I joked with Dan about how this baby and Joey were both awesome pregnancies, it was my dang organs that like to mess things up and be difficult! With Joey it was the ovary that grew a giant cyst (though I'm sure it didn't really want to and the cyst just showed up) and now with this baby I get an "irritated uterus" lol.
Thursday is Dan's day off from karate and that's the day we've been going over to visit Emma and to practice obedience training between classes. This past Thursday my dad was on a business trip and my mom had to work late, so we went over early to let Emma out and take her for a walk in addition to practice. It wasn't too hot out, just a little muggy, so we brought the stroller and Joey and I went with Dan and Emma on the walk. Just a short walk to make sure she went to the bathroom (she's weird about using the backyard and has an odd preference for paved surfaces over grass) and then we headed home. On the way home, literally as we started pulling into the driveway, I noticed a couple of Braxton-Hicks contractions back to back. This wasn't too odd, with Joey I had a couple happen close to each other, but it was never the "6 in an hour" that you're supposed to call your doc about. I started making myself some dinner and noticed a couple more. Total I had 4 in like 10 minutes, which was more frequent than anything I'd had with Joey. No pain or anything, just annoying BH contractions. While my dinner was cooking, I told Dan what was up and that I was going to lie down to see if they went away (and drink a ton of water), since if I called the MWs at that point, those were the suggestions I was likely to get. Dan brought me my dinner when it was ready and I ate in bed while reading the stuff given to me at my last MW appointment (never got around to reading it prior lol), BH were still happening and they were happening fairly regularly, between 3-5 minutes when I started keeping track.
I knew it was time to call the MWs and I was hoping to get a definite answer either a "You're fine" or a "Go to the hospital" because this is my second time and I know my stuff. It wasn't early/active labor, but it wasn't normal either and I had already tried the things you're supposed to try. Since it was technically after-hours (8pm) I had to call the answering service and they paged the MW who was on call that night, after 15 minutes of no call back, I called again and finally got a response in a few minutes. I got my definite answer and it was "Go to the hospital", not necessarily what I wanted to hear but at least we could make sure that the baby was ok. Since it was so close to Joey's bed time, Dan stayed to put him down and called his mom (who was only a few minutes away at a meeting and came straight over) to have her be in the house in case Joey woke up, then he would join me at the hospital. In the meantime, I drove myself over (again, no pain, just annoying BH which have only slowed down a little bit) and my mom met me over there (Dan called her too since I was driving) so I wouldn't have to be alone until he got there.
At 29 weeks, almost 30, I was far enough along that I didn't even have to mess with the ER beyond telling them what was wrong and how far along I was. They called straight up to the maternity floor and someone headed down with a wheelchair for me. Mom and I waited in the waiting room (and I took the opportunity to use the bathroom--which I asked if I could do first and they said yes) and noticed that a whole bunch of people were walking around with IVs started in their arms. They weren't hooked up to anything, mind you, they just had starter IVs for easy access. We joked that maybe Thursday night was "IV Night" like "Wing Night" or "Karaoke Night", come to the ER get your IV! The transporter came down with my wheelchair and we went up to Maternity. The transporter was nice and had kids herself so we were chatting about random baby stuff. I got to do everything paperwork-related on the maternity floor, register and check out (when the time came), so it was nice that everything was all in one place. I got taken to a triage room, which I'm not unfamiliar with as Sinai has them also and I had to sit in one for about an hour with Joey to make sure I was in active labor. Got the gown, put that on, then they wanted a urine sample, despite me telling them that the ER had let me go to the bathroom already.
"They know they're supposed to tell you to wait, but they let you go anyway."
Apparently I'm not the only one who has experienced this problem. I managed to give them enough for the tests they wanted to run and settled into the not-so-comfy bed to watch Pawn Stars (the only good thing on the few channels they had available). Sinai's triage room did not have a TV, so this was an improvement even if the bathroom was shared.
Eventually, after initial questions and putting monitors on, they let my mom come back. I had a monitor for the baby's heartbeat and a monitor for contractions. The baby's monitor was funny because he did not like having it on and we could hear every time he kicked it, the monitor made this funny "whoosh" sound! I was glad he was enjoying himself, it meant that we were both probably fine. The doctor finally came back to do an exam (I'd only seen my nurse up until then) and thankfully I was "long and tight" (can I get a "that's what she said!"??) which meant no labor and the BH contractions weren't even registering on the monitor. They had slowed way down at this point anyway, 10pm or so, it was like how your car makes a weird noise until you get it to the mechanic's shop then suddenly you have car that runs like it just came off the factory floor! The nurse encouraged me to keep drinking my water (I brought my Camelbak with me) and she even got me some ice to put in it. Dan arrived not long after that and you can only have 1 person in triage with you so my mom went home and I promised to let her know what was up. We watched another episode of Pawn Stars waiting for my test results to come back, because the doc was ready to let me go since everything else looked so good.
Finally the results came back completely fine except for a slight hint of bacteria which could be the start of a UTI. So the doc wrote me a script for some antibiotics to clear it up before it becomes a full blown UTI (which CAN trigger labor) and said that bacteria can sometimes cause instances of crazy BH like I had. All in all, we were home before 11pm but that was still super late for me since my bedtime has been around 9pm from back when I was pregnant with Joey and exhausted all the time! I still had to go to work the next day because several people in my office were out and several things would be greatly hindered by my absence (not to mention I only get two weeks PTO total, no maternity leave, so I'm trying to save that all up for baby). Thankfully, I had just applied for and gotten a special medical parking pass earlier in the week that they give to pregnant women in their third trimester (also for other medical reasons but I like this one!), so I stayed to sleep as long as I could, which was about an hour more than usual, then went in and worked like normal. Originally, Lyndsay and I had plans to hang out again (she's home until next Thursday and we hung out once last week already!) but with the lack of sleep, and Dan taking Joey to karate with him anyway, I went home and took a nice longggggg nap and rested as much as I could all weekend.
Now I'm officially 30 weeks and have less than two months until "full term" and just over two months until my EDD. I have no guesses as to when this baby's going to come. Joey was early I think mostly due to the cyst and just not having any room, supposedly first time babies are supposed to be late, but Dan was #2 and was late, although Joey measured a week ahead from the beginning and that's about when he arrived was a week early (8 days technically), so I don't know. There is definitely NOT a cyst in there this time and everything looks completely normal (the midwives would not have accepted me as a patient otherwise) and baby measures exactly on track so I haven't got a clue what to expect from him! I initially told work that I wanted to go until I went into labor, but now I'm thinking that I might want to work until right before my due date then take off and come back in January, which will give me enough time off no matter when the baby comes. That way, if he comes past his EDD then I get some time off beforehand and if he comes around then, I get more time in for cuddles. So we'll see, it's a bit fuzzy because I'm a contractor and they have to bring someone in to watch my spot while I'm gone, they may need hard dates or they may not.
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