26 Weeks - What a difference two weeks makes...

WARNING: Parts of this post may be a little graphic. So, if you're queasy about blood, etc., you might want to skip this one. Sorry, but I want to have a record of this so this post is more for me than anyone.

I can't believe that two weeks ago I was writing a blog post about how smoothly this pregnancy was going and how it seemed to be flying by. I can't believe that on Tuesday night I went to bed thinking how quickly time was moving and how fortunate I was to be having such a complication-free pregnancy. It's crazy how quickly things change.

I woke up Tuesday night/Wednesday morning around 2:30 to go to the bathroom. As soon as I stood up I realized that my pajama pants were completely soaked with something. I said: "Oh, no" loudly enough to wake up Brian, got to the bathroom and turned on the light to find that I was covered in blood. I practically screamed to Brian: "I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding." I got my pants down and sat on the toilet and blood kept pouring out of me. I have NEVER in my life been as frightened as I was at that moment. I had gone through forty-one weeks of my first pregnancy and twenty-six weeks of this one with not even the slightest spotting and now I was losing what looked like a lot of blood and worse, I couldn't feel the baby moving.

I was a wreck but Brian stayed calm, grabbed the phone, called our friend, Liz, and told her to come over to sit with Oliver so that we could go to the hospital. I got some clean clothes on and called the doctor's office while we waited for Liz to arrive (she was there within five minutes). The doctor on call called me back quickly and told me to get to the hospital ASAP and she would let them know we were on our way (we were, by that point, already in the car heading down to the hospital). I don't remember much of the drive down - just the fact that Brian held my hand the whole time and I kept telling the baby to "move, just move."

We arrived at the ER and they paged someone to come down from labor and delivery to wheel us up to that unit. We were sent straight to a room and they immediately got out the monitor to start looking for the baby's heartbeat. They put the monitor on my belly and we heard... nothing. Not a sound. They moved it around and around and couldn't find him and my heart broke. I was completely devastated and panicked and couldn't stop crying. One nurse left to find our doctor (Dr. Reich was actually on call that night) to see if she would have any luck and two nurses stayed behind and continued to move the monitor all over my belly. And then after what seemed like forever (but was probably no longer than five minutes) we heard it - the galloping horse of a heartbeat that told us that our little boy was still there.

Dr. Reich walked in right as they located the heartbeat and we started to go over the chain of events. I told her what had happened and she asked if I had done anything strenuous the day before. I told her that Tuesday had been a calm day but I had run three miles on Monday. She looked up and said: "How was your run?" (She's a runner, too, which is part of the reason I chose her as a doctor since I knew she'd be supportive of my running throughout the pregnancy). I told her it was great and she said: "Good. That was your last one." I said: "Man, I'm going to get so fat."

She asked about the bleeding at home and wanted to know the consistency of the blood. She wanted to be sure we were just dealing with blood and not with amniotic fluid. That is, she wanted to make sure my water hadn't broken. They brought in an ultrasound machine and she took a look at the baby and saw him kicking all over the place. She checked on my placenta and though it was still low it wasn't covering my cervix and she couldn't see anything out of sorts. She then did a pelvic exam and found another large blood clot coming out of my cervix.

After my exam she described what had happened as a "significant bleed" and told us that we needed to treat it aggressively because there was a chance with a bleed that size that we would have to deliver the baby that day. I couldn't believe what she was saying. I was barely 26 weeks along, how could they be talking about delivering him? She ordered a round of two steroid shots to boost his lung development and a 12 hour course of magnesium sulfate. Magnesium sulfate is often used to stop contractions when a mother goes into preterm labor but she was prescribing it to help boost his brain development and decrease the risk of cerebral palsy if we had to deliver. She also said that since he was breech at this point that if I did deliver that day, it would automatically be a c-section and that although I didn't seem to be having any contractions at that point that it would be highly unusual for a woman to bleed as much as I did and not start to experience some contractions.

At some point during all of this one of the nurses asked if he had a name yet. Brian and I looked at each other and nodded. We had a name we had been really loving and just the evening before Oliver had declared that it was his favorite pick for his brother's name so we told them yes... His name is Henry Charles Contine.

Dr. Reich ordered a NICU consult so that we could be prepared for what to expect if we did have to deliver. The NICU doctor came down and spent about 30 minutes with us describing in great detail all of the challenges that lay ahead of a baby born at 26 weeks gestational age. It was a scary report and I don't even want to start going into all of what she told us. She finished and I thanked her for her time, told her it was nice to meet her, and that I hoped I would never have to see her again (hope she didn't find me too rude).

