THIS HAS BEEN A DRAFT SINCE FEBRUARY 16!  I never got around to finishing it, obviously.  Not sure I’ll really bother since there are far more exciting things now. =)  So I’ll post what I got and maybe tie up a few loose ends at the end:

Oh my an eventful day.  I’ll back up a week though, then get us up to speed.

Last Tuesday, I had another OB appointment.  It was a pretty quick one.  I went in, peed in a cup, took a seat.  Got in pretty quickly.  Weighed, was up to 122, which was more like what I was expecting.  (I don’t think I really gained 2 lbs in the 5 days between appointments…that other scale…and that other nurse…they were just different.)  Dr came in, we heard the heartbeat.  I want to say it was 142 bpm, but I can’t swear to it.  The Dr said she usually starts doing internal exams at 37 weeks instead of 36 weeks, so since I had it done at my 36 week check and everything was coming along great, she said we didn’t have to do it again that time.  Didn’t break my heart.  My Group B Strep test came back negative.  The information gathered from having your cervix checked is certainly interesting, but not so interesting that I was in a hurry to have it done again.  Unpleasant.

As of Sunday, we’re on Week 38 – FULL TERM! Wow!  I Can’t believe it!   It seemed some things were starting to happen on Saturday morning.  At first, I thought I might be imagining it, but later it became very obvious.  I had a thick glob of brown mucus.  Brown being the not-scary kind of blood.  I thought…cool, bloody show?  Maybe I’m dilating more!  I thought it was sort of cool.  Sunday morning, had a brown glob of mucus again.  That was the end of the mucus.  Sunday evening, I had some persistent, dull period-like cramps.  Nothing that I haven’t had before, but this time they intensified to the point I wondered if I’d have a hard time falling asleep.  I fell asleep just fine…don’t think I even had to get up to pee in the middle of the night.  By morning, I was not crampy, and I was feeling 100% normal.

All day Monday, I felt completely normal.  No symptoms whatsoever.  I had a horrible night’s sleep, though.  I got up to pee a ridiculous number of times, but it rarely amounted to much.  I blamed the baby, figuring she was just squishing my bladder more than before.  Besides that, I felt normal.  I accidentally fell asleep earlier than usual last night, which sort of threw me off, and I was hungry, but by the time I woke up and realized–oops, I fell asleep–I didn’t want to wake myself up enough to get up and eat something.  So there were a number of factors I blamed for my crappy sleep.

When I got up this morning, I was feeling fine and rested enough.  I woke up feeling very mildly crampy (like before getting my period), which was a little different.  When I feel that way, it’s usually later in the day.  I got up, went to the bathroom, and found a tiny bit of pink on the TP.  I was thinking to myself, well, if the brown mucus stuff wasn’t bloody show, then this has got to be bloody show!  I have read multiple places it can be brown or a faint pink as the cervix dilates, so I was pretty excited.  Then (if the paragraph leading up to this wasn’t TMI, then what follows might be…………….ok you were warned) I had a pretty loose bowel movement.  At that point, I was thinking wow talk about textbook pre-labor.  I didn’t even want to go to work because I felt like cleaning my house.

But I went to work.  Still feeling great, just mildly crampy.  After my first patient, I decided to run to the restroom since my next patient was running late.  I looked down, and HOLY CRAP TONS OF BLOOD!!!!!  Lots of it, and bright red.  It freaked me out.  I didn’t really think much about which orifice it could be coming from.  I just knew that that should not be happening.  So I hurried back to my office and called my Dr’s office.  I spoke with the nurse and she asked the expected questions.  I had an appointment scheduled for 2:15 this afternoon, but she suggested I go ahead and go to labor and delivery to see what was up.

And so I did.  I bailed on the rest of my patients for the day (the one that was late sounded pretty put-out, but whatever.  She was late enough I could have decided to make her reschedule anyway).  On my way out the door, I called Pete, had him finish packing everything up just in case…and told him to meet me at L&D.  I kind of freaked him out with talk of blood.  I was pretty calm at that point since I knew I’d have answers soon.

I also called my doula.  She thought maybe I was in labor, and I was hoping she was right.  But I still wasn’t sure about all that blood.  She suggested grabbing a quick bite of food in case they admitted me, so I picked something up before going to the hospital and ate it in the parking lot.

I went into triage around 11:30.  The nurse asked standard questions, e.g. “Have you had your cervix checked recently?”  I told her no, and beat her to the punch by explaining how my cervix was otherwise undisturbed as well.  😉  She asked if I’d felt the baby move.   When the nurse at my Dr’s office asked me the same question, I wasn’t really sure since I hadn’t been up very long, and when I was up, I was constantly moving, so I don’t always notice her more subtle rolls. I thought I felt some subtle movement though while I was eating in the parking lot, so this time I was able to tell her that I thought I had.

She gave me a gown and sent me to the bathroom to pee in a cup and change into a hospital gown.  By the time I came out, Pete had caught up.  The nurse hooked me up to the fetal heart rate monitor…enjoyed getting to hear that.

^^^This is where I apparently stopped typing.  Now I’ll just give you the abridged version.  If I am capable of such a thing, haha.  Fortunately (?), my memory isn’t quite as detailed anymore.

Anyway, turned out that the blood was just in my urine.  After she checked my cervix (which was the same, btw), she was able to show me that the blood wasn’t anywhere else.  Which was a big relief, but it kind of made me feel dumb that I didn’t know where the blood had come from to begin with.

I hung out in triage for a while while we waited for more information.  The preliminary lab results took a while to come back, but so far it didn’t look like any sort of infection.  They thought perhaps I had kidney stones since there was that much blood, but I hadn’t had any pain.  From what I hear, kidney stones are generally a pretty unpleasant thing to experience.  Seems unusual that I wouldn’t notice something like that.

My OB stopped by to see me while I was there.  Since they had already done the things there I would have had done to me at my usual appointment, I was told I didn’t have to go to that.  Just call to schedule my 39 week appointment.

Memory is foggy, but I think I was there something like 4 hours?  Maybe a little less.  They let me go with a strainer to pee in and a cup to put any stones in should I collect any.  I was also Rxed an antibiotic, Macrobid, since they were still culturing my urine sample and all signs pointed to infection or kidney stones.  I guess I shouldn’t say “all signs.”  When the only thing was blood in my urine.  But it’s still a pretty alarming thing to see when there’s that much of it.

Anyway.  Went home, took my first dose of the antibiotic that evening.  Started reading the insert, and apparently the medication is contraindicated in women 38 or more weeks pregnant, when labor is imminent, and do NOT take while breastfeeding.  I really like and trust my doctor, but I couldn’t stop freaking out about it.  I left a message with my very kind, patient pharmacist friend and called the emergency line for one of the doctors on call to call me back about it. I felt kind of bad for doing that, but at that time, in my mind, it WAS an emergency.  She basically told me it was fine, but I was still a little nervous about it.  Later, my pharmacist friend called me since she had looked up the reason for the contraindication warning.  Apparently the problem occurs in a very small group of people with a certain genetic marker, and they’re all of African descent.  I think…memory is hazy on this, too.  But it was enough to put my mind at ease.

The next day, my OB’s nurse called me back to let me know that my urine culture was still negative, and I could stop taking the antibiotic if I wanted to but it wasn’t advised (etc etc).  I told her I was fine now and I would continue taking the antibiotic.  I wouldn’t just stop taking an antibiotic anyway unless I had something else to take.

I wonder if this is coherent.  The end.  The next post is probably going to be a lot more interesting. 🙂