Just another manic Monday

Its grey and drizzling outside - perfect to match my melancholy mood today :)

Over the weekend, my contractions have started to grow stronger, but never getting closer than 15 mins apart. I have a lot of pelvic pressure and am dying to know if there has been any change in my cervix. I think I have another biophysical profile ultrasound scheduled for Thursday, so they will look then. I asked my doc today if he thinks we should check with a sterile exam and he said no, they are just letting nature run its course and there is no need to check unless my contractions are getting closer. Thanks. Doesn't he know I'm a control freak and want to know every single variable???

I was also getting concerned because Bennett's heart rate "base line" on the monitors seems to have started to drop. He usually hovers between the 140s and 150s with some accelerations as high as the 170s and rarely ever having decelerations lower than the 130s. But this weekend, he's been hovering around the 130 and 120s, with accelerations in the 140s and 150s, and decels in the 110s!! The normal range for a fetus this gestational age is 120 to 170. However, its not considered bradycardia (abnormally low) until he spends more than 2 mins under 120. But you know me - the eternal worry wart - every little change puts me on alert. He is also very reactive to my contractions, with low decels in the middle of my contractions. This is "normal" behavior, but still nothing to rejoice about. What they do NOT like to see are late decels, where the heart rate drops toward the end of a contraction. Unfortunately, we've seen a few of those, but the doc said unless it becomes consistent (signaling distress), at this gestational age there is no reason to do anything about it. Not that I want to deliver, but the further along I get the bigger my fears of cord prolapse or cord compression become.

The bleeding is coming and going. Not surprising with all the contractions I'm having. Thus, not worrisome. Just annoying. My sugar levels in the week we've been testing now have all been normal except for one (probably b/c I didn't get my breakfast until 10 a.m.!). The nurses keep asking me "are you SURE you have gestational diabetes???" I refer them to my infinitely wise doctors and tell them they are free to argue the point with them, as I think all the sugar checks are a useless exercise as well. Thanks to my genius mother and a wise nurse, we discovered they were using a very large gauge lancet on me that was causing me a good deal of pain and leaving huge gouges in my fingers. We now use the MUCH gentler baby lancets and I have almost no pain :) But I must say the getting woken up at 6 am ordeal to have my fasting levels tested is getting OLD. Particularly since they wake me up at midnight to do vitals and a fetal heart check every night. I tell ya - being in the hospital isn't exactly restful!

Okay, enough whining for today :) We're keeping our eye on the 30 week mark coming up on Thursday!!!!