It Happened Again

Week 26

Everything we've been trying so hard to avoid this pregnancy happened again.

At 25 wks, 4 days, I went in to Early Labor.

I'd been experiencing contractions the last few weeks, especially on my bad HG days.  They weren't painful, or frequent, just there.  It's common with dehydration.  But since I was still having trouble keeping in fluids, I did my best.

Then the Kidney infection just after Christmas threw a kink into things, causing more dehydration as I tried to, ahem, "flush" the infection out.  And then Snomageddon 2014 hit and I had a nasty cold, followed by a day of acting as though HG never left…

I had told my nurse about the contractions, and the doctor.  They both said that if they're consistent, 10 minutes or less apart, for 2 hours, to go to the hospital.  I was probably just overly dehydrated from being sick and a few IV bags would bring everything back to normal.

So on Friday, January 10 in the afternoon I started feeling them.  At first they were every 20 minutes, no big deal.  Then they got to be 15, then 12, then 10, then very quickly every 5 minutes.  I did everything you're suppose to do for 'Braxton Hicks'.  Drink more water, empty bladder, move around.  Nothing eased them up.  So at  6:30pm, I had my husband bring me to the hospital.  On my way we let a few people know, including our Pastor's wife.  We had to wait in a holding area until a bed was available.  I'd never seen this room before with my other 3, so it must have been new within the last 6 years.  But the second a bed was available, about 20 minutes later, I was pulled ahead of the other pregnant moms waiting (who didn't look like they were in labor or anything).

I'd been in these rooms before, 6 years earlier, when I was pregnant with Steven.  But that was at 30 weeks with him… barely 26 weeks made it all so much scarier.  But I'm just dehydrated, right?

It wasn't long after I got into the "Special Monitoring" section of Labor and Delivery when our Pastor and his wife showed up.  I didn't even think I'd told them what hospital we were at.  It made us feel so much better.  Even though we knew we were in good hands physically and spiritually, it was great to have people coming and praying with us for our baby.

After we got hooked up onto the monitors, and got me some IV fluids, the testing began.  There was a a lot of deliveries happening, a midwife, a resident, a student and finally a doctor from the practice I go to all came to see me, and they'd all been quickly dispatched for deliveries. They ran a fetal fibronectin, which can determine if a woman will go into labor in the next 14 days.  I'd had with Samantha and Steven.  Supposedly, negative tests are 99% accurate, and positive tests are 40% accurate.  About 90 minutes after the test was done, the nurse came to deliver the news… positive test.

Thank God my husband was with me.  I was in shock.  He seemed to be too.  "Wait, positive is good, right".  No, positive is bad.  According to one of the partners from my doctor's office, I wasn't in active labor, no dilating or effacing, but cervix was a bit soft.  She didn't think I was going to be in that 40%.  Praise God.

But I wasn't going ANYWHERE anytime soon.