1st trip to Labor & Deliver...check!

While pregnant you spend the first 36 weeks of your pregnancy fearing the labor and delivery part of the hospital and then the last 4 weeks you can't wait to get there. We had our 1st chance to spend time in it a little too early last night. Our uneventful weekend turned out to be exciting after all!

Here's the story...

I over did it a little on Saturday by working out pretty hard, cleaning the house, cooking and baking and helping J move all of our office furniture out of the nursery so we can start working on it. On Saturday night I was up 5 times going to the bathroom and I woke up with some bladder pain on Sunday but I thought it was just the baby laying on it funny. We spent the whole day on Sunday visiting friends and then I went to my friend Mary's for her B-day get together Sunday evening and the pain in my bladder kept getting worse and worse. I got home at about 8 and I was so uncomfortable I realized that this pain wasn't the baby but I had a UTI (bladder infection). The pain got more and more intense and I couldn't lay, sit or stand and I knew I needed to take something to sleep. I asked Dr. Google what to do and it said that a UTI while pregnant can lead to preterm labor and I realized that I was having some contractions (I've been having them for a few weeks now sporadically but they were pretty regular at this point).

I decided to call the on-call Dr. at my clinic to see what I could take to make it through the night. She asked if I was having contractions and decided she wanted me to go into L&D to test for the infection and get medication. Off we went to the hospital thinking we would be in and out in no time. They hooked my belly up to the monitors to check on the contractions and to my surprise I was having constant contractions about 1 minute apart. Obviously this was very worrisome. They immediately gave me a shot of something nasty that stopped the contractions that also gave me the shakes. They also found blood in my urine which confirmed the UTI. The Dr. came in to the hospital from home to do an u/s and check on the size of my cervix. Sure enough the contractions had already shortened my cervix to a borderline length of 2.3 cm. Anything under 2.5 cm is a little concerning.

Luckily they sent me home with an antibiotic, pain meds for the infection and an assignment of bed rest for a few days. I have another u/s on Thursday to check the baby's weight and my fluid level so we will do another cervix check as well and hope that everything has settled down. I'm still feeling a few contractions but they are a lot further apart and I think that having a few everyday is normal.

So here I sit, working from home trying to drink lots of fluids and hoping that my body decides to cooperate for 3 more months. J decided to work from home today too and is taking good care of me. I'll post more on Thursday after the next u/s.