It’s day 11, and it’s also “switch day,” the day we switch to a new gestational week– we’re at 26 weeks, which means we can throw those scary 25-weeker NICU pamphlets away.

I’m settling into life here. I like to imagine that I’m in a scifi story. It’s probably some kind of minimum security prison where they do medical experiments on people. I haven’t yet discovered my powers, but perhaps after the next magnesium treatment I will.

In the false alarm the other day, they removed a bunch of stuff from my room to make space. One of those items was a desk chair that I borrowed from the waiting room. Shoot! I’ve spent the last several days searching for my desk chair (and sitting on a doctor swivel chair while I work). Finally, yesterday, I found it in this little tiny office where the residents sit. I laugh every time I walk by and see three residents crammed into a tiny closet/office, which distracts me from my goal of getting my chair back.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a few pesky warts on my feet for a few years now. When the doctors came by the other day to do their rounds, I asked if someone could help get rid of them. Might as well take care of some other things while I’m here! They nodded and said “hmm… sure, we can probably have a dermatologist come by.”

Turns out, they came up with a better idea. They decided to do it themselves. Today, my MFM and an OB resident acquired a bottle of liquid nitrogen and came to my room to treat my warts. The resident sprayed a few of them with liquid nitrogen, three times each. Ouch! I think it hurts more via spray bottle than it does when a dermatologist uses one of those swab thingies. They seemed to get a kick out of this–I don’t think OBs get to use liquid nitrogen very often.

After this treatment was over, I found the courage to ask for my chair back. They happily gave it back, so now I don’t have to sit on a doctor swivel chair while I work. Victory!

We have group art class once a week, but they didn’t have it last week so today was my first one. We decorated light switch covers.

I’ve learned some other things this week:

• Eating coffee-flavored ice cream during an NST makes the babies go crazy. My (trouble-maker) friend Wendy brought me some ice cream, but she didn’t tell me it was coffee flavored. I ate some during my NST. I had a feeling it was a bad idea, but I didn’t know for sure. Night time baby monitoring is always harder than during the day — the babies seem to move around more at night, and the ice cream tipped them over the edge. My nurse had to call in a different nurse to find the babies, and she was strict. No laughing. No talking. No looking at the monitor screen.
• Visitors are the best!! I made a visitor schedule, and it’s been awesome to see friendly faces almost every day. It helps so much to have people to look forward to seeing (especially when they bring food :D). Thank you Angel, Maudie, Wendy, Anne, Ellen, Sharon, Kari, Lindsay, and of course family 🙂 It would certainly be possible to do this without visitors, but it’s so much nicer with them! <3
• I’m not allowed to walk down to my ultrasounds. They demanded to transport me via wheelchair, because that’s the protocol.
• They don’t schedule appointments for inpatients, so life becomes this amorphous blob of wondering when things will happen. With my ultrasound yesterday, first they said “maybe in the morning” which soon became 1PM, which soon became 3PM. The doctors also show up randomly to check in, which always seems to happen the moment I leave the room. This is a strange shift, since outpatient medicine is so appointment driven.
• It’s really hard to walk up the stairs.
• My back feels better now that I don’t have to carry Sam at all!
• Oh right. You probably want a baby update. I had another ultrasound yesterday to measure for growth. They only do these every 3 weeks now. Everything looks fine. They are still on the small side, somewhere around 11th percentile and 5th percentile, but it’s mainly because they have shorter femurs. Everything other than their femurs is measuring pretty normally, and Sam was on the smaller side when he was born so the doctors don’t seem concerned about this. Both babies are about the same size at least!