mara16jade
Mommy of 2 little boys
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2012
- Messages
- 12,038
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So last Thursday was terrifying. I woke up feeling refreshed after a good night's sleep and went to work like any other day. I had my regular monthly check up with my doctor at the medical offices here in town (the actual hospital is about 20-25 mins. away). Got in there, they checked my weight, my BP and my urine and found that it was fine. 
The nurse takes me back to the room and asks me if I've been having any contractions, bleeding, pains, etc. I said no bleeding or contractions but I've gotten a few odd menstrual cramp type pains under my bump. The nurse said that sounds like contractions. I said I don't know, I never noticed my stomach tensing up or anything. The doctor comes in and reads the notes and sees that I was having some under the bump pains and wants to do an ultrasound and do a swab to check the glue of the cervix. She does the ultrasound and baby is head down already, everything looked great, my fundal height is measuring perfect.
Then she wants to check the cervical length since she thought she felt my stomach go hard while measuring my fundal height. I had no idea, I couldn't feel it. We watched as my cervix changed with the contractions. It got shorter and shorter and was funneling. Funneling happens when your cervix can't handle the pressure of the contractions anymore, and you can start to dilate and efface. We watched as my cervix length went from 3.2 to 2.2 in a matter of seconds during a contraction, and they like to see cervical length to be at 3.5. Before we saw the funneling, the doctor said I'll probably need to stick around until after lunch to to a non-stress test (nst), but as soon as she saw the funneling, she found any nurse who was there and told them to get me hooked up asap. My doctor was worried, and so I began to panic. I asked her if I was really in danger of going into labor and she looked at me and said, "I really hope not, but you are contracting. We'll have a better idea after the nst. But you'll probably have to go to labor and delivery at the hospital and they may need to give you steroids for his lungs in case you give birth soon.".
Que me panicking and everything going through my head in a whirlwind of chaos.
I was hooked up to their nst for about 40 minutes. Baby was being a hyper and didn't like the monitor so they had to keep finding him since he'd move away. Then they had my DH keep his hand on my tummy and keep the monitor angled at the baby. Baby was not enjoying this. I went on to have quite a few contractions, and then the baby started to have decels in his HB.
My doctor was worried, packed up all my notes, pictures, charts, etc. and told us to hurry to L&D and take everything with us. I was hungry since I had only had breakfast and so I asked if we had time to stop to get food. She looked at me and said, "no, you don't have time, don't stop anywhere".
We get to the hospital and the nurses and doctor were already waiting for me and knew my story. They got me hooked up to their nst and also had me provide another urine sample. The urine sample at the medical office was ok, not great, but it was ok. The urine sample at the hospital was off the charts horrible. The doctor came in and gave me some options and discussed how severely dehydrated I was. Apparently I was off the charts dehydrated. No idea how. I swear I drink water!!! They said they could give me a shot to immediately stop the contractions and then hook me up to an IV to pump fluids in. I told them I'll take the shot, but I'd rather drink water if it'll do the same as an IV. They said the only difference is the IV will hydrate me in about 30 mins. and drinking water might take 2 hours - and either choice was fine by them. So obviously I chose to drink the water. The shot they gave me was WEIRD. They warned me that it'll feel like I just downed a ton of espresso. My HB went from about 85 to 160 in about 30 seconds once the medication kicked in. But it stopped all the contractions (but only lasts an hour). So now I had to drink my many many many jugs of water.
So in the end, my body stopped contracting naturally from rehydrating myself. And it was a huge slap in the face that Baby is going to come, when he wants to come. And as much as we plan for him to come in July, he could decide otherwise. I'm currently drinking more water, but we're both a little shaken up with this whole thing and realized had I not had a monthly check up, I could have gone into full blown labor and the baby might have been here this week.
My co-worker who's sister just had her baby at 33 weeks went into labor due to dehydration. But she was so far into contractions and labor that her water broke and all they could do was get her on antibiotics, give steroids, and wait for the contractions to build into active labor. She had her baby about a week ago by c-section and the baby is in the NICU.
