Update

Below is an email that I sent this morning to our family and friends, and thought I would re-post it here to keep all of you in the loop.

Hi there,

I am sorry for the mass email. The last couple of weeks have been rough with ups and downs. As you may or may not know, this pregnancy has been riddled with constant nausea, severe migraines and fatigue from the start. Then, on Easter Sunday, while getting ready for church, I got several very painful contractions. So painful that they took my breath away and forced me to sit down. This went on for awhile, but slowly they began to go away as I sat and drank water. All seemed to be fine. The next day was great, we had family in town and took them around the area. However, the next evening after they left, the contractions came on again, but not quite as regular, but still as strong and painful. I called the doctor that next morning. He asked that I come in to check my cervix and to look for any other signs of pre-term labor. At that point, I was 21 weeks. The doctor advised that I stay off my feet as much as possible, drink plenty of fluids and just try to hang in there. Based on the sonogram and exam, baby was fine and his heartbeat was strong, so whatever I was experiencing was not affecting the baby!

Then, 2 weeks ago, I woke up to hard contractions and horrible vomitting. I couldn't keep anything down, despite my attempts at taking my anti-nausea medication. By the next morning, I could hardly function. I called my mom who was on the next flight out. At one point, I got so sick that I literally flooded my pants with urine (sorry for the graphicness). HOwever, based on the fact that not 30 seconds earlier, I had tried to go to the bathroom and couldn't even get a dribble out, I worried that my water had just broken. I immediately called the doctor and went in once again to check my cervix and amniotic levels (all was normal). He concurred that I was extremely dehydrated and probably about 2-3 days behind on my fluids based on the volume I had lost. He gave me some anti-nausea to dissolve under my tongue and ordered that if I still couldn't keep anything down after taking that, then, I would need to come back in and either be admitted or get rehydrated via IV fluids. Luckily, the new anti-nausea seemed to work. My mom stayed for 10 days to help out with the kids and take over some of my mommy duties (ie, carpool, homework, laundry, meals, etc) while I rested as much as possible.

At my 24 week check, last week, he again checked my cervix and levels. All was good, but my iron was really low, so I am on iron supplements to help that out!

I seemed to be feeling much better and she went home on Friday. The weekend went well, except on Sunday night I got another killer migraine and more nausea. I took my meds and went to bed early that night. Yesterday, I woke up feeling ok, got Max off to school and was just hanging out on my couch as much as possible between trips to check on Cate upstairs. Around 5:15, while making dinner for the family, I got a couple of really hard contractions again. In fact, one was so hard, I almost dropped the steaks on the way out to the grill. I sat down, drank some water, but they were not going away. I then laid down on my left side and only sat up long enough to eat with the family. Once Matt took the kids upstairs for baths and bed, I began to get really regular, extremely painful ones. I started jotting down the time that each began and how long they lasted. After an hour on the couch, I had 10 contractions and was in tears. Once Matt came back down and saw my agony, he called the doctor. He told me to go directly to the hospital and he would call to let them know we were on our way. I was so frightened as I am 25 weeks today), but I was trying to be optimistic. We called my brother to come watch the kids, since we had already put them in bed. We live literally right around the corner from the hospital, so it took hardly anytime to get there. Once there, they hooked me up to monitors and I gave a urine sample. However, wouldn't you know it, none of those hard painful ones happened while I was there. I did have a few mild ones that were registering on the monitor. So, after about 2 hours, they discharged me and gave me an Ambien to help me get a good night's sleep. They also ran a test that can determine if I could go into labor in the next two weeks (not sure how this works, but we should hear the results sometime today). *****UPDATE: THE TEST CAME BACK NEGATIVE, SO I "SHOULDN'T" GO INTO LABOR OVER THE NEXT TWO WEEKS!*****

This morning I awoke from a very solid night's sleep, but I am still very tired and drained. Once I get the kids to school, I am going to rest some more. I will keep you posted. We appreciate all your prayers and thoughts during this rough time.