Day to Day

I've watched tons of TCL & Food Network, googled everything I can on fetal SVT, PAC, & AF, googled my medicines, googled all of Isaac and my Drs, read blogs about SVT, read the story of a child at our local Children's hospital who was treated for SVT, read my e-mails (Thank you for all the wonderful distracting e-mails), eaten dinner and snacks (Thank you ladies!), checked out facebook (Fridays are slow), and looked at some of the wonderful magazines my friends brought me (Thank you again ladies!), and obsessed over Isaac's monitor, so I thought I'd blog some more (This is my baby book / journal).

Here's a day in the life of the antepartum unit...

In my head my day starts at night, since that is when I first arrived, but I'll start in the morning...

- 5:00 AM - I wake up on my own, check Isaac's heart rate, and if it is low, snooze a little until the phlebotomist comes in to do my blood draw (for medication levels and magnesium and potassium levels around 5:05 AM)
- 6:00 AM - Medication, IV flush, & vitals time. After this I'm awake and watch the sky lighten, the fog role in and the traffic pick up and try to ignore the side effects of the medications as they kick in. The nurses rush in to adjust the monitors and find Isaac's heart beat on my monitor - it always disappears when I change positions.
- 6: 15 - EKG guy comes in and I try to beat him to remove the stickies when he is done. He'll be off this weekend, so I won't get any updates on his garden.
- 6:30 AM - The residents do their rounds (The residents are all OB-Gyns learning to be perinatologists.) and I try to remember all the questions I had from the night before.
- 7:00 AM - I watch the Duggars on TLC and feel sick. Also time to say goodbye to the night shift and hello to the day shift. It is always fun to see who will be working. I also drag myself out of bed, unhook from the leg squishies the heart monitor, baby monitor and contraction monitor and go potty.
- 8:00 AM Breakfast Time!
- 9:00 AM More vitals. If my heart rate is too low I walk around before taking medications - the next hour is sort of a dizzy haze, hopefully nap time.
- 10:00 AM More vitals and the perinatologist arrives. We discuss the current plan.

- During the day...
Visitors, ultrasounds, take a shower, IV flushes, vitals, lots of reading, google, TV and looking out the window, gossip with the nurses, explain what is going on to the break Tele nurses, debate whether filling out the menu will jinx the plans to go home, find out the lab results, chart my Is & Os, cry, wonder why I'm feeling numb and not crying, and always, constantly, continuously leaning over my bed to check out Isaac's heart rate.

Also, usually at some point someone decides my magnesium is too low & they d0 a magnesium drip.
I get to go on one walk a day, so the baby monitors come off and I get to cruise around the hall with the heart monitor.

- 12:00 PM - Lunch! & more medication... Usually I can't get up for an hour or so after the medicine, so this is major veg out time.
- 6:00 PM - More medication and dinner - hook up the leg squishies that I neglected to put on after the last pee.
- 7:00 PM - New shift & new nurses and CNA's to greet. Wash my face & brush my teeth.
- 9:00 PM - More Medications & Vitals (they are every four hours & before and after the heart meds.)
- 10:00 PM - More medicines, lie down and adjust monitors to find the baby on the monitor and drift off into an ambein & sotalol induced sleep. (At first I was really reluctant to take ambien, but it helps s0 much and doesn't make me feel weird)
- 12:00 AM - more vitals & getting unhooked from the wires to go potty.
- 1:00 - 4:00 AM hopefully sleep with wake ups every time my heart rate gets too low.
- 4:00 AM Vitals - Blood pressure is 80's over 40's usually - amazing! Go back to sleep...this is why the ambien is so important.