Preterm Labor Excitement

This is an email I sent out last week, it summed up our latest adventures:

Hello friends and family,

For some of you this is a review, but it might be the first news for some so bear with me. 

Last monday I went into the dr. Because I was feeling some contractions.  They sent me over to the hospital to get monitored.  I was dilated to a 2 and my contractions were about every 4-5 minutes.  They gave me medication to slow the contractions and they gave me a steroid shot to help the babies' lungs develop if they were born now.  I stayed overnight and they kept monitoring me.  I seemed more stable in the morning so they sent me home.

Tuesday and wednesday I felt pretty good.  Wednesday night I woke up feeling more contractions.  I took a bath and was able to go back to bed. 

Thursday morning I was feeling more constant contractions again and since the dr said it was better to come in and have a false alarm than to come in too late, I went back into the hospital.  Little did I know that that would be the last time I would be in my Vernal house.    They checked me again and I was still at a 2, but I was more effaced.  My dr was out of town, but he had told the dr on call my situation and he didn't feel comfortable with the change.  So I got to fly to SLC strapped to a gurney.  I was feeling pretty low at this point, stressed and in pain, mostly due to my catheter.  I got some pain medication on the plane and presently felt much better.  I got to also ride in an ambulance twice, to and from the hospitals and airports. 

3:30 pm. I arrived at the University Hospital in SLC.  My sister in law was there to meet me for which I was very grateful.  Oh, by the way, I hadn't been able to eat anything all day, so I was hungry too.  Here it seemed like everything started over again.  They checked me and started monitoring me.  A guy came in and did an ultra sound to check the position of the babies, amount of fluid, and my cervix.  That all seemed to look fine.  My contractions were still pretty fast when I came in, but started to slow down overtime.  The drs and nurses were all so nice and helpful.  They finally had an idea of what was going on and I was able to eat and get my catheter out, yay!  This was around 5. 

Dori stayed and visited with me until about 7:30.  Meanwhile Doug was going through craziness at home.  He packed up bags for him, me, and the boys and finally left Vernal at 5:10 to come out to SLC.  He arrived around 8, dropped the boys off at his brothers' and then came and saw me.  I was just being transferred to a lower level room since they didn't think I was going into active labor.  Now I didn't have to be hooked up to the monitors all the time, they would just come and check the babies every 4 hours.  Doug left to go back to his brothers and I slept relatively well considering they checked on me at 11 and 4:30am. 

Friday morning.  After eating and showering Doug found me right as I was going to get a stress level test.  This was just more monitoring of the babies heart rates and my contractions.  The contractions were about 10-13 minutes apart and the babies looked good.  After the test we were surprised by a visit from my Vernal Relief Society President.  Her husband had a meeting in SLC and so decided to come out and visit me.  Doug stayed with me through the afternoon while i continued to get my vitals checked and babies monitored every few hours.  I just have to say here that it got old trying to find two heart beats.  The girls are very mobile and sometimes not cooperative.  Then the nurses have to make sure that they don't have the same baby on the monitor.  Then it just cracks me up when they say "yep, there there are two babies there."  Duh, did you think they were going anywhere.  Anyway, I just chilled the rest of the evening, checking emails, texts and keeping people up to date.  And of course we are thinking of so many what if plans and trying to figure out what to do with the boys since I will be on bed rest now. Didn't sleep as well this night even though I should of, I was only disturbed at 12 and 6 am. 

Saturday.  I saw the drs in the morning and was checked again.  I was still at a 2 so my main dr thought I was stable enough to send home.  I spent the morning on the phone trying to get schedules lined up for family and friends to watch our boys.  They will be going to Cache Valley until we move on the 8th of May.  I admit that it was getting me stressed a bit and I was tired.  I stopped calling, ate lunch and tried to take a nap, I was interrupted twice by nurses, sigh.  Doug came by around 3 and by then my records were done and I was able to leave.  I wasn't feeling well at the time and was having more contractions.  I tried to tell myself that I wasn't in labor and went to Eric and Dori's house.  It was good to see the boys and have some distraction from my contractions.  Eric and Dori were great to take us all in and the boys loved playing with their cousins. 

Sunday, chilling with the family and getting ready to go. Doug left in the afternoon to go back to Vernal to pack more things for the boys and pack for us in Denver.  I will be flying commercially tomorrow (monday) to Denver.  We wanted to get me out there while I was "stable" so that if the girls came early I wouldn't be stuck in SLC while the rest of the family moved to Colorado. 

Doug will drive back to Vernal on the weekend of the 6th to help the moving company pack us up and move us out.  My mom will meet him in SLC with the boys and then together they will drive to denver and we will move into our house in Firestone. 

So that is the history and plan of our lives right now.  I am hopeful that the girls will wait a bit before joining our family.  I am now close to 32 weeks, so everyday they are inside is a good day.  Its been a crazy  ride.  I feel weird not being at home to help things get ready for the move.  I really wished I could have said goodbye to my friends there.  Life is an adventure.  I will be glad though in two weeks when we are all together again in our new house.