Throwing In The Towels.....

Me & My Silly Hubby....

****Note this is a VERY VERY Long Blog....Mainly me venting my frustations******

In case you didn't know before, you will know now. It is not quite 7 AM here in the Hendrickson household, I just sent dear husband off to work, and I am wide awake and beyond frustrated to even know where to begin. In the next hour I will be giving dear Bryan (my awesome boss) a call letting him know I will not be making it in to work today...why you ask? Because in about 3 hours I have a strong feeling I am going to crash and crash HARD, thank goodness for awesome brother in law unemployment to allow me to catch some much needed Zzzz's when the time comes to help watch Toby for me. And why the crashing of sorts in 3 hours? Because I have had virtually NO sleep last night. Approx 1 1/2 of sleep the whole night.



In the past 9 (ish) days I have had the privilege of having contractions of all magnitude's some ranging some minor hiccups to down right 5 hours of pure hell (I truly mean that it was HORRIBLE) I have seen my doctor twice once since then. The first huge set of contractions was last Sunday (January 17) and the second HUGE set of contractions was the following Friday night (January 22) to me it seemed that the most recent one was worst than the first one but between the two big sets I dealt with minor ones, they were there but they were NO where near the pain level of the other 2. I was able to calm them down with either a nice hot bath, heating bad and a minor pain killer and they calmed right down. I went and saw my doctor again yesterday (Monday January 24) after the weekend killer contractions (which by the way they lasted 5 plus hours of pure bliss) to see what else he can offer me because I didn't want to continue taking pain killers to dull the pain (considering both times I dealt with the HUGE contractions they didn't do squat other than piss me off that they weren't working) and he agreed that the pain killers (lortab's) were only going to dull the pain (or in my case NOT work at all!) and just piss me off (well DUH) and offered to give me a different type of meds....oh and in case you don't remember I am already on a weekly shot to prevent me from contracting....seems that my body just LOVES to contract! So he gave me Terbutaline for the contractions and gave me the instructions of, I start to feel a really bad set of contractions coming on take 1 Terbutaline and 1 Ambien (he claims the Ambien will be more effective than the Lortab) and then if I have still having contractions 30 minutes later take another Terbutaline and if 30 minutes AFTER than I am still having contractions he wants me to head up to Labor & Delivery where they will do a test that will show if I will be going into labor in the next 2 weeks (seriously? That's a pretty cool test if you ask me!) And if it comes back negative then we can ignore the contractions and work on getting them to stop. Awesome! I left the doctor office feeling slightly better about the situation and went home.



Around 6 PM last night I started to feel some contractions, nothing more serious than nasty cramps. I drank some water and went on with life, then as the night went on they started to get worse, so around 9ish I decided no better time like the present to try out my nifty new drugs! (note: I have taken Terbutaline before when I was pregnant with Toby and they just made me REALLY sleepy) So I was kinda expecting the same results.....WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!! I felt the contractions calm down, not 100% but I did notice a big difference which totally made me happy, because I am thinking the next HUGE contraction adventure these babies will work better than the pain killers! I was kinda excited (as sad as that sounds) but I was feeling jittery but I did know that was one of the side effects. Around 10:30 Richard and I called it a night...well at least Richard did....We layed in bed watching some TV and chit chatted....soon Richard was passed out and I layed down to attempt to go to sleep (I have always been dealing with insomnia so it always takes me longer to go to sleep almost every night) and that's when the fun began. I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. On one of my many adventures to the bathroom I noticed it was a little past 12:30 (remember we went to bed around 10:30) I was slightly annoyed but went back to bed trying to relax and get some sleep. Tossed and turned some more until I couldn't take it anymore, I then decided to take one of the Ambien's to help get me to sleep so I got out of bed (by this time it was a little bit past 1 AM) and threw out the idea of working just so I could get some sleep. So I grabbed a book and decided to read until the meds kicked in. Around 2AM the meds STILL had yet to kick in (despite what the doctor saying it will kicking in pretty quickly) so I decided to get online and dink around (funny thing is? I don't recall getting online at ALL let alone updating my FB!) but I do recall standing up and feeling like I took a hefty amount of liqour shots...I was walking all sorts of funny but wide awake as can be. I do remember getting back into bed, turning on my heading pad and continued to read my book (The Lovely Bones) and the last time I remember looking at my clock it said 3:27AM the next thing I know my awesome husband (he really is) moved and it woke me up, so I looked at the time....5:17AM...are you KIDDING me??!?!? So I got up went pee (for like the 200th time that night) and tried to go back to bed, no use..I was WIDE awake....sigh....so I just layed there until our alarm went off at 6:20AM....sigh......



