Anna's Birth, Part One: The Admission

Ever since my hospitalization at the beginning of January, I had been traveling from Corvallis to Portland every Friday for a day-long appointment at OHSU - fetal heart rate monitoring, ultrasound, meeting with the doctor. Each Friday, I packed an overnight bag. They had been telling me since January 5th that I needed to be prepared to be admitted to the hospital at any time. It turns out that even though I was dutifully packing and bringing my bag, I didn't actually believe the part about the hospitalization.

On Friday, February 3rd, they performed another growth ultrasound. This was 2 weeks after they last measured Anna's growth. According to the measurements, she had only gained 63 grams. A normal fetus at her gestational age (33 weeks and 5 days at the time) should be gaining about 200 grams over the course of two weeks. Anna had already been diagnosed with IUGR (Intrauterine Growth Restriction), so they didn't expect her to grow at the normal rate, but they still expected to see her grow along her own curve.

Most alarming to the doctors was the fact that her abdominal growth was nearly immeasurable.  Dr. M told me that the time had come . . . I needed to be admitted to the hospital until the baby was delivered.  This was a shock to me.  I think that, after four weeks' worth of "normal" appointments, at which everything seemed to be holding steady, I had convinced myself that there wasn't much to worry about.  Plus, Dr. M was still talking about trying to wait until 37 weeks to deliver.  That was over three weeks away!  Three weeks in the hospital?  I  couldn't fathom it.

Plus, what would Gabe do?  It's not like he can't function without me (frankly, he's much more capable than I am), but he'd be so far away.  And he couldn't take three weeks off work - not if he wanted any time off after the baby was born - so we'd have to spend most of that time apart.  After a lot of discussion, Dr. M agreed that I could go home to Corvallis one last time before checking into the hospital.  I returned home on Saturday morning after outpatient monitoring and stayed until as late as possible on Sunday.

I was due back at the hospital for more monitoring on Sunday.  I stayed in Corvallis as late as I possibly could and didn't get to the hospital until about 9:30pm.  I thought I was going in for more outpatient monitoring and that I would be able to leave afterward and stay with my parents, who live only 5 minutes from the hospital, but that wasn't in the cards. 

One of the consistently reassuring things during all of these weeks of monitoring had been my blood pressure.  However, at this appointment, I started having increased systolic blood pressure readings.  They took my BP about 5 times while monitoring Anna's heart rate and kept getting similar numbers, so this wasn't a fluke.  Dr. M wanted to perform some tests to make sure I didn't have preeclampsia, so they drew my blood and began a 24-hour urine collection. 

I was officially admitted to the hospital on Sunday, February 5th, and I would be there until Anna was born.

Coming soon: Part Two: The Hospital