Friday Sept. 30, 4:30 AM - I wake up and am feeling yucky and crampy. I lay there for a few hours before letting Steve know that I will NOT be taking to Audra to school in the morning since I hope to catch a few more hours of sleep which thankfully does come. A few days prior, The Mr. had randomly chosen to take the day off in order to get a few things done around the house so he was able to get Audra to school after all. He spent the day running around being productive as scheduled, while I lay in the basement still feeling crampy and gross and generally sorry for myself (and him) that I was not being helpful. Around 5 that evening I finally hauled myself off the couch in order to go pick up Audra from school. During the car ride and pick-up process, I had a bunch of contractions. Mind you - I've been feeling contractions regularly for months, but these were very regular and in combination with feeling "off" I decided to keep taking it easy and go lay back down. Dehydration can be a common cause of contractions and I hadn't had nearly enough to drink during the day since I wasn't doing much, so I chalked it up to pregnancy discomforts and not being hydrated, got annoyed by timing contractions that were regular, but not intensifying, and decided to get some sleep figuring that would take care of things.
Saturday Oct. 1 AM - Steve once again was up with Audra before me and I had gotten some truly excellent sleep for the first time in a loooong time and was quite groggy. Audra hung out with me on the couch while Steve got ready for a haircut that morning. In truly Schwendy fashion, our toilet backed up into our tub and through our ceiling for the 2nd time in a week after being "fixed" on Monday AND we discovered we may have had something similar to a
I went ahead and called the help line and gave the basic overview to the woman who answered and was told a doctor would call me back in about 10 minutes or so. Sure enough, I got a call from the OB on call from my practice soon after and I went through the basics with her: crampy, some contractions, but better than the day before and nothing intensifying. At some point she realized I was a twin pregnancy (the answering service had not informed her of that fact) and she told me to get my butt to Labor and Delivery. I told her my butt had a 3 year old at home and a husband who was out, but would be in when I could be. Thankfully Steve's appointment was finished and I was able walk out of the house as he was walking in. I kissed Audra quickly and I took my phone and computer just in case I needed to wait around, but was hoping to be back by 1:15 to watch Audra so that Steve could get our cat to the vet for her yearly appointment. Also, good friends of ours were hosting a party that evening and I was very much looking forward to parking myself on their couch and having people bring me plates of food, but off I drove.
We live appx. 2-4 minutes from the ER depending on how you hit the lights and what entrance you use, so I was at the hospital in no time. Walked in, chatted with the ER receptionist about how twin pregnancies are super hard and nothing to envy and then walked up to L&D. They took me into triage and hooked me up to the contraction monitors and reviewed information and just hung out for about 45 minutes until the Dr. could come by and see what was going on. During this whole time I only had one contraction and was feeling much better so I was excited to get the show on the road and get back home. After a bit, the Dr. did come by to do a fetal fibronectin (fFn) test. I figured she might as well do something while I was there. This is not a definitive test. Basically, it is very accurate at determining that you are NOT going to go into labor in the next week or so when negative, and then if positive, alerts you that you have a 50/50ish chance of going into labor in that same time period. All signs were showing that after an hour I'd get a negative result and could break free.
The next hour was spent occupying myself on the phone, but also noticing that I was feeling crampy, nauseated, and that I thought I was feeling contractions again. During this hour the L&D nurse also began talking less to me and making lots of hash marks on the contraction readouts. Still, she was pleased that the boys heartrates were looking great, and of course Baby B was doing his thing rocking and rolling around so that they had to keep adjusting the straps to find his heartrate. Imagine my surprise when the nurse let me know that they had (very quickly) gotten the results back that the fFn test was positive. The doctor told me to go use the bathroom since I had been hooked up for a while, and that we'd talk after that. I heard, "You are gonna hate me, but your boys are gonna looooove you". as I made my way over. At this point (around 1:30) I realized I was not going to be going home, but was more curious to know what they had in mind.
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