This sh!t is real ladies. Drink your water!!!!
The nurse takes me back to the room and asks me if I've been having any contractions, bleeding, pains, etc. I said no bleeding or contractions but I've gotten a few odd menstrual cramp type pains under my bump. The nurse said that sounds like contractions. I said I don't know, I never noticed my stomach tensing up or anything. The doctor comes in and reads the notes and sees that I was having some under the bump pains and wants to do an ultrasound and do a swab to check the glue of the cervix. She does the ultrasound and baby is head down already, everything looked great, my fundal height is measuring perfect.
Then she wants to check the cervical length since she thought she felt my stomach go hard while measuring my fundal height. I had no idea, I couldn't feel it. We watched as my cervix changed with the contractions. It got shorter and shorter and was funneling. Funneling happens when your cervix can't handle the pressure of the contractions anymore, and you can start to dilate and efface. We watched as my cervix length went from 3.2 to 2.2 in a matter of seconds during a contraction, and they like to see cervical length to be at 3.5. Before we saw the funneling, the doctor said I'll probably need to stick around until after lunch to to a non-stress test (nst), but as soon as she saw the funneling, she found any nurse who was there and told them to get me hooked up asap. My doctor was worried, and so I began to panic. I asked her if I was really in danger of going into labor and she looked at me and said, "I really hope not, but you are contracting. We'll have a better idea after the nst. But you'll probably have to go to labor and delivery at the hospital and they may need to give you steroids for his lungs in case you give birth soon.".
Que me panicking and everything going through my head in a whirlwind of chaos. I was hooked up to their nst for about 40 minutes. Baby was being a hyper and didn't like the monitor so they had to keep finding him since he'd move away. Then they had my DH keep his hand on my tummy and keep the monitor angled at the baby. Baby was not enjoying this. I went on to have quite a few contractions, and then the baby started to have decels in his HB.
My doctor was worried, packed up all my notes, pictures, charts, etc. and told us to hurry to L&D and take everything with us. I was hungry since I had only had breakfast and so I asked if we had time to stop to get food. She looked at me and said, "no, you don't have time, don't stop anywhere". We get to the hospital and the nurses and doctor were already waiting for me and knew my story. They got me hooked up to their nst and also had me provide another urine sample. The urine sample at the medical office was ok, not great, but it was ok. The urine sample at the hospital was off the charts horrible.
The doctor came in and gave me some options and discussed how severely dehydrated I was. Apparently I was off the charts dehydrated. No idea how. I swear I drink water!!! They said they could give me a shot to immediately stop the contractions and then hook me up to an IV to pump fluids in. I told them I'll take the shot, but I'd rather drink water if it'll do the same as an IV. They said the only difference is the IV will hydrate me in about 30 mins. and drinking water might take 2 hours - and either choice was fine by them. So obviously I chose to drink the water. The shot they gave me was WEIRD. They warned me that it'll feel like I just downed a ton of espresso. My HB went from about 85 to 160 in about 30 seconds once the medication kicked in. But it stopped all the contractions (but only lasts an hour). So now I had to drink my many many many jugs of water.So in the end, my body stopped contracting naturally from rehydrating myself. And it was a huge slap in the face that Baby is going to come, when he wants to come. And as much as we plan for him to come in July, he could decide otherwise. I'm currently drinking more water, but we're both a little shaken up with this whole thing and realized had I not had a monthly check up, I could have gone into full blown labor and the baby might have been here this week.
My co-worker who's sister just had her baby at 33 weeks went into labor due to dehydration. But she was so far into contractions and labor that her water broke and all they could do was get her on antibiotics, give steroids, and wait for the contractions to build into active labor. She had her baby about a week ago by c-section and the baby is in the NICU.
This sh!t is real ladies. Drink your water!!!!
Last night we had our labor and delivery class, and the instructor stressed how important water was and how it can cause pre-term labor. 
Guess the doctors weren't over reacting. Ugh. It's just crazy. I never thought it was possible!!
