Recent trip to the Hospital

These are some bittersweet pictures of our little Peanut...After a great weekend with friends and family, on November 10th, I started having regular Braxton-Hicks contractions. Since I work with a lot of nurses, they encouraged me to call my doctor. As innocent as that phone call was, it landed me in the hospital hooked up to monitors. What those monitors showed was that I was having regular contractions. I was given some medication to stop them, and that worked. However, when my doctor did an ultrasound of my cervix she saw something that she doesn't normally see in first time pregnancies. While the length of my cervix was good (it hadn't shortened yet), there was some funneling (or an opening) on the babies end. She said that she usually sees this in women who have had surgery or had children before. Since I had neither, she was concerned.

So, I was put on bed rest for 3 (LONG) days. Thank goodness my mom was still in Minnesota, so she came back out to help with the dogs and the house (thanks Mom!). Jason was great and very supportive - although HE finally got tired of wiping the dogs paws too! When we went back to the doctor 3 days later, the funneling had shortened, but was still there. They also did a test called a fetal fibronecten, which would tell us (with 90% accuracy) if I was going to give birth within the next 2 weeks. Thank goodness that came back negative! It was the longest 3 days ever - and Peanut's very first test that he absolutely had to pass. Of course, me being the pessimist- I had to research every possibility there was to this situation, but thankfully, the outcome was the best it could be.

Now the plan... nothing that could induce labor, including no exercise, no traveling, no sex, reduced physical lifting/exercertion. From now on I go back every two weeks to check to see how things are doing- and hopefully stay off of bed rest. For those of you whom we didn't call right away...we apologize. It was a very private moment for Jason and I and we needed to know the facts before we went around telling people. Our time in the hospital did not amount to much and we didn't get too much information before Thursday Nov. 13th. Overall, this could be completely normal for my body - they just don't know. I do have to say that already we love this little guy more than we could ever imagine and we will do everything to give him the healthiest start in the world.

Peanut is now weighing in around 2 lbs 3oz!