My hospital stay

So Monday morning I woke up really sick but I went to work anyway thinking I could just tough it out. Well, I only lasted about a half hour before I had to leave.

I spent the day feeling miserable at home. I couldn’t keep anything down and I was having tons of contractions and pressure so I was feeling really worried about the baby so I had my brother Kasey come over to help Matt give me a blessing. The blessing made me feel so much better because in it Matt said that the baby and I would both be healthy despite what we may go through.

I had a doc. appointment at 3:30 anyway so I went in and they found that I was severely dehydrated and I was dilated to about 1.5 cm and having some bleeding so they had me go to the hospital. Once I got there they got me going on IV fluids and anti-nausea meds so I felt better pretty soon but they made me stay overnight because I was still dehydrated. They ended up giving me SEVEN liters of fluid! Needless to say, my hands and face were a tad swollen all day yesterday.

It’s no fun staying the night at the hospital. I didn’t sleep hardly at all because they kept coming in to adjust the monitors because every time I moved they’d lose the baby’s heartbeat. And I obviously had to get up to use the bathroom a lot, too. :) I was sad to leave Brennen overnight because I’d never done that before but he was very happy and well taken care of at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

All the docs told me to take this week off of work and on Friday I’m going in to have them see if I’m more dilated and monitor my contractions and if things are any worse they might “strongly suggest” that I quit working since I’m only a substitute anyway and only have a couple weeks left. I’d like to finish it out but the health of the baby is more important! One of the doctors said he wanted to put me on “half bed rest”. Whatever that means…

Speaking of the baby, he seemed to be doing just fine through all of this. I feel like he was moving constantly for two days and during the ultrasound at the doctor’s office he was measuring right on track (even though I’d lost almost 2 pounds). I’m still so excited for him to get here but being in that room in the hospital made me NOT look forward to child birth. :) And I want him to be as healthy as he can be so I’d love for him to stay in there another 7.5 weeks!

I’m so thankful that we have family here! I don’t know what we’d do without them. And Matt was so sweet to me during this little ordeal. I don’t think he slept much while I was in the hospital but he still went to class, cleaned the house and took care of Brennen. He’s just awesome. :)

Here’s a picture of me at 31 weeks (taken a little over a week ago).