27 weeks + 6 days (day 8 in the hospital)

Birdy,

The last 24 hours have been some of the toughest so far. Until then, it was just me that everyone was fussed about–you know, not having a seizure, stroke, or organ failure. You were tolerating everything fine.

Yesterday afternoon, during our routine monitoring of you, your heart decelerates. A lot. Within seconds, there are three nurses, paging OB. Then three doctors come in, one in scrubs and seemingly ready for surgery. In SECONDS they have me on oxygen, they’re pulling off my pants to do an exam, and they have wheeled in an ultrasound, checking on you, then pressing it hard against my chest to examine my heart.

You recover. Daddy has come, arriving quicker than I anticipated.

Not long after, it happens again. For longer. Six doctors now, including an anesthesiologist, talking to me about being put under in the next four minutes, because they only have that long now to get you out if you don’t recover.

They call the Action nurse to refit my IV, the fourth one, using the ultrasound, because my veins are giving out and the IV keeps infiltrating.

My whole body is shaking, violently, uncontrollably. Daddy and I are both crying. I start bargaining with you, verbally, out loud, like an insane person, that you can go to the party or ride the motorcycle or get the tattoo, if you will just cooperate with me now. Please, please, Birdy, cooperate with me now. There is still time.

And, by the grace of a God I only tenuously believe in at the moment, you take the deal. You recover. Two strikes down; one more strike and we are out.

The rest of the night is spent back on magnesium hell. Before I was first put on “mag,” on the first day, a nurse named Ros quickly became one of my favorites when she prepared me for what was coming. She just instantly got me: “It’s ok, Honey. I’m a bad patient, too. So you like to know what’s coming? We’re going to put you on a drip of magnesium. It’s going to suck. You’re going to hate us all. It’s going to make your skin crawl. But it’s also going to save you life.”

Somehow, the mag is twice as bad as it was that first day. I am groggy, nauseous, and alternating between extreme hot flashes and shivering from cold. I am on food and fluid restriction. I have a headache, and, oddly, am burping constantly. My oxygen levels are low, so I am breathing with a tube through my nose. We have to do constant monitoring of you all night.

And they expect me to sleep.

But you are an angel, and have so far kept to your end of our bargain. I have a feeling it may be because you are intimidated by our night nurse, the Reese Witherspoon one (don’t say it), who showed extraordinary patience and kindness to me all night long, but was quite stern with you before bed.

Grow, Birdy, grow.

P.S. If you make me go on the magnesium again, the tattoo is off the table.