After Richard woke up, I let him know of my quite awesome night that I had. He said he had woken up a few times and saw me reading but didn't realize I had been up 90% of the night. Also just for the record, when you are wanting to sleep and can't and your husband is next to you snoring away like it's his job you kinda get annoyed and tend to smack him more than you normally would mainly because your jealous of his awesome ability to sleep through anything, thankfully I only hit him to roll over twice last night although I did give him several deadly looks that he will never know he got. He is just as frustrated at this situation as I am.



I just honestly don't know what to do, mainly because I have FMLA (family medical leave act) which allows me to call in sick when needed and not worry about getting into trouble, which is great except for the fact of HOW many times in the past week and a half that I have had to call in, I have 12 weeks worth of time to call in, so I am well within my range of time left over, I just have this HUGE guilt hanging over me huge part of that is the fact that WHAT I do for a living in case you don't know I work for HRB support...tax season.....busy season....very very busy at work right now and I hate calling in sick..but at the same time as I am typing this I am struggling to keep my eyes open.....or like last week I was so drugged up from the morphine they gave me at the hospital....My family comes first but knowing I am letting my awesome co workers down by not being there and helping them makes this guilt be about the size of Texas.....



When I was at my doctor apt yesterday my doctor told me I don't want to go on bed rest this early because it will make it feel like time has stopped (BTW I never asked him to go on best rest he brought that up himself & honestly who's to say I will go insane?), this morning Richard told me I need to call the doctors office and explain to them what happened last night and that if time has to stand still for the next several weeks so be it, I am at this point that I am OK with going insane before my due date gets here! He wants me to go on bed rest (Richard) because then I don't have to worry about getting sleep and possibly lessen the contractions and how often they happen AND hopefully the guilt trip will lessen on me. While he was getting ready for work I decided to look up some information on the Terbutaline.



The most common side effects are:

• Jitteriness


• Increased heart rate


• Tremors


• Headache


• Restlessness


• Insomnia

I didn't experience all of these common side effects but I did on alot of them, which explains why I wasn't able to sleep, now why I still wasn't able to sleep with the Ambien is still confusing to me.

I finally called my doctor's office, asking them at this point I am at my wit's end, I don't know what else to do and explained to her my awesome night and want to just go on bed rest that way they can take me off the books at work and then I won't stress out as much when I do get the contractions and get to deal with this lovely medicine and it's awesome side effects. She told me no sleep just comes with being pregnant (well yeah) and I might just have to deal with it but she would talk to my doctor and take it from there. She called me back about 15 minutes later, and explained to me and he wouldn't put me on best rest because there is nothing wrong with the baby, and then said that he told her that I need to walk 5 miles before bed to help with my sleep issue....she then asked if there was anything else he suggested and he stated no that this will be my best bet to fix my issue, on a side note the day before at my apt he told me to "take it easy" because I told him that if I do more than my normal everyday walking around I tend to contract more so no, walking 5 miles WON'T fix my problem she said she was sorry and she knew how I felt because she also deals with sleep issues. I got off the phone with her and just BURST into tears, walk 5 miles seriously? Like I said I have noticed that when I walk around my house/anywhere else it will give me contractions so really walking 5 miles is kinda just asking for contractions which makes me take the meds which makes me not sleep...isn't that a never ending cycle? Remember I am already on a weekly shot to prevent contractions and I am STILL having contractions so now I am on 2 different types of medicines to stop contractions......

I am just at a loss here, I am so frustrated, I have prayed about this several times (I am not the type to really pray honestly) to give me a piece of mind & to help me feel better about going on bed rest and when I finally feel at ease to do it the doctor tells me no and to go take a hike (litterly). I have cried over this in my opinion way to much and I am just so frustrated I could just scream. I don't know what else to do I feel like my doctor is just brushing me off to the side but at the same time I feel like I am being a cry baby and making this a bigger deal than it really is but then again I look at the several times I have had contractions so it's like my body's telling me no your really not freaking out. All I know is as much as I want to try to have another baby and try and have my baby girl, I can't possibly bear going through this again and putting this much toll on my body (and mind) & my family's.