Blogging from the Hospital

Well folks, I'm typing this email from the comfort of my adjustable hospital bed here at Mayo Clinic.

In fact, I've been here all day...at the clinic that is, not checked into a hospital bed until late this afternoon. Here's the general order of medical-related events today:

10:30 am--I check in and drink the oh-so-sugary solution for standard glucose screening test
11:30 am--blood draw (glucose screening and other standard stuff)
around 1:00 pm--our follow-up ultrasound to check up on little Poppy/TaterTot, and more particularly, on the placenta previa
1:30 pm--chatting with doctor and no, previa has NOT resolved itself...also, the minor bleeding I've been having the past day or so is enough to concern the doctors, so...

3:00 pm--I'm checked in for what will be a minimum 24-hour observation; another blood draw, hooked up to fetal monitors, and an injection of steroids to speed up baby's lung development, in case of preterm labor
7:00 pm--taken off the monitors (yay!) and switched to an antenatal care room for over night (no longer in labor & delivery)

To come tomorrow--another steroid shot, about 24 hours after the first, more fetal monitoring, and surely a whole host of doctors in and out...this is Mayo Clinic, after all. Its rather unclear which doctor/resident/fellow is actually in charge of my care, though there are certainly enough of them involved. We couldn't really get a straight answer about how long we'd be here--you know, anywhere from "24 hours" to "until you deliver". And for those of you who are counting, I'm only 28 weeks along in this pregnancy...so hoping for a not-preterm delivery, that last option would mean being here for 9 or 10 weeks to get me to term!

Let me just say, for the record, that this is NOT how I planned to spend the evening, much less the next many weeks! But then again, maybe they'll discharge me tomorrow night already...I can hope, right :-).

p.s. on the plus side, Poppy is doing just fine!