L&D Trip #4

Well, nothing sucks away vanity over a couple of photos like a late-night trip to Labor and Delivery. All of my self-consumed whining went straight out the door in about 3.4 seconds when once again, I feared this child might come 8 weeks too early.

I'm still trying to piece together what happened. Yesterday was such an boring day. I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. Brian and I made a quick trip to storage to pick up some files (and drop off our old, almost deceased TV). We grabbed a quick bite to eat around 6:30 with a friend. At the restaurant, a rather precocious little four year old asked me if I had a baby while eyeing my belly suspiciously. I said, "Yes, he's in my tummy," and braced myself for the inevitable follow-up question "How did he get there?" (I was totally ready to punt this back to his mother). Instead, he informed me that he was once a baby, too, and his balloon was orange. (He did, in fact, have an orange balloon tied to his wrist).  Crisis averted.

So then at 9pm (while watching 'True Blood' - a little slow this season, no?), the contractions started. And kept going. By 10pm, I had had 8 in an hour. Called the on-call doc, and she (not surprisingly) said to go to L&D. (I should totally go into on-call ob/gyn services if this stay-at-home-mom gig doesn't work out. There are only two responses: lay on your couch and drink water, or go in L&D. Piece of cake.)  Since the season premeire of 'Entourage' was also on at 10:30pm, I told myself this is probably a fluke and remained planted on the couch. By 11pm, though, they were getting stronger. I bid adeiu to Brian and headed for the hospital. (this man has been through enough...I really didn't think he needed to be there and watch me get hooked up to all the monitors. Plus, I thought I'd be home in an hour.)

But they decided to keep me. :-( Worst feeling in the world. Apparently, I was dehydrated.  Two bags of saline and every imaginable invasive test in the world later, they made the call: she stays. They upped my meds again and watched as my mountain-like contraction pattern smoothed into nice, soft valleys. Crisis #2 averted.

I was released this morning with instructions to go straight to my perinatalogist's office. They were talking about doing a 'decompression amnio' to reduce some of this fluid (especially since every single nurse I saw last night said, "Wow! You're big!" which did wonders for my rapidly shrinking self-confidence) but thankfully, the levels were at 21. I guess at 30 is when they bring the big needle out...gulp. Think small thoughts, folks.

Overall, the experience was not so great. I think Brian is getting dangerously close to the edge, considering Emma has been acting weird lately (not eating, hiding, not being her usual opinionated self) and I'm just a walking disaster. I got a text from him this morning, after I told him I was okay. It said, "Emma ate all of her food. Everyone's happy!" That made me laugh. Poor guy is going to need a vacation from all of the crazy, ailing people/pets in his life.

So, good news, no baby yet. Sorry this blog is rapidly morphing into a pregnancy blog. I haven't picked up a book in days and TV has been mainly Food Network and HGTV. At least we can count on Jillian tonight to do something cringe-worthing. More reviews to come soon.