Let me back up just a bit: this weekend I was feeling crampy on my left side, mostly. It felt like Cohen was trying to break through my belly. Well, it turns out that Cohen was actually flipping himself around. He is no longer head down, or even transverse. Nope, the little guy really wants to be breach. In fact, he is so high up, his head is under my ribs, which made for an interesting ultrasound! So, the little guy got his way this time. We will see if he stays that way for good or if he decides to flip again.
Brady, on the other hand, is still head down and has been making it difficult for me to walk for the past 36 hours. I told my husband that it seems like Brady dropped even lower than before. (It was even on one of my notes to ask the doctor about!)
After the fun ultrasound pics of the boys, the tech needed to measure my cervix. Remember, it was pretty short a month ago and all of the measurements since then were showing improvements or stabilizing of the measurements. Well, today, I was measuring 1.09 cm at the longest. Yikes! That's not what we hoped to hear.
This measurement prompted the doctor to do a check and that's when she discovered that I'm 2 cm dilated. Double yikes!
Dr Wagner called B & R into the room and she discussed with us what this entails. Basically, I am now on bed rest, not just work and home restrictions. I don't have to be laying down, but I'm now only allowed to get up a couple of times a day for 10 minutes, plus bathroom breaks.
She gave me a shot of steroids today to boost the babies' lungs and I have another one for tomorrow. If I'm still pregnant at 32 weeks we will do the shots again.
She talked to all of us about what we can expect: if the babies are born before 30 weeks I'll have to be transferred to another hospital where they are better equipped to handle tiny babies. If the babies can wait until after 30 weeks to make their appearance then I'll still deliver at my current hospital and we'll take it from there.
As I said before, I'm so glad that B & R were at this appointment. Purely from a selfish reason, I'm so glad that I didn't have to call them with this news (I usually need some time to process info and was afraid I'd mix some of the info up.) It was also great that with B's medical background, questions were able to be asked and answered in a logical, rational manner. The practical provider side just seemed to take over, which was helpful.
I'm way more calm now than I was three hours ago. Honestly, fear for the babies' safety and an overwhelming sense of helplessness about the situation were the feelings I was having. After having some time to talk things through with B & R over lunch and a couple of phone calls with Shawn, I'm more at ease with this situation and ready to not stress over it. All along I've been doing whatever I can to help the babies so far and will continue to do so until they decide to make their appearances.
I still have many questions that need answering, but Shawn and I will start to work through those tonight and handle them as they come up. Some of the big ones are what to do about Annalies (keep her home or send her to daycare, and if daycare, how to get her there and back), school conferences for Natalie, and other logistical questions to keep our family functioning.
This isn't how any of us expected this pregnancy to go, but we all are just going to make the best of it and pray for healthy little miracles to stay where they belong a bit longer!
Cohen's cute profile (Brady was too low to get a good pic today).
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