Maybe I should stop complaining that my life is boring. My life is not boring. My life is stable, safe, and awesome. Let’s go back to that. So uhm, I got to spend 5 hours in the ER today. Around 1:45pm I started experiencing mild lower abdominal cramps. They were intermittent and not too severe. Around 2:00 they started getting a little worse and it started getting hard to stand up completely straight. I started calling folks like my midwife, Noah, a friend who is also a midwife. The only person who answered was Noah. (I was at a friend’s house.) I told Noah I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted to do about it but I was concerned. Once I started getting fairly fierce lower back ache I burst into tears and announced it was time for the ER.
I sat in the waiting room for hours before finally getting seen at all. I spent a lot of time in the waiting room hunched over crying from pain. My midwife arrived after not too terribly long and we snuck off to the bathroom so that she could listen to the baby with the doppler. She said she didn’t know what was going on with me, but the baby sounded fine. My blood pressure instantly dropped. I stopped crying every time the fierce pain came and instead started breathing through what I was pretty certain was contractions.
For those following at home: I am 14 weeks pregnant. There is no way my baby could survive outside of me at this point.
Eventually I got in to see a doctor. (Amusingly this doctor is well known in the dance community. She immediately offered to get a different doctor if I felt uncomfortable with her giving me a pelvic exam. I muttered that given how many of her friends have already seen my crotch, one more person was no big deal. She tactfully ignored me. :D) She was friendly and professional. She didn’t feel anything problematic so I was back out to the waiting room so that I could wait and wait and wait for an ultrasound. It took another hour or so. The ultrasound technician was WAY chatty compared to my previous experiences telling me all kinds of interpretations of what he was finding. I’m pretty sure he was actually breaking rules but oh man am I not going to report him. The baby looked great. The baby is measuring a couple of days ahead of my dates but that’s not a big deal. The heartbeat was lovely. Development is universally on target or a couple days ahead. This is awesome. But I had a whole lot of confirmation that I was having very fierce contractions. My cervix was long and thick (that’s a good thing). I am no where near having a baby any time soon.
I had to wait a while longer to see a different doctor (shift change) so that I could get final results. No UTI. No obvious anything other than me having severe contractions. Uhm, I guess those just happen. Take Tylenol for the pain.
Then we were released. My midwife said that if I am not opposed, half a glass of wine should probably take care of quieting my uterus. I am currently sipping an awesome vintage.
You know, given how stressful my pregnancies are I really really really really don’t need to go through this a third time.