First off, I had my first NST (non-stress test) on Wednesday at my OB office. The nurse told me that they would watch baby for 20 minutes on the monitor and be sure he raises his heart rate at least 15 beats for at least 15 seconds and they wanted him to do this twice. This just shows that he deals with stress okay. If he doesn't do this within 20 minutes they can continue up to 40 minutes to be sure he passes this test and the test is called "reactive". IF he doesn't do this within 40 minutes, its called non-reactive, and basically it means he failed. And then I would be sent over to have an ultrasound and a Bio Physical Profile.
So, his baseline heart rate was right around 140 beats, which is perfect. After about 15 minutes he wasn't raising his heart rate on his own so the nurse did some different things to try to get him to get excited and accelerate his heart rate. She had this little vibrating device that at first almost seemed like tickled him! He moved right away and his heart rate started increasing. However, he got very board of it fast. haha. As the next 40 minutes went on, nothing was phasing him :( She was having me lay on my other side, push on my belly and anything she could think of to get him to accerlate his heart rate. After about an hour my OB dr looked at the monitor and decided she felt it was non-reactive and she sent me over to ultrasound. Of course the nurse said this was the first time it had ever happened to her. Darn it!!! I broke her perfect record! haha. And, it also worried me that something was wrong.
Luckily, the ultrasound went beautifully! Baby K looked great and he passed the BPP (bio physical profile with flying colors)! They watch the baby in ultrasound and he gets 'points' for doing different things. 8 points are possible and he got all 8! Wahoo! Such a relief. He was measuring 36 weeks 2 days, so just a little over a week bigger than my gestation. He was 6 pounds 2 ounces according to the ultrasound so he's definitely a growin'!
Okay, so fast forward to Thursday night. Around 8pm that evening I started noticing I was having some contractions. I pretty much ignored them because on Saturday and Sunday last weekend I had a lot of braxton hicks but they were all over the place, no rhyme or reason and not timeable. So, I assumed this was the same thing happening.
But, I was laying watching tv at about 10:30 when I said to Steven "gosh, these contractions seem to be kind of regular. I feel like I am having a lot of them. And I have some back pain with them which is new."
So at 10:40 I started timing them. By midnight I had 13 contractions and several of them came with mild cramping and back pain. hmmmmm... interesting. I decided to go to sleep and see how I felt in the morning. From 12-2:30 I tossed and turned and had several strong contractions that actually woke me up. Not overly painful but just enough to make me realize them while sleeping. So at 2:30 I got out of bed and moved to the couch to time the contractions again. Same thing happened as earlier, they were frequent and some of them strong. They were consistently about every 6-7 minutes. From everything I read about and have heard from friends about braxton hicks, this seemed different. At 4am I got in the shower and then called down to the hospital to speak to the on-call Dr. I told her what was going on and she told me I needed to come in and be seen.
I got to the hospital about 5am and was hooked up to the monitors. After about 10 minutes the nurse told me that I had already had 4 contractions. Whoa! She kept saying "you are definitely contracting on here!!" She went ahead and checked my cervix and it was still closed! Wahoo. This means that I was not dialated at all. However, it makes it more confusing. Because according to my contractions and the way I was feeling, it seemed as though I was in labor; but my cervix said otherwise.
So, the nurse gave me a dose of terbutaline to stop the contractions and calm my uterus down and told me to head home. However, told me to come back if they come back any stronger or more frequently because anything could change at this point.
I went home around 8am and was feeling good. Ate some breakfast and then went to sleep since I had only slept a few hours the night before. I woke up around 12:30 and ate some lunch and was still feeling great! I thought for sure we were out of the woods and it was just false labor after all.
However, around 3pm I got some strong contractions again. After that the frequency picked up and we were right back to where I was the night before. I had rested all day, drank as much water as possible, and tried as hard as I could to relax my mind and be stress free. I had 1 hour where they were completely gone and we were all hopeful that was it for the night. But, unfortunately Baby K likes for it to be known that he is in charge!! ;)
Contractions came back. I kept timing the contractions and they seemed to be no less than 4-5 an hour and some hours went all the way up to 8-9 that hour. Most of them were mild with no pain. But later in the evening the back pain and cramping came back. Darn it!! So after debating and debating on if I should go back to the hospital, I decided to try to go to sleep again. I fell asleep around midnight and I woke up at 7am!!! Hallelujah!! I remember waking up 1 time in the middle of the night because of a strong contraction. Other than that I didn't feel all the mild ones that were most likely happening.
This morning everything was calm and quiet until about 9am. Now, they are back. 6 in an hour so far and 1 was very strong (slight pain with it). So.... we wait.
I plan to relax all day and just see how things play out. At this point its extremely hard to tell if this is early stages of labor or if baby K is playing jokes on us with false labor. I tend to feel its not false labor at this point since its been SO consistent and nothing has really been able to stop it.
I've been taking baths and that is hit or miss on if it helps. One bath was a miracle worker and helped a ton and then the next bath I had several contractions during. After this I am getting in the bath again. So, we'll see.
So... if this was just a regular pregnancy of my own, I would never in a million years be updating everyone with all this. Because I would just deal with it and see what happens and if I go into labor, then so be it. BUT.... Kellie and Chris being thousands of miles away is throwing such a huge wrench into all of this! Poor Kellie just miserable not knowing what to do. She wants to be here but I hate for her to come all this way if this ends up just being a false alarm. Kellie is currently in Destin, FL on a girls trip so its also kind of a difficult trip to get from there to here in any sort of hurry. Chris is in Portland, which is still far away, but they have red eye flights and many other flight options so him getting here quickly won't be quite such a fiasco.
And, I just wish I had a gut instinct to tell them. I wish I knew this was it so I could say "yes, hop on a plane and get here!" or "No, this isn't it. Hang tight and we will have you come when its time." But I truly am SO confused.
At this point, there is 2 flights later this afternoon and early evening that Kellie could get on. So, we are going to keep waiting it out and if anything becomes more regular or painful, Kellie has decided she might just come.
I spoke to another friend last night who has been a surrogate also and who is also a nurse practitioner (giving me some advice) and she said "Kellie probably will never mind if she ends up coming and its a false alarm. Yes, she will be out the cost of a plane ticket but I bet she will prefer that over not coming and missing it. So just keep that in mind." That made me feel better and she's so right. It's SO amazing that Kellie and Chris both work from home and so this doesn't throw a huge curveball into that. They can come when they need to, which is awesome. And of course, I work from home too, so this isn't interfering with much for me either.
So... for now... thats the update. Sigh. We know that they will not stop active labor at 35 weeks gestation because baby's usually do just fine. However, if you know me, you know I am a HUGE advocate for full term. My twins were born at 27 weeks gestation. And yes, I know thats a very big difference between 35 weeks but still. I fully believe babies need that full 39-40 weeks! So, I would love if we still had a few weeks left to let him bake. But, at this point, its out of my control and whats going to be, will be! I know without a doubt, he will be perfect whenever he decides to make his appearance.
Send some love to the Kaufmans. I know they are stressed. I know they want some clarity on what to do and I wish I had that for them. We will keep you updated as we have some updates. For now, we just wait it out and see what Baby Kaufman plans to do. He is just SO excited to meet his Mommy, Daddy and sisters! I don't blame them... they are all pretty awesome ;)
Happy Saturday.
-Kenz
Nice information about gestational surrogacy. we are surrogacy agency in georgia.
ReplyDelete