Things Like That Just Don't Happen To "Us"

But today they did! Actually it started last night. I started cramping and at first thought it was just "round ligament" pains of my growing uterus and that it'd just go away after an hour or so. No biggie, right? Wrong! The pain increased more and more and we debated whether or not to go in to the hospital last night or not. After putting the kids in bed, we decided to just hold out and that the pain would probably subside by morning. A couple of times during the night, I awoke to VERY bad cramps and pains, I took some Tylenol and went back to bed, praying that it would be gone by morning. It was still there, so I had Chris hang around here until the midwifery office opened up so I could get an opinion on what needed to be done - maybe I was just being a hypochondriac, after all! After describing my pains to the midwife, she thought it best to go in to the ER or Urgent Care to get blood work drawn and and ultrasound to rule out an ectopic pregnancy and then to keep them posted on what was going on. This scared me because my midwifery office doesn't usually just jump to the "hospital" conclusion and feels that most things will resolve themselves.

I called a couple of urgent cares while getting kids dressed and myself ready and none of them would do this and all of them referred me to the hospital. We set out and I called a good friend (Jeanne - she took my kids once before when we were in the Urgent Care with James) and asked if we could drop the kids by and she gladly agreed to watch them, feed them and just love them to pieces! I checked into the ER and Chris drove them over to her house. They took some blood work, did a urine check, and then finally ordered and ultrasound. The lab tech doing the u/s wouldn't really give us a whole lot of info, but showed us the heartbeat on Baby and printed a picture for us to take home (we have a cute little 'blob' to show off now). She didn't, however, mark the u/s as "urgent" so the Radiology department took their time in looking it over. They found some blood leaking around the placenta and in a space between the placenta and uterine wall, which means there was some trauma there, somehow and it just needed to heal.

*This happened with Celeste, but it was about half way through the pregnancy and because one of my wonderful children decided to take a flying leap landing right on my stomach causing a slight tear.*

The ER doctor said that it is called a "Threatened Miscarriage" and that it is actually quite common. He said I'm not on full blown bed rest, but if I want everything to heal, I need to take it easy for a couple of weeks. Luckily, Chris has a wonderful boss (his Uncle) that decided to send someone else on his business trip through Wyoming, just so he could stay close by this week for me. He also said to let him know if Chris needed help with everything here in Colorado and he wouldn't hesitate to send someone out here. I'm glad things aren't bad enough that he needs to do that, but I was VERY grateful for the offer!

We are home from the hospital now, and Chris is making dinner and the kids are helping him with that. I'm glad things weren't worse, but we're still not out of the woods yet, though. We need to keep close tabs on everything for the next couple of days and if the pains don't stop or get worse, then we need to go back in. They also checked the possibility of my appendix causing issues, but so far, that's not the culprit. I'm going to go lay down and relax and watch cartoons with my kids (they're beginning to gather on my bed to watch some TV with me)!!