What a week. Before reading this blog entry, I want to tell you that Tobie, the babies, and me are fine. A little worse for the wear, but doing okay!
Tobie went in for her weekly doctor’s appointment on Monday, the 19th. Normally she gets an ultrasound first, then we talk with the doctor about everything. This time the doctor portion of the visit was first. Everything sounded great and he was happy with the way the pregnancy was progressing. Then came the ultrasound. Between doctor’s visits, Tobie’s cervix shrank from 4 cm to 8 mm. That is not good because the next step is dilation and full blown labor.
She was immediately rushed to Good Sam in downtown Phoenix and was admitted into their OB triage ward (basically an emergency room for pregnant woman). This also happened to be the first doctor’s visit I didn’t go to. Luckily at the last minute, Tobie’s mom went with her. When they got her hooked up to everything at the hospital, she was contracting bad. Yep, she was in pre-term labor at 21 weeks. She was immediately put on an IV of Magnesium Sulfate (known as Mag), and given shots of Terbutylene (known as Terb). These drugs are administered to stop the contractions. They do not affect the babies. The Mag is a muscle relaxer. It makes Tobie a little groggy, causes her vision to be blurry, and makes her a little nauseous. The Terb was being administered via shots in the arm to stop the really bad contractions. The side effects of this drug are: accelerated heart rate, anxiety, and the shakes. Needless to say, it freaked us out even more, because she has these side effects as she was being stabilized.
This was probably the scariest day we have ever had together (it definitely trumps proposing! I still got it!). We really didn’t know what was going on and the doctors seemed genuinely concerned for Tobie’s condition. There isn’t any specific reason why Tobie’s cervix shortened like it did. The basic explanation is she is carrying triplets. Triplets stretch out the uterus. The body thinks its time to deliver. Most of the time when the doctors see sudden symptoms like this, the mother has some sort of infection, Tobie came back clean on that front.
So what does all this mean? For starters, Tobie will be in the hospital until she delivers (hopefully later than sooner). We are at 22 weeks right now. Babies can live out of the womb at 24 weeks. 28 weeks is the earliest we can feasibly deliver. Obviously if the babies came now, it wouldn’t be good. The longer the babies are in there, the better off they will be. She is on complete bed rest. She is only able to get out of the bed to go to the bathroom. Surprisingly this is not an easy task. Between all the drugs she is on and the IVs hooked up to her arms, movement is very limited without nurse assistance (or a little help from Dr. Eric).
Typically the a patient will be in the Triage Ward for up to 72 hours to stabilize them. We were told that once she is stabilized, they would move her up to the Maternity Ward. However, the doctors were having difficulty getting Tobie’s contractions under control. They would keep upping her dosage of the different cocktails. She ended up having an IV in each arm, a Terb catheter inserted into her thigh so she could get constant injections of the drug at 4 hour intervals, oxygen administered through her nose because her lungs had accumulated fluid from not taking deep breaths, and leg massagers to keep the blood flowing through her legs so she wouldn’t develop blood clots. As you can imagine, it was heart breaking just to look at her. She really had become the human pin cushion. Tobie put it best when she said she had literally become a vessel for the babies and she was sacrificing everything to keep them in there.
Everyday she would would still have some periods where she would have too many contractions. The nurses would administer a bolus of the Terb. This usually did the trick and her uterus would quiet back down. Everyday we received an ultrasound to check on the babies and make sure their hearts were working normally. They looked great. They have even grown since our last official doctor’s visit. All 3 of them are over a pound. From all the drugs they administered, Tobie gained about 10 pounds. Her swelling as gone down since they have lowered her dosage of some of the cocktails she is on. Well a week later we just got moved to the maternity ward. That’s a good sign we have stabilized since being admitted. Tobie is more upbeat being in her new room. It’s bigger and brighter and most importantly it has a window. She even has internet access, which is cool!
So what do we do now? Well, we aren’t out of the woods. We just don’t know what’s going to happen. We are really living our lives one day at time. If we can keep her contractions down and keep her cervix the same length, we have a good shot at keep these babies in there for many many weeks. This experience has taught is there are no certainties in life. We are just going to have to accept what awaits us, good or bad. We are keeping our thoughts positive and are hoping for the best.
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