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High-Risk Pregnancy
Coping with long term hospital bed rest
Has anyone here ever been in the hospital on bed rest for 6 weeks or more?
I had my weekly cervical check today and the funneling was a little worse than last week. The cerclage is holding but my cervix is dynamic and it was a really discouraging ultrasound. I was really optimistic that I was going to be able to do home bed rest and now I just feel utterly defeated.
I'm looking at many, many more weeks of hospital bed rest. Obviously I will do whatever I need to in order to give my baby the best chance but I feel frustrated and overwhelmed.
I play online games, read books/ kindle, play on my smartphone and surf the internet. Am I missing any ways to cope with this? Maybe it's just a bad day and I'll feel better tomorrow? Any advice is appreciated.
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Re: Coping with long term hospital bed rest
Hey there Christy.
I was in a similar position two years ago when I was admitted to hospital bedrest for funneling with a 0.5cm cervix in January and didn't leave until 42 days later (I was 28 weeks gestation) when I had stabilized.
At first i felt like I was in a prison but I got through the days by looking forward to certain times during the day (which helped to break it up). For example, I knew in the a.m. the residents would stop by and ask questions, so I'd get groomed. Breakfast would soon come, then the nurses for a check or meds. The cleaning crew for the bathroom or the assistant who would make the bed. Lunch would soon follow then waiting for visitors or watching a series (I found Desperate Housewives and became an expert after seeing all the reruns). Dinner would then make it around the corner but I would save room for dessert so I could call to have it sent up at a certain time. By the time dinner was done, it would be dark outside and that was promising because the day was soon over. Enough time for the baby to have made progress growing.
I just think if you partition your day, you can have events to look forward to and the day can race by fast. Also partition your week: I would set Thursdays for days when I would order food for delivery to escape from eating the hospital mush.
I also had a calendar to strike off the days me and baby survived. I hung it on the wall for everyone to see.
See if this works for you and keep us updated.
PS. If you start a project, this is another quick time passer. Especially if you learn something new, like a free online course or teach yourself something. Perhaps even if you decide to create a scrapbook or design or remodel a house (there's software for this or I think you can do it online on HGTV)!
Be well.
I agree with all of this. I was only in the hospital for four weeks, but I about 6 weeks at home on strict bedrest that was almost worse than hospital bedrest. At the hospital, you have little events to look forward to throughout the day, like getting to hear your LO's heartbeat on the monitor, talking to the dr's, etc. At home, it was very lonely all day.
Definitely get a little routine going for yourself all day. That made all the difference. Also, I highly recommend a Kindle. I developed awful carpal tunnel syndrome while in the hospital from laying down so much, and by the end, I couldn't even hold up a book. I wish I had a Kindle. It also would have kept my room much neater b/c I had books everywhere.
Keep your head up. Looking back on bedrest now, it seems like such a peaceful time. I wish I had relaxed and enjoyed it more, but at the time, it seemed like an awful prison sentence. Now, I would kill for a full day all to myself in bed.
With my daughter, I was on hospital bedrest for almost 4 months. Definitely 'plan' out your days so you have stuff to look forward to. Ask if they have a massage therapist that can come visit you...my hospital did and it helped so much as your body is going to start gettting sore if its not already. I did a lot of crafty things to keep me busy as well as reading, crosswords, word finds, suduko, painting my nails a new color daily. I think 1 thing that really helped me was insomnia. I couldn't sleep at night when most patients were and everything was usually quiet so I would invite my nurses in to hang out and chit chat instead of them sitting 10 ft away at the nurses station talking to each other. I made some good friends with them and that helped. I'd sleep away most of the day while my DH and family had to be away at work, wake up in time to get 'prettied up', they would come visit and then I'd stay up at night.
I agree with what most have said. The schedule was/is important to me so I that could show the passage of time. I celebrated after dinner as well because I always felt that if I did deliver it would likely be the next day by the time everything came together.
I did some projects for the nursery, read, watched movies, scheduled visitors so I only had one at a time so there would be more time with visitors there instead of everyone coming at the same time. My nurses were great and I would chat with them when I could. I also told them that they could pass out my name and room number to any other long term bedrester there who needed someone to talk to. I ended up meeting another twin mom. We talked every other day by phone. It was nice to have someone who understood. We could discuss the high risk docs, nurses, and protocols that we were both going through even though our diagnoses were a little different.
I also used this board and sidelines.org who matched me up with someone who had been through a similar situation.
I was on hospital bedrest for 25 days. I was just discharged to home strict bedrest. You can definitely do it.
Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.