Our Little Scare

Saturday I cleaned our condo and made dinner. That is about all it took to keep me off of my feet the rest of the evening Saturday and even all day Sunday.

When I was preggers with Spike, my dad, who was living in Florida at the time, said, "Kate isn't one of those pregnant women who are complaining all the time." I said, "You just think that because you're not around me." Plus now I have a blog. I wish I weren't a complainer, but man, this sucks!

I'm so sick of being sore. My hips get sore, my tailbone gets sore, my round ligaments get sore, and the worst is that now I'm getting something that I'll call SWHS. SWHS is definitely "too much information" for this family-friendly blog, but I'm happy to describe it to any of my girlfriends who wonder what the heck I'm talking about. Suffice it to say, it makes me very uncomfortable.

...and all of this happens every time I do "too much." But what constitutes "too much" to my pregnant body is considered "not enough" by my mind AND my 17 month old! I know women who have run several miles each day through the pregnancy. Not I. I had high hopes and started the pregnancy running on a pretty regular basis, but soon my hips started popping out of place whenever I exerted myself too much, so I stuck to walking.

Now even walking is becoming too much! And I can no longer have a cleaning day, I'm going to have to change it to one job per day or something, because apparently it knocks me out for two days.

So like I said, I spent most of my day off my feet on Sunday. But Sunday evening I started noticing lots of Braxton Hicks contractions. In case you don't know, Braxton Hicks contractions are basically the same thing are regular contractions, but they don't actually lead to labor. They just fake you out. For me, they're not super painful, but they are uncomfortable, and I was definitely concerned when I seemed to be having them every few minutes.

I called my mom to see what I should do (she is a Nurse Practitioner and worked in Labor and Delivery for many years) and this is how the beginning of our conversation went:

"Hi Mom, I'm having contrac..."
"What?"
"I'm having..."
"What?"
"I'm having con.."
"WHAT?"
"I'M HAVING CONTRACTIONS!"
"You are?"

Those of you who grew up with a nurse or a doctor in the house know that these people do not have compassion. Zach's dad is a doctor, and when they were growing up, I think the rule was that they had to be bleeding from two orifices to be allowed to stay home from school. My mom is the same way. The basic lens that she's viewing your complaints through is "I've seen worse." She also seems to recommend putting hydrocortisone cream on everything, but that's another story.

So anyway, I got pretty worried when my mom freaked out:

"Did you call your doctor?"
"No, not yet. I..."
"Call your doctor. Call your doctor right now. Hang up the phone, get off your feet, drink lots of water, empty your bladder, and call your doctor. Goodbye."

So I did! He wasn't as concerned as she was and told me to call back if they got worse. Zach and I started paying attention to the timing and number of contractions. For the next hour, I had six contractions, mostly every 15 minutes but a couple after only five minutes. I was a little worried.

I didn't want to go into the hospital, and I was sure they were going to tell me it was nothing. I had a lot of Braxton Hicks with Spike, so I knew what it felt like. But my mom had said that some women who came in with preterm labor didn't even know they were having contractions and that preterm labor doesn't feel like normal labor. The thought that crossed my mind that made me decide to go in was this: If I go in too late and there's something they could have done if I had been there earlier, I would not be able to live with myself. Better to be safe than sorry.

So Zach picked up Jake to stay with sleeping Spike and we headed up to Evanston. We had the best nurse ever who was very reassuring that we had done the right thing by coming in. We were in the very same room where Isaac was born, which was so weird to me! I felt like this room and all the equipment should be enshrined somewhere as The Place Where Isaac Was Born, but here it was, being used for just anybody, even me once again!

So the short version is they monitored my contractions, had me pee in a cup, took my blood pressure, checked my cervix, etc. while we watched cable (wow! cable!) and Zach ate a Daddy Snack from their little fridge. We're thinking of having "preterm labor" again when we wanna watch TV and there's no food in the house. Anyway, all was well. My cervix is still closed for business. We were there for maybe two or three hours. We were in bed by midnight.

Since then I have really been trying to take it easy, but that is not easy in itself! I want to walk, I want to be outside, I want to exercise, I want to get my errands and cooking and cleaning done, but my dumb ol' doctor (what does he know?) told me to "listen to my body." I'm sorry, but I just do not like what my body has to say!

At least now I know that Braxton Hicks contractions are not abnormal for 24 weeks. Let's hope we don't see that room again for 16 more weeks!