Heading to the Final Countdown?

All of the days are starting to run together, and I like to look at things in terms of numbers sometimes just to put things in perspective.

Since this whole thing began:

6 - The number of nights I've spent in the hospital
2 - The number of nights I've spent without Mike there with me
3 - The number of times I've been through OB triage and not gone out the same day

15 - The number of OB appointments I've had to date
14 - The number of ultrasounds I've had to date

48 - The number of hours I've been on magnesium sulfate IV
4 - The number of terbutaline injections I've been given
2 - The number of steroid injections I've had for lung maturity
3 - The number of times I was given stadol to become oblivious to contractions
5 - The number of 4 hour doses of penicillin I've been given during labor
2 - The number of other maintenance tocolytic drugs I've taken after going home (ibuprofen and nifedipine)

241 - The number of days I've been pregnant (although 14 of those days don't really count!)

10 - The number of pounds I've gained this pregnancy (you'd think it would be more with sitting on my butt so much!)

Well, enough of that for now.  I could go so many directions with it and it might get a little crazy and too TMI!

Anyway, today was an interesting, yet surprising day.  I was at least able to sleep last night, which I really needed to get some after the previous night of sheer exhaustion.  I was worried that the combination of being in the hospital, being overly tired, and my mind going in a thousand different directions would somehow mess with my sleep.  I got semi-comfortable (as comfortable as one can get in a hospital bed, being sweaty from hormones and having an IV stuck in one hand) around 11:30pm, and tried to sleep.  My brain didn't shut off at first, but luckily I was able to doze off until the nurse came in to do vitals around 1:30am.

Back to sleep, and the next thing I remember is another nurse in at around 5:30 to do vitals again.  My eyes were playing tricks on me when I looked at the clock (I got the hands on the clock mixed up) and I thought it was 2:30 for some reason)...I even commented that it felt like I'd slept longer than I thought.  I barely just dozed off and a resident came in (and she was asking all of the same questions...how far along were you with previous labors, blah blah blah).  So I had to be a little coherent, and I couldn't go back to sleep for a little while.  Finally I did get back to sleep (dozed off on my back, oddly enough...and under covers...I had suddenly gotten really cold!) and woke up right before 9am.

Breakfast came and eventually the new day nurse came in to do vitals and check to see if I might need monitoring again.  She put me on the monitors while I was in (what felt like) a very weird position on my side.  A little more than halfway through, Mike came with the kids!  After the first hour, the nurse reported a contraction about every 10 minutes, and she went to page the doctor.  Monitoring continued for a while after a bathroom break, and nothing dramatic changed after that point.  Now was just time to wait for the doctor!

Right after lunch, Dr. Pottorff came, did another cervix check and I was still the same as I was the previous day (5-6cm, 70% effaced, bulging sac).  It's been funny how it's bouncing between the 5 and 6, but she explained that as more of just being such a small difference at this point between 5-6 (but definitely not over 6!).  The biggest surprise, though, was her letting me go home!

We talked about some of the major concerns, mostly trying to gauge how much I'd be able to take it easy (weekends are hard with the kids running around, pulling at me sometimes...weekdays are easier with daycare...I get more rest/sleep at home, and I'm less stressed out just being with Mike and the kids versus being in the hospital...I'm not as "secure" as I am in the hospital if something changes quickly...so on and so forth).  So we came to the compromise that this week I'd keep my appointment at the office (happens to be on Monday, tomorrow), and they'd add extra NST's and monitoring twice a week, just to see how the baby was doing and to see how many contractions I was having.  Those will likely just be in OB triage, so that actually reassures me that if they see something sketchy, all they have to do is run me down the hall.

Well, my bags will be packed each time (it's pretty much stayed packed), and I'm getting more secure with all of the different scenarios that could play out.  Let's hope I keep that feeling of security!

Bedrest Part 2 - Day 7

Wow...I actually did an entry the next day after the previous one!  I'm on a roll!  If I do it again tomorrow, this might be the start of another trend (wishful thinking!).

So it's been a week since I was admitted to the hospital for a night, testing out new drugs to see if they stopped contractions for me.  Luckily, it was only an overnight stay.  Since bedrest in general began five weeks ago, tomorrow, there's been ups and downs and changes.  Some major changes, some little.

