Monday, May 24, 2010

It's even harder when you miss someone that wont' be coming back

In the next couple of weeks my amniotic fluid just kept increasing and increasing to a point that was not only becoming very uncomfortable (my back was killing me, to the point it hurt to walk)but was also a cause for concern. The weight and size of my uterus could cause a false feeling of being full term and cause me to start dilating too soon. I was only about 33 weeks at the time and we really wanted to try to prolong things if we could. After talking with the doctors I decided that I would have some of the fluid removed. To put a little perspective on things I asked one of the ladies that did my sonograms what a typical amount of fluid was and she said about 7-11 cm, I had 48cm when I went in to have some of my fluid removed. So the day we decided to have the fluid removed the doctor told me go home and then go the hospital at 6 and we will remove it tonight. So here we go, I was not expecting it to happen that night but I guess it was better than waiting. Getting the water drained was like having an amniocentesis but they take off a lot more fluid. I was attached to machines that monitored my contractions because that was one of things we had watch while having the fluid drained. With a sono going the whole time so they could make sure they didn't poke Skyleigh, they gave me a local and then inserted the larger needle they would use to draw off the fluid. They drew it off 300cc at time and the doctors and residents had to take turns drawing it out. In the mean while I started having slight contractions but they weren't too bad until after they were done. It took a couple of hours from start to finish and they ended up taking out what totaled to about 10cm of fluid. I had been having so much back pain before the procedure, but now that I was having contractions the pain was insane. On a pain scale from 1-10 it was definitely a ten. I could not get into a comfortable position. After some medicine and what seemed like an eternity the contractions had stopped and I got to go home. My back was still in so much pain I could barely walk. After a day or so of recovery I felt much better and with the fluid decrease I was able to get around much better. We weren't really in the clear. Another problem with having fluid drained is that it will come back, the doctor said that babies get used to a certain amount of water so they usually just produce more. We just had to hope that it wouldn't come back too fast.