Fainted and Trip to Labor/Delivery

Well yesterday was quite a traumatic and eventful day. The day had gone quick and was pretty busy up till I fainted/passed out in our home around 7:15pm. I woke up to my hubs above me looking at me and saying my name. It was like I had been in a deep sleep for hours. Just before I was lying on our couch when our dog asked to go outside and I asked my hubs to let him out and he told me he would do it in a few minutes since he was cleaning up from the mess in the kitchen I had made earlier. So the dog came to me a second time with this look that he couldn’t wait any longer so I got up and let him out our back door entrance that leads to a deck area. He always goes right off of the deck and is usually pretty quick to do his business and get back into the house. Just as I closed the door and felt the cold air on my face I started to feel light-headed and even said out loud that I felt like I was going to faint. I remember trying to make an attempt to get back to the couch I had been laying on because I thought if I was going to pass out that it would be the best place to do so. I didn’t make it. I fell back onto our hardwood floors resulting in a pretty sore spot on the top of my head and a bruised left elbow (I don’t know about anybody else out there that is preggers but I use that left elbow quite a bit to get up from bed and the couch).  So after coming to (was out for 2-3 minutes according to my hubs) I quickly started thinking about the baby and if everything was all right with him/her. My bottom pajamas were soaked and all I could think of immediately was that possibly my water had broken and that somehow the baby was injured or hurt during my fall and blackout. I was in a panic and quickly changed and was having my hubs drive us into Labor and Delivery at our hospital. I was not taking any chances and wanted to make sure everything was okay. It took us about 25-30 minutes to get to our hospital and upon getting checked in the nurse that saw me to my room quickly checked with a Doppler for the babe’s heartbeat and she got one very quickly. I was SO relieved at that point and happy to hear that sound! I didn’t care at that point if I was okay, I just wanted our baby to be okay and hearing the heartbeat was music to my ears. At that point they put a fetal monitor on my belly that could monitor the heartbeat and also looked for contractions. This was on me for about two hours while we waited for the OB doctor on-call that evening to perform an ultrasound.  During this time they also took some of my blood to test, performed an EKG and had me give a urine sample. Just before 11pm the OB on-call came who we had seen for a brief few moments earlier. It was not good. You see the OB on-call was the doctor we had with Leia and seeing him walk in to greet us and talk with us about what was going on was not so good for me. All I could think was I don’t want this doctor doing anything with this pregnancy. I just wanted to blurt out, “NO!” But I couldn’t or wouldn’t do that. I know they probably didn’t have another doctor on rotation that night but what were the odds that we would see him? It just was all TOO much having this doctor and was giving me flashbacks to the last time he had performed any kind of testing on me.  So he came back in to do an ultrasound and we were able to see our baby moving around and doing well. He checked the amniotic fluid to make sure it was at a good level and from everything he checked and measured it was good. He also checked my cervix to make sure that there were no contractions. So with the ultrasound testing done he left and then I was taken in for an MRI. Since I had fallen and hit my head they wanted to make sure that I wasn’t having anything internal going on and thankful they didn’t find anything other than seeing the external bruise on the top of my head. They are chalking it up to a vassal-vagel, low blood pressure or dehydration. We were back home by 1am and I was able to get some sleep part of the night but found it quite hard to lay just right without having some kind of pain. The doctor told me to take it easy the rest of this weekend and to check-in with our specialist first-thing on Monday who has been keep abreast of what happened and will be able to give me some more guidance or tell me if he wants me back in to see him before 2/24.  If there is anyone out there who has had something similar or experienced this kind of episode during a pregnancy, I would love to hear from you.

So with this event I have decided to really put myself first and scale back on several things. I am going to tell my work that I can only do part-time hours and really hold them to it. Just this past week the attorney had asked me to start working fewer hours and that sounded fine to me so I am really going to do this if not only for myself but for this baby and pregnancy. I am also going to do less around our house and just try to put the baby and myself first and think of that before trying to keep up with work, social commitments, etc. I will be 26 weeks tomorrow and just one-more week to getting to the third trimester. When we left our hospital last night the nurses told me they didn’t want to see me back till May. I just hope that is how it all works out for this pregnancy.

But back to the hospital part and our unexpected visit. I had been thinking through most of this pregnancy how I would handle being back on that floor again. I had mentally thought about how I had wanted to visit the floor one-day when I was in for a routine appointment. Obviously, I had not done this so being back there last night was my first time since last year. I am also thinking of how today is the 11th of the month and just 13 months ago how we were leaving that floor and hospital without our baby girl. While we were there I had some flashbacks and thought to how those three days there had gone. The actual delivery of Leia, all the nurses and doctors coming and going from the room, our extended family that had come by the hospital trying to give us comfort during those days. The card on the door discreetly signifying how you had lost a baby. It was all too much and I have been thinking about it most of today. How do I prepare for being back there in a few more months? If we had another option of delivering at another hospital we would jump at it but unfortunately our specialist only has privileges at this particular hospital and I really want him there for when I deliver with this pregnancy. It is all a little overwhelming and has given me a lot to think about today and going forward. I am just thankful and happy that all is okay for the moment. I hope I don’t have another episode like last night and that indeed our next time in the hospital is for the delivering of our baby.

Dear Leia,

I’ve been thinking so much of you today little girl. Our visit to the hospital made me think of last year and all that happened with you. We miss you every single day and will never forget you. I hope that one day we have a little brother or sister that we can tell them about you and how much we wanted and love you. You will always be our firstborn child and the missing part of our family. Love, Mommy