Our Latest Adventure

So guess what Chuck and I did all day Tuesday?

I'll give you a hint.

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Yup.

It was awesome, guys. 17 hours of non-stop fun, starting at 1:15 in the blessed a.m. Actually, that's a lie. My fun started Sunday night when I got ready for bed and noticed some lower back pain. Nothing too crazy. I am pregnant, after all. Well, the night was full of tossing and turning because I couldn't get comfortable. I woke up Monday morning with horrid lower back pain and cramping in my lower abdomen. Hmmmm.... not so good.

I stayed in bed for most of the day, only getting up to 1) pee (no surprise there) and 2) ride in the car to Subway with Chuck to get us some lunch. Come Monday evening, I was still having some pretty bad cramps (they felt like really bad stomach cramps) and no position was comfortable for more than, um, 5 seconds. I was drinking as much water as humanly possible, but I still managed to feel thirsty. Everywhere was hot except for my hands and feet, which were ice cold. I thought I had lost my dang mind.

I managed to last about 10 minutes upstairs at the 'Anderson Family Home Evening' shindig with all of my grandma-in-law's kids and their kids and their kids before I thought I was gonna die. Chuck and I bailed out to head back down to our cave, only to try and putt around the neighborhood in the darkness (and rain) to try and get rid of the contractions.

Well, that didn't work. We shuffled along at the pace of a severely injured snail for intervals of what felt like 60 seconds before I had to stop and stare at the sidewalk for a while before I could manage to walk again.

Around midnight, Chuck started to time the contractions, even though I was convinced they weren't very consistent. Well, let's just say that you probably shouldn't depend on me to tell you if something is unvarying or not. They came every 2 minutes like clockwork. Dang. That's just not so good when you find yourself only 33 weeks preggo.

Off to the hospital we went.

It turns out that my ob/gyn was the one on-call that night and he had just finished delivering another baby. Good timing, eh? After answering the 40 million questions they ask you when you go to the hospital, they checked me out and realized that I had a fever of 101.7, verified by two different thermometers. Well, no wonder my face had felt like a space heater all night. I was just glad I wasn't crazy.

Other than the back pain and the contractions, I felt as fit as a fiddle, and so they were quite worried that there was an infection around the baby, in which case they would need to induce labor despite her being so premature. That was a little scary. It was also a little scary when my doc started saying that he needed to get the opinion of a 'high risk' ob/gyn because he wasn't sure what to do. However, I hadn't dilated at all, so that lowered the possibility of there being an infection quite a bit. Hannah's heart rate was a little lower than they liked and she had been quite placid during the day (which is unusual for her), but as soon as they gave me some apple juice, she was all sorts of excited. I hadn't eaten more than about 10 grapes and a few bites of Subway the entire day due to feeling like poo, so that makes sense. The poor kid just needed some food.

Pretty soon I had the pretty stellar view of this to entertain me:

They were worried when my blood test results came back showing that my white blood cell count was high (even for a pregnant woman), so they admitted us and I got to wear The Sexy Socks (pictured above. Please hide your jealousy). I worried the doctors a lot, it turns out. I was quite the walking contradiction. I was sick, but I wasn't sick. The put me on an IV to get some fluids in me, and by that time, my fever had already started to go down by itself. My contractions were still going, but they weren't nearly as consistent - thank heavens! They monitored both my contractions and Hannah's heart beat, and she appeared to be doing just dandy.

A nice little nurse that works with the 'high-risk' ob/gyns came in and took an ultrasound of the baby and measured the amniotic fluid. She was helping to decide whether or not I would requir an amniocentesis (to calculate if there was indeed an infection in my uterus like they suspected). She had to run off before reaching any conclusion, and the next person we saw (besides our awesome nurses) was the actual 'high-risk' ob/gyn that my doc had talked to when we first got to the hospital.

She did a more thorough ultrasound and performed some tests on me to try to ascertain if I had any symptoms of being rather ill. Nothin'. She said that Hannah was spot-on with her growth and I didn't have any of the typical symptoms. "You just look so good that I'm going to hold off on the amniocentesis until we can observe you for a while longer.", she said. And for the record, I don't think she meant that my unwashed, unkempt hair and make-up-less face looked good, but more that I didn't look like the walking dead with a high fever. :)

They took my blood again shortly after she left and realized that my potassium was super-de-duper low. They were so very much confused when I pinky swore that I hadn't thrown up or had diarrhea. Potassium doesn't go that low for no reason, but I didn't have one. They hooked potassium up to my IV and gave me 4 of the grossest horse pills known to mankind. Um. . . yuck. Yeah. Anyway, they also wheeled in yet another monitor because they were worried about my heart. Cue the additional baggage that had to be toted with me to the bathroom every 2 seconds because I seem to have a bladder the size of a smooshed pee.

It was horrid.

Just ask my husband, who was recruited to help me make sure I had everything unplugged, slung across my shoulders, or in my hand so I didn't trip and kill myself or kink my IV. He was also indispensable in rolling my IV tower-thingy over the enormous floor-board-bump at the entrance to the restroom. Who put that bump there, anyway? Gee wiz. He got lots of exercise walking to the restroom and back, along with a good view of my bum (stupid hospital gowns).

Too much information? Probably. I'm good at that sort of thing. :) At any rate, here's the best picture I could get of the mountainous amount of wires that were hooked up to my body:

That little gray box transmitted the beats of my ticker to a bigger monitor in the room, which then transmitted the info to another floor where a hoard of nurses were monitoring it. Fun stuff. Each of those wires were hooked to a different spot of my chest and side and if I moved too much, they would pop off. I think I flat-lined, like, twice. According to the machine, it's a miracle I'm alive. :)

Now for a quick word about those gowns. Why is it that they think "Central Laundry" needs to be written smack-dab in the middle in black letters? Couldn't it say something cool, like, "Sexy Babe" or "Pity Me, I'm Sickly" and then put the "Central Laundry" reminder on the back? I mean, come on. Let's all sign a petition and buy new hospital gowns :)

Long story short, my white blood cell count kept going down, my fever never came back, my potassium levels came back up, my heart had no arrhythmia, Hannah hardly stopped moving the entire time we were there (the poor nurses had to keep coming in and re-positioning the fetal monitor because she wouldn't stay put), and I felt just dandy. Besides being numb and sore from laying on that darn hospital bed for 17 hours and only getting about 3 hours of sleep in 24+ hours, of course.

They say I was the topic of conversation among a bunch of doctors because no one could figure out 1) where my fever/high white blood cell count came from and 2) where it went. 

They finally released us and told us to come back the next morning to get my blood drawn one more time. It's a good thing they set us free because Chuck and I were seconds away from losing our darn minds from boredom and lack of sleep. We were getting loopy, I tell ya. I was looking very much like a bruised pin cushion by the end of this little adventure, but I was grateful that they were so thorough and cautious.   

I'm also very thankful for the priesthood blessing my wonderful hubby gave me early on Monday, because I attribute the outcome of this jaunt to be a direct result of the promises from the Lord. It's a pretty good rule of thumb that when doctors are left scratching their noggins, they Lord has definitely had a hand in it :) [of course, that's not to say that the Lord doesn't have a hand in it at any other time, but you know what I meant!]

Oh, and by way of epilogue, the results from the blood test today were normal. Yay for being healthy (again)!