In my last blog post, I shared about some of the anxieties and worries I faced during pregnancy.
A couple weeks after the event of that post, we had an unseasonably warm sunny day. It was so beautiful that Caleb and I decided we needed to be out and about enjoying the weather, instead of staying indoors. We decided to go disc golfing.
We had only gotten through a couple holes before I started having some pretty intense, frequent contractions. By the time we had finished four holes, they were bad enough to where I told Caleb we needed to go home. I was sure once I got in the car and sat down and started drinking more water, they would subside some.
I had dealt with some contractions earlier in my pregnancy and had been instructed how to handle them then. So we started our drive home.
About 10 minutes into the drive, I noticed my contractions weren't easing up any. I decided to call my doctor to see what I should do. After a frustrating series of calls that led nowhere, we arrived home. I went inside and did all the things I knew to do. I took a bath, I put my feet up and I drank a TON of water. I don't remember if I ever got a hold of my doctor's office or not. But by about 7, when I'd been having contractions for about 5 hours, I decided we needed to go ahead and go in to labor and delivery (l&d).
When we arrived, they checked us in and wheeled me back to a triage room. The nurse that wheeled us in made polite chit chat and mentioned that we weren't the only people that had come in tonight, that the heat had caused problems for a lot of women that had just forgotten they needed to drink more in the heat and gotten dehydrated. I assured my nurse that I'd been drinking water religiously all day and that I didn't think that was my problem.
I put on my super fashionable hospital gown, left my urine sample and got all hooked up to a million different monitors. The nurse came back in after awhile, really excited that she could tell from my urine sample that I was actually being truthful about the amount of water I had been consuming. Which meant dehydration was not the reason for my contractions.
The nurse was great, very helpful and reassuring. We were there for about an hour and a half having various tests run before finally being discharged, saying that there wasn't anything wrong with me or the baby and that I would probably just need to take it easy for the rest of my pregnancy.
The whole day was fairly stressful. Contractions are not a lot of fun. They're even less fun when you know you're way too far away from your due date to have a baby. When you add to that the feeling of helplessness you get from feeling like you don't know for sure what to do and can't get a hold of someone you trust (in my case my doctor) to get you through it, it makes for a hard day. But I realized, even in the midst of my crazy, stressful day, I never once was worried that I was going to lose the baby. Was I frustrated that I had tried *everything* I was told and *still* couldn't stop contractions? You bet. Was I concerned about how we would work things out if he did happen to make an entrance early? Sure. But not once, not a single time, did any thought of losing him enter my mind. And given my mental state two weeks prior, I know that there's no way I stayed that calm on my own. It was only because I had started trusting God every day, day by day, that I was able to have a peace about his safety during that stressful situation.
A couple weeks after the event of that post, we had an unseasonably warm sunny day. It was so beautiful that Caleb and I decided we needed to be out and about enjoying the weather, instead of staying indoors. We decided to go disc golfing.
We had only gotten through a couple holes before I started having some pretty intense, frequent contractions. By the time we had finished four holes, they were bad enough to where I told Caleb we needed to go home. I was sure once I got in the car and sat down and started drinking more water, they would subside some.
I had dealt with some contractions earlier in my pregnancy and had been instructed how to handle them then. So we started our drive home.
About 10 minutes into the drive, I noticed my contractions weren't easing up any. I decided to call my doctor to see what I should do. After a frustrating series of calls that led nowhere, we arrived home. I went inside and did all the things I knew to do. I took a bath, I put my feet up and I drank a TON of water. I don't remember if I ever got a hold of my doctor's office or not. But by about 7, when I'd been having contractions for about 5 hours, I decided we needed to go ahead and go in to labor and delivery (l&d).
When we arrived, they checked us in and wheeled me back to a triage room. The nurse that wheeled us in made polite chit chat and mentioned that we weren't the only people that had come in tonight, that the heat had caused problems for a lot of women that had just forgotten they needed to drink more in the heat and gotten dehydrated. I assured my nurse that I'd been drinking water religiously all day and that I didn't think that was my problem.
I put on my super fashionable hospital gown, left my urine sample and got all hooked up to a million different monitors. The nurse came back in after awhile, really excited that she could tell from my urine sample that I was actually being truthful about the amount of water I had been consuming. Which meant dehydration was not the reason for my contractions.
The nurse was great, very helpful and reassuring. We were there for about an hour and a half having various tests run before finally being discharged, saying that there wasn't anything wrong with me or the baby and that I would probably just need to take it easy for the rest of my pregnancy.
The whole day was fairly stressful. Contractions are not a lot of fun. They're even less fun when you know you're way too far away from your due date to have a baby. When you add to that the feeling of helplessness you get from feeling like you don't know for sure what to do and can't get a hold of someone you trust (in my case my doctor) to get you through it, it makes for a hard day. But I realized, even in the midst of my crazy, stressful day, I never once was worried that I was going to lose the baby. Was I frustrated that I had tried *everything* I was told and *still* couldn't stop contractions? You bet. Was I concerned about how we would work things out if he did happen to make an entrance early? Sure. But not once, not a single time, did any thought of losing him enter my mind. And given my mental state two weeks prior, I know that there's no way I stayed that calm on my own. It was only because I had started trusting God every day, day by day, that I was able to have a peace about his safety during that stressful situation.