Long version (5 a.m. insomniac remix)
In retrospect, I wonder how much of the bad temper, poor sleep, and inability to cope of my past few days was brought on by the discomfort of un-noticed contractions. I didn't go into labor naturally last time, and I hadn't really had any Braxton-Hicks before, so I wasn't attuned to them and might have written them off as part of the general misery of being seven and a half months pregnant.
But I sure as fuck noticed Friday afternoon, when I crawled under my desk at two for a brief nap and was almost immediately hit with a series of painful (like, bad menstrual cramp painful), distinct contractions less than seven minutes apart. After about half an hour and a few position switches, they waned, but I dutifully googled up Braxton-Hicks, because I seemed to recall that they were supposed to be ... milder.
Sure enough, B-H are supposed to be "painless" for most women. And you're sure as fuck not supposed to have four or five in the space of half an hour. The internets said to call my doctor, so I did - even though I felt okay at that point and was sure I was just being overcautious.
The advice nurse took all my info and said she'd have the doctor call me back; by 4 pm they had sent me to labor and delivery at the local hospital. I was still contracting, but mildly and less frequently, and feeling like an idiot who was probably just imagining it all. Nevertheless, I called my partner (who was on vacation in Kentucky) and left a message on his phone, saying not to panic, but to develop a "plan B" on how he might get home earlier than planned.
A new acquaintance (seriously, I like her and we've been on the way to making friends, but this woman has been to my house once, and we hung out at a kids' birthday party once, and she had emailed me earlier in the day to say "how about pizza and playdate after preschool?") called to see when I would want to meet to hang out, and I had to explain what was going on. Without my having to even ask (and I had been desperately wracking my brains as to how I could make this work) she offered to pick the Squid up from preschool (all my other authorized picker-uppers were out of town) and take him for as long as I needed. At that point, I was still thinking it wouldn't be a big deal, but I thanked her profusely, called the school to arrange it, and continued on to the appointment.
4:15. Intake, waiting room, ugly gown, urine sample, monitors, blah blah blah. They gave me a button to push when I felt the contractions, which by then were much fainter and not registering on the monitors. The fetus's galloping heartbeat over the doppler machine was soothing and I knit a little while listening to Iron and Wine to calm my nerves. By 5:15 it was clear that they were not going to let me out in time to pick up the Squid - they had found a potential snag in the urine sample and had to send it up to the labs for further testing - so I called my ... acquaintance? friend? savior? Let's call her K ... I called K to tell her I would, in fact, need her to take the Squid, but not to tell him I was in the hospital.
And this is where I started to lose it.
Because, okay, it was no longer Not A Big Deal. And with my partner in Kentucky and my parents in LA, I had no backup that was familiar enough to the Squid to take him overnight. He's four - he's never had a sleepover except with family. He would be upset and scared and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I was pretty sure I could have the baby on my own - that's what hospitals are for, and at 34.5 weeks, most of the major development has taken place; she'd be small and premature, and I could have wished for a little more time for the lungs to mature, but we would be fine. But even my village, the amazing network of friends and neighbors that keep me going when my family is out of town, would not be enough to take care of the Squid overnight. He's a very resilient little guy, social and adaptable (he had a great playdate, and never even blinked over the whole thing) but I think a night away from home and family would almost certainly have freaked him right out. I started to cry on the phone to K, and had to take deep breaths to hold my shit together.
My partner finally called; he hadn't even gotten my message, and was alarmed to hear I was in the hospital. There were, however, no flights that would get him back appreciably sooner than 3:30 the next afternoon, his current scheduled arrival time. Nurses continued to come and go. I continued to contract. They were stronger now, and more regular, and they were showing up on the monitor. I texted K, who reassured me that the Squid was having a great time and told me to take care of myself, and listened to music, and knitted (I had to rip out my knitting at least twice during this process, because I kept fucking up; knitting while contracting, lying on your side, and trying desperately not to freak out is not optimal.) Nurses came and went. At 7 p.m., the extended urinalysis still hadn't come back, and the shift changed.
