Wednesday, March 16, 2011

yesterday was a whole world of frustration, all over again.

I had to have my 2 hour glucose tolerance test, which meant I had to be at the hospital at 7am! With the time change, it was really dark, and I don't like driving in the dark, much less in the pouring (sideways!) rain. But, I made it.

The butchered my veins, I'm a completely bruised mess. i really hope I don't need any blood tests in the next couple of days because they won't be able to find anything through all the bruising, on either arm. Really, though, not a big deal. I'm 100% sure I don't have gestational diabetes.

After the two hours of sitting around being completely bored, I grabbed a bite to eat and headed to my nst. It wasn't great. Right at the beginning there were some accelerations, but then nothing. She would move, and her heart rate would drop. Then she had a nap, then she woke up, would move some more and her heart rate would drop again. The nurse that does fetal monitoring noticed enough of a difference from Friday's test, to call the mfm, who was too busy to come down. So, she called another doctor, who wouldn't even listen to my history (she actually interrupted the nurse!!) and said that at 27 weeks the rest was fine enough, she's too young to get a good read. The nurse showed her the test from Friday, the doctor didn't care. She told me to do kick counts, and that's it.

Well, kick counts I've been doing, and she regularly goes a couple to three hours without moving. Then, she'll kick up a storm for a bit, and then go back to the hours of not moving.

Stressful. The doctors these past few appointments have been so uncaring, and rushed, and I sincerely feel as though they could care less about Ellie and I. I know Friday isn't far, it's only two sleeps away, but I'm worried about all those tests on Friday. I think I'm going to call them today for an extra NST. To get a reactive one like we had on Friday would really calm my nerves.

Better get dressed and head over there :)

UPDATE:
I drove in to the fetal assessment clinic at the hospital. I tried calling the mfm clinic ahead of time, but couldn't get through to anyone all morning. Hmph!

I was the only patient there in the assessment area, it was a quiet morning (usually 20-25 babies are born there every day). They definitely were not half as skilled at performing nsts on people, much less women with tiny bellies! Took the nurse ten minutes to get everything in place, and Ellie didn't really want to cooperate. In the end, she gave an awesome strip, which eased my mind like you wouldn't believe. I know that it doesn't mean everything is wonderful or anything in there, but at least she's doing a lot better than she sounded the other day.

Then, I waited for the on call mfm to come look at the strip and let me go home. He took a while, (turns out he was reading my file all the way through- impressive!) and when he came around, he said he wanted me to go for an afi/dopplers scan before he felt comfortable letting me go home. Even though the nst from this morning was really good, the one from yesterday wasn't, so he felt it warranted a follow-up. Ah, where was he yesterday?

So, I waited for about an hour before the u/s, and the tech I got was a bit of a weido. Seriously, he talked non-stop about everything. I don't think he has any sort of filter. Good thing it was just stuff about his schooling (all the places he's dropped out of), his wife's spending issues, and other stuff I pretty much tuned out. AFI was really good, again. And, the dopplers from today were great. The resistance decreased, and it was contant the whole time. The doctor did say that the flow can be really variable, and that they will recheck it all again on Friday (nst, afi, dopplers) when they do the growth check. I asked if it was possible that the test from last Friday was wrong, and that maybe there wasn't absent flow. He said no, and that usually it doesn't get better, but that it's really intermittent, mostly positive, occasionally going absent depending on the baby's position. Still, I felt really relieved to have had someone actually take the time to familiarize himself with my file, and listen to me. He cared. It was a nice change from Friday and Tuesday.

Fingers crossed that by some miracle Ellie will have grown a whole bunch by Friday. I have to explain my crazy weight gain somehow!

Oh yeah... I parked on the main street outside of the hospital, because I didn't want to spend $15 to park in the parking lot. Well, you can't park on the street after 3:00. I left the hospital at 3:20, to see my car in the process of being hoisted onto a tow truck. OMG. I didn't even think about it, and broke into a sprint so they wouldn't take my car to the impound lot. The guy was really nice and gave me the car back, probably because I burst into tears when I got there and realized that I had just run a pretty far distance when I'm supposed to be on bed rest. It was crazy. I got a $50 fine for parking in a "no-stopping" zone after 3pm. Great. lesson learned, next time I'm getting my mom to drop me off at the hospital. No contractions or anything post-sprint, although I was so out of breath I had to stop my car when I got to a side street, and rest for about ten minutes. Ellie's been moving a bunch since then.

Ah, what a day.