Famous Last Words

-Super Long Post-

As I said in my NICU post just on Thursday, "I will not be back in Labor and Delivery until January 10th!"

Well I should have never said those words.

On Friday I was at my mom's house, visiting with her and all the kiddos in the day care center, just relaxing and sitting in the rocking chair.  She has a new sweet baby boy that is about 4 mos. old and I was holding him the rocker almost the whole time, so I wasn't doing much. I asked two of the older kids to take the baby excersaucer in the other room and they did but I didn't see where they put it. Once it was the end of lunch time and almost nap time, I got up and lifted my laptop and was carrying it in the other room (with the screen open, so I couldn't really see where I was walking) and BOOM, I fell straight over the excersaucer (which sits high off the ground, obviously) and fell head first on to the carpet. I mean, seriously, eating carpet fibers, like hello rug burn on my face! I screamed in a loud cry/scream once I hit the floor and luckily my mom was only feet away and got to me quick. I was screaming and she just picked up the phone and dialed 911. I finally was able to roll over and get off my stomach pretty quick, and my whole left side was killing me. My jaw was immediately killing me (almost dislocated, we found out later) along with my head throbbing, I was all tangled in the computer wires and I just couldn't move in fear I had hurt one of the girls, especially Baby C/Natalee, since she is horizontal laying across the top of my uterus, right where I was carrying the laptop and fell, with it pushing into her.

To say the least, my mom was screaming on the phone to 911 and the ambulance took a few minuted to get there and by the time they did, I was shaking so badly, they thought I was going into shock. They kept asking me if I was cold, but I was just so scared. My body hurt and I was so worried. I knew I would have been ok and would not have gone to the hospital if I was not pregnant but due to carrying three babies, they loaded me up right away and gave me no choice but to go, which of course I was fine with.

Luckily it was right at 12:30pm, when many of the parents pick up their children (before nap) so everyone was there and all the kids had no choice but to see the EMT's pushing me out on the stretcher. My mom had called Tim and he was already on his way to the ER, and my mom was making phone calls to get everyone picked up so she could get down to the hospital too. Of course, since the day care center is attached (but separate) from my parent's house, an ambulance with lights on out front is never a good sign and of course everyone was wondering what was going on. I was a little embarrassed but of course knew it was the right thing. I was still shaking so badly, but my blood pressure was good and my pulse was normal, I was just so scared.

I am so blessed that my mom has such wonderful parent's in the day care who stayed with the other kids until their parents were able to come pick them up so my mom could go straight to the hospital. That was so nice of them, and everyone was so concerned and still calling my mom today to see how I was. Such sweet families.

I did settle down, once being in the ambulance for a little while. The EMT's were so nice and concerned, but made me feel really better. All I was concerned about was getting the fetal heart monitors on me asap to hear to the girls.

Luckily I didn't have to wait in the ER at all, I went straight to Labor and Delivery. I got settled into triage and the nurses put the babies on the monitors and it was literally music to my ears. I was so happy to see Tim too. Just having him there, made me calmer, along with my mom of course. Within 30 minutes of getting there, I heard the nurse on the phone with one of my doctors (the lady Dr. I really like) and she said I was staying 24 hours. I was surprised but not really.

I was then moved to a real Labor and Delivery room and had a pic-line put in, blood drawn and all the monitors back on.  I had a nurse from my practice come and do the sonogram, and it was the lady who found out that Natalee was not a Jackson, she was so sweet. The sonogram looked perfect, everything looked great with the girls. Praise God. They didn't measure my cervix since they had just done this on Tuesday and it was almost 4.0 mm, so we are praying it stays that way even with all the contractions. The blood work hopefully would show none of their cells or the placenta cells in my blood, since there was trauma to my stomach, they tested for this. Later it came back negative, amen.

The monitors were driving me crazy because my skin is so sensitive to anything and the stretchy material was not making me happy. I had one for each baby and then one for my contractions.

