24hr Observation

My sister, Alison, sent me a text message this morning saying that she was going to drop her daughter off at school & then she needed to run a few errands.  She'd swing by mom's house to see if I wanted to go with her after dropping off the kiddo. I wasn't even awake when she sent the text message, so it was about 15 minutes later when I finally woke up and saw the message.  At first I was bummed because I thought I may have missed her, but my mom told me that my she probably wouldn't drop Zora off for another 30 minutes or so.  So I grabbed my cereal and yogurt and ate quickly (while looking through facebook at all of the post-reunion messages) and flew into the shower.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

As I was combing out my hair my mom knocks on the door and says..."Here's what happened" or something close to that.  (Alison is 37-38 weeks pregnant.  She's due on the 22nd of this month and is scheduled for a C-Section on the 21st.)  Alison was leaving the house with Stella in her arms, car keys, an empty travel mug, a few pieces of boxboard for the recycling bin and she was trying to click the car door button while she was going down the back steps.  (You know where this is going, right?)

She got to the bottom step, her foot hit at an odd angle and she felt her ankle give way.  She tumbled to the ground.  She said that she felt like she had a super power arm that it's only function was to keep the 18 month old from hitting the ground.  Amazingly enough, she did just that.  Stella didn't get a scratch on her and we don't think that her head hit the ground at all.  She cried of course, but Alison thinks that it was just because the whole fall was scary.

Alison scraped up her knees, both of them, and fell on her side.  She said that she just laid there on the sidewalk for a few minutes, holding onto Stella, trying to assess the situation...checking for broken bones, blood, etc.  A neighbor, who happened to be looking out her window, saw Alison on the ground and came running over.  She helped get Stella out of her arms and opened the door for Zora to run into the house and get her Dad.

Jim got her into the house and sat her down to clean out her scraped knees and bandage one of her pinky fingers that got banged up and was bleeding.  Her ankles have been swollen due to the pregnancy, but they didn't seem to be damaged at all from the fall.  All in all she was doing alright, but she decided to call her doctor just in case.  The doctor told her to go into the hospital, check into the Triage floor and get hooked up to the monitors for a 4-hour evaluation.  After this evaluation they could determine whether or not her baby was going into distress or if the fall had caused the placenta to tear away.

 This was the triage room

After the 4 hours, Alison and I, in all of our worldy judgment figured that she was bound for home. She felt good, there was no baby distress, no momma distress and no bleeding.  We were both starving so we'd spent the last hour talking about food and what we were going to get when she was sprung.

Then the doctor came in and said...

We're keeping you for 24 hours.

Turns out that Alison had been having contractions, however  mild, nearly the entire time they had her hooked up.  This could mean that it was brought on from the fall or that they'd been going on all along and she just hadn't noticed, but either way they were keeping her just in case it was a problem with the placenta.  Ugh.  Also - no food.  no water.  no nothing.  In case they needed to do an emergency C-Section she couldn't eat.  ahhhh!  Alison wasn't too upset about staying in the hospital, but she was very upset that she was starving and couldn't eat.  They were going to hook her up with a nice batch of sugar water through and IV though, so that made it all better  :)  Yeah right.

Because of the H1N1 virus the maternity floor is full of rules and regulations about who can and can't be up on that floor.  Only the Father and the grandparents (parents) are allowed on the floor.  Since was was none of the above I was getting some pretty serious looks from the nurse.  She mentioned a few times that I couldn't be there, but I wasn't listening.  I left only when Alison's husband wanted some help and asked me to come watch the girls while he went grocery shopping.  Then I stayed and watched the girls while he came and sat with Alison for a few hours.  I can see that this new rule (which is nationwide) is going to be a real pain.  I understand, I do, I just don't agree. :) A support person is also allowed, but the nurse that was giving me the evil eye wasn't having any of that talk. 

Anyway, it all looks to be OK as of right now and I epect that it will stay that way.  My mother is going to pick Alison up tomorrow morning and I hope that she had a fairly decent sleep with no complications.  Then hopefully the next time she's in the hospital will be to have that baby!

Thanks everyone for your well wishes.  I posted a little note on Facebook and received a lot of prayers for her.  Thank you.

Kristin

edited to add - usually if I schedule a post to run, I set the time for 11:11.  In this case, the 11:11 was just what time I finished!  Cool :)