THE Day

I am 25 weeks 6 days pregnant today. It's a big mental-hurdle day for me. It was this day in Sierra's pregnancy that I went into labor for the first time (no, she was not born that early).

Fun fact of pregnancy they don't tell you ahead of time...you have a mucus plug (it's just what it sounds like) stopping up your cervix during pregnancy and as you dilate, you lose this plug in pieces or one big chunk. Sometimes you even lose parts of it and your body fills it right back in. I was at work one Friday when it became necessary for me to call my OB's office and inform them that I was 26 weeks pregnant and had lost my mucus plug. They gave me the typical "there, there, crazy first time ignorant mommy" talk and told me to sit down for a while and call back if I had more than 6 contractions in an hour. I sat at my desk and put my feet up and one of my student workers asked what was up and I remember calmly telling him I thought I was in labor. He said that wasn't good and I said, "no, not really." I started keeping track of contractions, which were all between 5 and 10 minutes apart, so I call the OB's office back and basically said, "no, really...something's not right". They told me to go ahead and go to the hospital.

The hospital triaged me in the ER (that's just how you get admitted there) and called for an L&D nurse to come get me. She gave me the same "there, there, crazy first time ignorant mommy" talk on our way up to L&D. They put me in a delivery room, told me to change, and then hooked me up to the monitors. It didn't take long at all before all hell broke loose. The machines told them what crazy first time mommy had been trying to say, except by now the contractions were down to 2 minutes apart. I had never been in a hospital before at all and I suddenly found myself in bed hooked to monitors with one nurse putting in my first ever IV and another shooting terbutaline into my opposite arm. My doctor suddenly appeared and confirmed that I was dilating and effacing, which was the piece of information that meant I really was truly in labor. The IV nurse left and came back with big ol' syringe of betamethasone to stab into my back side (that stuff hurts!). A while later the contractions stopped and I asked if I could go home. Ha ha crazy first time ignorant mommy...you've earned yourself 3 days in L&D for this little stunt! Oh, and strict bedrest at home for the duration of the pregnancy, kiss the job goodbye. See these little pills that make your heart rate and breathing race? Take one every 4 hours around the clock. The good news is Sierra stayed put. I stayed in bed for 6 weeks until the terbutaline stopped working, then I found myself back on L&D...I had earned another series of betamethasone and 36 hours on a mag sulfate drip (worst. drug. ever. I have an inkling of what it's like to be comatose but completely aware of your surroundings now). It all sucked royally. We were extremely fortunate that she wasn't actually born until I was taken off the drugs at 36 weeks (and got yet another round of betamethasone to mature her lungs).

We made different prevention and treatment choices for the next pregnancy and for this one as well. I can't tell you for sure if those choices are the cause of better outcomes of it's just dumb luck, but I haven't found myself in labor quite so early again. 25 weeks and 6 days is always important to me though....getting here without complications lets me breathe a sigh of relief and every extra day almost seems like a bonus.