Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Monday - October 11, 2010

Nothing too exciting happens in the hospital, the girls have been behaving and nothing changes over the next couple of hours.

The leaking of my water has come to a stop which is a welcome surprise and all I can think of is when can I take a shower and can it be as soon as possible. I begged the nurses and they called the doctors and asked what they thought about it, when I was flagged ok to take one, I practically ran to do so.

I think the thing that was the most frustrating was being alone. It was nice when during the day I would get visitors. I would have friends from church come by and visit for a bit and Olivia and the girls grammy would come by and visit too.

I think the one visit that I got that made me even more paranoid about the girls arrival was a visit from one of the NICU doctors. She made me nervous because she talked about all the complications and things that happen to most preterm babies. I wanted to run from the room. She asked if I had any questions and I was just in shock and what was worse was that I was alone when she came in, Cisco was at home with Kipper and the kids so he missed out on the enlightning visit. (I was shocked several months later so see that I was billed for the doctor coming to give me a NICU heads up, pissed me off)

All I could really do was try to keep myself busy. I think the highlight of the day was choosing what I was going to eat for the day. Since I had no limits of a special diet I could pick what I wanted from the kitchen and since I had one of the best nurses ever she gave me a heads up on how I could order and change things the way I wanted, I could ask for things that weren't even on the menu and I could order extra things and they could save it in the nurses fridge for later so if I got hungry I could eat. I loved it. I also had little stashes of food in the room with me.

Olivia's godmother was the best and brought me some fruit cups and also resupplied my yarn for the blankets that I was working on for the girls. Of course when the kids came for visits they took advantage of the fact that there was all this food in the room, Anthony would help himself to my dinner that I didn't finish...it was funny cause Olivia would yell at him about it. "Don't eat mom's food! She needs it for the girls!" We watched a movie once or twice in my room since there was a DVD player and that was nice.

I really missed my husband mostly though, he was the one that could keep me focused, he is the one that I could talk to or even just sit in the room with for hours at a time and not do anything too special but watch people come for temp checks and monitor the girls. I know that he was bored out of his mind and even worse when I would beg and cry for him to spend the night on that horrible cot or chair he would. There were plenty of times I told him to go home so he could sleep there with the kids and so that he could actually get some sleep without people coming in at all hours of the night. He was my sanity. He still is.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Sunday - October 10, 2010

It had been a long night and now we were onto day two. Cisco had stayed and slept on the little couch that was in the room and looked very tired as well. They decided to move me to a room in the anepartum hall in the maternity ward to wait out the delivery of the girls. There was going to be another injection of steroids later in the day, which I definately was not looking forward to since the last one was so painful. Upon moving to the new room the nurses disconnected me from all of the monitors that were hooked up around my belly and were told by the doctor they had to monitor me every 4 hours to check up on heartbeats and so on. That morning there was another nurse that came in to give an ultrasound to check on the babies and how they were moving and the water levels that were around them. I had grown very tired of laying down or sitting so I was so happy when I had to get up to run to the restroom since that was the only time I was allowed to get up out of bed.

The doctor came in to check in on me and see how things were going. He ordered me to wait until after Tuesday to have to deliver the girls since he was not going to be in town due to a conference he had to attend out of town. I told him I would do my best, but I was also wondering again how long I was going to be in that room. They were hoping for at least 4 weeks to get the girls nice and big and their lungs developed enough so that there wouldn't be too many problems. The doctor was very optimistic on how far I had already been able to carry them without any problems, they said that I at least hit the mark where the girls would be a little safer than if needed to be delivered a couple weeks sooner than now.

So getting settled into my room and trying to get used to the idea that I would be there for a while was hard. Cisco left in the morning to get cleaned up and bring some much needed items for me to survive the day. My mom said that she was going to bring the kids in the afternoon to visit which would be nice, but since there is a time limit at night I was not looking forward to them leaving. I think the hardest thing that I was going to have to deal with was Cisco working and the kids being in school. I was going to be alone most of the day and at night I couldn't ask Cisco to stay at the hospital, it was just too uncomforatable and there was Kipper and the kids couldn't just stay with my mom all the time.

There were some very important people that came to visit with me that afternoon and early evening which made things a bit easier, but I was just so lonely. The nurses were great and came to visit quite often and we got to know each other pretty good in that first day. There was one nurse that was asking on the names that I had picked for the girls and I told her Catherine, Cecilia and Charlie. I had picked out who Charlie was going to be from the very begining (She was at the top of my belly right above my stomach) and at that point she was my favorite, she was firey and kept me company in the late nights when I was working. The other two slept most of the night and kept me up when I was trying to get some sleep durning the day. I told the nurse that Cisco and I thought that Baby A would be Catherine, since most of the time she was sleeping and like a little princess she needed her beauty sleep. Baby B was going to be Cecilia since I had already picked out Charlie. It was decided and the nurse put it up on the little white board to keep me focused and so that when people came to do check ups they could call them by name and not A, B and C.

I was so tired of getting blood drawn. I know that they had to do it, but I was just so tired of getting poked and prodded at. Temperature checks and blood pressure. I think the worst was when they would have to come in and do the monitors on the girls. It would take forever for them to get a good beat on them since they were moving all the time. Once they would get one someone would move. I think Cecilia was the most difficult. There were times where we would be at it for an hour just to find their beats and keep them there. The monitoring had to last for a solid hour of beats...good luck. It would take about 2 hours sometimes, there were other times where the nurses would call the doctor and find out if they would be able to stop or try again in a few hours. They would find a beat and I would have to lay so damn still so the girls wouldn't move, however, my back would hurt, my legs would go numb, I would have to pee...there was always something that would make it near impossible to get a good beat on the little ladies.

The kids came that night after they had done homework and had dinner and at that point there was only about an hour for them to visit and I would always hope that the monitoring would be held off until they left so my visits wouldn't be interrupted. The nurses were great and would wait. they would tell me about their day and I missed them so much. I was so sad when they had to leave. I just wanted to go home so bad. I guess it would have been nice if I had had my computer :)