my interesting weekend

So this weekend started out great! :) Thomas and I had a date night at home with a movie, popcorn, and twizzlers. Saturday was fine, I got to sleep in and I tried to be as stress-free as possible all day because I had to work that night. So, I go to work and everything seems fine, I got a good patient group and it started out as a pretty simple night. I even got all my meds passed and my charting done (on 6 patients!) by 10pm. Usually I dont even sit down until around midnight, so it was a "good night." :)

About 10pm I sat down to chart and I thought to myself, "Hmm. My lower back really hurts..." It was the kind of hurt where I felt I needed counter-pressure to help it to feel better. Then I noticed that I was having some pretty painful lower abdominal cramps, kind of like bad menstrual cramps. I thought that was odd. I called Thomas and I told him what was going on and that I was pretty concerned. Of course, being the man he is, he kind of blew me off, haha, but I told him to Google "pre-term labor symptoms" for me. Lower back pain and abdominal cramps were 2 of the symptoms. GREAT! :) I remember reading before that if you are having cramps or pain to drink a lot of water and to rest. So I gulped down about 6 cups of water during the next hour... But the pain just seemed to get worse, and I think I even started having some light contractions. It was hard to tell if they were true contractions because of the cramping, it was just hard to distinguish. My co-workers saw me squirming in my seat because of my back pain so I told them what was going on. They thought I needed to go over to L&D to get checked out, but me and my stubborn self didn't want to... I mean, every pregnant woman has aches and pains, right? My pregnancy with Char was picture perfect (in terms of complications) so this one had to be the same way, in my mind. Well, the pain wouldn't go away so I did go down to L&D at about 11pm.

When I got there, they hooked me up to a monitor. For about an hour, I was just having a lot of back pain and really painful cramps. I felt contractions, but apparently they weren't showing up on the monitor. Around an hour after I got there, I started having painful contractions that showed up on the monitor. I think there were about 5-6 big ones. They hurt so bad I was nearly in tears and it was hard to move. Here I am, by myself in the hospital in the middle of the night, and I am having painful contractions at 23w 5d pregnant. Great!!!!

I was given a shot of terbutaline to stop the contractions. It worked. Thank you, Jesus. I was still cramping and had a lot of back pain still, so a couple hours later they gave me another terb shot. That didn't seem to help much, so they sent me home. The doctor said the cramps were due to my uterus contracting and that it was tired. Or something to that effect. They checked my urine and said I was not dehydrated, which I was kind of frustrated at... If I was dehydrated, that'd be an easy problem to fix, you know? I did get a liter of fluid, though. Extra fluid is always nice when you are pregnant! :) I was released at about 3:30am and drove home with my heart about to burst out my chest (thank you, terbutaline!!).

Sunday I was still pretty crampy and my back hurt. I was having contractions, though nor painful, all day long. They seemed to get more painful as the afternoon went on. Of course, not having dealt with this before, I was nervous so I called my doc and she told me to come in and get checked. To make a long story short, of course when I get there, my contractions stop. They gave me some Procardia to take at home for the cramps. We were released and I went home and slept all night.

Today I woke up feeling pretty normal. No cramps or pain or anything like that. Phew!!! I had a doctor's appointment and I had an ultrasound done and my cervix is nice and closed and long. Sorry if that is TMI for some of you folks, LOL. That was like music to my ears. As long as I am not dilating, everything is fine. My doctor just told me to take it easy, that I can still work (yay for extra money!!), and to just keep taking the Procardia when I'm going to be active, like at work or something.

As of right now... I feel... ok. Over the past few hours, I have had a bunch of contractions. I am trying not to be paranoid super freak pregnant woman, but I am trying to drink a lot of fluids to see if that helps. I still feel pretty crampy, but maybe that is normal. I dont know. I'm sure everything will be fine, we'll just take it day by day and pray to the One who has both mine and Vivian Grace's lives in His hands. I know that it is ALL under His control and He is good, all the time. Please pray for us. Hopefully this weekend was just a fluke and that all will be back to normal soon. Thank you SO MUCH to all of our friends and family that has prayed for us. God answers prayer, and I know that this is the reason why everything is fine so far!! So thank you. :)