For those of you who have not yet heard, Carter made his arrival on Wednesday morning at 6:32 via C-section. He is perfect, although we may be a little biased! Here are a couple of pictures to tide you over until we can do an official blog update. We will be discharged home tomorrow, so updates will be coming soon!
I had another appointment with the OB yesterday and sadly have had no progress towards having this kiddo! It seems that Carter would be content to stay put until at least his first birthday. I, on the other hand, am soooo ready for him to be here. He has had adequate time to bake, and I am beginning to consider evicting him!
Even with random contractions, I am still barely dilated to 1 cm. My blood pressure has been high the last several visits but with no other signs of pre-eclampsia, Dr. Harris has been reluctant to push things. However, he and I are both now ready to proceed. So, on Monday at 1, Cory and I will go to the hospital to start the “ripening” process. This makes me feel a bit like a cantaloupe, but hey, if it gets things moving, I’m game. Apparently, they will place some kind of gel on my cervix, and observe me for several hours. This will either immediately start labor, or at least get me ready to actually induce later in the week. So, we should know by late Monday afternoon whether we will be staying in the hospital to deliver, or whether we get to come home and go back a few days later for induction.
It would be nice if Carter decided to come before officially being evicted (with induction), but if we need to get the sheriff involved I am fine with that, too. Either way, Carter should be here next week!
So, no magic happened yesterday. I started having contractions late Saturday night, along with an upset tummy and vomiting. At about 4:30 Sunday morning, the contractions were lasting 1-2 minutes and were about 5 minutes apart, so Cory and I headed to the hospital. When we got there, they hooked me up to the monitors and the contractions weren’t lasting quite as long, but were actually only about 2 minutes apart. Cory and I were quite excited, expect for the fact that I felt awful. I was still having an upset tummy, on top of really pretty painful contractions. Which is quite difficult to manage, when you are tethered to the bed with monitors. The nurse checked me and I was only dilated to 1/2 a centimeter, which was no more than at my appointment on Thursday. This really had me discouraged! Mom and Dad had arrive by this time, expecting that this may be the special day.
My blood pressure and pulse rate were also quite high, which was not happy news for the doctor. Because of the bood pressure, they checked my urine for protein, but thankfully found none. They also drew blood to look for signs of pre-eclampsia. Again, all was good. However, they found that I had LOTS of ketones, which meant that I was severely dehydrated. So, IV fluids became my friend. After 2 bags of fluid, I was feeling much better and the contractions had all but stopped.
So, it turns out that dehydration can cause “uterine irritability”. The contractions were real but they weren’t going to make me progress to real labor. 10 hours of labor really sucks once you realize that there will be no baby reward at the end! After observing me for nearly 8 hours in L&D and doing lab work and an EKG, they let me come home. My pulse rate and blood pressure were still a little high when I left, so they sent me home on “modified” bedrest. No really sure what that means, but I have a feeling that I will be spending a lot of time on the couch until Carter arrives! I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow, so I’ll ask lots of questions. Right now, it means that all of the meals come upstairs to me. 