DVT and Labor False Alarms

It's been a wild week for us!! First, I had a routine OB appointment last week Wednesday. Fluid and heart beats looked superb via ultrasound and babies were 'breathing' away. My edema is outrageous. We talked about birth options at length. Simply because I'm carrying twins I can choose to have a c-section no questions asked. (I didn't know this) BUT, both babies remain head down and, call me crazy, but if they remain this way I'm going to try for a vaginal delivery. We covered possible complications (baby B flipping, breech extraction, etc.), but I want to at least try for vaginal. Are the odds stacked against me that this will work and go off without a hitch? Definitely. Do I want to avoid surgery? Definitely. We're at an advantage for a vaginal, according to my OB, because Baby A is the larger of the babies and this should make it easier for Baby B to slide on out. Sure, there are complications that could arise, but isn't that life? Other twin mama's out there...what's your take on the birth? Am I insane?

From the mundane to the exciting we go...Friday my husband came home over lunch and commented that my right leg was quite swollen. I can't see my legs so he snapped a photo for me and BAM! It was huge!!! Overnight my right leg had swollen to 1.5-2 times the size of my left leg. Talk about looking like a freak... It was also warm and painful to touch. I immediately starting thinking DVT, but figured I may be over reacting so I placed a call in to my OB. I got a call back immediately and was told to head straight in to the hospital for lower extremity dopplers to rule out DVT's.

I waddled my way in on Friday afternoon panicking about DVT's and PE's...I had a lot of scenarios running through my head. I asked the tech to please tell me if he saw anything unusual rather than making me wait for a call from the OB; thank goodness he obliged. He scanned both legs and both were DVT free. Crisis averted. I just had a seriously unfortunate case of edema.

Crisis one done. On to crisis two. I have been having an increase in cramps/pain (not what I'd really call contractions, just an annoying uncomfortable constant period-like feeling whenever I'm mobile..which, let's face it, I spend as much time on the couch with my feet up as I can, but that's beside the point). Over the weekend I started to experience nausea/vomiting, upset stomach with a side of diarrhea. I ate antacid pills like they were candy. I also started to experience lower back pain on Sunday night. I was so uncomfortable Sunday I decided to simply go to bed because I was tired of feeling so crummy.

I woke up at 1:15 am with damp underwear and pajamas. I woke up the husband and informed him of the situation. Had my water broke? It wasn't a lot of wetness, so I was unclear what it was and I wasn't having any contractions. We talked it over and decided to go back to sleep. I changed clothes while the hubs rolled over and started snoring instantly (yeah so that's a bit of an exaggeration perhaps...), but I laid in bed slightly panicking and analyzing every twinge and feeling. A few hours later I woke up to a similar situation; although dampness was present it wasn't as damp as earlier. Still no contractions. We both hopped on Google and found that water can slowly leak rather than break. So maybe that was it? Back into a fitful sleep we both went. Around 7 am we both got up and started getting ready/packing. I placed a call in to the on call OB and she said to come on in to L&D with bags packed to determine what was going on.

We went in about an hour later and I got placed on the monitors. The OB used a speculum and had me cough to see if any water was leaking. This hurt like a mother f%^&er, but came out negative. She swabbed my cervix to see if there was any fluid present. Negative. She thought maybe I had a UTI and had peed myself so she tested my urine. Negative. (I knew I didn't pee myself...I'm not stupid!)

According to the monitors I was having a lot of false contractions, but nothing to show I was in labor. I had an ultrasound and both babies had plenty of fluid present. The OB checked my cervix and I was only a fingertip dilated (first time I've had this done and it also hurt like a mother f%^&er). Do these things hurt this bad or was this OB just rough? I'm not sure, but both were quite unpleasant. It was determined I was not in labor. So why the fluid? Apparently, it could have stemmed from an extremely small leak that is too small to detect or it was just an unusual amount of drainage. It was not significant and the babies were fine so home we went.

I had an OB appointment today and I'll write about that later...it was much less exciting than what we've been doing the last few days. Today I'm at 35w4d and I'm more than ready to have these babies. It's such a weird feeling to be sitting around waiting for something to happen...