Denial is a Mother

Well yesterday was a flurry of crazy.

Cayce and I arrived promptly at 2:35 for our 2:30 appointment.  After half an hour of a quality waiting room time we made our way back.  Cayce to room four and me to the scale and obligatory pee cup.  Another week of no weight gain, usually that's a good sign this far into pregnancy, things should be progressing, but not for us :(.   So this was super routine, and then came the fun part.  The nurse asks if I have any complaints.  Normally I don't.  Normally the visit is a quick stop.  This time I rattled of the list, the shoulder/neck/head pain I've been experiencing, lack of sleep, trouble breathing, etc.  The nurse then straps on the blood pressure cuff, proceeds to squeeze the ever loving life out of my right arm.  Hmmm... she asks for my other arm.  Repeat.  She tells us she's going to have someone else try.  She didn't want to worry us, but she's getting a high reading.  I told her at Wal-Mart on Saturday I checked and got a borderline high reading.  In comes another nurse.  Same thing.  I'm told to strip on down and the Dr. is going to want to put me on the monitor.  The nurse tells me to lay on my left side.  While I'm laying there waiting for the Dr. the midwife walks on in.  "So you've been having headaches for four days?"  Huh, I guess so.  She asks if I've had any upper abdominal pain.  Hmm, yeah, I totally thought my tummy was starting to get irritated by food.  Oh, and don't even get me started on the amount of swelling.  Dr. was NOT happy.  I've been so used to the swelling that I really thought it was normal.  I'm totally embarrassed I was able to totally explain away my high bp symptoms.    Ugh.  denial, denial, denial.  So I'm strapped to the monitor.  Immediately the midwife turns to me, are you feeling that contraction?  Nope, sure not.   The dr. and midwife discuss what they're seeing on the monitor and agree Lily looks excellent.  Me on the other hand, totally not so hot.  I'm still thinking everything will be fine and we'll talk about maybe inducing later in the week or something.  It's the midwife's words that alert me to the severity of the situation.  She tells us she was supposed to do my cervix check today, but since it will probably be Dr. N staying up with us that night for delivery it makes sense for Dr. N to check.  Excuse me.  Did she just say what I think she said??  Now the nerves set in.  Dr. goes ahead with the cervix check.  1 1/2 cm.  But she does something in there, who knows what, it hurt like a B and she says "just trying to help things along."  Okay.  Dr. starts talking again, and reaffirms what the midwife said.  They're sending us to labor and delivery for further observation, and if anything suspect shows up we're kicking this baby out.  Then the strangest thing happens.  I just started bawling.  You would think I would take this news with a happy face, but holy Lord, I did not.  Everyone's now in a tizzy.   "Are you afraid of the labor?"  "Are you scared about having a baby?" etc. etc. I just profusely apologized between sobs and choked out something about "everything."  Meanwhile Cayce's holding onto my head whispering words of encouragement, the midwife's holding my hand, and the Dr. is throwing as many tissues at me that her quick little hands could gather.  You would have thought something tragic was happening.  Embarrassing!  Ugh.  So I managed some semblance of composure and sucked back the tears.  Dr.  tells us again the plan for the night and proceeds to say if not tonight, we'll induce in 4 days - Thursday, 39 weeks.  We stop at the window to pay our two cent bill, literally, two cents.  The receptionist asks when we want to do our bio physical profile/ ultrsound.  Huh, missed that, but there it was written on the order form, BPP/US, 3 days.  The only slot available was 4:00 on Thursday.  Now we're getting confused.  As if we weren't already.

We walked next door to the hospital.  Checked in, ushered back to the pretty L&D room, given my gown and told to get comfy.  I'm hooked up once again to the monitor.  "Are you feeling that contraction?" Nope.  We do the whole ask a million health questions, and then it dawns on me we're not prepared for this at all.  Our bags aren't totally packed, we don't even have a bag packed for Lily, a stack of books are ready for me to pick up at the library, and a million things still need to be done at home. So in between answering the million questions Cayce and I are working on the list of things still needed to be done.  Loved the part in the questionnaire when the nurse asked if I struggled with rational thought, insert Cayce's response,
"she's asking me bring the whole house to the hospital, that's rational right?" hardy, har, har, he's so funny.  He did have a point I suppose.  After check in started the "24 hour urine collection."  This is disgusting.  I won't detail, but I will say thankfully my 24 hours is over in 45 mins.  Cayce headed home to tackle the monumental list, and I tried, unsuccessfully, to get comfortable.  At some point another nurse came in to draw blood.  Eww.  Nice reminder of what is in store needle wise for the actual delivery.  Sometime after my 4th or 5th trip to the bathroom I'm ushered off to the ultrasound tech.  Cayce still hadn't returned by this point, and I worried about him coming back to an empty room.  The u/s was fun.  It was sad not having Cayce there.  He totally missed watching Lily move her mouth around, similar to sucking.  It was awesome.  The tech was looking for "practice breathing," but after about 30 mins on the monitor and no practice breathing she gave up.  Who knows what that means.  I then got the pleasure of waiting IN THE HALL for 30 mins for someone to wheel me back to my room.  Seriously, if I understood where I was I would have wheeled myself.  The only thing I could think about while waiting was the terrible state of my nails.  I have peeling paint on them, and I was mad at myself for not taking the time to strip them b/c now all of my first pics with Lily would have my trashy nails in them.  The things I focus on.  I FINALLY made my way back to the room.  Cayce was there!  He said they wouldn't let him come back to the u/s.  He was really disappointed.  So at this point I've been monitored for 6 hrs.  My blood pressure was steadily going down, and the final reading was 116/68.  Very normal for me.  In the process of  unhooking myself for yet another bathroom run the nurse comes in.  We're FREE!  The dr. consented to send us home.  And by us I mean me and my pretty orange bio-hazard urine jug. *shudder*

Cayce and I came home watched the second half of Celebrity Apprentice off the dvr and made our way to bed.  I tossed and turned all night.  I'm hurting pretty good now.  I suppose it has something to do with Dr. N's "help."  I called and left a message with Dr. N asking if we're still planning on induction for Thursday.  Still no word.  I've been pretty productive today, and relaxed at the same time.  I successfully cooked and froze 3 meals for after Lily and washed up a bunch of towels, sheets, and blankets for guests, and filled up the bio-hazard jug.  Yesterday I was nervous and scared about what was happening, but now that I've had a day to think about it I'm ready to go.  If we don't induce on Thursday I will definitely be disappointed.  I felt totally unprepared yesterday.  Yesterday was a shock and too soon, but now I'm ready for this!