Little Scare

Yesterday morning I realized that I had not felt Avery move in a while. She seemed to have established a routine recently, but when I woke up yesterday, she wasn't following her normal routine of wiggling. I got up, got ready for work, drank a real Pepsi, got the dogs to bark, anything that I could think of to get her moving around. Nothing worked. When I got to work, I called my doctor's office and told them, and they wanted me to come over right away, so off I went. When I got there, they brought in the big monitor to hook me up, but were unsuccessful in finding her heartbeat because she was moving around so much (much to my delight!). We tried for almost 30 minutes to get her to be still long enough to get a one-minute strip of her heartbeat, but we were all unsuccessful. My doctor came in with her handheld doppler and found her heartbeat right away, but it was not normal. It would be good and strong and fast and then dip down and get slow (decelerations). She wanted me to go check in to the hospital for a few hours of observation and an ultrasound. When I got over to the hospital, they hooked me up to one of the official laboring monitors which included a monitor for me and a monitor for Avery. Avery's heartbeat was experiencing some decelerations, but she rebounded every time. There was something else strange on the monitor though---I was having contractions!! My poor nurse rushed in and was obviously a little shaken up because this was not part of the plan. What's weird about all of this is that I had no idea---I could not feel the contractions. I mean, yes, it felt tight, but I have felt like that for a while and thought it was stretching and growing. Who knew? So, they started an IV and gave me some medicine to stop my contractions (the medicine worked, thank goodness). During my ultrasound, they noticed that my amniotic fluid levels were low. So, all of these elements (decreased fetal movement, decelerations in her heartbeat, contractions, and low fluid level) bought me a night in the hospital. Her decelerations stopped eventually (we actually saw that she was squeezing her cord in her hands on the ultrasound---crazy child!). I was pumped full of fluids all day and all night. I wasn't allowed to eat anything until later last night because they wanted to be prepared in case I had to have an emergency C-Section. Matt spent the night with me at the hospital. It wasn't too bad, but there was a lady down the hall who was having a natural birth in the middle of the night/early morning that woke us up---so pleasant! We had another ultrasound this morning, and we successfully increased my fluid levels, contractions had stopped, I could feel her moving, and her decelerations were next to none. We were released this morning shortly after breakfast. What a day/night!! During the admission questions, they asked us if we had a carseat, to which we replied, "no." Of course we don't have a carseat yet---our due date isn't until May! It was crazy, but we are all relieved that everything seems to be ok now and back to normal. Thank you for your prayers and support! One good thing that came out of all of this is that we got to meet a lot of the staff, "tour" the labor and delivery area, and see what it was like in one of the rooms ahead of time. While it is great to know all of these things beforehand, I do not recommend our scenario.