Friday night… three hours away from home, babysitter on duty… sounds like time for fun and romance, right?
Eh, not so much. Not when you’re spending those three hours at maternity triage. Blah!
First things first – don’t worry, all is well. Now for the story. Thursday morning when I got up, I had a wierd new pain. It didn’t concern me at first, since that’s really what this pregnancy gig is all about – first one pain and then another. (Didn’t I just stop puking a couple of weeks ago? And then I started having sciatica, so hey, what’s one more twinge?) This was a sharp pain, right in the middle of my abdomen – so it was hard to guess what it might be. I put in a call to my midwives office, and one of them called me back a few hours later.
We discussed the pain – type, intensity, duration – and how all the “normal measures” (drink lots of water, sit with your feet up, lay on your left side, Tylenol) hadn’t really helped. She was concerned that it could be my appendix, but I didn’t have the normal warning signs. So I got a list of things to look out for (fever, chills, sweats, nausea, vomiting) that would mean I needed to head to the hospital ASAP. Otherwise, she said, just keep an eye on it – don’t blow it off, take it easy the rest of the night, but don’t worry too much either.
It didn’t get markedly better that evening, but it didn’t get worse either. And I slept like a ROCK. When I woke up Friday morning, I felt 100% better. Jonas and I went out to the Post Office when it opened at 8:30, and when we got home, I had a slight achy cramp… within another 30 minutes, it was back to the full-fledged pain of the day before. So I called the midwives back and left another message.
The phone woke me up from my nap (really, seriously? I don’t know how Andrea does it – naps save my SANITY, I tell you!) when the midwife called back. She was concerned that the pain had returned, and while she was pretty sure it wasn’t appendicitis, she wanted me to come in to be checked. It could be an infection (apparently UTIs are common in pregnancy and can cause strange aches and pains, as well as eventually causing preterm labor).
So I called a good friend, who saved the day by agreeing to put up with Jonas all afternoon, and then called Chris to say I was heading to the hospital. Jonas was thrilled to be at “Ga-ga’s house” and didn’t even mind when I left; Chris met me when I got off the elevator at Good Sam. It took a little while to get checked in, and Chris used “the power of the coat” to come back into the triage room with me (Good Sam has this policy of having everyone other than the preggo wait in a waiting room – bah on that, I say!).
A million questions, time spent hooked up to the two belts, three vials of blood, and one urine sample later…. (ie, about three hours) the midwife on call came in to see us. All my labs were normal, with no sign of infection anywhere. I’d had a couple of contractions while I was there, but Doodlebug’s heartrate stayed good and strong throughout, which is good to see & hear. Basically, she said, we would just have to chalk it up to one of those pregnancy complaints that is unexplainable.
{sigh} At least Chris and I had lots of time to talk without a toddler running around, right? 😛
3 thoughts on “Date night – with a twist”
Just keep us posted, okay? I swear to you, my prayer journal is 2/3 full right now with friends and their baby scares. So far everything is turning out okay, so we are busy praising God too, but I am about worn out with all the asking God for baby miracles! I guess I need to spend more time asking God to bless the babies, before the scary stuff freaks us out, huh?!
Michelle, wow! Deja vu! I had the same thing happen to me during my second pregnancy. I had these awful pains that I swore were labor pains, except that labor pains come and go, on and off, but these wouldn’t let up even with rest. I went to the doctor in tears, sure that I was in preterm labor-way too soon. He checked and said everything was fine and annoyed me by saying, “it’s probably gas.” And I was like, “No, I know what labor feels like and what gas feels like. This is definitely not the latter!” Then later that night, when the pain wouldn’t let up, I rushed to the ER. They worried about my appendix and UTIs and all that, too, but all my lab work came back perfectly fine. I chalked it up to nursing while pregnant. ??? Or maybe it happened because I was picking up Elisa all the time while pregnant. ??? I’ve never figured it out, and it happened one other time later in pregnancy, too, but that time, I just waited it out. So see? You’re not the only prego to have crazy stomach pains.
Also, by the way, when I read another of your blogs earlier about how you hadn’t gained weight as quickly with the second…same here! All those books that say that with the second kid, you get fat a lot faster/have to wear maternity clothes faster, etc. NOT TRUE!!
I just clicked over b/c you won a giveaway on my blog. My son’s name is Jonas, too!
I hope everything is okay!