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!

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!

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

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.