just for kicks

It was getting a bit boring around here, what with all the love and mushiness and registry talk, so I fell down the basement stairs last night in spectacular fashion. Spectacular, I tell you. Feet flying out from under me, with hands full and unable to break my fall at all. I fell flat on my back and butt, stopped my head from slamming into the stairs by slamming my elbows into the stairs and then fell the rest of the way (about 6 steps). A glass pitcher flew across the basement, the steel pan that I was carrying in the other hand was flung against the wall, and then I collapsed at the base of the stairs in hysterics.

I couldn't catch my breath, and it hurt SO DARN MUCH that I thought for sure I'd broken my tail bone, and I kept thinking about the baby, oh my GOD, the baby. I was sobbing, eyes closed, shaking and trying to catch my breath while Josh ran down the stairs to my side and begged me to tell him what had happened. It felt like an eternity before I could breathe enough to tell him how hard I'd fallen and that he needed to call the doctor's emergency line.

So we spent last night being monitored for several hours in the labor and delivery ward, with ultrasounds and baby monitors and contraction monitors and blood work. Everyone is FINE, except for the massive bruises up and down my butt and back and elbows. Frankly, though, I'll take those 1,000,000 times over, just to hear that my baby is happy and safe.

We drank some orange juice right after the fall to encourage baby to move, because he or she was strangely quiet. During the race to the hospital, baby was moving fairly actively and once we got to the hospital and I was hooked up to the monitor, the kicking and twisting was nonstop. No contractions, no bleeding, the ultrasound looked fabulous, although the little bugger decided to turn fully breach, with its bottom near my cervix, head near my ribcage, and legs and arms stretched straight out into my right side and in front of baby's face. On the ultrasound we watched him playing with his toes and umbilical cord. Baby even regaled us with practice breaths and the hiccups while on screen.

We went home around 4am after they were satisfied that everything was fine, with strict orders to rest all day and come in immediately if anything seemed amiss. Everything has been fine all day, with only soreness and bruising to show for the experience. That, and new rules about walking around the house with rubber soled slippers instead of socks. I'm only a step above going down the stairs on my bottom, at this point.

I'm hoping this is the end of the excitement for this pregnancy, I think Josh and I have had enough.