A Post from the Luxury Suite at Banner Good Samaritan

I finally figured out how to get on the internet from my room. Of course it helps that I am not whacked out on heavy duty drugs at the moment! That was certainly not fun. Hopefully I won't have to repeat the mag anytime in the near future. But for now, I am am feeling great (other than feeling really large!). Today they moved me to my "permanent" room on the antepartdom floor. All things considered, the room is not too bad and even comes with a mini fridge and entertainment armoir. I also had an ultrasound today to monitor the babies growth. I am happy to say that all the babies are growing well and are right around normal for 31 weeks gestation. The five babies weights were:

4 lb 2 oz
3 lb 5 oz
3 lb 9 oz
3 lb 10 oz
4 lb 3 oz

The smallest one is the one on the bottom of the pile, so it is understandable that she is smaller than the rest. Still she made it into the 35th percentile for 31 weeks gestation, so that isn't bad. The two 4 lbs-ers were both over 50th percentile for their age.

So, with all this baby in me, you can probably guess that I feel HUGE---kind of like a balloon about to explode. But I know I have to hang in there a few weeks more, so I am sure I will look back fondly at these days as the days when I was "little". OK, that might be exaggerating things just a bit. Not only do I have lots of baby weight in me, I have also gained 8 lbs since I have been in the hospital. Considering I didn't eat anything for the first three days, that only leaves one explanation----water weight! My feet, ankles, legs, etc. have gotten huge in the last few days. They hook me up to these machines that basically have a series of balloons the blow up around my legs and are supposed to help circulation. They also look stylishly like white moon boots.

My favorite part of the day here is when I get to go for "hydrotherapy". This is just a big tub that, yes, even I can fit in. The water is supposed to help keep up the babies amniotic fluid and hopefully help some of my swelling. It is very relaxing, so whatever the reason for the tub, I am quite fond of "hydrotherapy".

I have been very lucky since I have been in here to have many visits from my mom, aunts, kids, cousins and husband. It really helps pass the time--especially now that I am not so drugged up. I am so grateful for all the the kinds emails and comments that I have received from many of you----they really boost my spirits. It is not the easiest thing to sit up and type, so I many not get all the email's answered, but please know how much I appreciate them.

Please keep our family in your prayers! I will try to post when I can, but Jayson will make sure that the updates stay regular!

A Post from the Luxury Suite at Banner Good Samaritan

Finally in the hospital

(For a slightly more up to date post done on the evening of July 9th, see Jayson's blog by clicking here)

Well, Rachelle can't write anything because she is in the hospital and not feeling too well so she asked me (Jayson) to write it for her. I decided that I am going to try to give daily updates here from now on so you can know what is going on. On Friday of last week, Rachelle "failed" two of her home monitoring tests so they had her come in to the hospital. When she got there, they decided to start her on the magnesium. At first, she felt fine but they found that it wasn't stopping the contractions so they upped the dosage a lot. By Saturday night she felt really sick and the contractions were not slowing much. The nurses thought that she might have to have those babies before the weekend was out.

I spent Sunday with her and she wasn't feeling particularly well. When we initially "signed on" with Dr. Elliott in Arizona, he told us that there would come a time when Rachelle would beg to be done with the whole thing despite all our goals. Up until Sunday, we couldn't imagine that. Now, however, we see what that is like. She is really miserable but hanging in there for now. She will go as long as her body takes her. Right now, we are really hoping to make it to 32 weeks which would be July 17th. If we can make it to that, we will then see what it would take to make it to 34 weeks. Right now, the next 48 hours are fairly critical and if they can't stop the contractions, then we might just have to have them sooner rather than later. The good thing is that she is far enough along that the babies all have a pretty good chance of being just fine (provided they have enough room for them in the NICU).

Finally in the hospital

False Alarms and Other Fun Adventures

This week has been a little out of the ordinary. For a woman who spends 90% of her waking hours laying on the couch, this can either be a good thing or a bad thing.

It started last week when I began to have more contractions than normal in my monitoring session. If there are 5 or less contractions in an hour, everything is considered good. If there are 6 or more contractions, I am required to get a drink, have a snack, etc. and re-monitor to see if the contractions go down. Until last week, I had not had to re-monitor in about a month and a half. But last week I started having to re-monitor almost every day. Fortunately the contractions always went down the second hour, but things were definitely changing for me. Over the weekend, the nurses at Matria (the company that does the monitoring), called the doctor on call and they decided to increase my anti-contraction medicine to see if that would help. It did seem to help for a day or two, but then I was back to re-monitoring at least once a day. Sunday evening I had 13 contractions in an hour during my monitoring session. When I re-monitored, the number only went down to 8, so the nurse told me that I needed to go to the hospital to get checked out.

I had been dreading this happening because I thought that the next time I walked through the hospital doors, they were not going to let me out until after the babies were born. Already my doctor had told me that I had managed to stay out of the hospital longer than any other quint patient he had had, so I figured I had already used up my "get out of jail free" cards. So, I hurried and packed my bags and prepared to stay for the long haul.

At this point, it was 10:00 pm on Sunday night. My aunt had been sick with the flu all day and didn't feel up to driving me to the hospital. My uncle had just left that afternoon for a business trip to Israel. Even my husband was on a plane to Germany, so I couldn't even call him for encouragement! So, I called my Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Kathy who live in Mesa, about 20 minutes from here and asked them to take me. Despite the fact that I woke them up, they agreed.

