Many of you have already heard the news but last week I managed to accomplish a major pregnancy no-no that I was really hoping to avoid. I fell down. Hard. And not in a graceful or lady like manner. Luckily my body response works faster than my brain and when I slipped I fell sideways and not onto the belly. My right arm and right hip caught most of the action. I was out walking the dogs by myself, which I don't think I will ever be allowed to do again, while Jerry finished up something for work inside the house. It was a beautiful spring day and things were melting and our road was muddy and I apparently threw caution to the wind and didn't wear my Yak-Tracks. On the way back, I hit a patch that was in the shade and therefore still firmly made of ice. It took me down. Hard.
I realized that I was on the ground and looked around me and wouldn't you know it, my little Izzi dog was laying in the road next to me looking at me like "Oh, we are laying in the road now?... how lovely!" Girl has got my back. She was all "I don't want you to feel stupid about laying in the cold melty road by yourself so I'll lay here with you, it's all the rage." Wicket, meanwhile, was trying to drag us both over to the side where he could spend the next 10-15 minutes inspecting the snowbanks for "news" (other dogs pee).
I took a minute to collect myself, got up, hobbled back to the house, and when Jerry came out, immediately burst into tears. He was fantastic, he took the dogs, made me sit on the couch, and talked me down. After both asking each other "Should we call the midwife?", we instituted our rule: If one or both of us asks "should we call the midwife?" more than twice, the answer is Yes. Call the midwife.
Jerry called and I blew my nose. After some back and forth with our favorite nurse Sue, she decided I should come in to the office to get checked. Irene, the mystery midwife who Jerry still hadn't met, wasn't responding to Sue's calls but Sue was sure Irene would be back by the time we got there. This didn't help Jerry's belief that Irene is a figment of our imaginations.
We got to the office, no Irene. Sue got in touch with her by phone and apparently she was doing something unimportant and simple like assisting a doctor in the operating room. Jerry gave me a look that said "likely story." Irene told Sue to hook me up so off we went into the conference/group/multipurpose room where I hopped up on the bed and they strapped a nifty baby monitoring system to my belly. Baby's heart rate jumped right out and was beating as strong as ever (about 155 bpm which is right where we usually are). There were also no signs of contractions. All good things.
Sue brought me a water, Jerry settled into a chair near by, and about 20 minutes later... Irene appeared!! She checked the print out, said things looked good. And told me to get comfy because I would be there for about 4 hours. Excuse me? That's cute. No. She was serious. A fall on your side = 4 hours of monitoring. A fall on your tummy = 24 hours. Oh. Ok. No one told us that. Because apparently they know me already and know that if they tell mommies that a fall = 4 hours of laying around in the middle of the day, none of us would ever come in and get checked. Well played, tricky bunch of health professionals watching out for my baby's best interest!
So to bring a lengthy story to a somewhat abrupt ending - everything checked out just fine. Jerry went out and brought us lunch and news papers (we declined an afternoon of watching movies since the only movies they have are birthing movies). I laid real still and obsessively watched either the heart rate do its thing or the sensors strapped to my belly do a funny dance as Baby kicked them. Irene said everything looked great, no signs of any distress or anything to worry about. I just need to keep an eye on Baby's movement to make sure it's remaining in a similar pattern as before. Sue, the awesome nurse, checked on us frequently... told Jerry a few stories when they let me up to pee 1/2 way through... and kept us laughing. And I got to spend 4 hours on a random Wednesday doing nothing at all. I asked Sue if it would be inappropriate to show up this time next week for another 4 hours of doing nothing. And as a bonus, Jerry got to meet mystery midwife Irene!
Now, I'm pretty darn sore but very grateful that everything checked out fine. Baby and I are made of some tough stuff but I would really like to not ever do that again. And I'm fairly sure Jerry's nerves are going to need at least a month to recover - I'll let him write a post about what our morning of that same exact day was like. You really can't make this stuff up. :-)
And now... because that was a really long read... you get a picture with a bonus look at our pretty new wall!
Pretty new wall? I want a picture of YOU! Yay! Fun to see you, Brit.
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