Not so fun...

Yesterday sucked. Around 11 am I started having some mild cramping, dizziness, and nausea. Which prompted another million hours on the monitor. Luckily, I wasn't contracting at this point I just felt awful and spent most of the day napping. Later that night I started feeling a few contractions and the monitors showed I was contracting every 5 minutes. Which is what I was afraid of for several reasons.

The first obviously I don't want to contract at this point. But the second reason is I knew that if I started contracting again they would have to give me an IV again. My previous IV was removed on Sunday evening because it expired and I begged not to have another put it. It complicates every aspect of hospital living. I have to drag the IV pole with me to the bathroom, they make me pee into a bucket so they can monitor the fact that I'm expelling as much as they are pumping in (which is so disgusting), and they cover my hand in a glove with tape for showering, which makes showering impossible, not to mention it just hurts. Sunday when they removed it I was so happy it's a small thing that makes a huge difference in my comfort at the hospital.

Of course that happiness was short lived because of the stupid contractions. The first nurse attempted an IV and hit a valve or something. No blood was coming out, no fluid was moving in. This didn't stop her from trying for a while though all the while a giant bruise was forming on my arm. Since that didn't work she found another nurse to try again, and this nurse in a different spot also hit a valve. So same problem as above. At this point I lost it and started crying (which is so embarrassing), but the second nurse was really rude, as though the failed IV's were my fault, I was exhausted, my arm was now bruised and killing me, and I was over the whole experience.

Then a miraculous thing happened. In the process of trying to find a a third nurse to attempt an IV, my contractions stopped. Previously they were 5 minutes apart for the last 3 hours and they just stopped. So between my begging not to have an IV, and the nurses exasperation at trying to get one started they all decided just to let it be.

My arm looks awful. It's bruised on my hand from the original IV from when I was admitted, the mark from my IV two weeks ago is still visible, I have two huge bruises from the failed attempts, and they drew my labs from the same arm this morning.

I was unfortunately contracting again this morning, but after about 3 hours they slowed again, so I'm still IV free for the moment.