The Cubby Chronicles X

Note: Kristin was admitted to Duke University Hospital the evening of Monday, May 5 2008 for leaking amniotic fluid. The following are updates, notes, & observations on hospital life.

Welcome to the tenth anniversary post of the Cubby Chronicles; since I'm here at Duke writing this it's safe to say we're still around & stable. However, it seems like it's always a tenuous existence--exhibited by the events of the past couple of days. Not only did K lose a lot of amniotic fluid a couple of days ago, we had another evening of too much excitement last night. After 8, Kristin had some cramping and after awhile she started to worry that they were actually contractions. Despite trying to stay optimistic, we were getting resigned to the fact that she actually was heading towards labor.

At midnight (after a few hours of observing/counting the cramping) we had the nurse come in & put her on the Fetal monitor for an hour to see what was going on. The picture above shows what a the monitor's output screen looks like--it essentially shows 3 different lines (you might have to click on the picture for a bigger version).

The top red line within the grey band is the Cubby's heart rate & the number displayed in the upper right is the exact rate at the moment (the rate should be between 130 - 160). You might notice that the the line is a bit scatter shot & this is because he's quite a mover & shaker--its hard to get a lock on him for long periods of time. The middle pink line is Kristin's heart rate and the flat black line near the bottom of the screen is the uterine contraction line. As you can see, its flatter than Florida, which meant she wasn't having any contractions at all. We were relieved beyond belief....

We were so excited it was hard for us to go to sleep even though it was 1 in the morning. Today the doctor came in & said he wasn't surprised she was feeling the cramping after losing all that fluid yesterday. She also didn't have any contractions at all during the morning monitoring (when the above pic was taken).

She's still doing okay and has only felt some slight cramping this afternoon; nothing like last night. So once again we're cautiously optimistic but as previously mentioned, every day is a roller coaster ride. Plenty of hills, valleys & unexpected turns and you never know when you might hit a curve....