First hospital visit

April 17, 2008: The day we thought we would get to meet Landon.

As a result of my diabetes, 2 weeks ago Dr. Goodrum (the high risk dr. in the same office as my dr.) ordered me to have weekly Non-Stress Tests (NST) done with Dr. Phillips. They usually last almost an hour each time. This is where I get hooked up to a monitor that tracks Landon's movements and compares it to his heartrate. In normal circumstances, when he moves, they like to see his heartrate increase by fifteen beats for fifteen seconds.

We had a normal Dr. visit. Everything checked out fine. Then on to the NST. This particular day, nothing was happening whenever he moved. His heartrate wasn't increasing even a little...much less for 15 seconds. So, Dr. Phillips called this a non-reactive NST. She ordered us to go to the hospital right away and have a longer NST done and ordered a Bio-physical profile/ultrasound. So we go over there and they hook me up and after about an hour, he is still non reactive.

So, they continue to watch him over the next 2 1/2 hours. At that point, they came in a took us to have the ultrasound completed. As for the ultrasound, there were four things they were looking for him to do (kind of like a check sheet) and he had to complete the four tasks within 30 min. If he did all four, he passes and we get to go home. Needless to say, one he did not complete. They also saw too much blood flow through the umbilical cord.

After the ultrasound, Dr. Phillips came over to the hospital and told us we were going to stay overnight just in case and then see Dr. Rowe (the other high risk dr.) the next morning for another ultrasound. She also told us that later that night, they would do another NST for about an hour.

10pm rolls around and the nurse comes in for the NST. I get hooked up and everything seems to be going ok. All of the sudden, babys heartrate dropped to around 80 and the nurses come running in and rolls me to my side. This seems to control it and they leave. It happens again within 10 min. At this point, they have called Dr. Phillips. They hook me up to oxygen, have started an IV, and drew the neccessary blood work needed for a c-section. Dr. Phillips comes by and informs us that if this happens one more time, we will be having the baby that night. This of course scares Brian and I. And of course, because they are watching his heartrate, I have to stay on the monitors all night. This does not make for an easy sleep. Luckily, things were normal the rest of the night.

The next morning, we have our ultrasound with Dr. Rowe and he said everything looked good and there was no need to have a c-section this week. He wanted me to come to his office next Thurs. for another ultrasound. He also told me because the baby is so small, to get off the diabetes diet, get on bedrest all weekend, and eat, eat, eat till I see him next Thurs. OK--I think I can handle that.

Because of all that happened so far, Brian and I have now packed our bags for the hospital and are now bringing them to all future dr. visits.