A final visthit to Dr. Robison (while pregnant) - April 16

Monday morning... Shane had started his set of 4-on that morning and I had an appointment with Dr. Robison at 10:45am.  I had my sweet dad take me and drop me off and he went and bought stamps and groceries for me while I was in there.  I knew it wouldn't be the fastest appointment because the stress tests were always so long.  I was nervous about the baby girl having dropped off on the growth chart and my Aunt Karleen had come by over the weekend to bring me some "calm" tea to try to help get my blood pressure down and I could tell that she was worried about the baby girl dropping off the growth curve as well.  Darla (Ultra Sound Tech) re-did all the measurements - and although the cord blood flow looked good and the amount of amniotic fluid looked good... the little girl was still at the 4th percentile and the little boy had gone up to the 43rd percentile.  Dr. Robison came in for the duration of the ultrasound and while I was having the non-stress test on the babies he came in and sat with me during that as well.  I told him that I was quite nervous about the little girl's growth having dropped off and he said he was nervous about it too - and had been worrying about me all weekend.  He wanted to admit me to the hospital to be on the monitors for the duration of the pregnancy.  They would watch things closely and if things changed they would do the c-section tomorrow or at the latest by Friday.  He was worried about fetal demise on baby b and I agreed that we needed to be on the monitors full time at that point.  I asked him if he could consult with Dr. Jenkins (he is the NICU doctor) and told him that Karleen had pointed out that he also had perinatology credentials .  He said that he would.

I told him that this was really going to mess up the shower that Anna (and Sheila and Krista) had planned for me - and he laughed with me and said they could have the shower in the hospital room.   It was scheduled for the upcoming Saturday.

Dad picked me up with all my groceries and stamps (I still haven't found where I put those books of stamps - but there are 80 stamps somewhere in my stuff) and I told him to take me to the hospital.  I got checked into EIRMC into Labor and Delivery.  They were waiting for me and we got on the monitors.  I sent my Dad home to put away the groceries and he and my mom called me from my house so I could walk them through packing a bag for me to bring up.  I called Shane at the jail and we determined that he would stay at work until we either made a decision or until after his shift - so that he could be gone when / if it counted.  It was relieving to be on the monitors and to be able to continually hear the babies heart beats.  It was interesting to me that despite the visitors I had and even though he couldn't do anything for me - I really just wanted Shane there with me.

Angie and Karleen came to visit me in their scrubs during their breaks from work.  Angie works in day surgery and Karleen in the NICU.  Karleen had the nurses staff on alert in the NICU and had talked to Dr. Jenkins about it.   We were trying to determine what would be the benefit of waiting till Friday to deliver verses the risk to baby b of waiting if she wasn't getting bigger.

Shane came up after work to see me.  His parents were there to visit when he got there. 

It was a long night and  I didn't get much sleep - despite my ambien!  The monitors and the continual automatic blood pressure cuff interrupted the sleep a lot as did my excitement / nervousness / worry about the day or days ahead.