I arrived at the hospital at around 11:00 pm. After filling out all the paperwork (I actually have to fill out paperwork for me and each of the five babies every time I go to the hospital), they sent me to OB triage where I was hooked up to various monitors. They also brought in the ultrasound machine to make sure that all the babies were alright. As it turned out, I was still contracting, but the contractions were small and not doing anything. The nurse said that they were nothing to be concerned about. She gave me a shot of some anti-contraction medication, monitored me for another half hour and then came in to tell me I was being discharged. I was so excited!!! Being able to go home was totally unexpected. My aunt and uncle had graciously stayed with me the whole time, so they were there to take me back to my Aunt Jeanie's house.

When my doctor saw the report of my middle of the night adventure the next day, he ordered a terbutaline pump for me. The pump, and a nurse to show me how it all worked, showed up on Tuesday morning. Basically how it works is that a small needle (shaped somewhat like a tack) with attached tubing is placed into my leg and a small pump continuously injects a very small dose of the medicine into my body. Every 4 hours, I get an extra boost of the drug. Administering the drug this way, as opposed to the oral pills which I had been taking, makes it so that the level of medicine in the blood stream stays more stable over time. It also makes it so that overall, less of the drug has to be used. I have been using the pump for about 2.5 days now and it seems to be working much better than the pills did. So far, I have had about 2 contractions per hour, on average, and have not had to re-monitor at all.

Yesterday I had another doctors visit. All the babies look great and despite my adventures over the past week, the doctor used the words "fantastic" and "amazing" to describe how I was doing. I am so grateful for my excellent progress thus far, and I know that in large part it is because of the many of you who have included us in your prayers. THANK YOU!!!!!

False Alarms and Other Fun Adventures

Things Can Change in an Instant...

I have been hearing from several people with multiples that during pregnancy, things can change in an instant. Now I am a believer. I went to my doctor’s appointment on Monday afternoon fully expecting to be given a pat on the back for what a great job I have been doing and sent home. After all, I had been gaining weight (OK, so truth be told I don’t think I actually get 5000 calories in everyday, but I try hard and I still have good weight gain), the babies seem to be doing all right because I feel them kicking fairly frequently now, and most importantly, I had not been having many contractions. I am supposed to keep the average number of contractions for the week below 3.5, and I had never had more than 2 and usually had 0 or 1 in a single session.

So, no one was more surprised than me when the ultrasound tech looked at my cervix and said, “You are going straight to the hospital. Let me see if we need to call an ambulance or if the friend that brought you can take you.” I was stunned. (And I thought that the whole ambulance thing was a bit overdramatic). They finally decided that my friend, who had brought me to the doctor’s appointment, could take me over for direct admittance into the hospital.

My cervix, which two weeks prior had been about 4 cm in length (and which one ultrasound tech had called the “cervix of steel”) had shortened to 0.7 cm and was 1 cm dilated. The doctors weren’t sure if it has just happened, or if I was in pre-term labor and that’s what was causing it. They hooked me up to a contraction monitor to check things out. At first I was having three contractions per hour. Then I started having them every two minutes (yikes!). They gave me some drugs to stop the contractions and decided I needed a cerclage (a surgical procedure where they sew your cervix closed) as soon as possible.

Well, as luck would have it, Monday was also a full moon, which, for some unknown reason, tends to put women into labor. The labor and delivery area of the hospital was packed and several women required emergency c-sections, which all had to come before my surgery. Finally, at around 10:15 that night, it was my turn. The procedure itself is fairly simple and did not take a long time. They did numb my body from the waist down (similar to an epidural) so that I wouldn’t feel anything, but I was awake for the whole thing. After surgery, they took me to recovery for an hour and I was back in my room about midnight. My sweet aunt was there, along with another friend and two men from our church. They had waited over an hour and a half for me to come back. I got teary-eyed when I saw them because it was so unexpected and so thoughtful. The two men gave me a Priesthood Blessing (see www.mormons.org if you want to learn more about those), which really boosted my spirits and made me feel like everything was going to be okay.

Because the cerclage tends to cause more uterine activity, the doctor decided to put me on Magnesium Sulfate (code name “Mag”). This drug does a great job of limiting contractions, however it has some pretty nasty side effects, including nausea, double vision, overall muscle weakness, shortness of breath, congestion and chest pain. Fortunately I only had to be on it for a day and a half before they decided to take me off and see what happened.

After they took me off the mag, I did pretty well, with minimal contractions and they thought I might be able to go home on Friday. Unfortunately, Thursday night I started having more contractions, so they gave me a shot of tributaline, which calmed the contractions. Because of the increase in contractions, however, they decided to keep me another day. The next night, the same thing happened, so again they decided to keep me for another day. This time, they gave me an oral dose of the tributaline in the early evening to see if it would prevent the contractions from occurring. Happily, this tactic worked and I was released from the hospital this afternoon.

I know that I will likely end up back in the hospital sooner rather than later, but I am truly grateful for whatever time that I can spend at my aunts house on bedrest instead of in the hospital. The doctors and nurses in the hospital were wonderful, but nothing can compare to being surrounded by family.

Things Can Change in an Instant...