Memorial Day..."Memorable Day"

May 24th/25th

Our Memorial Day this year should have been called "Memorable Day".... We were looking forward to a long, relaxing weekend together...still grateful to be out of the restaurant business and enjoy a holiday weekend with friends. On Sunday afternoon, Becky started feeling pretty consistent lower abdominal/pelvic pain. It went on into the evening and we tried to head to bed. I (Becky) was up ALL night, couldn't find a comfortable spot, couldn't eat or drink anything, and finally tried "relaxing" or sleeping in our old recliners. The pain increased into the early morning hours to the point where it hurt to breathe in or out. I finally thought "maybe going for a little walk would help decrease the pain...maybe it has gotten worse since I've been curled up in a ball." So, I went out in the neighborhood around 4:30am, barely made it around the block to the top of our street and had to sit down on the curb because I felt lightheaded. Things didn't get much better as I sat, so I got up and tried to get home quickly. I made it to the bathroom where I noticed that my face had lost all color and my arms and hands were starting to tingle; I began to feel pretty weak and sick. I woke David up and said, "OK, I think we need to go to the hospital now." Within a few minutes, we were in the car with a trash can (hey, just in case), a cold washcloth, and me groaning the whole 4-or-so miles.

Upon arriving, I leaned over the counter and just said, "I'm pregnant and I've been having severe abdominal pains." They immediately sat me down to check my blood pressure and then the shaking began - I couldn't stand up straight and my body was beginning to shake uncontrollably. I asked the nurse if I could please have some water or ice chips. His response? A straight-faced "no." I thought for sure I was going to pass out - a pregnant women who had not eaten or drunk anything in nearly 12 hours and you are denying her?!? They escorted us into a nearby room and I could not get remotely comfortable. David was pretty worried because I literally could not stop shaking. Of course, scary thoughts about the baby were going through our heads most of our time there. Eventually, I tried laying mostly on my stomach with one of my legs bent so my hip was in the air (and not all my weight on the baby) and MUCH to my delight, the pain began subsiding...until the doctor came in and poked around a bit. After a few hours, we were sent off to have an ultrasound done to check for the baby's health, possible kidney stones for me, and a condition I had neither heard of or had read of (as it relates to pregnancy) - an ovarian cyst. Apparently (now that I have found info in the preg books), ovarian cysts are very common in pregnancy and are supposed to be reabsorbed by the body. When they don't reabsorb, they can produce a lot of pain and can even rupture, though we learned the next day that mine was small enough they were not concerned about rupturing at this point.

In the midst of all this pain and long hours, we were SO touched to see the latest ultrasound. In just 3-or-so weeks time, our little peanut had grown so much!! Yes, us mommy-to-bes read it all in the books: the fetus' development, "your walnut-sized baby is now the size of a lemon," etc. BUT..., David and I went from the "what if something has happened to our baby?" to immediately seeing a heartbeat (!!) and then seeing FINGER BONES, TOE BONES, THE SPINE, and THE RIBS!! WOW!! I instantly forgot and cared so little about the awful night that I just went through (the little shot of morphine probably helped, too :] ). Our little baby was - as I say - havin' it's own little dance party in there, too. It was moving all around. We initially thought it was sucking it's thumb, but other views showed that it had it's arms up by it's ears and was moving it's feet all over the place. SOO good to see the little one moving around...so funny to see just how active it is, again!

We were sent on our way about 6-7 hours after arriving, with some pain and other meds. And we were blessed to get into the new doctor I hadn't yet seen the next day, since I decided to stay back from a work trip to Florida on Tuesday. She did yet another ultrasound and yes, our child was moving all around on THAT one, too! Of course we would have such an active child! :] The doctor also said that much of all my sickness I've experienced could be the baby's activity. Since we're 3-for-3 on the baby movement during ultrasounds, it all makes a lot of sense....