Day -1 – Sunday, July 16, 2017
The evening of Sunday, the cramping and contractions began to flare up again. If I could not get these contractions to subside, I knew that I should head in and get checked so I watched them closely and took it easy. By 8 pm, I was having mildly painful contractions every 2-2.5 minutes. Around the same time, I had red spotting which was the real reason I knew it was time to head in to see the Doctor. We called my mother-in-law to let her know our situation and that we were going to drop off our 2-year-old on our way to the hospital.
When we arrived to the hospital, my cervix was checked. It was 50% effaced with no dilation. This was good news because, at that time, the contractions were not dilating my cervix. Both twins were put on monitors and I was put on a monitor to track contractions. I was giving my first round of steroids to be given within 48 hours, fluids for potential dehydration, medication to stop the contractions. When a fetus is steroids are given to speed up their lung development in case they had to be delivered prematurely. I was continued to be monitored through the night and contractions had almost completely stopped by 3 am. I was given a prescription and sent home because they felt my labor had stopped. My husband and I headed home and were told to come back of the contractions got regular again.
At this point, I was still not alarmed because I had been through this with my first pregnancy. With my daughter, I was in preterm labor at 27 weeks, had a 1 week stay in the hospital for monitoring and was then on bedrest for 2 months before I went into labor at 36 weeks. I couldn’t stand for more than 10 minutes without a contraction starting and the contractions started at 25 weeks. At that time, the contractions weren’t affecting my cervix so it wasn’t much of a concern.
With this pregnancy, I was prepared for an even earlier labor and had accepted that I would probably have a NICU stay. Once doctor told me she expected me to deliver at 30-32 weeks. I listened to her, but in the back of my head was dead set on making it to 34 weeks with my twins which was my focus. I was never asked to change any of my activity, but overall took it pretty easy because I wanted to hit that 34 week mark.
This little hospital visit with this pregnancy didn’t worry me. I had been through it before. I was fully anticipating to be given the go ahead to go home on bed rest. No big deal.