Thursday, April 30, 2009

Growth Ultrasound

Thursday we had a growth ultrasound which went well. My body and cervix are still holding up although I feel like my body is being over taken by babies! I'm sure this is only the beginning of the uncomfortableness but I keep telling myself its all for a good cause. I haven't actually talked to the doctors about the ultrasound but the RA told me this morning that Baby A & B are in the 40th percentile which I'm assuming is based off a singleton baby. These are the current weights for all the babies.

Baby A- 2lbs. 7oz.
Baby B- 2lbs. 9oz.
Baby C- 2lbs. 1oz.

I have some great ultrasound pictures that I plan to post as soon as I can scan them into my computer so check back soon!

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Not much to report

Sorry for not posting in a while but I don't have much to report, which I'm thinking is a good thing. I'm still having crazy contractions that last 2-6 minutes(sometimes longer) and I'll have 4-5 an hour but half the day I'll have 1-2 small contractions an hour. They don't seem to be too concerned about them at this point because they are not that painful. We still monitor the heartbeats and the babies seem to be healthy. We have a growth ultrasound tomorrow so we will see how much they've grown in the last three weeks.

There was a little excitement on the 3rd floor this week, the quads that were next to me delivered. From what the nurses can tell me they are all doing good even though they weighed between 1-1.3 lbs. Now that she delivered I told the nurses that they can call me the Big Mamma now! I also got a small fridge in my room this week which made me very excited(its the little things)! Mom and Dad brought me a calendar that I can count down the days, it also helps me remember what day it is so I've enjoyed having that. The calender goes all the way to 32 weeks so I hope we can make it that far.

I've attached a couple of pictures so you can see what luxury I'm living in!

This used to be a double room, that's why there are two sinks, closets, etc.



These are the machines they hook me up to for heartbeat and contraction monitoring.

This is me hooked up to the monitors, I'm smiling for the camera not because I'm enjoying it!

This is Steven in his chair/bed, he said it is comfortable. What a trooper!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

First goal almost met!

We've almost met our first goal of 28 weeks. If you would have asked us six weeks ago the doctors and Steven and I weren't sure this would be possible. Now we can start working on our next goal of 30 weeks. On Thursday they checked my cervix and it is about the same as it was last week (1.4cm last week-1.2cm this week).

I think I spoke too soon about the 3 1/2 hour monitoring record because Friday was a long day. It didn't take as long to find the heartbeats but Baby A had what they call D-cells (drops in heart rate) and the doctors monitored her for 8 hours. Not fun because every time I moved we would lose her heartbeat and have to find it again. Needless to say I was very uncomfortable and wanted to have a party when they said she could come off the monitor! The doctors don't seem to be worried about the drops but just wanted to make sure she wasn't in distress. This next week we will get to do a growth scan/ultrasound so I will let you know how big the babies are after that.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Not a good night for heartbeat monitoring!!!

Last night was not a good night with the heartbeat monitoring, we must of set some sort of record! We started about 8:00pm and after 3 1/2 hours, 2 nurses, 3 heartbeat monitors, a resident, and an ultrasound machine later we finally finished. Needless to say I was very tired and cranky by the time it was done and on the verge of tears because it is miserably uncomfortable. I felt really bad for Steven who came to stay with me last night thinking he would go to bed at a descent time so he could get up early to drive back for work. He looked so tired but hopefully tonight he will get a good nights sleep.

Even though yesterday was a bad day for heartbeat monitoring it was a really good day for contractions, I'm not sure exactly how many I had but it was significantly less than what it has been. The doctors had to take me off the contraction drugs for now because my blood pressure dropped too much so we were very pleased that we had such a good day without drugs. Lets just hope today we can have a good day with contractions AND heartbeat monitoring!!! I think I'm going to request we start a little earlier tonight so I'm not up so late if it takes another record setting time :)

