back from the hospital

 

Last night was my first night away from Malakai, ever. It didn't happen intentionally, I had no time to prepare. I found myself wishing we had followed through with a trial overnighter like we had planned on. Even just him staying at home overnight with someone other than us. He's done well going to bed for others, which is basically the hardest part.

I'll back up. Yesterday morning I was walking out of the play room and stepped on a toy (typical) and I stumbled, hitting belly first on the open door. I didn't fall down, just sort of bounced off the wall. It wasn't really painful, just startling. I lay down to make sure baby was moving and all was well and then I called my doctor's office. When I finally heard back from the nurse she told me they'd probably just monitor me for a bit when I came in for my weekly appointment later that afternoon, but she needed to talk with my OB. Baby was still moving and I wasn't really worried at all. I wasn't in pain and nothing was out of the ordinary.

I get another call back letting me know that I was to head straight to the hospital for "extended monitoring". I still felt like I shouldn't worry but being told to go right away scared me a bit. Malakai was napping by this point so Ben's mom came to stay with him while we headed to the hospital. Once we got to triage in Labor + Delivery I asked the nurse how long we should expect to be there. She had to check with my doctor but let us know that extended monitoring usually meant 4 hours, but could be 12. Once she got clarification from Dr. M we were told to expect 4 hours on the monitors. I was grumpy about the whole thing, but knew that it was best to play it safe.

After 3 hours and a lot of back and forth between 3 different nurses and the on-call doc (who was stuck at the other hospital) we were told that because my uterus was overly active that they were going to keep me overnight for continued monitoring. News we were not expecting at all. They were watching for signs of placental abruption. While baby's heart rate and movement was tracking normal, my uterus wasn't. Protocol said that I needed to be monitored for roughly 24 hours to be sure that everything was ok.

To get medical/technical, I was told during monitoring when I was pregnant with Malakai that I have an active/irritable uterus. Basically it doesn't really show up as a flat line on the monitors as having no movement, which is what the nurses wanted to see in order to send me home. So while I was certain that everything was normal, they couldn't send me home.

I was pretty emotional considering I didn't get to prepare for my first night away from Malakai. By then Ben's mom had left and my mom had come over to watch Kai. It started to get late and the doctor had still not seen us so we decided Ben should go home to at least get Kai to bed and see whether or not he should stay with Kai or come back to be with me. Ultimately Malakai was having too rough a time getting to bed so Ben stayed home, it was our first night apart in 3 years, making my stay alone in the hospital even more rough.

The on-call doctor didn't even get to me until 10:30pm, I had been at the hospital at 1pm. It was a long and stressful wait just to hear that they definitely would not discharge me and that I was stuck.

I was hooked up to the uncomfortable and often painful monitors all night and only got about 3 hours of sleep, non-consecutively. I fought back a lot of tears, and tried my best to not get worked up as to not cause unnecessary stress to myself and little brother. By the time morning came I was really missing my boys and feeling pretty lonely. Not to mention feeling the aches and pains of being restricted to sleeping in a hospital bed with monitors and wires everywhere.

Ben + Kai came to get me around 8 this morning and I couldn't have been happier to see them. I had been away from Malakai for nearly 20 hours, which is the longest stretch ever. It may seem silly to some, but our lifestyle just doesn't afford overnight vacations away from our child and since I'm primarily a stay-at-home mom it's just our reality that I'm with him all the time. I knew this time would come but thought I'd be in labor so I'd have some time to mentally prepare myself, not to mention the distraction that laboring would bring.

After going back and forth with several nurses and 2 different on-call doctors I was finally discharged, after 18 hours of continuous monitoring. It's not 100% that everything is fine, but everything looks good. I just need to take extra care to notice baby's movements or lack thereof and some other symptoms of a placental abruption. I'm confident that I didn't really hit my tummy THAT hard and that overall God is watching over us.

So, needless to say, it was a rough night. I'm still recovering physically from being stuck in bed that long (the aches + pains!), not sleeping (I will be napping soon), and the emotional roller coaster it all ended up being.

I'd appreciate any and all prayers for myself and little brother as we await labor and delivery over the next couple weeks (or days!).