Monday, November 26, 2012

The last few days before the delivery...

So my last weekend of pregnancy was not exactly the best ever, but the last few days before we delivered the boys were actually pretty good!  On that Monday morning, I went to my last non-stress test.  As always, the boys rocked it!  It never ceased to amaze me at how well the munchkins were doing in my tummy when I had those tests.  I guess I just expected to have complications at some point during the pregnancy and since I seemed to be doing alright physically, I frequently worried that something was going on with the boys in my tummy that I couldn't feel but that would show up on the non-stress tests.  Kind of like always waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it never did...  thank God!  And since they had done so well on the other tests, I worried that the last one would be bad because it was karma's last opportunity to mess with my babies and me.  Neurotic of me, I realize, but it just felt too good to be true that things were still going well!  Before I left the testing area, I had to give a big hug to my nurse, Linda, who'd conducted most of my non-stress tests.  She promised to come up and visit the boys after we delivered- I was hoping that she would!

After the non-stress test, I walked over to the labor & delivery area to get the first of a series of two steroid shots.  Betamethasone, a steroid, is given as an intramuscular injection in some pregnancies to stimulate the maturation of the baby's lungs and decrease the risk of intracranial hemorrhage (bleeding in the head) for the baby when premature delivery is a possibility.  Now, our babes were pretty much past the point of being so premature that they'd be at major risk for those things (always a possibility for them, but the risk really decreased after 32-34 weeks of gestational age).  But as both Dr. McElvy and Dr. Pat had explained to me, there has been some research (not quite sure how much, but it was fascinating to me that both of them mentioned this) that has shown a connection with babies being more ready to eat after delivery if the mother received the steroid shots.  For that reason, I elected to the get the shots.

I'm not scared of needles, so the shots were not that big of a deal for me (I'm in the wrong profession if needles scare me!).  As I've thought all along throughout this pregnancy, getting the shots helped me to better understand what it's like to be a patient so that I'll be (hopefully!) more empathetic with my patients in the future.  I don't think I've been completely insensitive with them in the past, but I just feel like having gone through some of the same experiences as they have helps to forge a connection between nurse and patient.  I was excited to see one of Jason's friends working that day in the L&D unit.  She had actually put a note in my chart already saying that "Brittany and J-Bird" are her friends and to be nice to us.  It cracked me up when one of my nurses came in and asked who J-Bird was (unfortunately I don't remember the story of how Jason got that nickname).

I went back on Tuesday for the second steroid shot, and the nurses got a kick out of the fact that I had saved my blood pressure cuff from the previous day and brought it with me to reuse.  Before they could give me the injection, they had to check my blood pressure and other vital signs- it seemed like a total waste to me to have them have to rip open a new cuff each day, so I saved it.  Apparently patients don't do that too often!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I actually spent my days cleaning and tidying up around the house and running last minute errands.  People thought this was pretty unbelievable- shouldn't I have been resting?  I have to confess that even though I was exhausted, I was restless.  Even though in my head I knew that soon I was going to be getting even less sleep than "my normal" (which had been totally NOT normal for most of this pregnancy) and should have made a better try to lay down, I just couldn't.  My mind was going a mile a minute and I kept thinking about how many things I still hadn't accomplished over my maternity leave.  Arrggghhh!

So I ran to the library, the eye doctor's, and the grocery store (last minute free blood pressure check!).  I made sure Jason packed his bag for the hospital.  I completely organized my desk and got finished up packing my own bag for the hospital.  I dusted, cleaned bathrooms, and did laundry.  As a small concession, I didn't do any big vacuuming or floor cleaning- too much for me to handle physically.

I basically put myself on a self-imposed "contact black out" during those last few days.  I wanted things to be as peaceful as possible (or as much as my neurosis would allow it to be!), so I tried not to really answer the phone or email.  It may sound silly, but I think I was just in a total thinking phase and not as much in a communicating phase during those days.

And the last two nights were just strange for Jason and me.  I think a part of me wanted to live it up, to go out to dinner and totally have a last "married couple without children" night out on the town... but we were much too looking forward to our delivery day to do that.  Instead, we got take out from my favorite restaurant, Paesano's, on Tuesday night and relaxed at home with the puppies.  On Wednesday night, my friend Jen came over and sat down with Jason and me to discuss our wishes and plans for Thursday's delivery.

Months ago, I asked a group of my close friends (Jen included!) if they would be willing to be part of our support group at the hospital on the day of the delivery.  Because of the private hospital tour that Jason and I had gone on, we knew that I'd get to have two people in the operating room with me during the delivery.  Obviously one of those was going to be Jason- it was a tough call though!  :)  Because we weren't sure exactly when we'd deliver (delivering early was a much higher possibility with this pregnancy than I would have preferred), I wanted to make sure that we'd always be able to have someone to support both Jason and me during delivery.  Well, we totally lucked out- on the day of delivery, we had multiple support people with us all day!  But more on that next time...

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