Tuesday, February 02, 2010

37 weeks and the sick house


"Congratulations — your baby is full term! This means that if your baby arrives now, his lungs should be fully mature and ready to adjust to life outside the womb, even though your due date is still three weeks away. Your baby weighs 6 1/3 pounds and measures a bit over 19 inches, head to heel (like a stalk of Swiss chard). Many babies have a full head of hair at birth, with locks from 1/2 inch to 1 1/2 inches long. But don't be surprised if your baby's hair isn't the same color as yours. Dark-haired couples are sometimes thrown for a loop when their children come out as blonds or redheads, and fair-haired couples have been surprised by Elvis look-alikes. And then, of course, some babies sport only peach fuzz."

We hit 37 weeks yesterday and celebrated that by spending almost 6 hours in the hospital. Around midnight Sunday night/Monday morning I started having severe abdominal cramping, vomiting, and other fun stomach flu symptoms. By noon yesterday I still wasn't able to keep even ice chips down and was very dehydrated. They had me come in to triage at labor and delivery to get some fluids. They got the IV hooked up and also pushed through some Zofran for the nausea.

They also hooked up the monitors to watch Luke's heartrate and if I was having any contractions. The first thing they asked me was, "Are you feeling these contractions??" Um, no not really. I'd been feeling them off and on for a few days, but really nothing yesterday. And half of what I've been feeling lately I thought was just the baby balling up. Turns out (at that point) I was having a contraction every minute or so. Once the nausea started to subside I could actually feel them. They weren't painful, but I could tell when I was having one and they caught my breath.

Like I mentioned, I was pretty dehydrated and it took almost 2 bags of fluid, plus a glass of water, and 16 oz of sprite before I could even provide a urine sample for them. (A lot different from peeing every hour or two like normal!) That came back that I actually also had a bladder infection on top of the flu. That probably explains a lot of the lower pressure and frequent peeing I've had. (And here I thought it was all because Luke was lower!)

The fluid helped to slow down the contractions to about 5 minutes apart. (Dehydration can cause them.) Of course, this didn't keep them from coming in and asking all of the fun registration type questions - have you taken prenatal classes, do you plan to circumsize, do you plan to breastfeed, do you want the birth announcement in the paper? For awhile I thought they weren't going to let us leave!

They checked me to see if there was any other progress and I'm still not dilated at all. So they finally decided to let me go home - with another nausea med (phenegran) and an antibiotic for the infection (macrobid.) I was still feeling like crap when I came home and only attempted a popsicle. (I had tried jello at the hospital and that was a fail.) The phenegran knocked me out so I was able to get some sleep.

I woke up this morning still having some issues, but luckily have managed to mostly keep in 2 popsicles and saltine crackers today. I've also slept pretty much the entire day. And sadly, I'm pretty sure I could go to bed right now and not wake up until the morning.

Unfortunately Jason came home around 1:30 today with what seem to be the same problems. So if I were you, I'd avoid our sick house.

So anyways, that's our update. I'm starting to feel better and the contractions aren't all that often anymore.

Also, on a slightly different note - our induction is scheduled for February 24th. So he has 22 days to get here, or he's being evicted.

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