aminoreduction

This pic is sort of upside down - I am lying in bed and I took a aerial shot of my own belly. If you pulled the blue stripy fabric up higher you would see my boobs. And the weird piece of skin just below the monitor is what used to be my belly button (the monitor is just off center).

The big round thing is measuring contractions and there is another band lower down with a thing on it measuring the baby's movements and heart rate.

Anyway, I had to wear this thing for hours after the amnioreduction on Monday. The amino itself went ok, they took out 1.6L and the baby only kicked the needle once. But it really hurt after...the procedure was done at about 1:30p and I was still having contractions and pain at 11p despite taking nifidepine every 3hrs (vasodilator usually for high blood pressure ). The midwife asked to rate my pain level between 1-10. I said 10 for pain experienced so far in pregnancy. She looked down at me through her glasses...so I adjusted my answer to, 'ok 7 so I have 8,9,10 reserved for when I am actually in labour'. She happier with that and wrote down 7. I ended up taking some pain drugs and they gave me a break from the monitor so I slept for awhile. When the monitor when back on at 7am I was still having lots of painless contractions (like every 2 min). Even though the contractions were painless and irregular, it could progress into really labour so I was given salbutmol (the stuff in asthma inhalers) in a injection under the skin in my chest. This stopped all my contractions almost instantly but I had to put up with the crazy side effects for a couple of hours (it is a super stimulant). My heart was racing along at 165 for a while! Anyway, once things settled down I slept all afternoon and woke up this morning feeling great with the bub still on the inside so all good! It was worth it.