The Friday night before my delivery I had abdominal pains that felt like tightening all over my stomach. I thought it must have just been a normal pregnancy thing, maybe Braxton hicks and dismissed it. The next day I went along with my business running errands and even went on a run!
Then came Saturday night.... I went to bed around 1 am and felt ok. Periodically through the night the pains came back. I was tossing and turning and then just got up at 4:30 b/c they were too much. Then I remembered Braxton Hicks contractions are not supposed to hurt. I walked around the house and that did not make them go away so I consulted my handy dandy Mayo Clinic guide to pregnancy. It said BH don't hurt and they go away when you change activities. Knowing that something was up I called my doctor and she said to go in immediately. Maybe I ate something bad that was irritating my uterus?

When I got the L&D at 5 a.m. I was dilated 1 cm and was experiencing contractions 3 minutes apart. I was only 30 weeks so they wanted to stop the baby from coming. They gave me a shot of Terbutaline and it seemed to calm things down for a little while but then it started right back up after an hour. After 3 of these shots the contractions were still coming with a vengeance. The baby's heartbeat would drop every time I had a contraction so something had to be done. They brought out the big dog - Magnesium sulfate. This was held off until the last ditch effort b/c of the side effects. It was 5 p.m. at this point and the pain was getting too much so they gave me an epidural. I had dilated to 4 c.m. and my doctor decided that it would be better to have the baby now than to risk anything with his heart rate dropping.

Luckily the epidural not only calmed me down but it soothed the baby. His heart rate stabilized. The doctors were concerned now was that if he was delivered at 30 weeks his lungs would be immature. They gave me a steroid shot to help his lungs. Hoping that the Magnesium sulfate would still work I held tight and tried not to freak out. The goal was to stop them or make it to 1 a.m. so he could have 2 steroid shots for the lungs.

They checked my bleeding around 11 p.m. and it was more than expected so they checked the dilation. I was at 9 cm and there was no going back!

By 12:27 a.m. after maybe 15+ pushes we had a little baby boy name Connor. He was 3 pounds 8 ounces. He spent 7 weeks in the NICU. We were so very fortunate to have no complications and he spent all this time in the NICU gaining weight and learning to eat.



He is now 17 months. We work with a physical therapist bi-monthly to help him learn to walk and also work with a speech therapist. His development is a little behind but overall he is a very healthy little boy.

The cause of the preterm labor was never determined.