The Doc who Magged Me

On April 22, I reached week 32 and had to go off of my magic green pill, Indocin. I took my last dose at midnight Friday night and was in the hospital with lots of contractions by 7pm Saturday. When I got to the hospital, again I was put on the monitors to watch the baby's heartbeat and the contractions. Every five minutes. They tried some oral medications first, then they tried doubling the dose of the same medication. Several hours went by. Saturday turned into Sunday. By Sunday afternoon, my contractions had not stopped. They weren't progressing, but they were constantly every five minutes, no matter what was done. And some were strong. So, they walked into my room with an iv set up and several bags of medications, and announced that my contraction pattern was better than their current patients who were actually in labor, like real labor, like giving birth in a few hours labor. So I needed to be started on Mag.

Mag. I could write a book about mag. A largely miserable book, except for the ending, I suppose.

Let me start out by saying that Dr. Tabsh, my OB, has a reputation of caring about one thing - the baby and its well being. That sounds really great, right? and it is. Except for this - it comes at just about any cost to the mommy. And in those terms, MAG is one of the most expensive ways to lay in the hospital. THANK YOU Dr. Tabsh for giving me a baby at 36 weeks who was and remains healthy. But I have to hate you just a little bit for Magging me for 4 weeks.


If you read Tonya's blog back in April, you will have just scratched the surface of what being on mag is like. The fact that she had to write my blog for me is a hint at how miserable the stuff really is.

After three nurses tried four times to find a vein, they finally called the anesthesiologist to get an IV started (a process which repeated itself every 5 days while I was admitted, because that's how often you need a clean line). They warned me what was coming, they said it would feel like pressure and burning as the Mag started. They missed the mark slightly, as it actually felt like an elephant was standing on my chest which was made of fiery coals. I asked them several times if I was having a heart attack. I can't imagine one feeling much different. My entire body felt engulfed in flames. The AC was turned down to 50 degrees, I had cold packs and cold washcloths on my face and chest. The burning in my epigastrium was so severe that I vomited

bile. They tried to start a urinary catheter which I made them take out because it was more burning than I could take. My chest was so heavy that I had to remind myself to breath. And that was all in just the first three hours. They assured me it would get better. A few of the prolonged side effects that never really went away:
1. Vision blurring
2. constipation
3. hemorrhoids, due to the constipation
4. total body weakness
5. poor balance
6. worsening heartburn
7. nausea
8. fatigue, actually a blessing so that I could sleep through the worst of it.
9. off and on, I continued to feel chest heaviness, no fun
10. headache
11. low blood pressure.
12. pulmonary edema (oh yeah, you know that one was fun)
13. Lab draws every six hours, around the clock. This lasted for three weeks. I ran out of veins, so during labor they had to start one in my foot. More on that later.
14. constant monitoring of the heartbeat and the contractions.
15. Not so much due to mag, but rather due to preterm labor, they had my bed inverted so my head was lower than my feet as much of the time as possible. Made for fun after-dinner heartburn and food particle regurgitation.
16. I guess you could say generalized stress over how this was all affecting the baby.

I'm probably forgetting some, but that's the gist of it. Here's how you are limited because of the above issues:

1. you can't watch tv, crochet, read, facebook, email, or do anything on the computer for longer than about an hour a day because of the vision issues. My eyes would start burning and I couldn't see anything after that.
2. You can't have the lights on too bright because of the vision issues as well.
3. total body weakness means instability, so I was limited to a five square foot area to move about in. that included my sink and bedside commode. And no showers, unless the nurse taking care of you was nice and would sneak it by the doctor. Otherwise, bedbaths every day.

4. because of the gi issues, i lost my appetite for some time and didn't gain weight for the first two weeks in the hospital. Then they put me on Ensure dietary supplement.
5. constipation like you wouldn't believe. Everything I was able to put in my mouth centered around avoiding and alleviating constipation. I ate fruit with every meal I could put down, I had fiber in every single dish I could stomach, and I drank as much water as they would allow.
6. Breath. I started getting pulmonary edema around week 33, so they ended up altering some of my meds. That was fun.
7. Constant monitoring meant being effectively "tied" to the bed at all times. Beyond the IV, I had two lines for monitoring and two lines for the SCDs that kept the blood flowing to my feet. The monitors eventually started to erode away at my skin on my belly, which was constantly being stretched to new limits by my ever growing baby.
8. Anything you can think of. It was effected. That's how it seemed, anyways.

All this, and the contractions continued. Every five minutes. For four weeks.