baby scares

I guess no pregnancy can be totally perfect, and maybe every baby has to give you a bit of a scare before he or she is born. This Sunday, as we were leaving to run errands like picking up paint samples and looking at cribs, I began having stabbing abdominal pains. At first, I wasn't concerned, but simply followed the advice of all my pregnancy books and drank a glass of water, put my feet up, tried lying on my left side, but nothing helped.

The pains got worse, until I couldn't stand up straight and Josh was begging me to call the emergency line at my Ob/Gyn. We finally got through to the doctor on call at the hospital, when she proceeded to further scare me to death by telling me that she was concerned that I was either in early labor or had appendicitis and wanted me to go straight to labor and delivery. The pains were radiating downward, starting at about an inch to the right of my belly button and a couple of inches down. Walking or touching the area made the pains worse.

I tried to keep my emotions under control, but the only thought running through my head was "25 weeks... 25 weeks... 25 weeks... it is just too early." I didn't know whether a baby could survive surgery, if it really was appendicitis, and even contemplating anything different made me want to vomit.

After 3 hours at the hospital, blood tests, urine analysis, exams and ultrasounds, we could come to no conclusions. The pains eventually faded after a couple of hours, and the on-call doctor's best guess was that my growing uterus had been compressing one of the organs in the area, causing the organ to be unable to function and therefore spasm and contract with accompanying pain. I was told to come straight in if the pain recurred, but in the meantime I could resume all normal activities and try not to worry.

All has been well since then, and I'm back to feeling great. Thankfully, the whole time I was experiencing the pains, the baby was kicking up a storm so I didn't worry about how the baby was at that instant. I just worried about the future.

I guess I'll just chalk this one up to phantom pregnancy pains, and put it in my pregnancy book as one of the many things I'll hold over this baby's head along with labor, hemorrhoids, and sleepless nights.