Thankfully our son’s heartbeat was strong and steady, so they were doing fetal monitoring four times a day for around fifteen minutes a pop. Though, sometimes the monitoring could last longer if there were any dips in his heartbeat.
“What can I do for you?”
She gave me a sheepish smile. “Would you be okay sitting in the bed for a while? I want to see if that recliner is any more comfortable for me.”
“Okay.” I smelled a trap. Father in the bed with the pregnant wife with high blood pressure in the chair? That wasn’t going to earn me any dirty looks from the nurses at all. Father of the year award right here. But I would literally do anything for Devyn at this point.
The last place I wanted to be was in the damn bed. She should be in the bed, but she kept saying it was hurting her back, so I gave her the recliner. I settled a blanket over her that I’d brought from home and gave her the little stuffed animal I’d picked up from the gift shop earlier in the day.
She cuddled it close with a smile and was asleep within minutes.
I kicked off my boots and sat down on the bed, wishing there was a second chair in here. When the nurse came in, she looked at me in surprise, then over at the chair where Devyn was fast asleep. “She says the bed hurts her back,” I explained desperately.
“Oh, well, wherever she’s comfortable,” she replied, but still gave me a side eye. Was she messing with me? She moved all the machines over and gently woke Devyn so she could take her blood pressure.
I sighed with relief as it came back normal. Dev was asleep again before the nurse even left the room. Pulling out a book, I started reading to pass the time. It was a book about general engineering. Light reading for my time away from work.
The door opened an hour later and I set the book down as Dr. Natalie came in. “Hey.”
“Oh, she’s exhausted,” Dr. Natalie said with an empathetic look on her face.
“She can’t sleep very well in the bed,” I explained. I was just hoping all these women working here weren’t thinking I was a piece of shit for taking the bed while my pregnant, sick wife—fine girlfriend, but to me she was my wife—slept in the damn chair. I was pretty much fixated on it at this point.
“That’s okay,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just talk with you so we don’t wake her.”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
She explained that we’d be staying the night again—I’d already figured that out—and reiterated what she was looking for. I asked her a few questions, then said goodbye as she left for the night. One of her other doctors would be watching over us.
Tomorrow Devyn’s mom and Sophie were going to come for a visit if we were going to be here another day.
I wanted her to be here as long as she needed to, but I also wanted to be able to take her home because that meant she was doing better. Twenty-four weeks was still way too early to have this baby. Dr. Natalie said she was confident we’d be going home in a few days.
It took a week. A week of her sleeping in the recliner and a week of me realizing how awful that bed truly was. The CIA should stock up on those things for their interrogations. If they made a spy sleep on one of those for a few nights they’d turn to our side for sure.
Despite my internal whining about the bed, Dev’s blood pressure finally started dropping back into normal ranges and I was able to take her home. To a real bed, and real food.
CHAPTER 39
Devyn
Sighing, I pressed a hand to my stomach. I smiled as my son kicked at it. It’d been a month since my first hospital stay due to blood pressure and there’d been two more since then, though they’d been shorter.
My blood pressure was still causing me issues, but I was determined to make it to thirty weeks. Dr. Natalie had assured me that at thirty weeks my son would be healthy and strong and if I needed to have him early that was an acceptable time to do so. That thirty-week mark was still two and a half months early, but it was better than the twenty-four weeks when I’d first been hospitalized. I just wanted what was best for my baby.
I was exactly twenty-eight weeks today and I was sitting with my mom in the hospital room. I’d been admitted last night. They were doing a twenty-four-hour urine catch on me. Nothing better than having to collect your urine and pour it in a little container for twenty-four hours.Bleh.
Thankfully, the nurses were used to this kind of thing. I’d done this twice already and they were doing it to keep an eye on the protein in my pee. Apparently, if it got too high, that meant the pre-eclampsia, that had started showing up after my first hospital stay, was getting worse. If it got too bad, then they were going to have to do something about it.
Thatsomethingwould be an emergency C-section. Dr. Natalie had explained that the pre-eclampsia was happening because of my placenta. And the only way to make it stop, was to deliver the placenta. But we were still trying to keep my son inside my body for as long as possible. It was a delicate balance. Every day that he spent inside the womb was that much better for him.
We wanted to give him enough time to grow, without putting me in too much danger. So we’d just been managing the symptoms, which so far had just been that darn blood pressure.
I looked up as the nurse walked in. Bolo had run home to grab more clothes and take a shower since my mom was here visiting. Each time we ended up in the hospital he was here with me. He didn’t like to leave, but I’d insisted he go take an hour or two to himself. That I’d be fine here with my mom.
The nurse came in. “Okay, so Dr. Natalie said your protein is rising, so the train is coming down the tracks, but it’s not here yet.” The nurse looked up from the chart. “Her words, not mine. But she said if your blood pressure goes down again then you can go home. You know the drill.”
“I do,” I told her with a smile. We’d been through this enough now that I wasn’t quite as worried as I had been the first time. We’d get my blood pressure down, then I’d go home and hopefully I’d get a couple more weeks before I ended up here again. Whatever I needed to do to get to that thirty weeks, or even beyond.
