Well, Baby and I have been home for a little more than a week now, and I've finally gotten around to recording a little more about my hospital stay. I won't go into details about the entire 12 days, but I did want to mention some of the crazy experiences I had before Alyssa was born.

STUPID NURSE!

I had to deal with three 24-hour urine collection tests while I was in the hospital. With each one, anytime I needed to use the bathroom, I had to pee in a little hat mounted in the toilet, then record the amount of pee on what seemed like a big billboard on the front of my bathroom door. As if that weren't embarrassing enough, 2-3 times a day, I had to call the nurse and announce "I pee-pee'd in the potty" so that she could come in and do a dip-stick test before pouring the pee from the hat to one of the collection jugs (being the over-achiever I am, I always needed TWO jugs to hold it all), which was kept in a bucket of ice like my own personal beer tub.

The stupid nurse I had for the third and final urine test really upset me too! She was such an idiot! I won't get into the dumb things she did and said early on, but when my test results came back, she walked in and said "your results came in, and your protein levels are high."

"How high?" I asked.

"I don't remember the number, but it was high. The doctor will be in later to talk to you about it," she said.

"Well," I replied, "was it higher than the other 2 test?"

"I dunno. I didn't check those numbers." she answered.

"The first test," I said, "was at 2330. The second test was at 1910. Was it higher than those?"

"I don't remember, but it was high. The doctor will be in later to discuss it with you." she repeated.

"Well, the doctor told me that anything over 5000 was serious. Was it higher than 5000?" I asked, trying not to shake her.

"I'm not sure. But levels of 5000 or more are considered serious. The doctor will come in later to talk to you about it." Then she left before I could make it out of the bed to throttle her!

So I spent the next few hours freaked out and crying, until the doctor showed up to tell me that my protein levels were at around 3000. What the ??!??!?! They hospitalized me for having high blood pressure and protein in my urine, then freak me out and make my blood pressure higher by making me think I was going to go into seizures at any minute and lose the baby! Ugh!

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STUPID ASSISTANT!

The NST (Non-Stress Test) that morning was pretty bad too. The results were fine, but Labor & Delivery, where I was wheeled every morning for the test, was packed! By that Friday, I had enough experience with the test that I could have set myself up on the monitors! In fact, since the nurse was busy with the other patients, I went ahead and laid out the two monitor straps (one white, one pink) on the bed and got myself ready to be strapped in. Not good enough for the little assistant in the room - she came running over and whipped out the sensors for the monitor.

"I always wanted to do this," she said, as she tried to strap the contraction sensor to me using one end of each strap.

"Um, you need to use both ends of the SAME strap to attach the sensor," I told her.

"Oh! Right," she said, as she grabbed the other end of the correct strap and snapped the elastic around my belly... again (OUCH!) Then, she slathered the stupid gel all over my stomach as she tried to attach the fetal heart rate sensor to me.

"The baby usually kicks the sensor off or moves out of the way, so you might want to watch it for a minute," I told her, as she let the other strap snap back onto my belly.

"Mmm-hmm," she said, and feeling proud of herself for a job poorly done, left.

Well, the contraction sensor was in the wrong place and only measured my breaths, so every time I inhaled, it looked like I was having a huge contraction. As I warned her, the heartbeat sensor picked up the baby's heartbeat for only about a minute before the baby moved out of the way. So, I had to readjust both sensors to get a reading that wouldn't be entirely useless.

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SEND IN THE CLOWNS

The last NST I was to have was the day I was induced. As always, the nurse wheeled me over to Triage right after breakfast. Except no one was there. Apparently, they had so many people discharged the day before (lucky ducks!), they were doing NSTs in the exam rooms. So I wound up in the exact same room I was in for my very first NST (and where I received the news that I would be admitted) nine days before. Talk about coming full circle!

OK, so here's the update from the doctor this morning. The second 24-hour urine collection lab showed less protein than the first. Good! My blood pressure has gone down and the non stress tests show a very healthy little girl. Great! My ultrasound the other day showed a baby estimated to weigh about 6-1/2 pounds. Whew!

Now, as far as delivery... induction will begin Sunday night, 3/19, by the vaginal suppository that will soften my cervix. Monday, they will probably artificially break my water and start the pitocin (sp), which will trigger/intensify the contractions. They expect Baby Girl to arrive that day, maybe even late that day, 3/20.

So... less than one week to go before this little Bean arrives! Hope her bags are packed!! Honestly, I'm not looking forward to the whole delivery process, but who does? Knowing when it will happen helps a little, but also seems to increase my dread of labor and delivery. Nevertheless, it's just one day of drama for a lifetime of joy. I think I can get through ONE day, and it may not be as long or as painful as I imagine. If nothing else, I have a good guilt story now, don't I? ("You hospitalized me for 2 weeks and put me through xx hours of labor! The least you can do is clean your room!!")

THIS may be my last entry until after the baby arrives on Monday. Hope she cooperates!

Well, here I am in the hospital, where I’ve resided since my 35-week doctor visit on Friday. I was sort of dreading the Group B strep test, but in comparison, that was nothing to what lies ahead.

