L&D Day 5

I feel a little cheated. The hospital has been withholding food from me! When I checked into my room last week they gave me a menu to order from and I have to say it was pretty limited. All the food I've ordered has had a sort of fake/cardboard like resemblance. Yesterday evening my nurse saw the menu and asked me what is was....hmmm....odd that she wouldn't know. She then made a comment that it looked like only a partial menu. This morning when I called to order breakfast I asked if they could please send me a new menu because I wasn't sure if I had the right one. One of the sweet volunteers brought it up. She was saying something to me as she walked in the room but I couldn't hear her because I was too focused on the binder of food options she had placed in front of me! There are pancakes on this menu and things like "breakfast sandwiches" I have been eating fruit, yogurt and granola for the last 4 days!!! I don't know what kind of menu I had before but keeping the full menu from me was just plain criminal, did they forget I'm pregnant!

So to make up for lost time, this morning I ordered pancakes AND a breakfast sandwich! It wasn't exactly IHOP but after 4 days of cardboard granola it was amazing!

One of my OBs was in this morning to talk about our plan. I am having mixed feelings about the whole thing. I am still having contractions that vary in frequency and intensity. There just doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to when they come. That in itself is actually a good thing. My OB said it does not appear that I am having preterm labor because although I have regular contractions, I get breaks in the contraction patterns (that doesn't happen in labor). Still, they find it very odd that they keep coming back, even after 5 days of medication. Because of our Vasa Previa I am absolutely the last patient they want contracting right now but there really isn't anything more to do at this point so this afternoon they are going to let me go home and see how it goes.

I am happy to be going home. It will be nice to have a break from the hospital and sleep in my bed for the next 2 weeks. But, I am still terrified of something going wrong. I've been given the parameter that if I have 6 or more contractions per hour that continue for 2 hours at home I would have to come straight back. Well, that has happened every day that I've been in the hospital so I'm just wondering how long I'm really going to be able to stay home! I have 911 and the L&D charge nurse on my speed dial and our house is 1.9 miles from the hospital according to google maps. I've discussed exactly what would need to happen if we had an emergency with all of my doctors and this morning I couldn't come up with any new questions.

I know this was a tough call to make. I feel for my doctors. Medicine is truly so gray and often much more of an art than a science. Managing our situation is even tougher because Vasa Previa is so uncommon and guidelines for management vary a lot. There is no clause in the outline that says "If your patient starts contracting at 29 weeks, proceed to step...." Trust me, I have read the current management guidelines for Vasa Previa, more than once. Now that I am faced with having to respond to my symptoms on my own at home, I've tried to come up with a plan for all the different scenarios that I have played out in my mind. But obviously I have no idea of predicting what could possibly lie ahead in the next couple of weeks. I'm just going to do the very best that I can to listen to this baby and my body. I'll follow up with perinatology on Thursday which is not long at all, I'm convinced that short term goals/milestones are going to be the key to my sanity!

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