Warning: Some may find the following blog a little T.M.I.
I got up this morning at 03:30 for my nightly grope-around-in-the-dark bladder-emptying ritual, removed Ian from our bed and took him to his and then attempted to get back to sleep. The dog next door barked profusely for who knows how long and I really struggled to get back to sleep. Just before 6 a.m. when Bryan was leaving for work, he said his goodbyes and added, “How are you feeling, are you doing okay? Okay, I don’t want to alarm you, but there was a tiny bit of blood on the toilet seat…” I made a manoeuver to check and Bryan confirmed there was a little.
After he left, I tried to get back to sleep again, but couldn’t get it off my mind. After half an hour, I gave up and went to the bathroom again. Sure enough, there were tiny dots on my underwear. “Oh good” I thought, “I thought it was going to be worse than that.” After wiping, I checked and was shocked to see so much more, and it was thick and clotted. I tried not to panic, but it was inevitable. From anything I’ve ever read, blood is never a good thing. I grabbed the phone and called Bryan and we conference called the doctor’s office. She then hung up and paged the doctor on call and he phoned me a few minutes later to see what was going on.
“You’re probably okay, but you should come to the hospital, just to make sure.”
So after I shared his advice with Bryan, I took a shower and started getting ready. Ironically, I had planned on putting Ian’s bag together later on today. Bryan got everything together and we were out of there at 7:30. We then dropped off Ian, said our goodbyes and headed the 45 minutes to the hospital.
On the way there, I started experiencing contractions. The first one or two were 11 minutes apart, the next seven were 6 minutes apart, and it stayed that way after we arrived at the OB Ward.
As soon as I mentioned to the nurse what was going on, she said, “oh, that’s really common, it’s probably your mucus plug.” I remarked, “I wish I’d called you now instead of the doctor’s office!”
She monitored me for a few hours, told us the baby’s heart rate was great and his oxygen intake was perfect. I was still having contractions, but they were becoming fewer and further in-between; although I did have two really good ones.
She went through a few questions with me like, “will anyone else be in the room with you attending the birth?” “I hope not, because they’re not invited!” I quipped. “Will you be having your tubes tied after this delivery?” “No…why? Should I?! Hahaha.” Then I said, “well hey, at least I still have my sense of humour…”
After checking with my doctor (he said I could go home), and checking my progression twice, she suggested that I walk around Missoula for a few hours to see if that would help the progression, if at all. She said that there was “definitely something going on” and that it might be later today, tomorrow or sometime this week.
All walking around Lowe’s, Home Depot, Target and Wal-Mart did for me was wear me out completely. After we got home with Ian and we all crashed and took a 2-hour nap.
So basically, we’re back to the waiting game. I’m beginning to wish pregnancy came with a built in countdown stop clock.
a Brit different 