This past week has been very low key, as per Doctors orders. Last weekend, after a particularly stressful week, I started experiencing heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness and some cramping, so Rob and I took a trip to the hospital just to make sure everything was fine. I would rather spend an hour or so in the hospital making sure everything is ok, than spend hours at home worrying that something was going wrong.
Honestly I've never been given such priority service at the hospital. Within minutes of arriving and disclosing that I was 21 weeks pregnant, they had my chart made up, took my vitals and attached to an EKG machines to track the palpitations. My pulse was jumping from 107 to 77 every few seconds. After a minute or so of recording they disconnected me and rushed me upstairs to the maternity wing.
Walking in there was quite the experience. You get off the elevator and hit a buzzer across the hall on the wall. Almost instantly these double doors open in sync to a room of nurses staring at you, as if you were royalty. It was a very odd feeling. They rushed me around to a bed and slapped a fetal heart monitor on my tummy. After recording for a few minutes, they discovered that the baby's heart rate was fine. I wasn't concerned about the baby, because while the nurse was tracking the heartbeat the baby was kicking exactly where she was pushing the probe, as if to say, get this thing off me!
The nurse then took all the information and phones the OB on-call. We waited abut 20 minutes to hear that he was sending us home as the baby was fine. As for the heart palpitations, they had begun leveling out, and the OB told me to go home, and take a week on bed rest/house arrest. His strict instructions were to avoid stress. (A lot easier said then done.) I had a regular scheduled appointment 2 days later with my OB that I was to be attending to re-check on the baby, and if anything got worse between heading home and that OB appt, I should return to the hospital.
When we left the hospital we checked the time and we had only been there for 1 hour. Quick the express service for the emergency department I must say. We returned home and Rob set me up on the couch and made sure I had everything I needed for a relaxing evening.
We decided jointly that in order to enjoy a week completely stress free, I would be giving up my cell phone and the internet just to get some peace and quiet and focus on health and family. I thought at the time that it would be incredibly hard to make it through a week without attachment to the electronic world, but I gotta say it was a welcome relief. I didn't realize just how attached I was to my blackberry (checking it when i wake up and when im laying in bed, not to mention a hundred times in between) and to Facebook in particular. It put things back in perspective for me.
Having a few days without those forces controlling my life allowed me to take time to reconnect with myself and with what was happening inside my tummy. I got to enjoy bubble baths, naps, magazines, books and catch up on some favourite tv shows. I spent some quality time playing cards and board games with Rob, and got to focus some time on Jake as well. Rob was a godsend this week. He took Jake for all his walks as walking to much is what was causing my cramping.
At the OB appointment on the Tuesday, he re-checked everything with the baby and she was still doing fine. All the results had come in from my testing a few weeks earlier so we spent the majority of the appointment discussing those. The blood tests/ultra sound scans that tested for things like Downs Syndrome and Spina Bifida all came back in the extremely low range. There is no guarantee that we wont be the 1 in 50,000 that does acquire the disease, but the odds are definitely in our favour. We already knew the heart scan came back fine, but he confirmed that indeed everything in her heart appeared to be the picture of perfection at this time.
The 19 week ultrasound for measurements also came back perfect. She measured out to be 18 weeks and 6 days, when our early dating put her at 19 weeks, so that's right on schedule. All her parts looked as they should and nothing was out of place. So good news all around.
My OB advised me to continue taking the rest of the week off (as in remain at home taking it easy) and that the remainder of the pregnancy needs to be as stress free as possible.
The big news for us this appointment was that I had finally gained my first few pounds of baby weight. A whole 2lbs. 5 and a half months pregnant and I've gained 2 lbs so far. I'd be concerned if my OB didn't continually remind me not to worry because clearly my belly was growing, and the baby was measuring out just fine. The weight must just be re-distributing from other areas.
I have other appointment scheduled for next week to do glucose screening for gestational diabetes, and to find out if my stress has lowered enough to start getting back to normal activities. Especially important with Thanksgiving coming up. My favourite holiday of all!
