Well it has been a pretty exhausting last week. It has been a busy last week of pushing myself probably a bit too much to get ready for the impending holiday season as well as other events like the baby class and going to work. I then got my first migraine this pregnancy on Sunday and just noticed I was getting a bit more tired each day. Then on Wednesday night, after going out to dinner, we went to make our pies and I started noticing that on top of being SUPER tired and drained, I was feeling some pain on the surface of my stomach that felt like it could be contractions. It wasn’t super uncomfortable, but it felt weird. I had had a few Braxton-hicks practice contractions where my stomach felt tight, but nothing where it actually had any pain involved. It was definitely pain rather than tightness. After reclining on the couch for a bit and then ultimately getting into bed, we notice no improvement (despite no activity for an hour).
So, we called the on call doctor and described the symptoms to her and she said we should go to the hospital and get checked out. Of course it was like 9:30 or 10 pm at this point, everyone’s favorite time to go to the hospital. Luckily the labor and delivery triage is not at all associated with the ER (and therefore, more peaceful) and the on-call doctor had called ahead so they were expecting us and got us in and settled immediately. They then hooked me up to the machines to watch baby’s heart rate and check for contractions. They saw about 3 contractions, then nothing for 20 minutes, then as soon as they called the dr to say not much had happened I had another 3 or 4 contractions. The hospitalist on duty was very nice and came in and we talked a while about what was going on. Since I was contracting, she also checked my cervix and saw that it was championship level long (4 cm) and completely closed. We also talked about my increased activity as well as things like my blood sugar being a little off and the migraine. She hypothesized that my hormones were changing at this point, causing all these changes, and either causing or contributing to the contractions. They also confirmed that I still had blood in my urine (I had restarted antibiotics the day before) which meant my uti/bladder infection as still present. She said to rest/relax and basically put myself on bed rest to see if it would help calm the contractions down. She recommended we not do anything for thanksgiving and just totally take it easy. However, she also reassured us that also I might be having pre-term contractions, that is different than pre-term labor (where the cervix is actually changing). If it switched and got more intense, my cervix was long enough that we’d have plenty of notice to take action.
We were home by midnight (after a quick stop for steamed egg nog for Katie for being such a good sport!). Unfortunately though, I had a terrible night of sleep and probably only got about 5 hours, if that. I woke up several times still contracting and was also contracting in the morning. I called my dad to let him know we’d miss thanksgiving but he could come get the pies we baked for everyone. He came up and kept me company while Charles was at the gym, which worked perfectly. It was nice to see some family on thanksgiving, even if it didn’t go exactly as I planned.
The day was rough with contractions all day and no improvement despite resting all day (plus an upset stomach and irritated bladder). We called the on-call doctor at about 4 (of course while another pie was in the oven) and he said that I shouldn’t still be having contractions so I should go back in. So Charles drove me to the hospital to be hooked up to monitors and then went to rescue our pie before coming back to join me. This time, no contractions came up on the monitor despite some similar pains on my part. The doctor at the time suggested that I was probably having bowel contractions instead since my stomach had been off all day. Either way, the baby wasn’t going anywhere, which was reassuring. We got to leave pretty quickly.
We then had some lovely pumpkin sausage pasta with Bobby Flay’s Brussels sprouts recipe (a new part of our thanksgiving spread). And of course PIE! It was nice to not be worried about the “contractions” any more and just relax and enjoy my dinner with Charles. As much as thanksgiving is supposed to be about big family stuff, it was nice to finally just sit down and enjoy a few minutes with Charles and relax. I then slept a million times better last night and as the Inverso’s would say “thanks-a-god” because I really needed it.
Today has been much improved. Most of the day I felt almost perfect, but in the last hour or two have had some increased discomfort, but nothing major (probably just my body getting a little tired). I had a regularly scheduled Non-stress Test (NST) today, which is the same baby heart rate and contraction monitoring. I am going to be doing them bi-weekly for the rest of the pregnancy. It was nice to see that I still wasn’t contracting and the added bonus today was that my doctor (Dr. Kline) was in the hospital so we asked them to page her and she came to chat for a few minutes. Her take was that I may be having uterine contractions, or maybe bladder, or maybe bowel, hard to say. She thinks if the monitor picked it up the first night, that there probably is some type of uterine contracting going on, but clearly not large enough ones to open a cervix or be picked up by the monitor always. This means that even if annoying, there is no worry of pre-term labor. She said ultimately it seems like my body was having a bad day yesterday (and night before) and has potentially righted itself (technical diagnosis of caddywompus-ness!). She said to listen to my body and relax, but if I am worried, to call because she would be on call all weekend. This is such a relief to have her available to us, and she was so nice to not only commend us for calling the last few days because it is always better to check, but encourage us to keep calling if we are worried. We are in SUCH good hands! It is hard enough to be first time parents, but to add all of my stomach/bladder/arthritis and other issues to it makes it all the more complicated and confusing, and with such high stakes!
We are now looking forward to doing nothing. We have our Christmas party (Gingerbread rock) next weekend, but hopefully we can depend on friends to help pull that off without too much work on my part. I also will just take work one day at a time and rest as much as I can. Tomorrow we are planning to stay home and NOT go to the hospital! I am going to keep resting as much as I can and try to catch up my energy meter! Thanks for all the love and support and I promise we will keep this bun in the oven until he is ready!
p.s. I apologize for typos, not doing as much proofing as usual today…
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