I Hate When They're Right

Whenever I told someone we were expecting twins, the most common response I got was "you know you'll be on bedrest!" It irks me that they were right. I honestly never expected to be here. I thought after awhile, I would be on modified activity simply because of how big I would be. I never expected pre-term labor or low fluid and discordant growth. I read about all of these things, but never thought they would apply to me and to this pregnancy. But here we are. Today's scan showed that fluid for both babies is lower than it was on Wednesday. It is not dire enough to require immediately delivery, but they quietly switched over from being happy with 20 minute NST's to full hour long monitoring of the babies heart rates. I know this is the best place for us to be right now, but it didn't make it any easier to hear the news from the perinatologist.

In other news, we got to tour the NICU today. The NP who gave us the tour was very nice and very knowledgeable. The NICU itself seems like the calmest, most serene place in the hospital. It is spacious and not overly crowded (at least not at the moment). The nurse explained the different pieces of equipment and what they are all used for. She let us peek at some of the babies in their isolettes or cribs and told us at what gestational age they were born, how much they weighed, and how far they have come since birth. Seeing the babies in there was not nearly as worrisome as I expected. Instead, it was reassuring to see the place where our babies have a high likelihood of spending their first weeks. I'm sure it will feel different once it is our kids in there, but at least we now know some of what to expect and have met a couple of the nurses.

In addition to continuing the warm baths twice a day, I am now trying to drink gelatin mixed with hot chocolate three times a day. So far this is the best combination we have found because I can't taste the gelatin at all (with just warm water or apple juice, it tastes yeasty). Since our doula recommended this as a possible home remedy for low amniotic fluid and it can't really do any harm, I'm going to give it a try. I'm hopeful that the combination of this, drinking tons of water, resting and taking two baths a day, we have a shot at seeing more fluid on Monday. it is going to be a long weekend. Although we do have visitors planning to stop by, so that should keep me somewhat occupied.

The first two monitoring sessions today were very frustrating. We started the first one late because of my scan at 9:30am this morning. And I ended up on the monitors for 2 hours. I'm convinced the nurse forgot about me. I think in that two hour period, there might have been a total of 10 minutes that the babies were both actually tracing well. Or was that the second session? I'm starting to have trouble remembering specifics on what happened when and who was there. I can't remember which nurse I had on what day or night. It is all just blending together as one big long stretch of time now.

After the second session today, I asked to speak with the doctor. I was worried that the tracing for Banana was so flat. She told me it looked better than the morning session and both babies are doing fine. This is the last of the 6 doctors in my OB's practice for me to meet. So far she is my least favorite. Maybe it's just me, but she made me feel stupid for worrying or questioning things. She would just say a couple of words and just stare at me. I'm really hoping she warms up a bit because she is the doc on call all weekend.

I don't think it is obvious to most people, but hospital bedrest is anything but restful or boring. Most days seem filled with one activity or another and sometimes it feels like a stretch to get everything in that I need to do. More on that in another post. For now, I'm exhausted, so I'm going to try to sleep.

Thanks to everyone for the positive comments, emails, phone calls, visits, etc. They do help. Oh, and I promise I'll post some pictures of the sexy compression things as soon as I get to it.