I told you about scary tuesday.  Well, turns out I had scary thursday, friday, saturday…. you get the picture.  Doc put me on bedrest until today depending on what happens with the spotting and cramping.  Waiting for her to call me back, but since both are still occurring I fear I may be seeing more of this comfy new bed than I planned.

I’m dealing with feelings of fear, anger, sadness, shame and disappointment and trying to combat them with feelings of hope and love but it’s hard.  I feel trapped and ineffective, and anxious.  Deep down, I am certain Embry is OK, and if I have to stay horizontal for 40million years to ensure his health that’s what I’ll gladly do, but the worry monster is on my back.  My job situation is a big factor, I run a small office.  I am set up to work from home but there’s a lot I need to do in person as well. A financial hit would not be good right now.  I’m just hopeful that this ends very soon and I can get back to normal functioning.

How Far Along? 22 Weeks!!! 18 (ish) to go!  (1/29/12)

Symptoms: I don’t wanna talk about it.

Total Weight Gain/Loss: Same 8lbs as last week.

Maternity Clothes: Same sitch. Still looking for a maternity coat.

Stretch Marks: Not yet, still fighting stretchmarks as best I can.

Sleep: Horrendous.  Just horrendous.

Food Cravings: Peanut butter and jelly.  Fake strawberry shortcake (take a slice of entenmanns all butter loaf, put sliced strawberries on it, cover with whip cream, shove it in your mouth, mmmmmm)

Best Moment This Week: ….I’ll get back to you on that.  Might have been eating my fake strawberry shortcakes lol

Movement: Loads.  This little guy is so active.  John feels him a lot and they have little conversations.  “Do you think the giants will win? Kick once for yes”

Labor Signs: ::sigh::

Belly Button In Or Out?  Yeah, I need to just delete this question. You won’t be seeing this next week.

What I Miss:  Ummm not bleeding and not cramping.

What I Am Looking Forward To: Doc saying no more bed.

Milestones: We can see Embry moving from the outside now.  It’s sooo alienish. I love it.

Weekly Wisdom:  It’s ok to take it easy without feeling guilty.

Any advice for me at this stage in pregnancy? Did you have to go on bedrest of any sort during your pregnancy?

OK So this is a lil overdue, we got the scan last week Thursday. 

Why didn’t you guys tell me how cool the anatomy scan was gunna be!??!  Oh man.  We saw him dancing!!

We got to see everything.  They measured my lil man all up down and sideways. The doctor said everything looks fine and he’s a good size.  And what I liked was that he showed us why everything was fine instead of just saying we’re all good and rushing us along.  He even showed us some extra parts of the brain and why they were important.  I was so pleased.

I actually got scanned 3 times by 3 separate people.  The first was the usual sonogram chick who went through and measured all the parts of the body.  The wierd part of this was, she started the convo with “hi, I can’t answer any questions so please don’t ask me.”  (she did answer one of my questions though)  I guess they’re not allowed to say anything, and the doctor has to be the one to give good or bad news.

That scan lasted the longest, and we saw little guy’s head, face, legs, feet, back, arms, hands/feet, everything.  Then while she went to input our information and meet with the doctor, I got scanned a 2nd time by a woman who’s still studying to be a sonogrammer. (what is their real title?!)  She did the fun stuff, showed us his lil ears, and nose, and counted fingers and toes with us, and let us see Embry facing us, he looked like a scary skeleton beast, it was really cool.  Then he made a muscle for us!!! What a ham!

The 3rd scan was the thorough one from the doctor where he showed us extra parts, and answered our questions.  I have people telling me the baby’s going to be huge because John is, and it was making me nervous, but the doctor reassured me that the size of the baby at birth has more to do with the size and habits of the mother versus the size of the father, so that was comforting.

He also told us that up until week 20 or so most babies are around the same size and in the weeks to come we’ll see how Embry’s size really develops against the median sizes.  I don’t get another long scan during this pregnancy but I will still get the quickies at the doctor’s office so that’s good.  Next appointment is at 24 weeks and I’ll have to do the 1-hour glucose test.  I’m not looking forward to it.

We got loads of printouts from this scan.  I’m excited to start Embry’s lil photo album!

How did your anatomy scan go?!  How was your glucose test? Is that stuff really vile to swallow?

If you’re pregnant and not trying to read anything that may upset you, don’t read this.

I wake up to pee in the middle of the night.  I’m having light cramps, but think nothing of it.  I go back to continue tossing and turning in bed until my alarm goes off.  I get up and pee yet again, still cramping, and I. see. blood.

Oh jesus oh jesus oh jesus.

I put on a pad, I go lay down.  What do I do now? Should I call my doctor? (it’s 6:30) Should I go to the hospital?  Should I stay home from work?  I consider waking John, but he’s got a final exam in a few hours so I let him sleep.  I get myself ready for work and go in, figuring if there’s blood on the pad when I get to work in an hour, I’ll call the doctor.  Cramping has stopped so that seems like a good sign.

Arrive at work, go pee, no blood.  YAY!

I start to get some work done and the cramps come again.  Harder this time.  It felt like my period was coming at any moment.  I freak out, call the doctor and get told by the receptionist “You’re probably going to have to go to the hospital, but the doctor will call you back.” CALL ME BACK!??!  But I’m on the phone NOW!!! GO GET HER DAMMIT!!!

I hang up.  Bit my lip. Wring my hands.  Move papers around on my desk.  Consider calling John.  Try to do work. Fail miserably.