Anyway, today officially marks the day that my parents moved out of state.  Yep, boarded a plane, and flew 1200 miles away.  I keep and kept telling myself that I wouldn't get worked up over it, but inevitably, anytime I think about it, or talk about it, it brings me to tears.  I can blame the pregnancy hormones for that, right?  In trying to rationalize what's going on in my head, I got the insight from my mom about how this feeling sort of works. Most of this is in a blog post from this past weekend.

So my parents moving away is sort of like how my mom felt when I moved away to college.  It wasn't like I was going away forever or anything of that sort...but just that nagging feeling of what-if-I-need-that-person.  I know I can easily pick up the phone and just call (although, they just have cell phones right now that are turned off 95% of the time...that might change though), but now is the time I wish I had the security of knowing that my parents would be there to take care of Daniel and Jared, should something happen and I go into labor at a weird time.  That's what it boils down to right now.  Having my parents take care of Daniel while I was in the hospital having Jared was one thing I didn't even stress about...I felt better that Mike could stay with me at the hospital, I felt better that Daniel was being taken care of and having fun and all of that stuff.  If my parents hadn't moved until, say, September or October, I might be in a different state of mind.

Moving on to childcare...yeah...that's bothering me once again, even though I go back and forth with how I feel about all of the different scenarios.  I grew to expect Mike to be with me at night in the hospital, and I keep telling myself that I'd be OK if he wasn't there overnight when the baby comes.  But there really is not a good scenario where that is a possibility.  I feel OK with it, in passing, because I've spent one night in the hospital alone already...but when the baby comes, it's a different scenario.

In any case, I'm finding that the "big" things that I'm stressing about are somehow interconnected, and it's hard not to dwell on one without dwelling on the others.  As I've mentioned before, I like to have a plan...I like to have the security in place, knowing what to expect, what's going to happen, and everything like that.  Even if, at this point, if I knew that I was going to have a baby a little early, at least I'd be able to prepare for that, just like I would prepare for a trip somewhere.  Maybe the universe will send me a sign... :)

Happy Anniversary!

It hardly seems possible that it is our FIFTH wedding anniversary already. In many ways (and Mike and I both agree on this), it seems like it was just yesterday, but at the same time, it seems like we've been together longer!

So I'll go into today...woke up in the usual way, got ready for work and got the kids up and got them ready for daycare. Mike was working from home today (now according to his "typical" work at home schedule...Monday and Friday). I went to work, did a few things in the lab and really wanted to go home early to spend some quality time with Mike.

And right before 2pm, who comes walking through the doors of the lab...my sneaky husband! A vase of roses in hand! SURPRISE!

Now, I've never really been the cheesy type of romantic, as I appreciate smaller gestures and genuine surprises much more than having someone write me poetry or other stuff like that. This was DEFINITELY a genuine surprise, the point that I wanted to jump up into his arms in the lab...whee!!! Yeah, indescribable...I don't think it could have worked out any better!

With any anniversary or birthday type event, I start to let my mind wander to the past and to the future (but not lose sight of the present, of course!). How far have we come in the past 5 years? We got married on Lake Tahoe on a cloudy and almost stormy Saturday late-afternoon. We were living in Nevada at the time, and had probably thought that Reno was where we'd be for the next few years.

We celebrated our first wedding anniversary on the same boat that we got married on, and we were in the midst of trying for our first child. Our second anniversary, we were weeks off of becoming parents (no boat ride that time!). Our third anniversary we got to spend with our almost 1-year old son, and he got to go on the boat ride with us. Our fourth anniversary came after a move to Phoenix, and not long after, we found out we were expecting our second child. So, as you can see, each anniversary keeps building upon the last!

Where are we going to be in 5 more years? I find it fun to prophesize about these sorts of things. I'm sure I'll come back in a year and laugh at where we thought we'd be, especially if it's way far off of what I'm about to think of here. In five years, I think we will have at least another child, if not two more. We will still be living in Phoenix, and both Daniel and Jared will have started school. We will most likely have moved to the other side of the Phoenix. Both Mike and I will have settled even more into our jobs, and things will be more relaxed when we are more financially sound (I hope!).

Well, that's about all! It's a whole lot to take in, but a whole lot has happened in five short years! I look forward to the next 5...or 50... :)