That was fun

Life was pretty uneventful from 23 weeks to 23 weeks and 3 days. Well except for the trip we made in to the hospital to check on the crazy contractions that wouldn’t stop. They checked it out and sent us back to the hotel. Didn’t they tell you that you might contract a little after surgery? Everything looks fine. So imagine my surprise when 2 days later the exam that was supposed to be my ticket home sent the doctors into a panic. What you need to do is go across the street to the children’s hospital and get the fetal echo. They will know you are coming. Don’t stop for anything else. Come back here, skip admitting, we will have a room waiting for you. If you are carrying triplets and get this information, stop for food. If we had been thinking Bernie would have stocked up in the café while I was getting scanned to see if the tiny hearts could handle the drugs that were about to be dumped in my system. My uncooperative cervix had gone from short to paper thin over the weekend. Enter the most uncomfortable night of my life. The beds in labor and delivery: not soft. The token husband chair, that acts like it reclines but doesn’t really, apparently also not soft, and very loud. Try to relax with a contraction monitor around your belly, an IV in your arm, your husband wiggling in a squeaky chair and a med student checking your cervix every few hours. Oh yeah, and you have to collect your pee in a bucket, in a bathroom that adjoins to the one next door while dragging around your IV on a stand and trying not to encourage the babies to fall out. And you are sick and they can’t give your pregnant self a thing to make you feel better. And you get to listen to healthy baby birth weights and newly announced names and first cries all night long through walls as thick as your cervix while praying you are not about to have a very different kind of delivery. And you finally convince someone that it won’t do a whole lot of good to keep the babies inside you if they starve to death and your husband gets back with Qdoba that is crazy spicy and you can’t eat it on account of the inevitable heartburn. Happy New Year. The next day I learned I probably had pre-eclampsia, but I got a new room with a softer bed and a menu to order whatever I wanted to eat.