We have been on bed rest from 24 weeks to 30 weeks in Melbourne due to a shortened cervix ( 1.7cm at 24 weeks down to 0.7 at 26 weeks ) and previous pre term labour DS born at 28 weeks.
It's been a hell of a long road, we are at quite a comfortable 33 weeks now, but have been seperated from each other and DS for the last ten weeks, with Sal ( tummy mummy ) in hospital or living in a caravan as she is only allowed to be 15 mins from a tertiary care hospital until this baby is born. Our home town doesn't even have a birthing facilities at the hospital and the nearest bigger hopsital is 45 mins away so going home wasn't a good option.
In hopsital, she was on lots of drugs to try and hold off labour, progesterone & Nifedipine, plus blood thinning drugs to prevent blood clots from not being allowed to walk around, vitamin D because of no sunlight and sleeping tablets, cause sharing a room with ante nates for 6 weeks with crying newborns makes sleeping hard!! Since coming out at 30 weeks, she has been weaned off all of them, with the result that she has been having contractions for nearly FOUR weeks!!! Only last night, we were in the birthing suite because they thought this baby was coming soon!
The contractions have been getting stronger and more regular, when we went in to our appointment last Tuesday she was 1cm dilated with a 'sloppy' cervix, no change for the next few days but increasing intensity with contractions. On Sunday night in ED when they checked, she was 3cm with bulging membranes so they put her in overnight. Contractions all night, irrregular but strong so not much sleep to be had. From 1pm yesterday afternoon, she had regular 3 & 4 minute contractions, quite intense but not so bad she couldn't manage without drugs ( though my wife has an incredible pain threshold ) but as they didn't stop, they moved her to birth suite about 6.30pm saying they would do an internal down there. She was in quite a bit of pain by this stage but confined to bed because of the monitors and given panadeine forte to try and take the edge off and we were just waiting it out to see when this little man was making his appearance.
They didn't do an internal until 11.30pm, even though we'd asked for one before we were moved to birth suite, and found it to be EXACTLY THE SAME! 3cm, bulging membranes. I know it's crazy, as we are still 7 weeks early, but we were soooo upset that this wasn't going to happen in the near future. Our whole lives have been flipped upside down for the last 10 weeks, our son is at home being cared for by his Nana at the moment, we don't get to see him more than once a week as I can't leave Sal alone for any length of time and Nana can't drive in Melbourne so I drive back up there, pick them both up, they stay in the caravan for a couple of days and then I take them back again. It's been really, really hard and as much as we would have loved our full term take home bubba, we made our peace with not being able to have that a long time ago. What we want is two healthy little boys at home and if both our kids have to journey through NICU or special care to get there, then thats how it is. At the moment though, our 19 month old is missing out on both of his Mum's and his little brother should be just fine being born at 33 weeks with no other problems such as IUGR. Sal has been soo strong through this whole thing, making such a huge sacrifice to get our baby boy to this point, where if he's born, he will be okay, and we just want it to be over.
Thanks for reading girls, just really needed to vent to people who don't take it for granted that all pregnancies are straightforward affairs & that everyone gets a take home baby.
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