To understand this title you have to understand my family, we are a bit nutty and flaunt it. My uncle came up with the CHU, CHU,CHU chant. It is pronounced CHOO CHOO CHOO. It stands for Calm Happy Uterus. He wrote it on my goal board. my whole family would chant it during the monitoring sessions. It became a joke with a very serious undertone. The calmer and happier my uterus was the longer I could stay pregnant.
To keep me pregnant a variety of interventions were used. All with the goal of keeping my uterus from contracting, we wanted it to be calm and happy. The drug free methods were drinking lots of water to stay hydrated. A uterus likes to be well hydrated and when it is thirsty it will contract. I was given one of those large thermal mugs and it was kept full all day and night.
Keeping my bladder empty, when your bladder is full it can irritate the uterus and thus cause contractions. This was easier said than done due to the mag.
Laying on either side but not on my back. Laying on your back when your are pregnant can cause a decrease in the blood flow to the uterus and you guessed it, it will contract. Laying on your side sounds easy enough but the bed is not very comfortable and my hips became pretty sore. A few weeks in I mentioned this to one of my nurses and she got me an air mattress to put on top of the regular mattress. It made a world of difference!
Obviously I also received medications to keep things relaxed and calm. The big one was magnesium sulfate. It is not a new drug and it has been used for decades. People respond differently to mag, depending both on your body and the dosage. I had a mag headache for about the first week and a half. It wasn't bad but it was one of those headaches that make you want to knock your head against the wall. I also suffered from hot flashes the whole time I was on the medicine. The mag also made it difficult for me to concentrate and just kind of made things a little fuzzy for me. Mag works on the smooth muscles in your body. Obviously the uterus is a smooth muscle, but so are the muscles in your blood vessels, bladder, and GI tract. The relaxation of my blood vessels caused the hot flashes and my cheeks to be slightly flushed. Warning TMI, skip over the next few sentences if you don't want to know. The effects on my bladder and GI tract were a bit more difficult to deal with. For one thing the mag decreased my sensation that I had to pee until my bladder was full to the brim. It was relaxed so there was no stretch response. So needless to say when I did go to the bathroom I peed a lot. With the relaxation of my GI tract, the movement of things dramatically slowed down. Thus I was introduced to Colace, to help keep things from stopping all together. So, combine the slow movement of my system and being really scared to, ahem, bear down and things took awhile in the bathroom. Ahhh such fond memories. My family kept me well stocked with fresh and dried, fruit and vegetables to further help matters.
I was also given a progesterone suppository every night. One of the doctors explained that they were not really sure why it worked and the theory was that it "spoke" to the uterus to not contract. It is the same concept as the p17 shots that have been all over the news lately thanks to the greed of KV pharmaceuticals.
There are other drugs and interventions that are used to prevent preterm birth. These were the methods used with me.
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