We made it to 34 weeks!

Well, here we are, we made it to 34 weeks and we haven't been back to labor & delivery this weekend. J is having 1-5 contractions per hour still and has not hit the 6 contractions per hour threshold necessary to call and see about going in. So what does this mean? How soon will the babies come? No clue.

We have another routing non-stress test tomorrow and I'm feeling about 90% sure we'll be in the hospital most of the day after. J only felt a small percentage of the contractions she was actually having when she was hooked up to the monitor Friday, so if she is still feeling up to 5 per hour, that means she is likely having more than that. And if she is, they will again send us from the testing area to labor & delivery to be monitored again, check for dilation, etc. I'm holding my breath for what happens from there. If she is dilating more, they will try to stop it most likely by admitting her and giving her stronger medications than the shots they give in the triage. From there, who knows how long she will be in? They may just keep her on hospital bedrest. That would be so hard on J and her family and I dread that outcome. Or, perhaps they will stabilize her and send her home. The next routine test is on Wednesday, and then we would start the process over. I'm not sure why they didn't send her home with pills to relax the contractions, like our fellow blogger Marika has right now. That seems to make the most sense but when J asked about it Friday they just said no, they weren't sending her home with any. I guess I just feel like it's a lot to put J through with all these hours being monitored at L&D, possibly even being admitted, and if that can be mitigated at all with pills at home, why not? I'm not a doctor of course, so maybe there is some obvious reason I just don't know about.

So here we are, sort of in a world of ambiguity. As you all know by now, I don't do well in this world. In fact, if I'm being completely honest, I'm absolutely dreading this week. NOT the actual birth of course, but what I anticipate to be a constant roller coaster. It is SO STRESSFUL. What is more stressful is that I think a lot of people (non-IMs) think, "Why are YOU stressed? You don't even have to give birth! J is the one who should be stressed!" And knowing that people think that stresses me out MORE because it feels like no one understands that it can be really hard to be on this side too, even if you are not giving birth. And OF COURSE J has a lot to be concerned about - good grief, I can't even imagine going through this ambiguity AND having to give birth at the end! That's not my point at all. It's just that it's a unique stress to be on this side that few people can understand. To give you a glimpse (here comes a list!):

1. Because I am very stressed but at the same time feel guilty/embarrassed for being stressed when J is the one who has to give birth, I can't even show completely how I am feeling at any given time because I have to be concerned with not freaking J out, not freaking B out, not freaking the doctors out (in the case that they might let B in the delivery room if we look calm enough), not freaking J's family out when we are at her house, etc. It's SO hard to be feeling this stressed and nervous and have to do your best to keep it on lockdown. The worst part? My version of "lockdown" is still pretty transparent. So as hard as I'm trying, I know everyone around me still thinks I'm a stress case. That's nowhere NEAR what I'm feeling! Which then just leads to more stress and embarrassment. :(

2. Being an IM always means that you don't have the "latest" information on the pregnancy per se because you are not living it. But that takes on a whole new meaning here at the end when your babies could be coming at any time. When people ask for updates now, it's more often than I get them myself, which causes more stress! It would be no big deal if I were the one who was pregnant because I could just, well, update them! But poor J is trying to rest up and she doesn't need to worry about constantly updating me that this hour she had 1 contraction, the next hour was 3, etc. At the end of the day it doesn't much matter until she hits the "magic 6", so our update in most cases is the assumption that nothing has changed because we haven't heard from her. There is absolutely nothing different that J should be doing, it's just the nature of being on this side of the surrogacy. It's just something I have to deal with. But that doesn't mean it isn't stressful. J is doing absolutely everything she can, updating periodically, being on bedrest, following doctors' instructions, etc.

3. I'm really stressed about making sure J is taken care of while on bedrest. She has an amazing family and church family that are all helping out too. People have offered to bring her dinners this week, her husband has offered to work from home part of the time, and we are definitely not "on our own" to care of her and the family. But I still of course feel it is our primary responsibility and it's hard to know exactly what to do! We would of course do anything to make sure J has all she needs and is comfortable. But we also know that it can be difficult to have other people in your house all the time, so I've been looking to J to give us direction on what we can and should do for her. That's hard though, because J is somewhat soft spoken and doesn't want to ask for much, so I'm constantly wondering if we should just jump in and do more because she probably doesn't want to ask, or if we should accept that she is drawing the line for us between her privacy and what she really needs/wants us to do. And then I wonder if there are things we haven't offered/said/done that we should have and just didn't think to because we are thinking about so much at once right now! This is all VERY stressful to me because the last thing in the world that I want is for J to feel like we are not appropriately caring for her needs during this critical time.

4. The babies' health. We are at 34 weeks now and in ALL likelihood they will do just fine. But that is still 6 weeks early. I'm concerned that there will be problems. Even more so than that, I'm concerned that there are problems that we don't even know about (birth defects, etc., unrelated to prematurity) and are days from finding out about. Problems that could flip our lives upside down. Problems that could quickly turn this from a journey of joy to despair. A friend of mine from college had a full term baby a few years back that they had no indication had any problem until the birth. Then they found out about a heart problem and the baby died a week later. The end of the pregnancy could mean the beginning of something horrible. I KNOW, I know, I know, you are all saying, why focus on that rather than that it will likely mean only something wonderful? I guess it's just my personality. I would rather fear the worst, stress about it and be relieved when it doesn't happen than be completely shocked. It's not a conscious decision, it's just what goes on in my head.

5. I worry about the babies turning around, forcing J into a c-section. She knows it could happen and isn't going crazy over it, but we all know it would really, really suck. I know she'll be recovering from birth no matter what, and that is not fun, but it's worse with a c-section. I worry about being in a state of joy and excitement with two new babies and feeling guilt that poor J is at home in pain. I worry about how we can take care of her when we are taking care of two newborns too.

6. You'll all like this one...I worry that I will still worry after the babies are here. :) lol Not about the babies themselves, I know that's natural, but about J and always wondering if we did everything "right" to make this as positive as possible. I worry that there is something that she'll always think back on, like "I still can't believe that they...(something negative)" As you read this post, you can see that 99.9% of my worries are about J. I have to emphasize that that has nothing to do with J herself or what she is doing/saying or not doing/saying. It's the nature of being an IM, and especially an IM who is a type A by nature. Some of it probably has to do specifically with the nature of having a surro who is also a friend, because I care so much about our ongoing relationship.

So there you have it. I know that the actual delivery will be very exciting and a day I will never forget. But I would love to hit fast forward to that time. :)