34 Weeks brings hospital visits and bedrest...Yuck!

So here we sit. Me and the dogs. For the next several weeks apparently. What fun.

On Thursday night, I started getting contractions after dinner, and by 8:00 or so they had gotten my attention. So I took an hour to see what happened, drank some water, laid down, everything the doctor told me to do in this situation. Well, by the end of the hour I decided to call the dr, and she had me come into labor and delivery at the hospital.

They hooked me up to monitors to watch the baby's heartrate and the contractions. Bad news - was having contractions every 2-4 minutes. Good news - the baby was doing well through all of it! So they gave me a shot of terbutaline to stop the contractions, and they did stop so they sent us home around 12:30am with directions to just go about life as usual.

Well, that didn't work out too great! From the time I got out of bed Friday I was having contractions, which got progressively closer together throughout the day. They would mostly go away while sitting at work, but would get much worse whenever I stood or tried to do anything.

So, long story short, we went to the hospital again at 3:00, had two shots and a pill of trebutaline before they stopped this time, and left at 8:30 with a prescription for Terbutaline every 6 hours (yuck, yuck, yuck - it makes you dizzy and makes your heart race), and strict instructions from Dr. Penn to stay on bedrest. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "It was kind of hard to relax today dealing with 20 fifth graders."
Dr. Penn: "Haha. Well, you won't be dealing with 20 fifth graders for another three months."
Me: "Haha. You're kidding, right?"
Dr. Penn: "No, you're done with work until after the baby."
Me: "What exactly do you mean by done? Can I work at all if I promise to take it easy?"
Dr Penn: "I mean totally done. Not going to work at all. You need to get some rest at this point."
Me: "Okaaaaaay. So what can I do?"
Dr. Penn: "You shouldn't be getting up from your bed or the couch longer than to use the bathroom, take a shower or get something to eat. No house cleaning, no shopping."
Me: "Oh."

Yeah, I didn't take it too well. Me, who loves to take a day off of work, is very upset and having a hard time handling the idea of being off work with nothing to do. Of course, part of this has to do with the amount of time I can take off (12 weeks), and a lot of it has to do with the idea that we have five more weeks of my pay coming in (that's all the sick leave I have accrued) before we're having to rely on Seth's job to get by. Hopefully we'll get a good tax return this year! Also, I am totally not ready to hand over my classroom to someone else. I am not organized or planned for that, and really do have to go to work for a day or two to get things settled!

I had been planning to work up until the first week of March, so that I could take all of my time after bebe was born and only have to go back to work for 3 weeks. Now it looks like I'll be taking 1/2 my time before he's born and going back mid-April. It's just hard to swallow at this point.

So, I'm kind of mopey and upset with this turn of events, even though I realize it's the best thing to do and is necessary. Just indulge me for now...