Upon arriving at the office, a blood pressure check revealed an elevated BP, one higher than ever for me. As usual, I had to give a urine sample, then Alex and I waited for the doctor to arrive. Well, when we were finally brought back to the exam room, the nurse came in and took my blood pressure again. It was even higher! The doctor came in and told me that she was going to put me on bed rest because of the high BP, and because my urine showed some protein in it, which was never present in previous samples.

I asked how long I’d be on bed rest. She said “for the rest of the pregnancy.” Yikes! I think my BP went up 10 points then! “I need you to go to the lab in the morning and get a jug to start a 24-hour urine collection test,” she said, “Collect all your urine for 24 hours, then turn it back in to the lab for analysis. Meanwhile, I’m going to send you up to Labor and Delivery for some monitoring.”

When I finally scraped my jaw off the ground and made sure that she did indeed say “Labor and Delivery,” the doctor said that they were just going to hook me up to a fetal monitor for about an hour and then probably send me home. Yeah, right. She might as well have said “made you look!” After that news, the Group B strep was nothing! Even the part where she said “ok, this might be a little uncomfortable. I’m going to insert this into your rectum.” (Yeah, that pretty much summed the whole thing up!)

So we walked over to the hospital next door and up to the 4^th floor, where we trekked down two long hallways to Labor and Delivery. There, I had to strip, put on a hospital gown, and have the fetal monitor sensors strapped to me while some guy started beating on my arms to get a blood sample. (“I wouldn’t call her Ms. Vascular!” he said, as he tightened the tunicate.)

Afterwards one of the other doctors from the group came in and said “well, your urine was +2 protein, so we’re going to admit you and monitor you over the weekend, do a 24-hour urine collection, then deliver you on Sunday.”

Deliver me?!? What?!?  Deliver me from evil? Deliver me a pizza? I was so shocked, all I could do was stared open-mouthed with a confused look on my face. “Now when you say ‘deliver’ me,’” I wanted to say, “what exactly do you mean?” Instead, all I could do was stare.

“At 35 weeks,” the doctor continued, “the baby’s chances are very good… lungs are pretty developed… shouldn’t be any complications…” I could only hear phrases as I tried to grasp what he was telling me. I really didn’t want to hear about “chances” or “pretty developed” like I was a target in a casino, gambling with the baby’s life! I especially didn’t want to hear that they were going to take the baby in less than 2 days when she wasn’t due for another month!

After a horrible internal exam to check my cervix (which was hard and closed), I was jabbed a few more times with an IV “starter kit,” which blew out 2 of my veins. Then I was admitted into a recovery suite in the maternity ward.

The tests Saturday revealed that I did have preeclampsia (toxemia), but a very mild case of it thus far. The doctor said they would NOT likely deliver the next day, but wait until I was 37 weeks, unless my condition got much worse before then. I asked why they wanted to deliver at 37 weeks instead of waiting for the baby to decide. “Because,” he said, “we don’t want to wait until you get REALLY sick before delivering the baby, so you can have a better recovery.” Then I asked if he was planning to induce labor or schedule a c-section. He said it would depend on my test result at that time and the results of an internal exam. Meanwhile, he said, we were just in a “holding pattern” and that I would have to stay in the hospital until delivery.

Needless to say, I cried. Seems like every night since I was admitted, I would wake up at 3:00 am and start crying. Worse, I started crying during the afternoons too, which probably did NOT help lower my blood pressure!

Alex looked up preeclampsia and toxemia on the internet for me and found that it will eventually develop into the more serious and life-threatening eclampsia if left untreated. Unfortunately, the only “treatment” is delivery. Otherwise, eclampsia could cause me to go have seizures and go into a coma and/or kill me. Yikes!

The upside is that I am at 36 weeks tomorrow, and the baby looks very good. At 37 weeks, she will be even better. This just means young Alyssa will arrive much sooner than expected. It also means that I no longer have to deal with the evil bossman at my FT job, and can look forward to a FT offer from my PT place sooner.

The downside is that I cannot go home and am still afraid for both the baby’s health and of the not-so-good looking options of delivery: c-section or induced labor. A c-section would mean surgery with a more painful recovery, while induced labor would mean more painful contractions and the doctors will likely artificially break my water. Ugh!

My 37-week mark is 3/21, but there has been no “official” delivery date yet. It all depends on how things progress and the results of all the tests they will run on a daily basis. My blood pressure continues to rise and fall, as does the amount of protein in my urine. The latest ultrasound showed a strong and healthy baby, who is head-down and VERY low, basically “knocking on the door.” I get non-stress tests daily, all of which have been good thus far. (Baby HATES the test and tries to either kick the sensor off or roll away from it! Ha!)

Alex is very concerned and now has to do all the last-minute shopping and “nesting” baby preparations by himself. I regret now that I did not pack my hospital bag yet and instead have to give him a nightly list of the things I remember that I need. He told me he would hate to be in a position where he would have to choose between my life and the baby’s. I told him that I’m making that decision for him – he should choose the baby. Neither of us, however, believes that it will come to that. The doctors are wonderful here and everything seems to be ok for both me and the baby. It’s just still a shock to think that the baby I expected to have next month will be arriving next week instead!