Arrival of Adison: Part 2

October 14th & 15th
"THE MAG"

So I got over the party and most of sunday was pretty uneventful. I had recieved my 2nd of the steriod shots Sunday morning at 6am...oh boy was I looking forward to that! I had already had the IV and numerous blood draws, but I can't tell you just how bad I am with the needles! The nurses learned not to tell me when they were going to do something, just do it! Emily (my nurse) kept telling me how good she was at giving shots, but the last one hurt so damn bad I thought she was going to have to strap me to the bed! (Didn't you think shots in the butt weren't suppose to hurt as much? Thats what I always thought!) She actually was pretty good! Didn't hurt near as bad.

Sunday afternoon I was feeling pretty optomistic that there would be no more bleeding and that they would just let me go on bed rest until it was time to deliver. The high risk Dr. had taken me over and she was very nice and had given us a goal of Thanksgiving before delivering. That would put me around 30 weeks and that was our first short term goal. We DID NOT WANT TO HAVE A BABY BEFORE 30 WEEKS. In her words, "We will move heaven and earth Joy, before we deliver this baby before 30 weeks gestation. Blood transfusions, nasty drugs, anything to keep you pregnant for as long as we can. We will only deliver if we feel it is a life threatening situation for you or the baby and right now she is as happy as can be!"

She talked about "mag" being magnesium sulfate. It is a very nasty drug that is used to hold off labor or slow contractions. It is very effective, but its very ugly for mom. We were told to imagine having the flu or the worst hangover you've ever had. (Oh now you're speaking my language...I know what that feels like too well! :) Okay, so I can handle that if needed, but please don't do anything with my blood or shots (just whats going on in my head!)

2nd Bleed started Sunday afternoon. It was decided very shortly after that that I would go on "the mag". My contractions were coming at 5 per hour and weren't very intense, but were too many and were probably going to cause more bleeding.
The first 30 minutes of the magnesium are the hardest. Its the strongest dose and you feel the worst. A nurse would stay with me for those 30 minutes and take my BP, temp, O2, etc every 5 minutes!
"The first thing you will feel is very very warm as we start putting this through your IV" (ANOTHER IV...I should mention...I now have one in each arm!) "You might sweat and feel sick to your stomach. If you feel like you're going to get sick, let us know. Just try to relax." It is all a bit of a blur. I know I felt really strange. Had a little bit of blurry vision and just got really drousy. It just happened to be that my kids arrived as I was recieving this. They had really wanted to see their mommy since it had been the evening before since they last saw me. This had to be terrible for them. I was hooked up to so much and I was lifeless. My sweet and sensitive Taylor looked so sad and concerned. She had been asking daddy the night before if her mommy would die? Bless her little heart. I felt so bad for her. They only stayed a few minutes and it did brighten my day and give me more hope seeing them.
After the initial 30 minutes I went on a slow drip of the mag for the next 24 hours. I think 24 hours is about all a person can handle at one time and then they take you off for a while? They kept mentioning my size and how well I was handling it.

Sunday night I stayed at the hospital alone agan. We didn't see reason Jason should stay since they were controlling the contractions and we were just trying to hold off as long as possible. I was thinking it was the beginning of at least a week of being there on the mag. I thought we had plenty of time. It was later in the evening when they started saying they were dissapointed that the bleeding was not stopping even though they were slowing contractions. Our goals became even shorter now. We needed to make it 12 hours until 6am on Monday morning so that the steroids would be optomized and will have then had the full 24 hours to work to the full extend and her lungs would have a good chance. That Sunday night they woke me every hour to do vitals, came in even more often to fix the HR monitor on my belly, and I counted the hours until 6am just to make it to my goal of 12 hours! I prayed and prayed to let me make it to 6am. I did. "What's next? What's my next goal?" I needed another.