Of course, I know my body and I know my contractions, and I knew that once the afternoon hit, I was going to freak everyone out with the way I contract all afternoon and evening and that's exactly what happened. Around 2:30 or so, my contractions were getting stronger and when the Dr. got into my room with the nurses and they started getting all concerned, I asked how close my contractions were and they said, well every 2-3 minutes, sometime closer!! The nurse said, I was contracting better than many of their patients getting ready to give birth. I knew this was normal for me, and so I didn't freak out really, but of course since I was at the hospital they had to do whatever they needed to make the contractions stop. I even heard the nurses and Dr. say something to the extent of, "...if she doesn't have to stay for the duration of her pregnancy..." In my mind, I was like, say what, but I was not going to even acknowledge them talking about it!!! I knew I was getting that horrible medication that makes you go crazy and I was right.

I got a shot of the Terbutaline, which in five minutes I was totally a different person. That stuff is NO fun at all. My heart was racing a mile a minute, I got so hot, couldn't stop moving back and forth and I was shaking like I was having numerous seizures. I couldn't do anything and the only thing that helped was ice chips until about 45 minutes later when my body slowed down a little. The contractions stopped completely, which was good. Then every six hours I was to get the Procardia, which didn't make me feel great but it was MUCH better then the other stuff, but definitely does not work nearly as good for me. I still was having and still am having many contractions through the medication, they are not 2-3 minutes apart, but still close and very strong.

When Tim went home to grab some stuff, he was in the elevator coming back up and the other dad in the elevator said, "oh, are you having a boy or a girl", and Tim said "three girls, but not quite yet"..and he said the guys eyes popped out of his head! He couldn't believe that Tim meant triplet girls!

The nurse I had for the afternoon was strange, she was all in my family's business and I didn't like that. But then the new nurse that came on for the evening and night was great! She took all the monitors off of me, and washed my belly because she noticed how itchy I was and then instead of using gel she used lotion to put the monitors back on and did such a great job caring for each baby and calling them by their names. She would say, "now, Madelynn, stay on the machine like a good girl and mommy will be so happy to take you off and get some sleep.." It was so sweet. All evening and night she would talk to them by their names, so sweet.

I got to get an ambien, which I thought would be great, but really didn't do anything. I also got to take off all the girl's monitors around 11:00pm due to their good behavior and strong heart beats, which was so nice and then I finally fell asleep, between pee breaks and medication times.

This morning I had my other blood work done, the hemoglobin study and bile acid levels (which I was going to post about Friday afternoon, but now I will later in the week) and hopefully the results won't be too bad. The anemia is getting worse and the bile acid is a definite, we just don't know how bad it is. We had to put the girls back on the monitors this morning for some time, which all was fine. Amen. 

Of course I am more bruised and sore today, but that is expected. My jaw is sprained and my teeth don't touch when I bit down on my right side. I have bruising on my left wrist, left shoulder, right wrist (due to the needle pricks and pic-line) and my left knee and shin are bruised too. I mean I hit hard, head first, and it hurt. When my parent's got home last night, they checked the laptop and the screen was all messed up, it was completely sideways, the wrong way, so it wasn't like I just dropped it, I literally fell right on it at my tummy while my whole head crashed to the carpet. SO graceful, I tell ya!

We finally got to come home around noon. We stopped by the grocery store and when we got home, I took a shower and snuggled up in bed. Let me just say, I have never wanted my own bed more, it was heaven! I ate a huge lunch and went straight to sleep. (In the hospital they were giving me like no food, I even said, why can't I get a high calorie meal, instead of just the regular one...totally ignored though by the weird nurse.) We got some Krispy Kreme doughnuts which was wonderful, I could have eaten all six in the box I know!

Needless to say I am on the Procardia from now on every six hours and really not suppose to do anything, especially carry anything while walking now! LOL! I am really taking every precaution now because I am so worried that these contractions are going to make me go to the hospital sooner than later and I do not want to have these babies until they are ready and I just feel like this was my wake up call.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the sweet NICU head nurse that gave us the tour and met with us with the Neonatalogist came over and saw us this morning and was so surprised to see us! I said, I should have never said, see you January 10th, because I sure didn't think it would only be less than 72 hours before I was back! She was so sweet, and said that when she saw our name, she just had to come by.

So I hope I will not be back to the hospital for quite awhile, but I am slowly loosing hope for that. Power of prayer, positive thinking and bed rest will hopefully help me get through these next couple of months.

Thank you to everyone who called Tim or I or someone in my family, texted, emailed, came to see me, (thank you so much to Rachel, my sister's sweet friend who bought me beautiful flowers!!!)...everything meant so much to us! We are so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends and we thank you for your care and concern! Love to all of you!