Follow Up

I let the girls go out in the back yard this evening. Delaney discovered where I hid her swim sui, so I finally patched the hole in the kiddie pool and let them have a splashing good time.  Unfortunately, the mosquitoes had an even better time!  I saw the little buggers all over Delaney, so I pulled out my fabulous Purification essential oil and covered her with it.  When the girls finally finished playing in the pool and came in, Callie's back was more bites than not.  The poor thing was seriously covered with hundreds of bites.  Delaney, not very much.   Lesson to self- make sure to cover both girls in oil before letting them out in that 'squito-infested yard.

And I really sat down to follow up on yesterday.  I want you to know, that as soon as I posted yesterday, saying that my uterus had been quiet for a while, it started back up again.  I contracted nicely and steadily (as in every 3-5 minutes for a few hours) and finally after much stress and concern said, "Okay!  I'll go in!"  So I called a lovely sister in our ward with babysitting age daughters and one was free and she came over about 6pm.  I dutifully  headed over to the hospital, knowing that it was most likely nothing (but having to go find out anyway).

I was pleasantly surprised by my experience.   When I had a similar issue while pregnant with Callie, they didn't want me to go until I wasn't having any more contractions, and they gave me hiddeous medicine, and were a bit overanxious about it all.  Let me say now, that Callie is the only one I went in with for consistent pre-term contractions and she is the ONLY one of my 4 children who was actually born on her due date.  The rest have all come just about 10 days before the doc's prescribed due date.  So, you see why I'm sure its nothing!

So, I went in.  They hooked me up to the monitors and monitored for 30 minutes.  I had a lovely Russian doctor, and felt sad that Dan wasn't there to converse in Russian with him. Actually, that's not the only reason I was sad that Dan wasn't around!  Next we were off to the groping room where I got cultured, and my cervix was checked.  (It was not dilating.)  They also did an ultrasound to check the amniotic fluid levels.  They even took a blurry face shot for me to keep.  I have a very active baby who looks quite healthy.  I have normal amniotic fluid levels.  I have a non-changing cervix, and everything looks good.  They sent me home shortly after 9pm and called at 10:30 to tell me my cultures came back normal.    I love that they sent me home!  I love that they didn't worry about the contractions when they saw that everything looked normal and fine. It made me very happy.  My pocketbook too.  Its hard to ask a nice girl to come over and babysit for an unknown amount of time. One feels the need to compensate appropriately so she'll come again.

There were some issues though.  Apparently I have a very common name.  And apparently there is a lady with my same name who is cross connected with me in the computer, so they cannot access ME in the computer.  Not a great thing.  They spent half of my visit trying to work that out.  I don't think they ever got the glitch taken care of.   Also, 2 months ago I had a great doctor, who I loved.  She moved this summer.  I have not met my replacement doctor, so I am currently kind of doctor-less.  Since this is kid #5, I'm not sure I care very much, but it might be nice to have a familiar face around, and someone who I know has at least heard about my secret hopes for how the delivery will go.   One last thing- while it was inconvenient, it was great to learn that cell phones will not work at all in the hospital.  So, nice to learn before it really mattered. 

Having said that, it was ultimately a pretty positive experience. I felt a lot better when I went home.  And why would I not?!  I got to spend some time alone, reading "Eldest".  I found out my rowdy uterus is all talk.  I got to meet some of the labor and delivery staff and discovered that they were all very nice and pleasant people.  And I found out I have a lot of friends concerned about me and willing to help me out.  Plus, I came home to 2 little girls who had been bathed and put to bed by someone other than myself.  Not too bad an evening, all things considered!

For those of you who have read this far and might be wondering, "what does it all mean?",  It means I'm fine.  It means any more contractions I feel are probably just noise.  It means I won't go in to the hospital again unless my water breaks or the contractions actually get bad enough I have to use breathing techniques.  It means I have an excuse to do less and sit more.  The problem with that is that I exercise so that I can eat.  If I'm not exercising, how can I justify all that ice cream?!