Welcome to Utah

Our move from SoCal to Salt Lake City started out with a few bumps along the way. It took HOURS to sort out getting new doctors, cancelling utilities, breaking our lease, figuring out what to do with the dogs, and dealing with our health insurance company.  We worked through each issue and finally were able to commence with the packing and cleaning .

Luckily, we had lots of help.

My dad flew down from SLC to drive the moving truck (let’s face it, I’m in no condition to drive long distance with my belly this big) and we had lots of friends that helped pack us up and clean the house before we left.  It made the job immensely more bearable. I HATE moving.

We spent the night in St. George. Since I had an appointment with my new MFM on the afternoon of my arrival, I woke up early to drive up with my dad, and Steven and William stayed behind to sleep in and clean the condo.

They managed to fit in a few hours at the coolest park ever to get the  wiggles out before the final leg of the drive.

I’m a little jealous I missed all the fun.  I haven’t been allowed to run since week 10 of this pregnancy.  But I’m glad my son takes after me.

My mother-in-law went with me to see my new doctor, and I’m glad she did.  After doing all the regular tests and ultrasounds, they discovered I had a shortened cervix and checked me into the hospital for the weekend for observation.  I was *apparently* having regular contractions every 3 minutes, so they gave me steroid shots for the babies’ lungs, and medicine to stop/slow down possible preterm labor. I was less than thrilled about this, but glad we had at least made it to SLC first. Let’s just say I had other things I had planned for the weekend besides spending it in the hospital.

On the bright side, my sister-in-law, Karalee, had just been in the hospital for the last 3 weeks due to PROM, so all the nurses knew her and my brother.  It was fun to have family just down the hall, and even more fun to have regular visitors. She had her baby boy on Valentine’s Day. I got lucky and got a wheelchair ride over to Primary Children’s to visit little Matthew.

This was the first night I had ever spent away from my little boy, and I spent it hooked up to a million monitors so I didn’t hardly sleep until they finally gave me a sleeping pill. Since we were staying only a few miles from the hospital, I got to see my boys at least twice a day.  That wouldn’t have happened had we still been in California. Silly Billy LOVED playing with my “elevator bed”.

William probably did better away from Mommy than I did from him.  He was so excited to see Papa again that he didn’t even mind helping to shovel the snow over the weekend.

Especially since he had his very own snow blower.

Since I never went into actual labor over the weekend the doctors decided to let me go home on Sunday, as long as I promised to stay on bedrest.  Again. At least that’s something we’re familiar with. William was able to find plenty of fun at Grandma and Papa’s.

We thought I might even get off bedrest early since I hadn’t had any more contractions.  But, it wasn’t meant to be.  Thursday night we had to rush into Labor & Delivery due to some bleeding.  We thought we’d end up with two babies that night, but luckily there were no obvious problems…except for the fact that I had dialated to a 3 and was 75% effaced. My doctors gave me a 50% chance of delivery this week and kept me in the hospital for another 4 days. I’m getting sick of spending every weekend in the hospital.  I’ll try to avoid it this time. :)

This time, Silly Billy discovered the phone.

William calls Mommy’s Doctor

And Steve and I were able to even squeeze in a date night for the Oscars, complete with popcorn and treats (compliments of my awesome sister-in-laws, Catherine and Traci).

And speaking of awesome sister-in-laws, every single one of mine visited and brought me either treats or entertainment.  I got puzzles and movies from Karalee and Dan, and Mary Jane and Kevin brought me The Hunger Games.  I thought I was sick of reading, but it was only because I didn’t have anything that good to read.  Kevin also brought Emperor of All Maladies, which all my nurses raved about, but I didn’t’ get to read it yet because Steven got to it first.

I got lots of visitors, probably due to the fact that we thought I’d be in the hospital until the babies came.  Luckily, I got out Monday afternoon for good behavior and no cervical change (that, and the fact that we’re so close, we’ll make it to the hospital for sure once I go into labor for real).  But only on the condition of MORE BEDREST and switching my shots to Heparin (a 12-hour vs the 24-hour Lovenox) which is much more easily reversible in the case of impending delivery.

Which we are really hoping is not going to be at 32/33 weeks. I’m lugging around 9 pounds of baby, but I’d rather do that than visit them in the NICU.

As a side note, this belly has not gotten any bigger over the last few weeks.  Before we moved, I measured 42 inches around. Now I vary between 40-42 inches, pending the position of the babies (and the size of my meal, lol). But the babies are measuring nice and big.