Oh Happy Day!

Summary:
Oh what a wonderful day today! I am stable and all is well.

Details:
Today is the anniversary of Brynn's birth. By this time today, with Brynn, my water had broken, I was starting some pretty hard contractions, Brynn was showing several signs of stress by dropping her heart rate every few minutes, and she was born by this evening.

In contrast with this baby, although I've had some contractions that come and go regularly, they are all light and have been controlled with Procardia (a drug actually intended for heart-attack patients but for whatever reason it also tends to relax the uterus). Procardia is a much better drug than the mag and can be taken by mouth instead of through IV so I am a happy girl.

The baby is happy as can be and always has a good heart rate--in fact, she's so good, they took that monitor off entirely and I got the best night's sleep that I've had since I came to the hospital.

I've tested negative for Group B Strep, so I'm off antibiotics--which was the last thing keeping me on the IV pole. The antibiotics really burn the vein going in so I'm glad those are discontinued!

Now, I've even become the "boring" girl on the floor, which is so nice. That means the nurses aren't worried about me, the docs aren't fretting over me, and they are all busily preoccupied with more urgent moms. In fact, they even stole my IV machine and pole for another patient!

I can't believe I'm sitting here with no monitors (especially because I still think I need the contraction monitor just to be safe), but I am tube/cord/belt free and was all night. They only check my vitals once a day instead every couple hours through the night, and like I mentioned before, I finally got a good night's sleep.

Wow. What a welcome difference to this day last pregnancy. Oh, what a happy day! I'm really starting to feel like I have a good chance to keep this bun in the oven. Although I know things can always change any moment around here, and am therefore not taking my "boringness" for granted, I just feel a huge sigh of relief to be so stable right now. I would take boring hospital bed rest over NICU roller coaster any day of the week.

So in three (hopefully boring) weeks, when I reach 28 weeks gestation, I'll be able to take a big sigh and actually breath OUT; at 32 weeks, I'll start taking breaths in AND out; and at 34 weeks, I'll start dancing up the halls--that is if my dancing muscles haven't completely atrophied by then--ha!

Oh yes, and the best part is . . . since Matt's wonderful sister flew into town last night and we finally have some 24/7 help with Brynn, Matt and I will get some time together this evening. I'm so excited. This will be the first time since hospital admission I will get much more than 5 (coherent) minutes with my hubby--a regular date night in the hospital! He did get to spend the night once (thanks to a good friend watching Brynn all night), but I was so drugged on mag we didn't really get to talk at all. It'll be nice to be with my wonderful hubby under not-so-stressed-out circumstances.


Love you all,
Natalie