I have to pee, yet again.

Blood.

I pray to every God I’ve ever heard of that my baby’s fine and this is nothing.

Finally, like eons later (it was really about 15 minutes to be honest with you) my doctor calls, and I barely get anything out before she cuts me off and says “Go to the hospital right now, 12th floor, Dr. Wong is there and will be expecting you.”

Oh jesus oh jesus oh jesus.

I think about calling John and messing his day up.  Instead I text him:  I’m having some cramps, the doctor thinks I should just get checked out, everything’s fine. Good luck on the exam.

Then I got petrified.  What if this is something really bad, and I send this guy to take a stupid test when he really should be with me and our baby?

NO!

Can’t think like that.

I call my mom, interrupt whatever she said when she picked up and somehow told her to get to the hospital asap.

I’m shaking as I try to pack my bag to leave the office.  I barely get out a sentence to tell my guys at work that I’m leaving.  I think I said something like “docta…. i go…..now… docta”  but they saw my tears and asked no questions.  I just shook my head turned and speedwalked outta there.

At the hospital, mom’s already there (moment of clarity burst through the fear….how on earth did she beat me here from all the way down by south ferry when I was just acrosstown?….nyc traffic man….) and seeing her I feel safer.  The crying ensues.  She tries to calm me.  She fails.

We wait in triage for what seems like forever…mom’s trying to be a rock and telling me to relax, but every two seconds she’s like “what’s taking them so long!?”  Gotta love her.

I’m sitting there eating my hands and trying not to think about….you know…the worst… when my angel mother tried an age old tactic that works on toddlers and 30 year old daughters alike.  “Let’s play a game!”  We whip out the kindle and start playing some word game and then time flies.

“Danielle, you can come in now, but your friend has to wait here.”  Friend?

“I’m her MOTHER!”  (she loved that….LOVED it.)

All of a sudden I’m in the triage room getting all kinds of wires attached to me.  Hearing beeps, seeing contractions being monitored, hearing them debating an IV, I really was going to freak out.  John called mom, she put on calm voice and allayed his fears…SO glad she did cuz if I had him on the phone it would be something like “FUCK YOUR TEST COME NOW COME NOW MY LIFE IS OVER AAAAGGGHHHH!!!”

Blood pressure. Normal.

Contractions. Steady but not strong enough to be worrisome yet.

I suffer through the most painful speculum exam ever.  The doctor (who was like 9 years old btw and so not Dr. Wong) was looking up in there for like 30 minutes.  My mom’s rubbing the skin off my arm during the exam while telling ME to relax. LOL  I’m crying silent tears of fear and nani pain from this rough ass doctor.

They ask me a million questions, STDs, domestic violence, UTIs, bla bla “bitch just tell me what is going on with my son in there!!!”  (I didn’t say that….but I thought it)

Finally they tell me I have a friable cervix which is prone to bleeding even without provocation, but that I’m not bleeding from my cervix proper so that’s good.  Also I’m not actively bleeding which is also good.  Bad news is that bleeding can happen again at any time, and I’d have to come to the hospital every time it happens….just to be safe and ensure it’s not coming from my cervix proper.  Dag.

OK, fine, but what about these damn cramps?

“Oh yeah, your contractions…..let’s give you another painful nani exam to ensure your cervix is closed and long.”

Suffer through that yet again…to be told NOTHING…then they wheel in a sonogram machine.  They give me the internal and external sonogram (which I secretly like because I get to peek at my beautiful boy), find that my cervix is still long, so not to worry. They told me the contractions were unexplained but could be a sign of dehydration.

The doc goes: “Sometimes you drink a liter of water and contractions stop.” And she shrugged.

Is that something you really want to see?  A 9 year old doctor shrug at you.  I wanted to slap her.

But that’s the best they had for me.  They made me stay on the contraction monitoring machine for 1/2 hour, they checked Embry’s heart rate a couple times.  (He did not want to cooperate btw, he was dancing and flipping and made the doctors wait till he was good and ready to take a break before they could get his heart rate haha, that’s my rude baby!) They checked the fluid around him a couple times and then I was given a bunch of no nos:  Sex, exercise, sex, strenuous activity, sex.   They told me to take it easy for the rest of the day and that I can take my friable cervix and go home.

Just like that.

In the cab I text John the full scoop, relieved that it was basically nothing.

He called and I asked him about the final exam.  He goes: “I was so worried, I failed it, I just couldn’t concentrate.”

Ugh! Damn.  “Oh no, I’m so sorry baby!” I felt like complete sh…poo.

“Just kidding! I aced it.  But I was worried.”

Note to self: Punch John in the belly.

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I’m really glad the fears I had didn’t come true.  You see blood and you think the absolute worst ya know.  I think somewhere deeeeeep down inside I knew everything would be okay though.  If it was a lot of blood I would’ve taken a completely different course of action.

So I’m kinda living in fear now that I’m going to start bleeding every day and have to go to the hospital every day.  I’m cramping randomly still, but not as severe or steady as earlier, thank goodness.  I’m still a nervous nellie, but not like earlier.

I get home and  found that John had turned into Mr. Belvedere!  “lay down baby, do you want water, do you want milk, do you need more pillows, are you cold, are you hot, want to watch something, want to read something, are you hungry, want me to cook….”  He’s a nervous nellie too.  Bad combo.

I’m going to just try to chillax, be physically lazy, and keep a calm head as best I can.

So.  How was your Tuesday?