ER Adventure

Last night (Sunday) I took myself into the ER due to some light spotting I was having. I ended up being there until 2 in the morning.

Here's what happened.

Around 10:00 pm, I went to the bathroom and noticed the spotting. I wasn't too concerned about it, but decided to hop on the computer and see what all the pregnancy websites had to say about spotting at 26 weeks.

Every single one of them said to "call your doctor right away." So I did. The on-call doctor I spoke with told me it could be nothing, but that it was probably worth going to the hospital and getting checked out. Her concerns were that the placenta may be detaching, I could have an infection, or my cervix could be opening too early.

JP stayed home with the sleeping girls and I drove up to the Princeton hospital. When I got there, the nurse hooked me up to some monitors where we found a strong, healthy heartbeat from Rosie AND, we found that I was actually having small contractions! I couldn't feel them at first, but after a while I started to feel the tightening. It wasn't painful, just noticeable.

The doctor called for an ultrasound to make sure the placenta was ok. The ultrasound tech was very friendly, and we got to chatting about her job. I asked her about the 3- and 4-D ultrasounds and she started pushing buttons. Before I knew it, I was staring my little Rosie straight in her sweet face.


I couldn't believe it, and started tearing up right away. Isn't she beautiful? Look at her beautiful lips and cute button nose. Here's another picture that's a little harder to distinguish:

She's squished over on the left side in this one. JP and I both agree that she looks like Rae in the first one and Ruby in the second one. So, even though we are looking right at her, we still can't really tell what she looks like. :)

The ultrasound went terrific and my placenta and everything else looked great. The baby measured as weighing a little over 2 pounds right now.

The ultrasound tech also noted that my bladder was full, which was good for the ultrasound. But the nurse thought that could also be the reason the machine was showing contractions (she said sometimes that can make the machine more sensitive to them?). So she asked me to use the restroom and see if that would make them stop. When I did, I noticed more spotting, AND the contractions didn't stop afterwards.

Since the placenta looked good, the doctor called for a test that shows whether your body is going into pre-term labor. We did that test and it came back negative (thank the Lord!).

Finally the doctor had the nurse check my cervix to make sure I wasn't dilating. She said the inside of the cervix (the part by the baby's head that opens when one is in labor) was still closed, but that the outside was open slightly, forming sort of a funnel shape. Neither she nor the doctor seemed too concerned about this since everything else looked fine.

Finally, around 2:00 am, the doctor said I could go home. He thinks I simply "over did it" that day (which I had -- cleaning the house, lifting heavy things, etc.) and sent me with orders to take it easy and get plenty of rest (Level 1 bed rest). I went to bed around 2:20 am still feeling contractions, but they weren't even enough to keep me awake and were gone when I woke up.

Today I'm feeling fine, though tired. I'm very thankful for the wake-up call to stop pushing my body too far, and I'm taking the doctors advice to heart. I'm also thankful for how healthy Rosie is and that God has the timing for her tiny little life all planned out ahead of time.

Here's to 14 more weeks!