{"id":447,"date":"2011-04-25T17:40:13","date_gmt":"2011-04-25T22:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/?p=447"},"modified":"2011-04-25T17:40:13","modified_gmt":"2011-04-25T22:40:13","slug":"an-ob-appointment-week-38-a-trip-to-ld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/2011\/04\/25\/an-ob-appointment-week-38-a-trip-to-ld\/","title":{"rendered":"An OB appointment, Week 38, a trip to L&D"},"content":{"rendered":"

THIS HAS BEEN A DRAFT SINCE FEBRUARY 16!\u00a0 I never got around to finishing it, obviously.\u00a0 Not sure I’ll really bother since there are far more exciting things now. =)\u00a0 So I’ll post what I got and maybe tie up a few loose ends at the end:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Oh my an eventful day.\u00a0 I’ll back up a week though, then get us up to speed.<\/p>\n

Last<\/em> Tuesday, I had another OB appointment.\u00a0 It was a pretty quick one.\u00a0 I went in, peed in a cup, took a seat.\u00a0 Got in pretty quickly.\u00a0 Weighed, was up to 122, which was more like what I was expecting.\u00a0 (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.)\u00a0 Dr came in, we heard the heartbeat.\u00a0 I want to say it was 142 bpm, but I can’t swear to it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Didn’t break my heart.\u00a0 My Group B Strep test came back negative.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Unpleasant.<\/p>\n

As of Sunday, we’re on Week 38 – FULL TERM!<\/strong> Wow!\u00a0 I Can’t believe it!\u00a0\u00a0 It seemed some things were starting to happen on Saturday morning.\u00a0 At first, I thought I might be imagining it, but later it became very obvious.\u00a0 I had a thick glob of brown mucus.\u00a0 Brown being the not-scary kind of blood.\u00a0 I thought…cool, bloody show?\u00a0 Maybe I’m dilating more!\u00a0 I thought it was sort of cool.\u00a0 Sunday morning, had a brown glob of mucus again.\u00a0 That was the end of the mucus.\u00a0 Sunday evening, I had some persistent, dull period-like cramps.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I fell asleep just fine…don’t think I even had to get up to pee in the middle of the night.\u00a0 By morning, I was not crampy, and I was feeling 100% normal.<\/p>\n

All day Monday, I felt completely normal.\u00a0 No symptoms whatsoever.\u00a0 I had a horrible night’s sleep, though.\u00a0 I got up to pee a ridiculous number of times, but it rarely amounted to much.\u00a0 I blamed the baby, figuring she was just squishing my bladder more than before.\u00a0 Besides that, I felt normal.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So there were a number of factors I blamed for my crappy sleep.<\/p>\n

When I got up this morning, I was feeling fine and rested enough.\u00a0 I woke up feeling very mildly crampy (like before getting my period), which was a little different.\u00a0 When I feel that way, it’s usually later in the day.\u00a0 I got up, went to the bathroom, and found a tiny<\/em> bit of pink on the TP.\u00a0 I was thinking to myself, well, if the brown mucus stuff wasn’t bloody show, then this has got to be bloody show!\u00a0 I have read multiple places it can be brown or a faint pink as the cervix dilates, so I was pretty excited.\u00a0 Then<\/em> (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.\u00a0 At that point, I was thinking wow talk about textbook pre-labor.\u00a0 I didn’t even want to go to work because I felt like cleaning my house.<\/p>\n

But I went to work.\u00a0 Still feeling great, just mildly crampy.\u00a0 After my first patient, I decided to run to the restroom since my next patient was running late.\u00a0 I looked down, and HOLY CRAP TONS OF BLOOD!!!!!\u00a0 Lots of it, and bright red.\u00a0 It freaked me out.\u00a0 I didn’t really think much about which orifice it could be coming from.\u00a0 I just knew that that should not be happening.\u00a0 So I hurried back to my office and called my Dr’s office.\u00a0 I spoke with the nurse and she asked the expected questions.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

And so I did.\u00a0 I bailed on the rest of my patients for the day (the one that was late sounded pretty put-out, but whatever.\u00a0 She was late enough I could have decided to make her reschedule anyway).\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I kind of freaked him out with talk of blood.\u00a0 I was pretty calm at that point since I knew I’d have answers soon.<\/p>\n

I also called my doula.\u00a0 She thought maybe I was in labor, and I was hoping she was right.\u00a0 But I still wasn’t sure about all that blood.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

I went into triage around 11:30.\u00a0 The nurse asked standard questions, e.g. “Have you had your cervix checked recently?”\u00a0 I told her no, and beat her to the punch by explaining how my cervix was otherwise undisturbed as well.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09\u00a0 She asked if I’d felt the baby move.\u00a0\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

She gave me a gown and sent me to the bathroom to pee in a cup and change into a hospital gown.\u00a0 By the time I came out, Pete had caught up.\u00a0 The nurse hooked me up to the fetal heart rate monitor…enjoyed getting to hear that.<\/p>\n

^^^This is where I apparently stopped typing.\u00a0 Now I’ll just give you the abridged version.\u00a0 If I am capable of such a thing, haha.\u00a0 Fortunately (?), my memory isn’t quite as detailed anymore.<\/p>\n

Anyway, turned out that the blood was just in my urine.\u00a0 After she checked my cervix (which was the same, btw), she was able to show me that the blood wasn’t anywhere else.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

I hung out in triage for a while while we waited for more information.\u00a0 The preliminary lab results took a while to come back, but so far it didn’t look like any sort of infection.\u00a0 They thought perhaps I had kidney stones since there was that much blood, but I hadn’t had any pain.\u00a0 From what I hear, kidney stones are generally a pretty unpleasant thing to experience.\u00a0 Seems unusual that I wouldn’t notice something like that.<\/p>\n

My OB stopped by to see me while I was there.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Just call to schedule my 39 week appointment.<\/p>\n

Memory is foggy, but I think I was there something like 4 hours?\u00a0 Maybe a little less.\u00a0 They let me go with a strainer to pee in and a cup to put any stones in should I collect any.\u00a0 I was also Rxed an antibiotic, Macrobid, since they were still culturing my urine sample and all signs pointed to infection or kidney stones.\u00a0 I guess I shouldn’t say “all signs.”\u00a0 When the only thing was blood in my urine.\u00a0 But it’s still a pretty alarming thing to see when there’s that<\/em> much of it.<\/p>\n

Anyway.\u00a0 Went home, took my first dose of the antibiotic that evening.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I really like and trust my doctor, but I couldn’t stop freaking out about it.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 She basically told me it was fine, but I was still a little nervous about it.\u00a0 Later, my pharmacist friend called me since she had looked up the reason for the contraindication warning.\u00a0 Apparently the problem occurs in a very small group of people with a certain genetic marker, and they’re all of African descent.\u00a0 I think…memory is hazy on this, too.\u00a0 But it was enough to put my mind at ease.<\/p>\n

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).\u00a0 I told her I was fine now and I would continue taking the antibiotic.\u00a0 I wouldn’t just stop taking an antibiotic anyway unless I had something else to take.<\/p>\n

I wonder if this is coherent.\u00a0 The end.\u00a0 The next post is probably going to be a lot more interesting. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS HAS BEEN A DRAFT SINCE FEBRUARY 16!\u00a0 I never got around to finishing it, obviously.\u00a0 Not sure I’ll really bother since there are far more exciting things now. =)\u00a0 So I’ll post what I got and maybe tie up a few loose ends at the end: Oh my an eventful day.\u00a0 I’ll back up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/babyg.brainstormwarning.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}