contractions and hormones

I'm a day away from 34 weeks. I'm still contracting quite often. While the end of the day is the worse, today I was actually contracting 8 minutes apart during my antepartum testing at 8:30am. The antepartum testing nurse was not too happy. Especially when the buzzer went off and I popped up ready to go see patients. She wanted to try to have my OB see me today. Being a stubborn doctor (we really do make the worse patients), I declined, especially since I have an OB appt tomorrow. However by the time I got back to my office in the other part of the hospital, I was in tears. I was having a hormonal pregnancy moment and was so afraid of having a 33 6/7 weeker. I know that the boy would survive and do just fine outside of me at this point. In fact yesterday I saw a set of twins born at 33 6/7 weeks who were 13 days old but still below birth weight and I kept trying to imagine one of them inside of me. I watched their little movements and I could totally correlate them with the movements I'm feeling inside of me.

But I digress, although I know that a 34 weeker would do just fine, I also know that it would likely mean that I would come home from the hospital without him. That he would have to stay in the special care nursery as a "feeder/grower" likely getting some gavage feeds for a few days or even a week or 2 before coming home and I really don't want that. My time at home will be limited as I have to go back to work and I don't want to be home without my baby. So I took a terbutaline pill and worked through my day. I did finally get a hold of my HR lady and had her map out for me how my leave would be affected (and most importantly my pay) if I went out on 50% disability. I think it's totally doable so tomorrow, I think I'm going to have my OB write me out on disability and just work half days until the boy is born. My OB has been suggesting this since my fall and the start of my constant contractions. This way I'm hoping to keep him in me longer. I also want him to hold off until my mom is here. She can't come until the week before his due date because of her chemo schedule so this boy needs to hold off until 39 weeks.

Things around our house have been interesting to say the least. 2 pregnant women is crazy...way too many hormones, especially the 1st trimester and 3rd trimester combo. R is nauseous all day which makes her cranky. I'm big and uncomfortable which also makes me cranky. Add in some contractions every 5 minutes in the evenings and you get an anxious cranky pregnant lady dealing with a nauseous cranky pregnant lady - fun times! Half way through our bickering we catch on to what's going on and we're able to control it (somewhat). I'm not sure how it'll go with me cutting down on work. I'm hoping that I'll mellow out some because I won't be contracting as much and I'll also be able to take afternoon naps. I'll also be able to do a little bit more for R so I won't be so resentful when she's too nauseous to get herself something from the kitchen and asks me to do so when I'm in the middle of a contraction freak out. However I'm afraid that we'll just annoy each other more if we're both home. I guess we'll see.

Besides the 9 week mark for R this past weekend and the 34 week mark for me tomorrow, this week also marked the 7 year anniversary of our first date. Despite all of our new moodiness, I love you bunches R! I love to reminisce on our anniversaries but all I could think about this year is how our lives are going to change. This is our last anniversary as a family of 2 - next year we will likely be a family of 5. That's so wild but I'm so excited for it!