26w - L&D and Eval

I had been feeling off all night on Wednesday morning.  That all too familiar cramping started.  I tried to rest and stay hydrated.  By about noon, things weren't getting worse, but they weren't getting better either.  I made the call.  L&D was apprehensive to let me come in, but after a brief look at my history, they decided to have me come in.  I texted DH and we all met at the hospital.  They got me hooked up to the monitors and did noticed that I was contracting every 5 minutes for about 20-30 seconds.  The nurse, Doc Carter (my choice when I get one for scheduling), and a training physician came in to check me out.  I got the full treatment.  Speculum exam, ultrasound, manual, and digital exam.  The ultrasound showed a long cervix of 4.5cm, no funneling, and closed.  Q has her head right down on my cervix and she is healthy.  No infections, so the Microgel worked.  Because of my history with DS, they didn't want me leaving contracting (For those of you who do not know what happened, I went in to L&D contracting every 5 minutes, but no cervical changes and ffn negative so they sent me home.  I ended up in full blown PTL 5 days later and delivered him 2 after that) so they decided to give me a dose of Terbutaline or Terb for short.  Wow.  That was quite the experience.  It made my heart race, my hands shake, and very nauseated.  I started to feel a bit better, contraction wise, so we started discussing discharge after another exam to verify that there had been no changes.  The doctor (a new shift started) was still concerned with sending me home so we scheduled a follow-up for the next day in OB clinic.

Thursday, I dropped the kids off with DH at work for a quick stop to OB.  I was still getting contractions intermittently, but not of the same magnitude as the day before.  We took a quick peek at baby and her heart rate was good.  She was waving as usual.  He did a cervical exam and found that my cervix was down to 3.5cm.  Still well within a safe range, but a 1cm change in less than 24 hours.  We then discussed the words I knew were going to come up eventually.  Bedrest.  He talked about how we really don't know the benefits of it right now, but at this point, we need to keep the baby in.  I am now officially on restricted activity/modified bedrest.

What does this mean?  This means, I can shower, make meals, change diapers, eat dinner at the table.  This means I cannot clean, lift heavy objects (especially the kids), no trips over 30 minutes to the store, if I can be laying down, I should be, If the kids are sleeping, I should be, pelvic rest, and if necessary to be in the upright position, I should be seated.

I will be going in for weekly appointments of my cervix now.  If it changes again, that will be upped to 2x/wk.  He said that since I'm on the 17P already, there isn't much more we can do unless I go into active labor.  It's a waiting game at this point and one that I hope to win.  We'd really like to make it to atleast 30w, although even 28w would give Q a substantially higher chance of survival.

We'll see what next week Thursday brings.  A day at a time is all we can do.