thelongwells.com

I had a little scare yesterday, and ended up in the hospital. Everything is OK now, just to spare you any suspense, but the whole day sucked, especially because Aaron was out of town camping with the Boy Scouts so I was kind of on my own. The short version of the story is that I felt kind of weird all day, just super tired and not at all like myself. I had symptoms that kept getting worse throughout the day, like dizziness, racing heart, cold sweats, nausea, really bad heartburn, stuff like that and then around 5 pm I started feeling like there was this really intense pressure on my chest and I could not breathe. So I called Kristin (Aaron's sister) and asked her to take me to the hospital. They checked the baby's heartbeat first thing and it sounded good and strong, so I was able to relax a little bit and laid down for about an hour while they ran all these blood tests and did an EKG. They said the EKG was slightly abnormal and there was something not right about my liver function. Once I started feeling like I could breathe again they let me go home. They said what probably happened is that my stomach is squished by the baby, which causes the bad heartburn, and my diaphragm is squished by the baby, which causes reduced lung volume. Then add on top of that my asthma and worst allergy season ever, and voila, I feel like crud. Plus, then I probably panicked myself into a frothy little frenzy because I didn't know what was going on and I was so worried I was going to lose the baby and Aaron wouldn't even be here and on and on, you get the point. Kind of embarrassing, but I'm glad it wasn't something more serious. They're going to do some more tests and follow up with me next week. So, I am still feeling a little yucky at times throughout the day but at least I know not to panic and they gave me an allergy prescription that is safe for the baby and I also discovered that standing in the shower and breathing the steam seems to help relieve some of the pressure on my chest too.

The best part of the story is that when Kristin brought me home from the hospital, Aaron was in the driveway. I hadn't called him because he was supposed to be hours away for at least another day and I didn't want him to just worry about it because there was nothing he could do anyway. But there he was, the group had decided they all wanted to come home early. I was so relieved, I felt like he had somehow known that I needed him and I burst into tears I was so happy. I have never been so glad to see someone who hasn't showered, shaved or brushed his teeth in a week!

Lots of exciting things are happening in the next couple weeks. We are having an ultrasound in a couple days and we will find out the baby's gender, and then we also are starting natural childbirth classes (Bradley Method), and so that should provide plenty of entertaining content. I will try to get Aaron to take my picture here in the next couple days, because the last picture on here is a mere shadow of the woman I am now :)