By this time we'd been there about an hour or so. I'd had one steroid shot which wasn't bad and was started on the magnesium sulfate drip which made me feel so completely bizarre. Dr. Reich stopped by on her way out and told us that she was obviously going to keep me in the hospital to be observed. She said if the bleeding stopped for 48 hours, then she would send me home but that if I bled again I'd be back in the hospital until I delivered. And, when she did send me home I'd be on bed rest until delivery. Suddenly not running anymore didn't seem like such a big deal. She ordered some bloodwork and said she'd be back to check on me later.

The nurse finished up my admission paperwork and by the time it was done it was around 4:30. We called family to let them know what was going on and then we tried to rest for a bit. Brian headed back to the house around 6:30 so he could be there when Oliver woke up. I hated to think of him waking up in a house with both of us missing so I was glad Brian could do that. He sent Liz up to sit with me when he got home. She brought my laptop and I tried getting some work done (I was supposed to be going to Boston next week to sell books at a conference so I was a little on edge trying to figure out what to do about that trip). My mom got to the hospital a little after eight or so. Brian came back after he had dropped off Oliver. I was so glad to have them both there. Nothing worse than being in the hospital by yourself.

At that point I was on strict bedrest. I wasn't allowed to get up at all so I had to use a bedpan when I needed to go to the bathroom. I was also not allowed to eat or drink anything in case they had to take me into surgery. The bleeding had completely stopped at that point which was great news. And Henry was looking strong and healthy on the monitor (even if he did like to swim away from it every once in awhile. The poor nurses had to chase him all over my belly). I was having a few contractions but they weren't painful and they weren't falling into a pattern (in fact, most of them I couldn't feel) so they just kept an eye on them.

After a few hours, Dr. Reich came back in to check on me. She told me I could start trying to get up to use the bathroom but that if I started to bleed again, it would be back to the bedpan. She also said that I could start eating which was welcome news since it was afternoon on Wednesday and I hadn't eaten since Tuesday evening. Being able to eat also meant that the danger of immediate delivery had passed. She said she was off the next day but that someone from her practice would stop by to see me and she'd see me again on Friday, saying: "I'll be back Friday. And you'll still be here and you'll still be pregnant." That was good news. She said the bloodwork she had ordered came back and it indicated that I had suffered a small placental abruption (when the placenta pulls away from the wall of the uterus) but that it was a good sign that the bleeding had stopped so quickly.

Brian and my mom spent the afternoon entertaining me in the hospital and then Brian went to pick Oliver up at school. Before he left, I recorded a little video on Brian's phone telling Oliver I couldn't wait to see him. We thought this would help since he'd be able to see all the tubes and stuff coming off of me and then maybe seeing me wouldn't be such a shock. It seemed to work because Oliver walked right into the room, said: "Hi, Mom!", crawled into bed with me and watched a few episodes of Thomas and Friends on my computer. He left the monitors and my IV alone for the most part and we turned up the monitor so he could hear Henry's heartbeat for a bit.

My mom brought me Thai food from Titaya's for dinner, we ate, and then she headed back to the house. I know that either my mom or Brian would have stayed with me overnight if I asked but I was afraid I wouldn't get any sleep if they were there (that I'd use their presence as an excuse to keep chatting rather than try to sleep). After my mom left, I called the nurse to help me to the bathroom one last time. Before she left my room, I asked her if I could ask her a stupid question. Henry had been slipping off the monitor all day long and it had been keeping me on edge so I wanted her to reassure me that someone else was watching the monitor. I got really teary and said: "Y'all are watching this, right?" She said someone was watching it at all times. I knew that was true but I needed to hear it before I could try to sleep. So, I closed my eyes, tried my best to get comfortable and tried to sleep. Any time I would hear a change in the monitor, I'd tell myself: "They're watching. They're watching. They're watching." I managed to get a few hours sleep at a time. I woke up at one point convinced I was bleeding again and called my nurse in. It turned out to be old blood which was a relief. The nurse had to keep coming back in all night, though, when Henry would move and the monitor would lose him. So, it was a restless night.

The nurse came in at four to give me my second steroid shot. As I mentioned, the first one wasn't that bad but the second one? Dear God! IT HURT! I guess I had so much adrenaline pumping through my body with the first one that I didn't really register the pain. This one hurt a lot and for a long time. Around six the doctor came in and checked on me. She was glad to hear I hadn't had anymore active bleeding, said I could come off of continuous monitoring, and that at some point today I could transfer to the non-emergency side of antepartum. I asked her if I could take a shower and she said she'd already written in the chart that I could. As though she came in took a look at me and made a mental note: "Shower for this one."

I was transferred later this afternoon (after my shower) and got settled into the room I'm still in. Mom and Brian have been with me as much as possible. Oliver came by this afternoon after school and Liz and Lindsey came to hang out this evening. Things seem to have calmed down a lot but I'm still on edge and uncertain of what the future holds. I see Dr. Reich tomorrow and am hopeful that she'll let me go home at that point. But my pregnancy is now considered "high risk" and I'm still dumbfounded by how quickly everything has changed.