 |
| One day shy of 22 weeks (March 17, 2013) |
You'll remember that last Saturday was a busy day with playing at Aunt Misty's house and getting a new bed. Sunday was busy too. Nathan and I went to church (Daddy was working) where I'm co-teaching 2nd grade Bible class. After worship we came home for a nap and lunch then ran errands all afternoon. By the end of the day I was tired, my back hurt and I was feeling some discomfort in my lower abdomen. When I noticed some tiny spotting I took the hint and immediately laid down on the couch for about an hour to rest.
The next few days were fine until a repeat performance on Wednesday evening (spotting and discomfort). So on Friday morning when it happened again and the discomfort could start to be termed mild 'contractions' I called the nurse at my doctor's office. She, of course, told me to go to Labor and Delivery for monitoring.
As a side note, on Sunday when this first happened I searched the Internet for reassurance that it was normal and everything would be okay. After all, spotting during pregnancy is extremely common and I had Braxton Hicks contractions with Nathan. Wrong move! I should have known better than to do something dumb like this and I never recommend that pregnant women read online chat message boards, even if they are on a reputable seeming website. Anyway, the first site I came to was, in fact, reassuring and I should have stopped there. But oh no, I had to keep browsing and stumbled across a forum about women with an incompetent cervix and all their stories of pre-term labor and miscarriage soon after having the same symptoms I was having at the same point in their pregnancies. As I said, terrible decision. Don't do it.
So, as I'm driving to the hospital in Katy from downtown I keep thinking about losing Olivia and how awful that would be, but also trying to stay calm and not get worked up over what was probably nothing.
The sweet nurse at L&D hooked me up to a monitor so she could see what my uterus was doing and monitor my blood pressure. We also tried to listen to miss Olivia's heartbeat but she preferred kicking the monitor rather than cooperating with a heartbeat. Through this all I wasn't ever really worried that there was something wrong with her. She's been wiggling and kicking up a storm all week, including most of my stay at the hospital. The on-call doctor, who is an associate in the same practice as my doctor, came by to talk to us. She was a little...quirky. Jimmy even told me after she left he had surreptitiously checked her name tag to make sure it said "MD" and she was a real doctor. I recognized her name and face from my doctor's website, so I told him not to worry.
Since I was in fact having contractions (oh fun) she said she wanted to check my cervix to make sure nothing was progressing. The good news is that everything was still closed and firm and they decided the spotting might be left over from the slight placenta previa I had before. My personal opinion is that it is from Olivia kicking/punching me super low (an odd sensation to be kicked in that special place from the inside!). The doctor did mention that there was a lot of pressure on my cervix from Olivia and I needed to help relieve it. She started me on a low dose magnesium supplement and said to take Tylenol, drink copious amounts of water and rest all weekend. I am also supposed to start wearing a maternity belt when I'm up and about. Fortunately my mom bought me one when I was pregnant with Nathan. I am allowed to go back to work on Monday after my uterus is presumably well rested, but if this keeps happening or gets worse they may put me on bed rest. Boring. So here I lay trying to be an obedient patient.
We have a regular appointment with Dr. Schmidt in two weeks and I hope to get good news by then. I appreciate prayers in the mean time!
No comments:
Post a Comment