Monday, April 20, 2009

Typical day in the hospital

I thought I would share with everyone what my days have been like so far. Maybe its just because I'm a new patient but I have been pretty busy the last few days. Friday I checked in about 3:00, this took a while and had Steven running back and forth to the admission desk for signatures, etc. Of course the nurses and doctors couldn't do anything until we had the admission process complete so the rest of the night we had a doctor or nurse in the room with us until 11:30. Since I have checked in we have had visits from the Neonatologist, a Dietitian, a Nutritionist, and a Guest Services representative. Daily I have the privilege of seeing a Resident Assistant, Dr. Ivey(my new OB), 1 or 2 of Dr. Ivey's partner doctors, of course a couple of nurses, a nurse's aide, housekeeping, and room service comes about 7 times a day. The worst part of the day is when we have to do heartbeat monitoring on the babies. I love to hear the heartbeats but it is not easy to track down the babies, they move a lot and its difficult to make sure we have three different heartbeats. It usually takes about 1-2 hours for 20 minutes of heartbeats. We have to do this 2 times a day so it takes up 4 hours of my day and at least one or two nurses (they love it just as much as I do)! The second worst part of the day is hearing room service knock on my door, I feel like they are feeding a third world country! I get 3 large meals a day and 4 snacks. I don't know how they can call them snacks because it is usually a sandwich, cheese and crackers, and a milkshake or yogurt. Needless to say the dietitian and I had a little talk so we are working on cutting this down a little! Yesterday I had to do another glucose test and to my surprise I didn't pass so now they have me loading up on carbs so I can do the 3 hour test in a few days, lets hope I pass that one so my diet doesn't get restricted anymore! In my spare time I've been trying to catch up on sleep but that doesn't always happen with the traffic in and out of my room. As you can see the day can be pretty busy so if you have called and I haven't been able to answer you understand why but I promise to do my best at returning calls or update my blog more so you know what is going on.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Hotel de la St. Luke's

I am now an official resident of St. Luke's Hospital in Houston Suite Y322. Friday's appointment ended with me being put in a wheelchair and taking a trip across the skybridge to St. Luke's. During my wheelchair ride the nurse(my doctors wife) informed me that the doctor really wanted to put me in last week but I sweet talked him enough he let me go home for Easter. This week I tried the sweet talk again for just one more week but no such luck! Things really didn't change much from last week but they said I'd pushed my luck too far and they wanted me here. Yesterday afternoon consisted of a lot of visits from the nurses and doctors(until about 11:30 last night). They immediately hooked me up to a contraction monitor, which I told them I didn't think I was having many if any. Well it didn't take them long to prove me totally wrong, I think the machine started to go crazy as soon as they put it on. They seemed a little concerned about getting those to slow down. They eventually set me up with an IV and a sleeping pill and this morning the contraction have decreased so hopefully we can keep those to a minimum. Although I was not really happy about being admitted, once we were here and realized I was having contractions, etc. it gave us a reality check that this is where I need to be for now.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

One month down

Its hard to believe but I have been on bed rest for one month now. I'm only 26 weeks so hopefully I will have another month or more on bed rest. The past month hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be, my day mostly consist of watching t.v., playing on the computer, reading books, eating all day long, and every now and then a nap. Luckily I have a wonderful sister that comes by everyday at lunch time to make my lunch and she brings 3 very big helpers who love to do stuff for Aunt Adrienne. Yesterday my mother came and cleaned my house from head to toe and it feels so good to have a clean house. Not that Steven wasn't doing a good job he just hasn't had the time to "really clean". We've also been blessed to have many wonderful family and friends bring by meals so Steven hasn't had to cook much. My appointment is Friday afternoon so we will see if everything is still going good and if I will be able to continue bed rest at home.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Happy Easter!

Well it looks like we will get to have a nice Easter at home, still on strict bed rest but at least I'm not in the hospital! The doctor told us today that "things aren't bad but not good either and that I'm on the boarder of being admitted into the hospital or staying at home, its a toss up." The plan for now is to continue to do what I'm doing at home but come back again in a week with bags packed. Steven's going to get really good at packing up the car and I'm going to get good at living out of a suitcase but we're not complaining. Three weeks ago they seemed to be very skeptical that we would make it to 28 weeks but I asked again today and they said they were a little more optimistic now that we would make it to 28 weeks. They also agreed that from now on I need to have the same ultrasound tech check me every week so we get a consistent indication from one week to the next. So from now on we will see Ashley who we are both very comfortable with. We are thinking the closer I get to 28 weeks they will probably admit me just so I'm there when something does happen. I'm hoping that we can make it another week or two at home and when they put me in the hospital they can prolong labor another four weeks or so, maybe its wishful thinking but a little positive think never hurts. If something happens at home before then we were told to go straight to the Brenham Hospital and be put in an ambulance to be transported to St. Luke's in Houston. Lets hope that doesn't happen!

