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06/06/2002 Archived Entry: "Thursday Afternoon Status"
I'm back home from the hospital to take a quick shower and pick up Judy (Chrissy's Mom) to take her for a visit at the hospital.
The short of it is: the doctors were NOT able to insert a catheter into the baby's chest. They WERE able to aspirate some of the fluid (35 cc's), and the left lung, which previously had only been a sliver of grey in the sonograms, puffed out a bit, which is encouraging.
Chrissy is still at the hospital, and will be there AT LEAST until tomorrow (Friday). The big worry now is that due to the procedure, Chrissy will go into pre-term labour and deliver the baby early. This would be bad since the baby's lungs aren't yet ready for our side of the tummy. She IS having contractions, and they have given her several medications to stop them. The contractions are not strong enough for Chrissy to feel them, but they can pick them up on the Fetal Monitor that Chrissy is strapped to 24 hours a day.
There were pain issues, keeping-food-down issues, and discomfort issues (one of the medications was introduced by the nurse as "this will make you feel like crap"), but those are subsiding, and the two of us were finally able to get some sleep around 10 AM this morning.
Everybody at the hospital has been WONDERFUL. The nurses don't seem to get tired of me going up to the front desk to announce every little change in Chrissy's condition and Dr.'s pop by regularly to see how she is doing.
Game plan as of now is: give Chrissy steroid shots to help the baby's lungs develop quicker; do another sonogram tonight to see how the lung is progressing; possibly aspirate some of the copious amniotic fluid that maybe contributing to the contractions.
Also, we have an appointment with Dr. Lewis on Monday to go back and check on progress. Depending how things go, they may want to repeat the procedure to insert the catheter into the baby's chest again then (we are not looking forward to this possibility).
Random Notes:
Comfort stuff: sleeping in delivery room chairs that should but won't fold down is only slightly more comfortable that falling asleep in those plastic chairs at bus stations.
Weird stuff: it is very strange to be the ONLY couple in the Labour and Delivery wing of the hospital who is waiting for their contractions to SUBSIDE. Other expectant fathers and I trade smiles on the way to the ice machine, but our priorities are a little bit different at this stage of the game.
Neat stuff: as well as draw a diagram of the baby's heartbeat and Chrissy's contractions, you can hear the baby's heartbeat through the fetal monitor. There's nothing like falling asleep to the sound of your baby's heart.