Bedrest Journal

Well, I have been encouraged by a number of people to keep a journal of my hospital stay.  At first, I thought that it wouldn't be a very interesting journal, and I'm still not sure if it will actually be "interesting."  However, it gives me something to do, and I do have a lot of random thoughts while I sit here, so since nothing else will happen for me to blog about for a while, I thought I would just use the blog as my journal.  We'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow will be the end of the first full week of being in the hospital, not counting the weekend before that I was here when I got to go home for 2 days and then had to come right back.  So far, believe it or not, I have not been bored.  It took a few days for the emotional distress of being away from my family to allow me to have any clear thoughts.  It hasn't been easy at all being away from everyone.  I miss my husband.  I miss the kids.  I miss not seeing their excited little faces during the Christmas season.  I kept thinking about how we couldn't go on our hayride to get our tree, and we all wouldn't go driving around looking at Christmas lights (although R. could certainly do this without me).  These were the sort of thoughts that took up a great deal of the first couple of days.  Then I started coming around (see previous post), and have let go of the superficial things and just thought about how truly blessed I am.  God is good. Since being in here, Baby B (from now on I will just call him, B to save typing 4 letters and a space) has responded well to the rest and oxygen and most days his dopplers are hovering around a 5, which is still elevated, but acceptable, and if he stayed there for the rest of the pregnancy that would be AOK.  So I find ways to pass the time.

In the past week, I have 1) Graded the mulitple choice for R.'s exam.  2) partially updated Ansley's & Silas' baby books 3) Done one BSF lesson 4) Researched Christmas purchases online (which takes up a lot of time) 5) Gotten sidetracked on the internet while doing #4 (which is probably why it takes up so much time) 6) Watched TV.  Now, I know #6 is a big shocker, because normally I don't do this.  But desperate times call for desperate measures, and there is no greater waste of time than watching TV, so there you have it.  All of this doesn't seem like a lot once I write it down, but since I get up every day around 6 to have my vital signs taken, sometimes go back to sleep until 8 when they come in to do my ultrasound (actually I only first did this today), and then the babies get put on monitors after the ultrasound to try to get 20 minutes of a trace on their heartrate (which they protest greatly so it usually eats up about an hour).  So by the time all of this is done and I've eaten breakfast and all, it's normally around 11:00.  So the mornings are pretty full.   Then at some point both of my doctors come in to talk to me (not together), I have to have more vital signs taken in the afternoon at some point, I've had visitors almost every day so far, and the kids come up every day.  After dinner the babies have to get back on the monitors again, so there's another hour, and then I take my shower and talk to R. and get to bed around 10 or 10:30, so that really even though I have for the most part laid in bed for an entire day, I only have a few hours in the afternoon where I feel like I have to find something to do.  And right now I have a whole list of things to do - I've got 6 books to read; more shopping to do online; more of the tests to grade; another BSF lesson; some planning; and at some point I'm going to tour the NICU and get a pedicure in the hospital salon! So, more to come.  I'll keep you posted on anything new and exciting that happens.