Yesterday was quite an eventful day. First off, the nice parts :). Both my sister and brother- and sister-in-law came to visit. It was very nice to have some familiar faces, and I can’t complain about people leaving snacks! 🙂 Both visits were so encouraging.
After our lovely visitors, some interesting things happened. A nurse came on and asked me if I’d been feeling the frequent contractions I’d been having…apparently they were minutes apart. I was a little aware of them but hadn’t thought too much of it. Well, the doctors were concerned that I could be going into labor – whoops! That’s not what we want! At this point, they haven’t been totally confident that all is well with the girls , so if I were to go into labor their plan of action has been to let me and then perform a c-section. We of course want to avoid this early of a delivery though, so the prayer is that that doesn’t happen. Anyways, the doctor on call was concerned I was going into labor, and they wanted to try and take some measures to give the babies their best chance. They recommended putting me on a magnesium IV – sometimes this is used to stop contractions, but it isn’t necessarily effective for that purpose. The other effect it can have though is to provide neurological protection for extremely premature babies if they are both within 12 hours of starting the medication. This was the part that the doctor wanted for us. I must confess, this IV has been my least favorite thing here so far. Once they put it in, the arm it goes into is very painful for around an hour. Luuk was so nice and sat with me watching the discovery channel so I could try to ignore the pain. Additionally, the mag makes you feel very flushed, dry, achey…kind of like you are going through a ready bad flu. Oh and nauseous. It does get a little better, but you feel pretty yucky for quite some time and as an added bonus, the nurses also have to measure your pee output and limit your water intake. The saving grace in all of this has been Luuk, who is so good and kind and gentle, and the nurses who have been very nice to me. In fact, the nurse who started my mag just so happened to be a christian :). She has 7 kids and only works a few times a month to keep her license up to date, so I suspect the Lord sent her to make our rough evening a little better.
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