A few bumps in the road

First off, you should know that this is Rod writing for Kristin. It has been an eventful week for the three of us. I will attempt to update you, the brief version. Here it goes...

After 26 weeks without a *major* complaint Kristin began to have some complications on Saturday night. As you can see in her earlier post, we spent a lot of time at Covenant Hospital on Sunday night. They released us with an explanation of "Sometimes this stuff happens and we don't know why." Kristin returned to work on Monday with some minor pain which grew into major pain on Tuesday. At 8:30 AM, Kristin called me from work complaining of extreme pain. Since the amateur liability lawyers (work) refused to let her drive, I picked her up and we headed to the hospital for a second trip.

This time it was obvious that Kristin was having numerous contractions. A quick shot of Terbutaline (relaxes smooth muscle) calmed the contractions significantly. Everything concerning the baby still looked positive as Kristin was not dilated at all. After another 4 hours, Dr. Spence sent us home with a prescription for more Terbutaline and an order to have another cervical ultrasound the following day. Once home, the oral Terbutaline did little to nothing to stop the contractions.

Wednesday we headed to Women's OBGYN for our previously scheduled monthly appointment combined with the cervical ultrasound. Sunday's ultrasound showed a cervical length of 4.5 cm...Wednesday showed 3.1 cm. You may already know...the shorted the cervix gets...the closer you are to having the baby. Now, the sonographer warned us that this extreme change may be due to having two different people performing the ultrasound. Citing a few reasons that the measurements could be different on the same person. At this time we were told that Kristin was currently in "pre-term labor". Scary! The sonographer did a complete anatomy ultrasound which showed that Baby Victoria is right on schedule and healthy as can be. Finally some good news!!

Back to the hospital we go. After 4 more hours of intense contractions with no effect from 3 more shots of Terbutaline, Dr. Minnec made the decision to admit Krsitin to the hospital in order to get the contractions under control. A change in medication slowed the contractions for a majority of the night. Around 5:30 AM on Thursday, the contractions increased again. This called for another cervical ultrasound with the high risk pregnancy doctor. This time the cervical length was 3.1 cm again. They decided to start Krsitin on Magnesium Sulfate, AKA The Big Guns. This combined with a steroid, to help develop Victoria's lungs, quickly proved to help the situation. After a few hours, Kristin's contractions were reduced to 1 per hour, and then 1 per 1 and 1/2 hour.

What does this all mean??? Baby Victoria is doing well, and so is her strong, wonderful mother. Kristin will most likely be on "bed rest" for the remainder of the pregnancy...and unfortunately she will have to miss her shower on Sunday. One of us will keep you posted as things change.