Last days

The last  Friday before my life changed forever was just a regular work day for me. I woke up at 4 a.m. having a few contractions.  Nothing more than what I had been experiencing except the time of day.  They started earlier than usual.  I took my meds, went back to bed and woke up at 7 a.m. with them starting again.  I took my Nifedepine every four hours that day; I had been taking it every 6 hours.  The last hour before the next dose of medicine was due, the number of contractions I was having went significantly up.  They weren't painful though.  I rested and they slowed, I drank more water that day which seemed to help too. 

By the end of my work day, even though they weren't more frequent they were getting stronger.  I never stopped the doctor and let her know what was going on.  It's one of those things I look back on and wish I could do over.  I walked to her office, I was going to say something, but she was talking to another doctor.  I stood outside of her door and waited and thought of all I still needed to get done.  I had to get Hannah from school, we were going to do the baby registry that weekend, and I was so tired.  She was still talking, so I turned around and walked out.  I don't know if walking in to that office would have changed anything, but it's one of those places in my mind I replay from time to time.  It's what I would have done differently.   It's a place I let the busyness of life take over.  I made the choice to keep going; to finish my plans.

Jeff, Hannah and I went out to dinner that night because I was too tired to cook.  As we sat waiting for our food, my back began to hurt terribly.  I have a very high pain tolerance, but I couldn't sit there.  We took our food to go and went home where I could put my feet up.  I didn't think I was in labor, I just didn't feel good.

As it turns out I wasn't in labor.  I wish it had been so easy. 

I woke up Saturday morning slowly becoming aware that something was wrong.  It didn't take long to realize that I had been bleeding.  It was exactly like the dreams I'd been having.  Step by step, I knew just what to do. When I woke Jeff, he panicked a little but I was completely calm.  I was scared, but God had prepared me.  We called family to get Hannah, called the doctor, and went to the hospital.  I was exactly 26 weeks pregnant that day. 

When I got to the hospital, I had what they call an irritable uterus.  I wasn't regularly contracting, but it signals the possibility of trouble.  I had an ultrasound that seemed to take forever.  My back was killing me.  I barely made it through it.  It confirmed the presence of fluid behind the placenta.  For me, I realized that horrible back pain was actually the placenta tearing away.  I had partial tears (placental abruption) that were responsible for the bleeding, but the babies looked fine.  It was then that I learned Baby B was a girl.  Three little girls.  Oh Boy!  I was admitted to labor and delivery for what I was hoping would be a few days of observation.

So that was it, the day that began a series of events that changed our lives.  Walking across the parking lot, through those double doors was essentially walking into a parallel plane.  Everything would be familiar to me when I walked back out again, but nothing would be the same.  There would be a faint echo of the life I used to live, the dreams I dreamed and the way I saw the world. I felt it then.  I knew when we were driving to the hospital that morning.  I had a sense of the landscape getting in smaller and smaller; of leaving what I knew. 

I desperately wanted it back.  I wanted the familiar more than anything, even that first day, when I didn't yet know how different it would be.  I wanted to be slowly waking up and registering for my baby shower.  Immediately, I wanted life as I thought I was scripting it.  I couldn't even begin to grasp the concept of God wanting to change me.  I literally walked out of my own and in to his plans for me that day.  I wish I could say I did it willingly and with a glad heart, but I didn't.  I was so afraid, I couldn't even say it.  I smiled and told everyone that this was going to be okay, and I tried to believe it myself.

I still thought the babies would be okay.  I hadn't thought of the possibility of something happening to them.  I was thinking of everything that wasn't finished yet.  We had just started the nursery; we had almost nothing for the babies.  I was thinking of Hannah and how she would be taken care of.  I was still really focused on the physical aspects of being hospitalized and off my feet for the rest of the pregnancy.  I was upset that I couldn't finish.  I felt like I could deal with this if I had everything ready, but it just wasn't to be.  Having that underlying feeling that something was really wrong could still be ignored....for just a few more hours.