I had to call and make an unexpected appointment with the midwife for today. I have been feeling a lot of weird pain and pressure (not normal) lately, and along with the fact that I've had contractions for awhile now and that Bryson came early, I felt like it would be in my best interest to go and get checked out before I had to work all weekend (12 hour shifts). It's not normally like me to seek medical attention, but since I felt like something was happening early-on when I was pregnant with B and I didn't say anything and he came early, I'm a little hypersensitive to what is going on with my body this time around. I would like to keep this baby gestating as long as I possibly can:)
So I went in to have everything "checked out" and I'm glad that I did. I told the midwife what I have been experiencing lately and she made me feel very justified in coming in, which I definitely needed. Luckily, the baby is head down but the head is not engaged yet, which is something I was afraid of and is a good sign. The heart rate was in the 140s and I'm measuring a little small at 28 cm (which is totally fine since I'm progressively getting bigger). The midwife decided that she would do a fetal fibronectin test and check my cervix to see if I was dilating at all yet as well. My cervix is thinning (which can be normal for a third baby), is a little shorter than is expected at this point (1 3/4 cm), and the opening is dilated to about a fingertip, which again can be because it's my third baby. Essentially, this is just a baseline to go off of from now on. The fetal fibronectin test is very interesting- basically, it's a measure of a protein produced by the fetal membranes which serves as a glue that attaches the fetal sac to the uterine lining. If fetal fibronectin is found in the vagina too early (before 34 weeks), it may mean that the glue is disintegrating ahead of schedule because of contractions or an injury to the membranes. The test is either positive or negative- a negative result means that it is 99% or so likely that you will not deliver in the next two weeks. A positive doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to deliver in the next two weeks, especially since there are a lot of false positives with the test, but it does mean that the protein is present and you could be at increased risk of delivering early at some point. I was assuming that my test would come back negative and that I could be reassured that I wasn't going into labor anytime soon. I was wrong. The midwife called me back later this afternoon to tell me that my test came back positive. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to go into labor soon, but it does put me at a higher risk of delivering early, especially since I have a history of a preterm baby. She also suggested that because of the test results and all of the contractions that I have, it would probably be better to lighten my hours at work and so we agreed that three 8 hour shifts this weekend would be better than working three 12-hour shifts. (Which luckily I was able to do since census is low and there is plenty of staff working. Thank God.)
So from now on, I'm going to be watched a little more closely by the midwives, probably have the fetal fibronectin test done every couple of weeks, and see what will happen with my work schedule. I'm hoping bed rest is not in my near future, but maybe just taking some time off of work would be the best for me and the baby, we will have to see how things go. As I mentioned, I would like to keep this baby in the womb for as long as possible, and am willing to do whatever it takes to get there. For the mean time, I'm taking it easy and trying my best to rest as much as possible and drink lots of water. Please pray for us that everything goes well for me and that the baby comes later than sooner and is completely healthy and happy:)
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