Saturday, April 28, 2007

A Virgin to the Hospital


By the picture, you can guess where Scott and I spent 10:30 pm - 1:30 am last evening... at Riverside Hospital! Before I go on, all is well, thank goodness.

I had been experiencing contractions for a little over a week now. My OB reassured me that as long as they were erratic and not occurring more than 5 times in an hour. Last night, while watching "Saturday Night Fever" and eating Donatos Pizza, I began getting nervous about how frequently they were coming. Scott got out his handy-dandy stopwatch and we discovered them to be consistently 10 minutes apart... 6 in an hour. These contractions aren't painful, just a strong tightening lasting 20-45 seconds. We called, just to check. The gal on call from my OB's group said to count for another hour and call her back. This time I was experiencing them every 5-8 minutes - about 8 in an hour. When we called back, she said to head to Labor and Delivery.

So off we went, in our loyal Town and Country. They put that contraction-monitor-thingy on along with the devises that track the babys' heart beats. So it was cool for about an hour, but after two I was wondering WHAT AM I DOING HERE (the contractions were pretty regular still)? I was a virgin to being an actual patient in a hospital, although you'd think with how often I've visited I would be familiar with how LONG everything takes!

Bottom line - they finally did an FFN, which is supposed to indicate if labor is imminent in the next 10-14 days. It tested negative (meaning I WON'T go into delivery in the next 10-14 days), so that, along with the fact that I hadn't become more dilated, convinced them NOT to administer the medication designed to stop contractions.

So that was it! Back home we went... This journey truly is the ARTHUR ADVENTURE! Think I could write a book?

2 comments:

Orthodox Education said...

You two are hilarious! And to think......soon you'll double in size to 4...make room, here come two more Arthur's! Love you, Elenie

AL said...

I'm glad you are being cautious and are aware when you are having contractions(unlike me). You did the right thing by going to the hospital. Two weeks puts you into the middle of May. Doing good girly!