Christmas at the hospital (LONG post)

Christmas Eve was a good night but I don't have too much time to post so I'll post about that another time.

Christmas Day...

Nick and I woke up really early to finish getting the house ready. We worked sooo hard! My mom came over at 9:30 to help (Nick's family was coming over at 1:30 or so). We worked on everything. The basement was rearranged. The extra folding table was set up. The food was cooking. Everything was finally looking good and ready. Then everything went downhill.

At 11:30, I started to feel very sick. I felt nauseas and my back started to hurt very badly. My mom and Nick told me to lay down. Nick said it was probably because I had been working so hard and not getting enough rest. Well that made sense. So I laid on the couch while they kept working. Nick made me an English muffin to get me to eat something, but I felt so sick I didn't eat more than a few bites. I kept drinking water since I was afraid of being dehydrated. But that made me feel sick too. Around 12:30 I told Nick and my mom that I was having some contractions and I wasn't sure what to do. Again Nick told me that I just needed to rest. He brought me a trash can since I still felt so nauseas. At 1:00 I needed that trash can. That was the first time I threw up. And it was great. Seriously. After I threw up, I felt amazing. I felt like a whole new person and like I was going to be fine. I got up. Washed my hands and brushed my teeth and was ready to go. But that was short lived as well.

Around 2:00, Nick's brother - John, his wife - Lisa, and their two kids, Kailey and Addison came over. I had told Lisa that I had been sick and had back pain and was unsure what to do. At that point I was feeling very sick again. But my back hurt worse than anything else. Lisa, my mom and I were trying to decide if I was in labor. In the end, we decided I should try to lay down upstairs and see what happened. So I did. I went up to bed and everyone else stayed downstairs. My mom had to leave around 2:30 or so (I was in bed, so I really don't know what time she left) and I heard everyone else come. Around 3:15, I started throwing up again. A lot. But again, it was great. I felt so much better. But then the contractions started again, too.

I finally decided to call my doctor. I called the exchange and the on call doc called me back. I told him what was going on and he told me that their was a bug going around and I may have caught it. If I was continuing to throw up and go to the bathroom, I might need to go in to get an iv to rehydrate myself. Also, if my contractions were closer than 9 minutes apart I should go in. Around this time, Nick came up and told me that his family had left to go to his mom's house. I felt so guilty!! I feel like I ruined Christmas. They didn't want the kids to get sick, especially Jillian, the baby, which I completely understand. But poor Nick. He had worked soo hard and then everyone left. But I didn't have too much time to worry about that.

Starting at 5:42, I noticed some big ones. So I decided to time them. I called Nick to come upstairs and time them with me. We decided I might be a little dehydrated, so I drank as much water as I could stomach and recorded my contractions. Here's my list of them and there are a lot!

5:42, 5:45, 5:48, 5:51, 5:54, 6:00, 6:03, 6:06, 6:10, 6:16, 6:19, 6:22, 6:24, 6:31, 6:34, 6:37, 6:40, 6:43, and 6:45.

Ok, so then we decided to go to the hospital. I was terrified that we would get there and they would tell me that I was being a big baby and they weren't contractions at all. I would have been horrified if that happened so I kept telling Nick we didn't have to go. But he said, let's just go and get checked out.

We finally got into a room around 7:45. The on call nurse hooked me up to the fetal monitor and asked me a bunch of routine questions. She was asking them kind of slow and could hear me kind of hold my breath when she got to some questions and she asked me, "Are you having that many contractions?". I said, "I think so". So she checked the monitor and she was amazed. I was having BIG contractions every 3 minutes. She finished asking her questions really fast and told me she was going to get the oncall OB.

Unfortunately that took awhile. Around 9:00 the oncall OB came in to do a check. I was still having very consistent contractions and after his check I found out that I was 1 cm dilated, 90% effaced and the baby was at -2 station. Since I had been having regular contractions for a few hours at this point and I wasn't too dilated, he decided to give me a pill to try and stop the contractions and do another internal check in an hour. They gave me a pill called procardia and left me alone.

At 10:30 they came back. The contractions had spaced out to around 10 minutes apart and were much less intense. He did another internal and nothing had changed. At this point I told him that I was getting nauseas again and was there anything I could take. He looked confused and said, "Again?". I told him about my day (which I had already told the nurse) and he said that this was a whole different ball game. I needed to be put on fluids and maybe that would completely stop the contractions. Apparently finding a good vein for an i.v. is really hard if you are dehydrated and it took 2 nurses and an anesthesiologist to get an i.v. in. It was extremely painful but I'm so glad they finally got an iv in. They gave me a liter of fluids and some zolfran to stop the nausea.

This combo was heaven. I was able to sleep for awhile! I woke up around 11:30 and had to go to the bathroom. So I did and then I paged the nurse since the fluid bag was empty. She came in and gave me another one. Again, more heaven. Except with 2 liters of fluid in me when I hadn't been able to eat or drink much all day, I was in the bathroom every 5 minutes...literally!

At 12:30-ish, the OB came back and did one final internal on me. Again, nothing had changed. He told me that a lot of times if someone gets sick and dehydrated, it triggers contractions. But they aren't productive contractions and aren't putting you into active labor. They just hurt and aren't getting your body ready for the baby. I was the 5th or 6th one in last night with a bug and contractions. Apparently it is going around.

Today I feel a million times better although slightly sad since I basically missed Christmas with Nick's family and feel like it's completely my fault and that I ruined their Christmas. I really hope I didn't and I hope that no one else did get sick from me.

I'm very very glad we went to the hospital though. Now I know what big contractions feel like so I'm a little more prepared for next time. And the fluids and zolfran made me feel great. They even gave me a prescription for Zolfran so I could keep taking it at home when I felt nauseas.

Today I was even able to eat. Nick and I went to IHop for breakfast and I decided to cheat on my diabetes diet and get double blueberry pancakes with whipped cream. It was amazing. And even better, when I checked my blood sugar, it was only 124 (mine has to be under 140!). Score!!

Anyway, I hope everyone else out there had a Merry Christmas, and I really hope I didn't get anyone sick last night!!