The babies seem to be doing good. Baby A & B are both 1lb. 11oz and Baby C is 1lb. 7oz. almost 6lbs of babies!

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Maternity Photos

I have always been a camera happy person and like to document everything through pictures, if you can't tell from my other blog post. I really didn't think I would be crazy about taking pregnancy pictures but I thought if I didn't I may regret not doing them. When I was put on bed rest I thought so much for that. Well Thursday morning my thoughtful sister called and said do you still want to take pictures, maybe I could come over and take some pictures of you and Steven. I thought I was going into the hospital on Friday so I said why not this may be the only chance I have to get pictures. We took several pictures and I think they turned out pretty good.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Good News!!!

I'm not in the hospital!!! As you know we were told last week that even if things were better they would be admitting me into the hospital today. So I have been through an emotional week of ups and downs and packed a lot of stuff. Last night I slept horrible and this morning I left the house a little emotional thinking it would be a long time before I would be back home. Once at the high risk doctors office they didn't have my appointment scheduled(not the first time this has happened to us). After patiently waiting for an hour the ultrasound tech came and got us. I was immediately disappointed because it was a different tech that we have not seen before and did I mention she had a accent that you could barely understand, things weren't looking good at this point. Well the ultrasound tech did her thing and Steven and I both noticed right away it didn't look as bad as it was the last two weeks, but what would the doctor say? The last doctor we saw was Dr. Johnson who said he would admit me know matter what. Well today Dr. Moise was the doctor on the schedule, both of them are great so it wasn't as disappointing as the ultrasound tech. Doctor Moise came in and said "what have you been doing the last two weeks" of course I said "absolutely nothing" and he said "well it is working", okay sounds good! He said it is very rare but things have seemed to improve quite a bit. He said we are not out of the clear and things could turn back around tomorrow so I should stay on strict bedrest for the remainder of the pregnancy but if I was comfortable going back home he was okay with that. He said he was also okay with admitting me into the hospital today but who in there right mind would say yes if given the choice, not this sucker! I'm not sure our minds are totally at ease because it is hard for me to believe that things were pretty bad at 22 weeks. At 23 weeks things got a little worse and now at 24 weeks its a miracle and things are better? This takes me back to the ultrasound tech who didn't do some of the things the other techs did and found the problems. Do things look better because of what she did or didn't do? Is Dr. Moise's opinion different from what my other doctors have thought? At this point we are happy to finally hear some good news and we are going to trust what Dr. Moise says. At some point he said I will end up in the hospital so the bags will stay packed and go with me every week to Houston. He did give me a shot of steroids to help develop the babies lungs and a progesterone shot to help prevent miscarriage so that does give us a little reassurance, of course it just adds to my hormones so pray that Steven can deal with me in the coming days/weeks. Our next appointment will be next Thursday with of course another doctor in the practice so we will see what her opinion is and find out if next week is the week I end up in the hospital! Thanks for all of the prayers they are apparently working and we will keep you posted.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

BES Baby Shower

Yesterday Steven had the honor of going to a baby shower by himself. I had every intention of attending but we thought it would be best if I didn't. Steven doesn't normally like to do things like this but they made him very comfortable and he didn't mind. They did a baseball theme that looked so cute and probably helped put Steven at ease. The cake said "Congratulations It's a Triple" and had a baby on each base. They made sure to send home extra cake for me and it was delicious. When Steven got home he told me all about it and I was amazed at the gifts we received!



Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Busy Day!

Even on bed rest it can be a busy day. Last week my doctor told me to go out to eat or something to enjoy my last little bit of freedom. That made my day because I was dying to get my hair cut and thought I was going to have to wait a really long time since I probably won't have much time on my hands in the near future. So thanks to Myrna for giving up her lunch break to "drive Miss Daisy" to get her hair cut. Then yesterday afternoon our Christmas present arrived, new couches that I finally convinced Steven we needed. I know its March but it took me a while to pick them out. We ordered them about a month ago and they finally came in. I also received an email yesterday that our changing table/dresser for the nursery was in. Alan thankfully picked it up for us and stuck around to help put it together. We read many reviews that it was a difficult item to put together but of course I had to order it anyway (it matched the cribs). So the nursery is coming together quickly and I'm so glad that I actually get to be here to see it.

Notice I'm in the background making sure everything is put together correctly and Steven looks like he is letting his dad do all the work!