This past Saturday I was attending a clinical for my OB rotation at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center. It was actually the best clinical experience that I've had my entire nursing school career. I got to coach a woman through hours of pushing, help with delivery of her baby, take care of both her and her new child, teach breastfeeding, etc... it was amazing! Well, with all of my excitement, I neglected to sit down and put my feet up all day. Around 12:00pm while I was still at clinical, at 33 weeks along, I started having contractions about 10 minutes apart. By 12:20pm my contractions were about 3-5 minutes apart. Needless to say, either I was going to be dragged by a L&D nurse to triage or I could do it on my own two feet (those were my options that the charge nurse gave me!).... SO, I took the high road and walked down to triage right outside the L&D area. They hooked me up to all the gadgets and started monitoring me. The doctor came in and did an internal exam, and at that time I was not dilated or effaced. After about 2 hours of monitoring, I was still having contractions about every 3-6 minutes and the doctor came back in and did another internal exam. At that point the decision was made to admit me to the hospital because I was one centimeter dilated (which meant that I was in active labor). I was then transferred to a room in the Labor and Delivery unit where I received Magnesium Sulfate to help stop my contractions, Betamethazone to help mature Kinsey's lungs quicker in case of early delivery, and IV penicillin because I had not yet been tested for GBS (which usually happens around 35 weeks along), so they gave it to me every 4 hours as a precautionary measure. I stayed on the labor and delivery floor until about 4am with my contractions slowly getting farther apart. They had to increase my magnesium sulfate after a few hours of me being in L&D because at first, my contractions were not slowing to their liking. Around 4 am, my contractions were about every 10-15 minutes apart so they transferred me to the antepartum unit. I then stayed on the antepartum unit until I was discharged on Tuesday afternoon. Prior to this past Saturday, I had been taking Procardia to help reduce the amount of preterm contractions that I had been having. During my hospital stay, the doctors increased my Procardia from 10mg/3x/day to 20mg/4x/day. They did an ultrasound on Kinsey to see how developed she was and she is very healthy and weighs a whopping 5.5 pounds at 33 weeks!!! She's going to be a BIG baby! I was discharged from the hospital with strict instructions to stay on complete bed rest until I'm 36 weeks. At that time, I can resume all normal activities and go back to school (which is April 22). Luckily, all of my professors are allowing me to do all lecture work online and submit assignments via email so I don't become behind. I am, however, going to be missing 5 clinicals. I'll be able to do 2 of them as an online assignment, but I will either have to make up the last three before the semester ends, or take an Incomplete in my OB course and after I make the 3 up in the summer, I'll get my OB grade. Either way, they are being very gracious in allowing me to not have to take an entire semester over just because of missing two weeks of clinical and lecture. I've attached some pictures of me in the hospital, as well as hanging out in bed with Kendall. So far, we've painted nails twice, she went to a movie at the movie theater yesterday with her cousins, and I've had visitors and great help from friends and family. Thank you to all of you who have offered and helped out. And thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers while I was in the hospital!
2 comments:
Glad your doing ok, hang in there chic! We miss you! But how ironic you were at clinicals lol.....good luck!
bless your heart..i know how you must be feeling...that magnesium made me feel terrible.....hang in there....i hated bedrest because i stayed online all day and spent entirely too much money...lol....i'm home with callie for the next 5 weeks so if you get bored sitting at home gimme a call.... miss you and cant wait to see pictures of kinsey!
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