Every night I wake up at around 2:30 AM with a bladder that's simply bursting. I go and pee, get back in bed, have a few contractions as my uterus resumes occupation of the space my bladder was hogging, and after a while spent trying not to dwell on those middle-of-the-night negative thoughts, I eventually go back to sleep.
Last night all went as usual until I got back in bed and took note of the expected contraction. It was crampy. Not a painless tightening like I'm used to, but the ouchy kind that sets off alarm bells. This went on for some time. So, I lay there, engaged in my normal mental debate. Should I wake up H? Should I call the OB answering service and have them page the on-call doctor? Should I go to the hospital and get monitored at triage? Who should we call in the middle of the night to stay with D if H needs to drive me to the hospital?
I'll skip to the end and say that eventually a small rational voice in the back of my head piped up and noted that (1) pregnant women tend to get, erm, well... backed up, shall we say? and (2) previous experiences of this nature have been resolved when nature and my large intestine managed to work things out amongst themselves. I calmed down, eventually relaxed enough to go back to sleep, and this morning step (2) above indicated that indeed, this was what was going on.
The experience has reminded me how much safer I feel in the hospital when having a terrifying pregnancy. You're constantly being watched, monitored, ultrasounded, poked, prodded, blood pressured, etc. One of your doctors checks in on you every single morning and asks if anything new has come up. In the middle of the night, a nurse would be just a few feet away to strap on that contraction monitor in the above situation and either tell me everything's fine or administer an injection to stop the contractions. (Ahh, terbutaline... how I love to hate you...) All of the pressure to keep the pregnancy going is taken out of your hands entirely. And while I cannot emphasize the lousiness of hospital bedrest in strong enough language, there is indeed the advantage of having the responsibility removed for deciding what's a subchorionic hematoma causing preterm labor, and what's, well... constipation.
18 weeks and 3 days. Sigh. How far I have yet to go.
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2 comments:
sAhh to find the perfect balance of worry and confidence - I wish it for you (and to have no need for bedrest of course.)
I hope that you can get through the next 20 or so weeks contraction-free. Until they're MEANT to happen, of course.
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