7:30. The doctor showed up with the urinalysis results. I have never been so goddamn glad to have a urinary tract infection in my life. Apparently, they can contribute to pre-term labor. Fuck only knows how I got a UTI drinking gallons of water daily and peeing what feels like every five minutes, but the point is: treatable. They gave me an antibiotic and a prescription (which they apparently couldn't call in? Look, people, I have a four-year-old, I can't just wait around pharmacies in the middle of the night. I'll be taking the next dose an hour or two late, because there was no way in HELL I was going to drive to the next town (where the 24-hour pharmacy is), drop it off, wait to pick it up, and then go get my kid. I'll do it when he wakes up in the morning.) They also tried to tell me to take it easy and lie down. Fuck, no, I told them, I have a kid who needs me, and no backup. There is no way. So they offered me a shot of something that would make me shaky (thus delaying my discharge from the hospital another half hour) but would stop the contracting so that I could be more or less normally active without worrying. God, I love modern medicine.
At 8:20, they let me go.
I walked the quarter-mile to the parking garage, teeth chattering from the cold air, shaky from the shot and the whole ordeal, and drove straight to K's house, where I found the Squid cheerfully taking a bath with his friend, happy as a clam. K made me a cup of chamomile, fed me leftover pizza, and I endeavored not to have a nervous breakdown at her kitchen table. It took a long time for me to calm down enough to be sure that wasn't going to happen - by the time I headed home with an exhausted Squid, clad in borrowed pjs, it was 10:00, two full hours past his bedtime (and mine, for that matter). Thank goodness he was cooperative - I was so far beyond the end of my resources that I don't know how I could have dealt if he had been fussy - and I fell into bed soon after getting him down.
Everything is fine, now. The UTI is being treated, and the contractions are gone. I was reassured at the hospital that this does not markedly increase my chances of pre-term delivery once the underlying problem is dealt with. The Squid had a great time. I have a new friend. My partner will be home this afternoon, and in a few hours I will wake up (again) and drive to the next town to drop off the prescription and take the Squid out for breakfast.
But holy fuck, that was scary. I just wanted to cry on someone's shoulder the whole time, and there was nobody who could really be there for me in person, and I couldn't be there for the Squid, and it could have all gone so spectacularly downhill.
*deep, shaky breath*
Okay. It's 5:45, I've been up since 3:30, and I have to be functional tomorrow, so I guess I'd better try for a few more hours of sleep - though if the Squid gets up at 6 like he has been, I am once again spectacularly screwed on the sleep front. But I had to get it all down so I could stop rehashing it over and over in my head. And now I have.
...and literally two minutes later, Squid is up. Gah.
But I sure as fuck noticed Friday afternoon, when I crawled under my desk at two for a brief nap and was almost immediately hit with a series of painful (like, bad menstrual cramp painful), distinct contractions less than seven minutes apart. After about half an hour and a few position switches, they waned, but I dutifully googled up Braxton-Hicks, because I seemed to recall that they were supposed to be ... milder.
Sure enough, B-H are supposed to be "painless" for most women. And you're sure as fuck not supposed to have four or five in the space of half an hour. The internets said to call my doctor, so I did - even though I felt okay at that point and was sure I was just being overcautious.
The advice nurse took all my info and said she'd have the doctor call me back; by 4 pm they had sent me to labor and delivery at the local hospital. I was still contracting, but mildly and less frequently, and feeling like an idiot who was probably just imagining it all. Nevertheless, I called my partner (who was on vacation in Kentucky) and left a message on his phone, saying not to panic, but to develop a "plan B" on how he might get home earlier than planned.
A new acquaintance (seriously, I like her and we've been on the way to making friends, but this woman has been to my house once, and we hung out at a kids' birthday party once, and she had emailed me earlier in the day to say "how about pizza and playdate after preschool?") called to see when I would want to meet to hang out, and I had to explain what was going on. Without my having to even ask (and I had been desperately wracking my brains as to how I could make this work) she offered to pick the Squid up from preschool (all my other authorized picker-uppers were out of town) and take him for as long as I needed. At that point, I was still thinking it wouldn't be a big deal, but I thanked her profusely, called the school to arrange it, and continued on to the appointment.
4:15. Intake, waiting room, ugly gown, urine sample, monitors, blah blah blah. They gave me a button to push when I felt the contractions, which by then were much fainter and not registering on the monitors. The fetus's galloping heartbeat over the doppler machine was soothing and I knit a little while listening to Iron and Wine to calm my nerves. By 5:15 it was clear that they were not going to let me out in time to pick up the Squid - they had found a potential snag in the urine sample and had to send it up to the labs for further testing - so I called my ... acquaintance? friend? savior? Let's call her K ... I called K to tell her I would, in fact, need her to take the Squid, but not to tell him I was in the hospital.
And this is where I started to lose it.
