Two Days of Scares

For about a week and a half, Paul had been suffering from intermittent back pain that would sometimes radiate to his whole abdomen. At first, he believed it was probably just a pinched nerve due to moving furniture/books/etc. at home in preparation for Baby Z. However, the pain had gotten excruciating (and was accompanied by some other symptoms) so while he was visiting the hospital Monday morning before work, we decided he should go see our family doctor and get checked out. So Paul drove about 20 minutes from Mission Hospital to the doctor. When he arrived, the pain had gotten much worse and the doctor told him it was a kidney stone but that he needed to get checked out at the hospital and get some pain medication.

Being unable to properly communicate due to his cell phone not getting good reception in the brick building and being in too much pain to be able to talk much, little bits and pieces of information were relayed to me, but I couldn't quite figure out what exactly was going on. Finally, a text message that very briefly just said "ambulance". Of course, hormonal wife who can't leave the bed gets a text message that they're sending him by ambulance and knowing I can't be there, I got pretty upset. Trying to get the word out to people but not quite thinking in the rational zone, managed to worry some friends and family about what was going on (sorry, everyone)! So Paul arrived to the Mission Emergency Room (sheesh, he should have just walked downstairs and checked himself in) and not long after his brother, Andy, arrived and was finally able to make more sense of the situation and give me an appropriate update (whew)!

Paul was definitely experiencing a kidney stone -- his first, actually. The ER gave him an IV and got him some pain medication. After a CT scan, they determined the stone to be passable so they discharged him with several prescriptions to fill to aid in the pain management/passing of the stone process. Paul's dad came to pick him up since he wasn't able to drive and took him to their house to rest and stock up on fluids.

That same night, I got my first bleed since before I got checked in to Mission 4+ weeks ago. Since previa can go from a minor bleed to a big one in no time flat, the hospital started preparing me for the possibility of having to deliver by C-section immediately (and transferred me from the Maternal/Fetal staff to the Labor & Delivery staff which just added to the stress and seriousness of the situation). I called Paul at 2am and told him he needed to get to the hospital so his parents drove him over. The bleeding continued for several hours, but thankfully, did not get heavy and the hospital kept Baby Z and I on a monitor every second to make sure she wasn't in distress and I wasn't having contractions that would indicate labor. Thankfully the bleeding stopped on its own around 10:45am. The monitoring continued until 4pm today but they finally felt like I was stable enough to switch me from the Labor & Delivery staff back to Maternal Fetal staff. So the good news is that Baby Z and I are doing fine at the moment, but with previas, the bleeding can come and go, so we're definitely not out of the woods. Paul was able to spend the day with me and is still working to pass that kidney stone (but is not in as much pain as he was before, so that's good news).

I am really hoping that tomorrow is a no surprises kind of a day. We are so grateful for everyone who knew the situations and prayed us through them and helped out. I would really like it if Baby Z could make it to at least 33 weeks (when the biggest setback is usually lung development, but hoping she won't have as much trouble as most since we have had the steroid shots). So that's my goal! Please continue to pray that we make it that far. Thanks, everyone!!