The past couple days

Sunday evening we went down to Provo to eat a DELICIOUS dinner with Micah and Rachel. Eric and I decided that we'd stay in Provo overnight since we were going to have to come back down early Monday morning for work and school. Something weird happened with my body Sunday night that didn't cause me too much worry. In the morning I asked my mom about it and she said I probably ought to call the hospital to see if they thought I needed to come in. I called, they told me to come in. I got hooked to some monitors to keep track of any contractions and the baby's heart beat. What I'd been thinking were braxton hicks and just tightening from baby moving around so much were actually contractions coming on every 2 - 4 minutes and they measured me and found that I had already dilated to 2 1/2 cm, which isn't the best news at 33 1/2 weeks pregnant. Great! Pre-term labor. They gave me three rounds of shots to stop the contractions and a shot of steroids to help the baby's lungs develop quicker in case she were to come.

After that they sent me home with a prescription for meds to keep me from contracting. They told me to take some pills but call if I had contractions of 4+ per hour. Well I waited things out for a few hours and the contractions were still the same so I called in and they told me I needed to go back to the hospital to try something else. They monitored me some more and decided to give me a shot of morphine to keep me from contracting at least through the night so that I would be able to keep my baby in at least until my next scheduled steroid shot at 10:15 am the next morning. The morphine knocked me out pretty well, but still contractions. Well, I went and got my steroid shot in the morning and then went to my Docs for my check-up. He told me that although I'm still having the same types of contractions, the prescription he had ordered must be working fine enough since I am still pregnant. I have to be careful until December 11 so as to keep her in, but starting Dec 11 he said to throw away any remaining pills and start doing whatever because by that point the baby's lungs will be developed and at that point wouldn't have to stay in the hospital for longer than the required 2 days or whatever after being born.

Anyway, pregnancy hormones don't help anything, but I've had a lot of mixed feelings. Tons of excitement when we found out that she might be born really soon, a lot of nervousness knowing her lungs probably wouldn't be well enough developed to come home with us for a bit, some confusion having the belief that my pregnancy was probably one of the healthiest out there, yet for some reason my body was going into labor. All in all it has been a fine last few days, but also quite the emotional roller coaster - just waiting to see what would happen. For now, baby is still cooking, things look good, and we'll try our best to keep her in until Dec 11. Who knows... maybe she'll decide she likes it in the womb so much that she'll camp out for much longer than we're expecting and finally come after her due date. Much unknown - which I HATE - but I guess it keeps life exciting :)

On some high notes: 1) Doctor felt baby yesterday and said she is quite a big baby, which doesn't suprise me since my mom has HUGE babies, so at least if she came early she'd probably be bigger and heavier than the average premie. 2) With the thoughts of having the baby soon we have our hospital bags pretty well packed, figured out what we still need to get done, and Eric and I decided on a name for our little girl, it wasn't any of the names that we were debating over all along, but we both love it. We will announce it once she is here :)