Inescapable Drama

It seems that I can't escape some sort of medical drama when I'm pregnant. With Jared, a girl rear-ended my car and I had to spend the night in the hospital hooked up to monitors to make sure the baby was okay. With Zach, I had all the signs of pre-term labor for 5 hours. I called the Ask-A-Nurse hotline, and she told me to call an ambulance. I didn't, but had Ryan take me to the hospital. They did some tests and sent me home that night.

Yesterday, I went to Albertson's and stocked up on chicken and ground beef at their sale. I really needed to defrost the freezer before I loaded it up with food, and mostly, before it gets too cold in the garage for anything to melt. So I unplugged it and put all the food in coolers.

When it was time to pick up Jared from school, I discovered that the freezer was defrosting quite well. I thought it would take much longer, but it was dripping and the bottom had filled up with water and was starting to overflow already. I turned to go back inside to get a turkey baster to suck some out (so it wouldn't flood the garage), and as I did, I slipped in the water on the concrete floor. I landed on my right hip. Ouch!

It hurt really bad. I managed to get up and immediately put Zach in his car seat and sat down in the van. I had to get Jared from school! And I had to sit down, 'cause I was hurting.

On the way to school, we ran into our first ever traffic jam. I thought there must be a car accident ahead, but we never saw anything. But now we were really late picking up Jared, which mean that he wasn't waiting by the curb for us. I knew I would have to park and walk into the office, which didn't sound fun. In fact, I'd only hobbled a few parking spaces away from the van when I thought I just couldn't make it. Right then, Jared and a teacher walked out the front doors and I was spared having to walk to other 200 yards. Phew!

When I got us home, I called my OB office and told them what happened. A nurse called me back a while later, telling me to go to Urgent Care or the emergency room to get checked out. Well, we all know how much the ER costs, so I found an Urgent Care clinic for Ryan to take me to when he got home. Meanwhile, I counted kicks to make sure the baby was okay.

We got to the Urgent Care clinic at 6:30, 3 hours after impact. We waited and waited, noticing all the people with face masks (aaah! Swine flu!) and wishing we weren't there. We heard them saying that it was going to be several hours until everyone could be seen. Ugh.

When it was our turn to check in, they immediately told me that they had no equipment to check me out, and I needed to go to Labor & Delivery at the hospital. What? No one mentioned that before.

By now we were hungry and tired, and didn't know what to do. So we stopped by Little Ceasars for cheap pizza and I called my doctor's after-hours emergency phone number. My personal OB was on call last night, so I got to talk to him. I told him what had happened, and he said, "What? I told the nurse to tell you to go to Labor & Delivery right away!" She definitely didn't tell me that!

So we went home and called my Visiting Teacher. She came and took the boys to play at her house. Ryan and I got a crash hospital tour, trying to figure out where Labor & Delivery is. We snagged a wheelchair and I made him push me there. I never would have made it if I'd had to walk!

They put me in a L&D triage room and hooked me up to two monitors, one for the baby's heart rate and one for contractions. Turns out I was having contractions, so they moved me to a real L&D room and Ryan went home to get the boys. It was about 9 pm by now.

I got settled in and then the real fun began. First I got a shot of Terbutaline to stop the contractions. Ouch, that stuff is wicked. It burns going in, then makes you feel queasy, shaky, and ready to jump out of your skin. Then I got some blood drawn so they could find out if I had internal bleeding (placental abruption).

The contractions calmed down, but then started up again, so I had to have 2 more of those horrible shots within minutes of each other. Now I REALLY thought I'd jump out of my skin! My previous thoughts of sleep were gone until the drug wore off.

After that, the contractions stopped and they let me sleep. Or try to sleep, with two monitors strapped to my belly. At 3 am, my 6 hours of monitoring were up, and they took off the straps. I won't say it was a good night's sleep, since it hurt to roll over.

They released me with an order to "take it easy." As if I have any other choice! I realized this morning that it feels like I had a c-section few days ago. Ouch! So it hurts to walk around, which will make things interesting for the next few days.

Just to complicate things, Ryan is in charge of an all-day Scout training at the church today. After wrangling the boys into bed late last night, he had to wake them up early and take them to the church to set up. During a break, he came and picked me up from the hospital around 10 am and dropped us off at home, then hurried back to his training. So I'm on my own today. And it sounds like I'll be missing the Primary presentation at church tomorrow :( Oh well, Jared doesn't even have his own line this year, just a sentence he'll say with a group.

So that's what I've been doing! Fun fun fun!