Hospital visit scare @ 35 wks - don't be afraid to Call!!

Orca11

So I had a pretty lazy day for me.. got up later, like 9am, sat on the couch replying to email and chatting to my sister online, 2hr phone call with BIL to prep him for an interview, lunch and a tv show. Then about 4pm I got up and started back to work on my 2 day stint of preparing freezer meals (which has been super fun btw). Well about 5:30 I started noticing tightening contractions.. which I've had a bit already but were totally random.. but this time close to 6pm I realized they were fairly consistent and close together, so i started logging all of that.

Pretty quickly the pattern of 45 sec contractions every 3-5 mins was showing up, so I drank a bunch of water, but kept cooking away, still more contractions. They kept going for over an hour, at which point I could stop the mess I was making, and decided to call the dr's office after-hours line. The nurse thought everything was normal sounding, but that I should lay down, then she just in passing asked, well give us a call back in an hour or so once you've had more water and lying down but baby is doing fine and pretty active right? And I suddenly realized no.. I haven't felt her kick since about noon. Oh crap. That is certainly not normal since she is normally a soccer star in the making. So the nurse says, really.. well how fast can you get here, you need to come in for sure, right now!

Well we sold my car last weekend, and it was 7:30pm so my husband was still at work, I called him mid hyperventilation crying because I suddenly thought I was the worst mother for not noticing my baby hadn't moved much, and that my persistence in still standing and just noting contractions had been a bad move. I put food away and he came home pretty quickly, and we drove up to the hospital. On the way up I gave him a run down of details of the day, contractions timing and stuff which was useful because when we got there, they had me go change into a gown and do a urine test and asked him a million questions, all of which he could answer because of our info sharing in the car ride. Very important, and also I think really helped him to not feel helpless and scared because he could answer those things. Anyway they hooked me up to baby heartrate monitor, contraction monitor, and my own heart rate thing, even though the nurse was sure it was nothing and just like a UTI acting up. No, I had that tested last week at the dr's appt when I also complained of lower back pain and contraction-like feelings, and both last week and last nights tests came back negative.

Baby had great rhythms, mine was slightly elevated, but I was crying a bit and worried, and sure enough, after a few mins it was very obvious that I was having regular contractions. They were between 3 and 6 mins apart, fairly strong according to the monitor, but I wasn't feeling them nearly as much as I had at home. They called the on-call who said to get the floor dr to come do a cervical check, which is not pleasant, because he had to shove baby's head aside to pinch the cervix to find out how effaced I was. I'm only at 1.5 cm, and about 25% effaced, which is negligable, but the contractions were consistent enough that they decided to give me a shot of something anyway to shut down the contractions. He said being at 35 weeks I'm on the borderline, because baby feels big and strong so they wouldn't worry about true labor at this point, but would like to hold it off for a bit more. So now I'm on limited movement til my next appt next thursday, and they said, if it happens again, call, but if it goes again after the weekend, they will likely just let things go and let baby and uterus keep working to get her out. He also said not to bank on her being early though, because this could have just been a pre-action which may remain calm for another 2-5 weeks before becoming full on labor. Great

So, for you ladies. Definitely call if you feel anything lasting for an hour. It was the right thing to do. Definitely tell your husband all the details of what you were feeling, it will calm and inform him and make things smoother. And definitely don't be like me and assume because you have had a breezy easy pregnancy that something random like that can't happen to you, be prepared. I felt calmer knowing I was nearly totally ready at home ( we still need to install carseat and get a changing station finalized, but no biggie), and had my hospital bag almost all prepared with a list above it of anything left to grab so it would be easy for DH to find on the fly.