A Little Scare

Well, we kind of had a little scare this morning. I'm gonna go ahead and put the TMI warning out there. So, if you don't care to know those details, skip the next little paragraph. You have been warned.

So, I woke up this morning feeling kinda blah. I had loose stool (aka the big D) three times. VERY unusual for me. I read online that that can be a sign of labor. I tried to block that out, though, as I don't want to get freaked out by everything I read on the internet.

On top of that, I was having contractions. I've been having Braxton Hicks for a while now. They have been painless and mostly just a feeling of my belly getting tight. This morning, they felt lower (instead of all over) and were getting more and more painful. I went to work and started to time them...they were about 10 minutes apart and lasted for roughly 45 seconds to a minute. And my back hurt really bad, too.

I called my OB and they told me to go into the hospital to get checked out. Sean and I are down to one car (and I had it), so we decided he'd stay at work & I'd let him know if he needed to get a ride to the hospital. My friend Dorelle met me at the hospital (with her 5 week old baby boy in tow :)). I'm so grateful she came because had I been there alone, I probably would have been a wreck.

They hooked me up to monitors and the nurse said "Well, baby looks great! He's cooperating, now we just have to get you to cooperate." She came back 15-20 minutes later and said that no contractions were showing up on the monitor (and I felt maybe one, but it wasn't as bad as what they were before). They still wanted to check my cervix and do an internal ultrasound to see if I was dilated. Long story short, my cervix did not show signs of pre-term labor. The ultrasound confirmed that I was not dilated. They ran some other tests (urine, etc) and they came back negative.

Sean did end up coming to the hospital because they told me I could go home. However, the doctor at the hospital called my doctor (well, my doctor is apparently "out" today, so he talked to the doc that's filling in for her) and that doctor wanted them to keep me till noon and re-check my cervix then. I could tell the hospital doc didn't feel it was that necessary. So, I called Sean and got back into the gown. They re-checked me and it was still closed. Sean got there just as they were giving me the discharge papers.

So now I'm home. I still feel blah. What I think happened (and what I gather from what the doc said) is my "issues" this morning can sometimes cause contractions. But I am nowhere near pre-term labor at the moment. Other than Roan being head down :) but that doesn't really mean much if I'm not dilated, etc.

This whole thing really made me realize how unprepared we are! I know what I want packed in the hospital bag, it's just not packed yet. I was gonna wait another week or so. But after today, I'm thinking it should be packed as soon as possible. Not to mention washing the clothes and crib sheets that we do have. It's kinda scary not having a car seat/baby carrier, too. But I guess if he does come early, Sean can go out and buy one before we bring him home.

Oh, I snuck a video of his heartbeat! The audio is the most important part, obviously. There's kind of a lot of background noise, so you might need to turn the volume up. I can hear it pretty good on my phone. The bigger sound at 24 seconds in is him kicking :) Mr. Show-off. He was moving like crazy when I had the monitors on, but as soon as they took them off, he's been calm ever since.