29 Weeks, 3 Days

Hello everyone!

I can't believe that tomorrow is Christmas Eve. The days are completely blurred to me up here, so I don't even know if today is a Tuesday or a Wednesday.

They went from 24 hour monitoring to every 4 hours (which still made it hard to sleep at night, but wasn't quite as bad as having those straps on all the time), and then, because he was looking so stable, Dr. A said I could go to just three daily monitorings.

However, last night, when they put me on, he had a couple of small decelerations which we haven't seen since last Thursday! I was frustrated. It doesn't necessarily mean anything bad at all, because his heart rate bounced right back up, and it's not like he dropped into the 60 bmp range like he did that one day (scary!)... But still, I'd like to know that when I'm discharged next week, it's because he hasn't shown ANY signs of repeating that scary deceleration nonsense in a while. There are absolutely no physical symptoms to me when his heart rate drops like that, so it just scares me to death to think that something could happen and he could be in real distress and there's absolutely no way for me to know it. Dr. Devine has said it many times since I've been here: If I wasn't on that monitor right when I was, they never would have seen it happen, and would have sent me home completely fine.

They explained to me that if baby is in distress and needs to come out NOW, they have about a thirty minute window to get me prepped for surgery and upstairs and then get him out. 30 minutes! That's why I feel so safe at the hospital. The nurse prac. who always does my ultrasounds was talking to me the other morning, and I expressed to her that even though everything looks great, I'm still very concerned to go home, and she said, "Well, we don't have you on 24 hour monitoring anymore, so it's not like we'd be able to know if something happened up here any more than you'd know at home." But that isn't necessarily true. Here I have a button right by my bed that I can push and request a monitoring any time, day or night. If I'm contracting more than usual, I ask to be put on the monitor. If he isn't moving as much as he should be, I'm put on the monitor. What happens when I go home? I panic. And, if something does go wrong, and he does go into distress for whatever reason, they've already made it clear that from the moment he's struggling, they only have thirty minutes to get him out. It takes that long to get from my house to the hospital!

I'm just a little paranoid. My doctors say it's their fault their patients end up paranoid, because with all this testing and question-asking and monitoring, we get prepared for the next shoe to drop and kind of live in that freaked out state of mind. I don't know whose "fault" it is necessarily (I'm a natural worrier), but it does make me scared for next week.

I don't want to scare anyone by saying he had another decel last night. Dr. Devine has already checked my monitoring strip and said that it's very common for a baby his age to do that for whatever reason. I just thought we were done with all of that altogether.

Thank you all for your words of encouragement. I'm so happy to be able to reach out to people right now. It's very encouraging to hear from all of you. I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas, and that you all stay warm and safe.
God bless you all,
Kathleen and Travis.