Because, okay, it was no longer Not A Big Deal. And with my partner in Kentucky and my parents in LA, I had no backup that was familiar enough to the Squid to take him overnight. He's four - he's never had a sleepover except with family. He would be upset and scared and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I was pretty sure I could have the baby on my own - that's what hospitals are for, and at 34.5 weeks, most of the major development has taken place; she'd be small and premature, and I could have wished for a little more time for the lungs to mature, but we would be fine. But even my village, the amazing network of friends and neighbors that keep me going when my family is out of town, would not be enough to take care of the Squid overnight. He's a very resilient little guy, social and adaptable (he had a great playdate, and never even blinked over the whole thing) but I think a night away from home and family would almost certainly have freaked him right out. I started to cry on the phone to K, and had to take deep breaths to hold my shit together.
My partner finally called; he hadn't even gotten my message, and was alarmed to hear I was in the hospital. There were, however, no flights that would get him back appreciably sooner than 3:30 the next afternoon, his current scheduled arrival time. Nurses continued to come and go. I continued to contract. They were stronger now, and more regular, and they were showing up on the monitor. I texted K, who reassured me that the Squid was having a great time and told me to take care of myself, and listened to music, and knitted (I had to rip out my knitting at least twice during this process, because I kept fucking up; knitting while contracting, lying on your side, and trying desperately not to freak out is not optimal.) Nurses came and went. At 7 p.m., the extended urinalysis still hadn't come back, and the shift changed.
7:30. The doctor showed up with the urinalysis results. I have never been so goddamn glad to have a urinary tract infection in my life. Apparently, they can contribute to pre-term labor. Fuck only knows how I got a UTI drinking gallons of water daily and peeing what feels like every five minutes, but the point is: treatable. They gave me an antibiotic and a prescription (which they apparently couldn't call in? Look, people, I have a four-year-old, I can't just wait around pharmacies in the middle of the night. I'll be taking the next dose an hour or two late, because there was no way in HELL I was going to drive to the next town (where the 24-hour pharmacy is), drop it off, wait to pick it up, and then go get my kid. I'll do it when he wakes up in the morning.) They also tried to tell me to take it easy and lie down. Fuck, no, I told them, I have a kid who needs me, and no backup. There is no way. So they offered me a shot of something that would make me shaky (thus delaying my discharge from the hospital another half hour) but would stop the contracting so that I could be more or less normally active without worrying. God, I love modern medicine.
At 8:20, they let me go.
I walked the quarter-mile to the parking garage, teeth chattering from the cold air, shaky from the shot and the whole ordeal, and drove straight to K's house, where I found the Squid cheerfully taking a bath with his friend, happy as a clam. K made me a cup of chamomile, fed me leftover pizza, and I endeavored not to have a nervous breakdown at her kitchen table. It took a long time for me to calm down enough to be sure that wasn't going to happen - by the time I headed home with an exhausted Squid, clad in borrowed pjs, it was 10:00, two full hours past his bedtime (and mine, for that matter). Thank goodness he was cooperative - I was so far beyond the end of my resources that I don't know how I could have dealt if he had been fussy - and I fell into bed soon after getting him down.
Everything is fine, now. The UTI is being treated, and the contractions are gone. I was reassured at the hospital that this does not markedly increase my chances of pre-term delivery once the underlying problem is dealt with. The Squid had a great time. I have a new friend. My partner will be home this afternoon, and in a few hours I will wake up (again) and drive to the next town to drop off the prescription and take the Squid out for breakfast.
But holy fuck, that was scary. I just wanted to cry on someone's shoulder the whole time, and there was nobody who could really be there for me in person, and I couldn't be there for the Squid, and it could have all gone so spectacularly downhill.
*deep, shaky breath*
Okay. It's 5:45, I've been up since 3:30, and I have to be functional tomorrow, so I guess I'd better try for a few more hours of sleep - though if the Squid gets up at 6 like he has been, I am once again spectacularly screwed on the sleep front. But I had to get it all down so I could stop rehashing it over and over in my head. And now I have.
...and literally two minutes later, Squid is up. Gah.
posted by The Stute Fish at 05:45
1 Comments:
I am so glad you didn't go into labor so early. Sorry about the UTI.
Contractions can also be brought on by dehydration and other factors (stress doesn't help, I think, but also fatigue). I had LOTS of painful BH contractions for several months with the twins. I know, I had an oversized load in there, but just one data point to say it does happen (lying down and drinking water helped). Not that this is what was going on with you, but whatever. Did I mention that fatigue can contribute? (hmm, probably not helpful.)
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