26w 2d (Irritation)

Yesterday night found KGII and I back in the hospital. I had been having contractions since Wednesday the week before any time that I sat, walked, or stood (basically any position that involved me not lying perfectly still on my side drinking water). Each day it just kept getting worse. On Friday, I had to leave therapy early and go home. I called my doctor's office and was transferred to a triage nurse at the attached hospital. She said the words that I would begin to loathe hearing, "It could be that you just have an irritated uterus. Go home, lie down, and call back if you keep contracting that much".

So that's what I did. Over the weekend, the contractions kept on keeping on and I began to wonder if I was going to have to be in bed for the rest of my pregnancy. Then I started freaking out (as I'm inclined to do) as to how KGII and Co.* would take care of me, Zac, a house full of animals, and the house by himself **. I just didn't see any way that it was going to work.

On Monday, a nurse from one of my HMOs many free programs for high risk pregnancy called me. This one happened to be a pre term labor nurse. Of course, when I told her my symptoms she was like, "Hang up the phone immediately and demand to talk to you Ob Gyn's nurse. Don't get off the phone until you get a hold of her!! Then go lie down and I'll call you in a week." At first, my Ob Gyn's nurse was like, "Oh, you may have an irritated uterus (those words AGAIN)." but then she called back two hours later after talking to my doctor and said that I needed to come in for monitoring and testing. I don't know the name of the test, but basically they were looking for a protein that would indicate if I would go into pre term labor in the next two weeks.

Can I just say, thank God that I wasn't actually in labor. Coordinating being home for Zac to come home from school, KGII coming home from work, meeting my Dad to drop off Zac, and taking care of all the animals took a good hour and a half. Finally, we were on our way to the hospital.

They hooked me up to the fetal monitors and baby's heart rate was 160 bpm. Baby Bean kept kicking the monitors so hard and so frequently that it was hard to actually hear his heart beat, but I knew it was there. Of course though, once I laid down, the contractions stopped. I mean, completely. One doc said she was going to give me an IV with fluid before we left because all of the pre term labor tests came back negative and my cervix was closed. The doc that replaced her at 7pm, said I didn't need anything and sent us on our way.

The only problem was that I was still in pain. My uterus feels like it's cramping constantly, even when I'm not contracting. I couldn't convince the doctors that I was experiencing pain because according to them I shouldn't  be in pain and therefore, I wasn't in pain. Even if they had acknowledged that I was in pain, there would have been very little they could have done for me, besides telling me to take Tylenol. It was just very, very frustrating. I was told to follow up with my regular Ob Gyn with the impression that she might actually give a damn about how I was feeling. Right before we left I got another talk about keeping hydrated to avoid having an "irritated uterus" and swear I pretty much saw red at that point. The best part of the night was that I got to sleep in my own bed.

*Co includes friends and family
** He wouldn't really have to take care of everything by himself, but occasionally it feels like that.