nurse even had to come sit and hold Baby
A’s monitor in place for a few minutes just so she could get good solid reads
on her heart rate. Dr. Parnell finally came
in to see us around 10:00am (but he was watching my monitors from home the entire time). He told us
that all of the tests they ran came back negative – no broken water bags, to
amniotic fluid leaks, and no infections.
But his concern about contractions was confirmed by the monitor readings
– I in fact was having real (minor) contractions; the beginnings of early
labor. He put me on some medication to
slow down the contractions and calm my uterus.
His words were: “We want a nice and quiet uterus.” His instructions were to take my medication
twice a day for the next 10 days, get lots and
lots of rest, and just take it easy.
He said if the contractions don’t stop within the next two weeks while
taking the medication, then the next step is for me to stop working and just
relax at home all day every day – aka bed rest.
I’d really prefer to not go on bed rest at all, if I can avoid it. I realize that in itself is a task though
with twins. So at the very least, I’d
like to delay when I go on bed rest as long as possible – I certainly don’t
want to go on it before I even hit 30 weeks!
It’s taken some time (and is going to take some more), but I’m
finally starting to realize that I have to let other people help me do
things. Henry is a super awesome husband
and has pretty much taken over running the entire house – he does the dishes,
the laundry, takes care of the dogs, etc. Yet, even though I know I have to relax and
rest for the safety and well-being of our babies, I can’t help but feel like a
useless slob sometimes. :( I've always operated on the notion that I can
do things for myself. Ya know, the whole
self-sufficient thing. So expecting me
to just sit back and do nothing but be lazy all the time is kind of a strange
concept to me. I mean, don’t get me
wrong – I love being lazy. And I’m
totally cool with waiting an extra day or two to do laundry or the dishes. What pains my heart (cue the drama!) is
sitting idle while somebody else does all of that work for me. It just feels weird. Henry (and everybody else) reminds me several
times a week though that I’m not “just doing nothing” – I am, in fact,
literally, making babies. And that, my
friends, takes kind of a lot of work!
Since leaving the hospital, I've been taking my medication
as directed, and have been trying to turn most of the housework over to Henry. And he’s been making a valiant effort to make
sure I get to bed early so I can get plenty of rest each night. I haven’t had any more pains or contractions,
which is a good thing super awesome.
We have a few doctor’s appointments coming up this week including a
follow up with Dr. Parnell regarding our little trip to L&D. For now, we’ll continue to take everything
one day at a time and pray that these two little monkeys stay put for just a
little while longer.
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