It Wasn't Exactly a Smooth Landing (Part 2)

...I was wrong. It was bad.

It was Friday evening and we'd been in the hospital for a day.  I'd been gone for a few hours at work while my wife's mom stayed with her.  I walked into the hospital room.  It was cold. Very cold. So cold I was expecting the nurses to walk in wearing parkas. "Hey Hunny", I said, "You must be freezing!"  To which I was promptly corrected. She was HOT! Apparently one of the wonderful side effects of the magnesium.  I realized I'd be wearing a jacket indoors for the foreseeable future.  And so began the hourly countdown to 2:00 PM on Saturday when she would be off the magnesium.

I had spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the hospital room and helping to make my wife as comfortable as possible. When it was time for bed I unfolded the sleeper couch and settled in for the night. I woke up around dawn the next morning, well rested. It had been the first time in weeks that I had slept through the night. I had grown used to getting woken up by my wife's hourly trips to the bathroom and groaning from braxton hicks contractions. I assumed because I had slept well, it must have been a quiet night all around. I walked over to her bed and said "Morning! I haven't slept that well in weeks! You had a good night too?!" Nope. She had a terrible night. Up to use the bathroom multiple times, contractions, blood draws, fetal monitor adjustments, 2 nurses in the room with all the lights on trying to put in a new IV.  I had clearly missed quite a bit of excitement.

By 2:00 PM Saturday they had stopped the magnesium as planned. I don't think I've seen my wife so happy in a while.  Within a few hours it was out of her system and she was feeling better. This feeling good period would last until Sunday afternoon.  She looked good all things considering.  Good enough that we asked if we could go for a walk in the garden outside.  The nurse said she would check. She was back in the room shortly and said, "Nope, you can't leave, in fact, you aren't allowed to eat or drink anymore, and we'll be running lab tests every 6 hours." Last time I ask to do something...

Apparently the last round of labs was trending towards that scary HELLP syndrome I mentioned earlier.  The good news was it was starting to look like we wouldn't be held captive in the hospital for weeks, the bad news was that the twins we're still a bit a under-cooked.  Things were starting to get stressful.

The next 24 hours were lived in 6 hour increments.  Every time the lab results were about to come back we were preparing ourselves to get whisked back to the OR for a C-Section, 3 of these rounds went by without commotion. By Monday afternoon we finally got the word, my wife had been scheduled for a C-Section at 6:00 PM.  It was time to get the kiddos out before anyone got any sicker. It was almost a relief to have a plan, even if it wasn't the ideal one. 5 hours to go...

To be continued...