Hospital Day 2

So the whole Ambien thing was a fun experience. Last night I asked the nurse to give me just a 1/2 dose (5mg) to start since I've never taken it before and had heard crazy stories about hallucinations and such. After the 5mg I did begin feeling very tired and relaxed, but somehow still unable to get over the hump and actually FALL ASLEEP. So an hour later I buzzed her and asked for the other 1/2 of the dose. At that point it got a little hazy ..... I was semi-asleep and semi-awake at the same time. Hard to explain. I could hear the TV and I could hear the nurses walking by and talking outside of my room. So I wasn't fully asleep. But I wasn't fully awake and alert either. I "slept" like this from about 11:30 until 4am.

At 4am I found myself standing next to my bed with the lights on searching for my glasses. I have no idea what lead to me thinking I needed my glasses, or why I got up, I have no recollection at all. At one point I was crouching on the floor looking under the bed, when my nurse came in. I am hooked up to a million different monitors so she was immediately alerted when I got out of bed.

She walked in and politely asked if I needed help with something. I told her yes, I can't find my glasses can you help me with that? She went right to work searching, and asked "were you up late reading?" I replied no, I've been sleeping. She then asked, "okay, well why do you need your glasses right now?" There was a long pause while I tried to search my brain for the answer. It was in that moment that I realized I didn't have an answer because I had turned into one of the Ambien-crazies just like I feared! I truly had no idea why I was looking for my glasses or what I even needed them for. But I did have just enough mental clarity to recognize that I was confused and disoriented. So I finally just bit the bullet and admitted, "I'm so sorry, I totally can't remember! I feel really silly because I just realized that I'm not making any sense. I'm so sorry I bothered you!"

She was such a sweetie, told me "no worries, this happens to just about everybody on this stuff" .... tucked me back in and turned out the lights. And yes, she even found my glasses for me. Nurse of the year award goes to Jen! :)

Every other nurse I have met here has been equally fabulous. Even the other staff that are not nurses. The food lady that takes my food orders and brings me my meals .... wonderful. This morning when my shower head wasn't working right .... they immediately sent a maintenance man who took care of it in less than 5min. I have been very pleased with the care I've received here and I feel very fortunate that I am in *this* hospital, with *these* doctors .... the Lord has really shown us great favor and surrounded us with everything we've needed. Certainly I'd much prefer to be at home in my own bed (with zero contractions, perfect fluid, and a 4cm thick cervix of course!) .... but since we can't have that, then this truly is the next best place for me to be. I feel very grateful.

I was up (and alert I should say!) around 6:30 this morning. I ate breakfast and immediately began begging the nurses for permission to take a shower. Dr. Scott came by doing his rounds, he is one of Dr. Garcia's partners. I had never met him before. He was short and to the point ... basically repeating everything I had already known. And I was able to sweet-talk him into allowing me a shower so that made our chat super successful in my book!

After my shower I was greeted by Dr. Allen, a perinatologist who works with Dr. Mann. I had never met him before either. He went through the same 5 talking points that Dr. Scott had just finished an hour earlier .... so much so that I told him "nope, I don't have any questions, thank you!". HA! Now anyone who knows me will get a good laugh out of that! Normally I have lists of questions which I literally whip out of my pocket when the doctor walks into the room, at which point the doctors will laugh and tell me I need to stop doing so much research, and then I convince them to grab a comfortable seat so we can chat until they've answered every last one of my concerns.

It may seem extreme, but hey .... my perinatologist literally charges my insurance company upwards of $700 AN HOUR for being in the same room with me, and this fee does not include ANY medical procedures she might perform, it's simply a fee for her presence. So the little lists of overly-detailed questions are just my way of making sure she actually *earns* a tiny bit of that disgusting fee. But I digress....

After the doctor visits, my day has been quite slow and boring, really nothing new has changed. So that's the best we can hope for under the circumstances! They've pumped 3 full bags of fluid into me just since this morning, so I've spent the majority of my day making the endless trips to and from the bathroom, literally like every 10-15 minutes. It's a laughable ordeal really: First I have to unplug my 2 fetal monitors and throw the cords around my neck so they don't "fall in". I then remove my IV bag, and drag it all in with me too. I then have the pleasure of urinating into the oh-so-dainty and fashionable bowl insert-thingy which they place inside the toilet to collect and measure your urine output. Then there's the artform getting the pants back up without ripping the IV port out of my wrist, followed by more rearranging of the chords, which by now have winded into a 7-layer ball of madness, wash hands, limp back to the monitoring station, spend five minutes untangling the 7-layer ball of madness so that I can plug everything back in and get the IV bag hung back up properly. I have learned all the right buttons to push in case the machine honks at me or doesn't like the direction of my plug. Once the machine is happy and I see my toco strip is moving regularly again, I am free to get back in bed. Ahhhhh. Rest. Exactly 7-15 minutes after that my bladder is full again and it's time to repeat the entire process! Annoying for sure, but seriously I'm not complaining because it's the only form of "exercise" I've been allowed to have for about 6months now. And truly, if my biggest complaint of the day is that I have to pee 7000 times ..... then that means life is pretty good at the moment considering the alternatives!

