Right around 10am yesterday morning something very strange happened. My stomach began to vibrate. No, not shake... vibrate. Like when you set your cell phone to vibrate, only it was a baby inside me vibrating that quickly and making my whole stomach twitch with it. Seizure? Possibly. Very possible considering my sister's history of epilepsy as an infant. Thank goodness she grew out of that, I'm hoping Johnny does too if that is what happened.
Naturally I call the doctor's office. 20 minutes later, when I finally get through to someone other than a machine, I explain what happened. There are only mid-levels in the office for the day, but they called my doctor who said to go into the office for a stress test for the baby and then if it came back with any problems to send me up to the hospital where he was on duty. Get to the office immediately.
Now the nurse at the office was one I hadn't seen before, which surprised me for all the more times I've been in there. I have talked to her on the phone though, and when we got in she took me into a special room to hook me up to the same monitors they attach you to when you go up to the maternity ward at the hospital. They watch the baby's heartbeat and my body for possible contractions. Through the heartbeat, they can tell if the baby is in distress.
Well, by then it was almost an hour from when Johnny had spazzed out, and he was calmed down. No more hyper than he had been the other times they had hooked me up to the Maternal-Fetal Monitoring machine that spits out funny graph paper. On the other hand, my body was trying to expel my child 5 weeks earlier than planned.
Contractions this early on are not uncommon, nor too much to be concerned with... unless they are coming frequently and on a steady pattern. I was having contractions every 10 minutes, (which to me had just felt like really bad cramps) which is NOT good for how early it still is. To the hospital we went! We got hooked up to the same machines there, only this time the doctor was available and he came in, explained what they were doing, and told me to rest and after a half hour or so we could see what was happening and take it from there. A half hour later, I was having contractions every 8 minutes. That is very close together, seeing as once you are to-term, (which is 36 weeks) you call the doctors or go into the hospital if you're 5 minutes or less apart. Typically this doesn't happen until around 37 weeks or more, ideally not until a few days before your due date. The other reason this was somewhat alarming is because I had progressed so quickly from 10 to 8. Some blood work, a few other labs, and a hellish shot of some sort of bronchodilator later, I was shaking like a crack addict, passing out, and sporting a heart rate of 128 and blood pressure of 105/44.
It took over two hours for me to stop shaking so hard that I could get out of bed to use the bathroom. No biggie for them though, they had to have us sit and wait for the results of the labs anyway. Meanwhile, the shot worked, my contractions slowed and finally stopped. The monitors I was hooked up to, which now included a blood pressure cuff that would go off every 10 minutes, started freaking out every time they got a number they didn't like in one place or another, which meant we spent the afternoon turning off the alarm every 10 minutes because I had such a bad migraine by this point I was threatening to shoot the nice expensive equipment.
Blood work and labs came back fine, other than the extra protein problem the docs have all been talking about. Dr. Hemmer came back in and told me to go home, rest a lot, come back if any of it happens again, and follow up with my appointment next friday and then my trip to Danville. He wants to be personally notified of any change in my status, and to tell the nurses to make sure he gets any paper work. Apparently he was upset about how the whole thing with the other doctor went down on Monday and feels she isn't on top of things.
Well, I'm home!!! With another hospital bracelet to add to the collection Johnny will be shown every time he fights going to the doctors for any reason. "Look what I had to do for you! You can tough it out, the doctor's office isn't anything even close to a hospital stay!" Oy!
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