It all started the weekend after Thanksgiving, I could barely stay out of bed on Saturday and Sunday, I chalked this up to being 37 weeks pregnant and exhausted. I was literally out of bed for 2 hours, in bed for 2 hours all weekend long. I woke up Sunday night/Monday morning with a bit of a scratchy throat, went to work on Monday and felt like crap the whole day. I ended up going to After Hours care after work and found out that I had strep throat - so I stayed home Tuesday to take meds, be non-contagious and try to get some rest.
Wednesday I had my weekly Dr. appointment to check on baby. At the checkup Macy's heart rate was 175 and going as high as 195 - my doctor had been concerned with her fast heart rate the previous few visits, but it was always within the normal range, so she didn't take any further action, but 175-195 was definitely fast. My doctor said "I am going to make a few phone calls, you are going to go to the hospital tonight to have the baby monitored. Bring your bags with, if things aren't looking good you will be induced tonight. If things are ok you will be going in for a Biophysical profile and Non-Stress Test tomorrow. Either way you are not going to work tomorrow." So now I had Thursday off work too. I sent Joe a text while I was waiting for the doctor to make calls - I said pack a bag for Kara, we are going to the hospital tonight. Once I got home I frantically threw together a bag for me and a bag for Macy, luckily I had started to accumulate piles of things for our hospital bags, so I at least had a general idea of what to pack and where it was.
We sat at the hospital to be monitored for about 2 - 2.5 hours. Macy's heart rate was fast the whole time, it got up to about 210 for a period of time. While I was hooked up to the monitors they also did some labs, I'm not 100% sure what they were checking for with the labs, but they all came back negative.. so that's good... They also gave me a liter of fluid, I think mostly in preparation of possibly inducing me. In the end we were sent home and the constant appointments began.
Thursday, December 1st I had my first Biophysical Profile and Non-Stress Test, which I had to go back to the hospital for, because of course there were no appointments available at the clinic down the road from my house (with free parking). At the BPP it was discovered that my amniotic fluid level was low (more stress...). My level was at 5.9cm - I later discovered that 5cm to 25cm is considered normal, and if you get to 5cm they will induce you immediately. Other than the low fluid the BPP went perfectly, they have 30 mins to do the ultrasound and check for certain things, they saw everything they needed within the first 3 mins, so baby seemed fine! The NST went fine as well. Baby's heart rate was still high, but they were seeing the accelerations and decelerations that they wanted to see and everything else seemed perfectly fine, and I got sent home once again.
Over the weekend I developed this horrible itch all over my body, no rash or anything, just insanely itchy. It got worse overnight, to the point that I couldn't sleep - the palms of my hands and the bottoms of my feet itched like crazy, it was not cool, and of course nothing that I tried did anything to help. Put in a call to the on-call doctor, and they suggested I see my doctor first thing Monday morning. So I rescheduled my Wednesday evening appt for an early morning appt on Monday. On Monday I went in, my blood pressure was high, baby's heart rate was still high, I was still itchy, but the doctor explained that they were not concerned with the BPP and NSTs other than the low fluid.. so they would now be monitoring my fluid levels very closely. My doctor also told me she wanted me to be done working, mostly cause of the stress level I was feeling, but I told her I couldn't be off work until I was closer to my due date. I couldn't afford to take off two weeks before my due date and have the possibility of going overdue. At that time she told me that she can't see me making it to my due date, that she thought that I would have to be induced within the next week and a half due to the fluid levels, but of course she couldn't make any guarantees... Oh yeah, and she also told me that she would be out of state from Thursday thru Tuesday.... She missed Kara's birth because she was on vacation!
Tuesday, December 6th I got to go back to the hospital for another BPP and NST. Fluid level was at 7.4 and the NST was fine again, so once again, I was sent home.
Thursday, December 8th I was back to the hospital again. During the BPP they couldn't find much fluid at first, like 3.5cm at most. The lady doing the ultrasound asked if I had brought my bags with me and said that it wasn't looking very promising that I would be leaving the hospital. Well, guess what, she found another pocket of fluid that measured about 3.5cm, so that put me at 7cm...ugh! The NST went fine, baby did what they needed her to do right away, and once again I was sent home.
As you can imagine all of these extra appointments have been very draining on me, psychically, mentally, they have me very stressed out. It's very hard to try to work full time and manage these appointments in the middle of the day. I ended up having to use quite a bit of sick time, which also stressed me out cause it was cutting into my paid time that I would get for maternity leave. But I decided that Friday, December 9th would be my last day of work - I needed to take something off my plate. I am hoping that Macy decides to arrive in the next week so that I don't have to take more than a week off work before she's here.
I get to go back to the hospital bright and early tomorrow morning for another BPP and NST - I am SO hoping that they will just keep me this time and let me have my dang baby! If things are fine, I see my doctor on Wednesday evening... at which point I will beg, cry, do whatever I need to do to make her induce me!!!!
When I was pregnant with Kara I didn't mind being overdue, I worked past my due date, and I was for the most part pretty happy - at least approachable ;) This time around things are very, very different. I cannot wait to be done, and hopefully we don't have to wait too much longer!
And a few pictures...
I finally got around to adding Macy's name to the quilt that I made for her (and I also recently discovered that my husband doesn't care for Mae as a middle name...so yeah, we are trying to find a new middle name!)
Kara went to see Santa yesterday! I was pretty shocked when she decided that she wanted to wear her dress and picked out a cute little clip to put in her hair! When we got to the mall to see Santa we had to wait in line for about 45 mins. Of course the two kids in front of us threw huge fits and were screaming and crying, so I thought we were doomed... but Kara still sat on Santa's lap and even told him that she wanted a firetruck with glitter on it! She let us take a few different pictures, sat there and talked to him, it was adorable!
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