Home sweet home

Good news! I was thinking that Robyn would be in the hospital for a minimum of several days, if not weeks. Turns out she got to come home today. I went to go visit this morning about 11 a.m., and after getting her a salad from the nearby Marie Calendar's, she had an ultrasound and another non-stress test. Both tests came out great, with the baby looking really good and the contractions non-existant. So come this evening, Robyn got to come home to bedrest.

Bedrest is an interesting thing. The doctor at the maternal fetal medicine place was discussing the controversies around pre-term labor treatments (specifically the drug Robyn's on -- terbutaline) and the subject of bedrest came up. It turns out that they put you on bedrest, not so much to keep pressure off your cervix, which is what I had thought, but more to keep your activity minimalized so you don't dehydrate, because dehydration can cause contractions which may or may not mean labor.

We found out some interesting things, too. There's a test they do for something called fetal fibronectin (FFN), which is a protein secreted by the uterus (I think) when labor is imminent. If the test comes back negative, there's a 99.2% chance you won't go into real labor within 2 weeks. When Robyn went in on Friday evening, and we found out she'd dialated, we figured "This is the real thing, labor-wise," but it turns out the FFN test was negative. We also found out that terbutaline doesn't work if you're "really" in labor. The contractions that one often has that CAUSE preterm labor can be slowed or stopped with terbutaline, but once you're in full blown, ready-to-dialate-and-deliver labor, the terbutaline doesn't work. Interesting stuff.

Anyway, she's home. That's the good news.

By the way, the original due date is 8-31, but the baby's measuring big, today they estimated a due date of 8-18. So, LMP-wise we're at 30 weeks 4 days, but measuring-wise it's 33 weeks 1 day. Just so y'all know.

We got more ultrasound pictures today, but they're not as clear as some others we've had, so I'm not going to post them. :P