Beyond the never-ending bathroom adventure, really the rest of my day has been quiet. And it's been nice! I've enjoyed the quite really. Pastor Jamal from CCH stopped by after lunch and we chatted eachother's brains out for well over an hour. He is always so fun to talk to! I made him promise that next time we meet to catch up that we will do at at Five Guys over cheeseburgers and cokes. He was quick to agree to those terms, so I'm holding him to it.

He prayed with me before he left, and it was a surreal moment when he prayed Jamin's name out loud. Hearing someone *else* say that name, in prayer and petition no less, was so neat. He has been "my" Jamin in my mind for many weeks, but having him officially be recognized as Jamin by the outside world was heartwarming. I'm so glad that James and I ended up agreeing to a name on Monday of this week .... this way all our praying friends can lift him up now by name. I know God is already getting thousands of petitions on behalf of Jamin Wren and I know he hears each one. That's so comforting for me.

James worked until early afternoon, then left to pick up Gracie from my parent's house. Then they came here to hang out for a while. Jessica came too! So it was a nice visit. Gracie was enamoured with my "magic bed" which moved up and down and all around at the touch of a button. She declared that she wants one for her room now. I tried to squeeze as many cuddles out of her as I possibly could (when she was sitting still, that is). I sure miss her.

I made them all stay until 8pm when my second steroid shot came, during yesterday's I was alone and I really wanted a hand to hold this time. I've been *dreading* it .... seriously all day when I look at the clock I've thought, "uugggh, only x number of hours left until my stupid steroid shot!". James held my hand, Jessica bolted out the door to wait in the hall, and Gracie got as close as physically possible to the injection site because she wanted to see every detail ... to the point that her nose was an inch from my bum and we had to tell her to back off a bit! She does the exact same thing on Fridays when the home nurse does my 17p shots .... apparently she's fascinated by the whole thing! Maybe we have a little nurse in training or something?

After my whines died down a bit, James and Jess headed out with Gracie. I am so relieved that James and Gracie will be sleeping at home in their own beds tonight, and Gracie will get to go to school tomorrow. I'm really wanting to make this whole ordeal the least disruptive as we can for her. So anything we can do to stick to her schedule and maintain a sense of normalcy is our plan.

I ended my night tonight having a verrrry long girl-talk with my night nurse, Emmie. Turns out we have a lot in common. She is a devoted Christian, and she and her husband (who works here upstairs in the NICU) are going to seminary to pursue full time medical missions work in Eastern Europe. Emmie is currently 37 weeks pregnant herself, so we swapped pregnancy stories and she shared with me all the "insider" info she knows about anesthesia and such. As we talked she began to inquire more about Isaac and the circumstances of his birth. So I shared with her some of the chaos and absolute trauma of that night. I explained that this is one reason I'm so fearful of delivering this time without an epidural. She promised me that the pain of an abruption is SEVERE, ten times more severe than just a normal non-medicated delivery. She assured me that the pain I experienced then was exponentially worse than anything I will feel this time if we aren't able to use and epi. She is actually the second nurse to tell me this, and I trust her. I feel slightly better having the knowledge, but I'm still overwhelmingly terrified at the possibility of a non-medicated delivery.

We shall see. Only God knows right now.

Our plan for tomorrow, as best as I understand it, is that radiology will come up and get me early in the morning. Like, perhaps 7am early. They will do the ultrasound and bring me back up here. Dr. Garcia and Dr. Mann will both come by at some point tomorrow to see the ultrasound and determine a tentative long-term course of action. It could be immediate discharge, it could be 10+ weeks gestating upstairs, it could be fifty different options somewhere between the two.

My mind is weighing heavily on me tonight, I think because I shared Isaac's birth story with that sweet nurse, and of course our worst fear right now is that something that awful would happen again, to Jamin this time. And the fact that my "fate" tomorrow is so unknown .... that's causing a lot of anxiety as well.

So, against my better judgement, I think I will buzz Emmie and give the Ambien another shot. But JUST 5 mg tonight! I don't care to see fairies or gingerbread men in the corner of my room.

If anyone from Northside calls in the morning and seems frantic, tell them to look in the shower or inside the large tall cabinet next to the TV. To me those both look like good places to hide if you're hallucinating!