recent excitement

The short story is this: everything’s fine.

The slightly longer story is that I’ve been ordered to “decrease my activity” to stave off Braxton Hicks contractions after a visit to the doctors’ office and the hospital on Friday.

The long story is below…

I went for my regular 3-mile walk on Tuesday, but started having some discomfort/pain about halfway through. Of course it started just as I was at the farthest point from my house, halfway around the lake. It was round ligament pain and some cramping and tightness in my belly. I slowed WAAAY down and tried to figure out how best to get home quickly. I sat down for a little while, and realized, hey! this is what Braxton Hicks feel like!

Once I got home, drank some water and took it easy, I was completely fine. But I promised Dave that I’d talk to my doctor about it at my appointment on Thursday. So I did, and the doctor told me that I might want to stop doing my regular walks. Stop my regular walks?!? Surely this was a one-time thing! I told him that I wanted to see how it went, and that I’d like to try a shorter walk closer to home on Friday morning, when it was supposed to be cooler. He said OK, but with reservations.

After finishing work on Thursday, Dave and I headed out to run some errands. While we were out, I started feeling some tightness in my belly every now and then and mentioned it to Dave. It continued on into the evening, and it woke me up a couple of times during the night.

I haven’t had a lot of serious fretting and fussing over the things that could possibly go wrong with the pregnancy, but waking up in the middle of the night with belly tightness got my brain going. I started thinking about BHs and how they can cause “progression” and all the associated things that you might feel if that’s happening. And whether it’s actually happening, or whether the middle-of-the-night worries make you think that you’re feeling pressure and tightness in places where you don’t want to feel that at 32 weeks along, it’s cause for some measure of alarm.

They tell you to drink water and lay on your left side, and I had been doing that most of the evening before going to bed. But I was still feeling the same. In the middle of the night you wonder whether you should wait until morning, or just go ahead and call the doctor. But calling the doctor means calling someone that’s on call and probably sleeping peacefully (I know this from living with one as a child). And then its a real THING. So I waited until morning, and called. He told me that I could either come on in to the hospital or I could go to the office to be put on a monitor.

I went to the office, because it seemed less like an emergency than going to the hospital. I was hooked up to a monitor for about an hour and had three contractions during that time. My scientific brain enjoyed having the data to back up my suppositions about what was going on, and it was interesting to notice how, as I felt my belly tighten, I could see the needle on the graph paper move up. I was swabbed for fetal fibronectin and sent to the hospital, where they would process the test.

At the hospital, I was hooked up to another monitor for about an hour and a half while waiting for the test results. They also gave me a shot to calm smooth muscle and ordered me to decrease my activity. So there. I’m mostly really relieved not to be ordered bed rest, which I know would make me absolutely bonkers. And I was specifically told not to help Dave with painting this weekend (yes, we asked specifically – AND we had just bought zero VOC paint so that I could help!) and to “goof off.” Goofing off to me means something different than to most people, so it’s hard to take it easy! I’m trying, and Dave is being great about everything.

I’ll do a separate post about all the work he we [ed. critterpa] did over the weekend, and the next steps that we’re taking towards getting ready for Sir Critter!