My Trophy

Be prepared for a long, boring post.

So, this has been an interesting week...I've been laying in bed for the past three weeks, but last Sunday night I started to feel contractions. Let me start out by saying I feel contractions ALL the time. I'm talking the braxton-hicks practice contractions. With each of my pregnancies I felt them earlier, this time starting at 13 weeks. And I usually have several a day. Well, the thing that made them noticeable on Sunday was that they were getting really close together. My doctor had told me to call if I ever had four in one hour, even if they weren't painful. Well, at about 9pm I started noticing that they were about 20 minutes apart. So I told Hank to stand by and I called a nurse friend of mine. I told her that my back kind of hurt, I felt a "pressure" in my stomach, and that by then the contractions were 12 minutes apart. She said YES, call your doctor and go to the hospital.

Well, the doctor said the same thing (5 min apart now) and we headed into the Sierra Vista hospital at about 11pm (because it always has to happen in the middle of the night!). So, they checked me there and decided that I needed to be in Tucson (an hour and a half away) with my real doctors and a better facility. They told us they were sending me in the helicopter so Hank jumped in his car to try to meet us up there. After about a half an hour they came back in and said the pilot wouldn't go because it was too windy, so I'd be taking an ambulance instead. That was the longest ride of my life! I swear it would have been faster to just have Hank drive me. But they kept me on a monitor for the whole ride and even had to give me another dose of Terbutaline because my contractions were 3 min apart.

By the time we got there at 3 am poor Hank had been sitting in the lobby for 45 min. They gave me more terbutaline, my doctor checked my cervix, I had an ultrasound, and the contractions seemed to stop. At 5am she told us to stay for one more hour for monitoring, then she would send us home. Well, exactly an hour later, the contractions came back. They were a little confused and said they'd give me a sedative that was sure to knock them out. They knocked me out, but the contractions were as strong as ever. (While I slept, Hank drove home to check on our poor sick puppy, see if Jessica needed anything at our friends' house, etc.)

At about 2pm they tried ibuprofen, to no avail, and finally at 3pm gave me another sedative and a bunch of morphine. That did the trick. The contractions slowed enough that they could send me home and we were out of there by 6pm. Luckily, since I was pretty drugged up, I slept most of the day (only getting up to pee every 5 minutes). But Hank did not sleep a wink in that 24 hours and had to drive to and from Tucson several times. Then, of course, had to work the next day. Oh, and when we finally went to pick Jessica up she didn't even want to come home because she was having so much fun and had no idea that her parents had such a traumatic day!

Anyway, the contractions never fully stopped, but they slowed enough that they weren't worrying. So Wednesday they started up again. I really didn't want to go in, because I thought it was another false alarm, but the doctor said to, so we did. And, of course, the on-call doctor there looked at us like we were idiots and sent us home within a couple hours, saying that contractions are just my thing, and I shouldn't worry about them.

The good news that came from all of this is that I am now, finally, an official mom. When i was little, my young, cool aunts Jen and Desirae always had these cool clear drink mugs that they carried around everywhere. When I asked them where they got them they said, "oh, they give them to you at the hospital when you have a baby." So, all my life I had been waiting to have a baby so that I could get one of those cool mugs. Well, I've given birth twice now, and I have never gotten a mug! None of the hospitals I've been to give them, even though I see friends with them all the time! I asked in Tucson and the nurse looked at me like I was crazy. So, Wednesday when they released me from the SV hospital, I asked again. I said, "Do you have any of those clear drink mugs?" The nurse said, "Oh, do you want some water?" I said, "Well, I really just want a mug." And I got one! I left feeling so happy and accomplished. It is my trophy and I will carry it everywhere.