Trips to the Hospital
I know it has been a while but as anyone who has read Daniel's blog will know there has been a bit happening! Some of which I could really have done without :-(
I'll start with the good trip to the hospital. On Tuesday 12th April Daniel and I went to Royal Women's Hospital Brisbane (RWHB) to have our first ultrasound. We were both pretty excited but mostly I was trying not to pee! Let me explain that... before you have a tranlucency scan in the hour preceding the scan you have to drink 600ml water and not pee. It was quite uncomfortable by the time I got to lay down on the hospital bed and the person doing the scan, Ruth, started putting pressure on my bladder. However, it was all forgotten and when I saw and heard a tiny heartbeat for the first time. (My pelvic-floor muscles must still be pretty good.) Daniel was standing beside me holding my hand as we watched the screen on the wall in front of us and a few tears leaked out of my eyes as Ruth pointed out the various parts of our baby. This was a huge reality check. I was watching that screen and it was probably the first time that I felt it was actually real! A baby was growing inside me!
Although the scans pictured here are pretty clear it was even clearer on the screen at the time. My personal favourite is the last one as it looks like s/he is waving to us. One of the first comments Ruth made was that there was only one baby - good to know. After having a good look around and taking lots of pics Ruth was trying to get a particular angle to check the nuchal fold in the back of Baby's neck. Baby was having none of this. Although it was too early to tell the sex from this scan Daniel and I think it may be a boy as it was very lazy and uncooperative. As Ruth poked quite hard and jiggled the scanner thingy around on my tummy to try and get Baby to move it stayed completely placid and unaware we were asking anything of it. Finally Ruth asked me to go and pee (hooray!) to see if that made any difference. It did. With a bit more prodding and jiggling Baby posed for the camera and they got the shots they were after. The results show that we have 1:1510 chance of having a Downs syndrome baby. Pretty good odds I reckon (and so does the hospital).
After dropping Daniel off a work I had to drive up to Maroochydore to do their stocktake and couldn't wait any longer to call Mum and tell her all about it. The whole thing was organised in such a rush that I didn't even know I was having a scan until the day before, so nobody else had been told either. So when Mum got a phone call from me mid-morning on a weekday I'm sure her first instinct was to have a slight panic attack about what could be wrong. Luckily it was all good news and we both shed a little tear I think.
Little did Mum know she could have saved that instinct for a couple for days later. On the Wednesday night I had a bit of pain in my left side which sort of felt like a bad stitch. I didn't think much of it and thought it may have been constipation, although I haven't been having any trouble so far with that (knock on wood). Maybe it was instinct or maybe just because of the pain being on my side, but I really didn't think it was anything wrong with the baby. I went to work on the Thursday and it was really starting to hurt quite a lot more. By about 9.30am I could hardly move and decided I might actually have to go see a doctor about it. I made an appointment with my GP for 11am and told the girls at work I had to go home. I drove home (I really don't know how) and I was really struggling by the time I got there. I took off my work clothes, put on my nightie and got into bed. By this time the pain was really bad and I was writhing around on the bed in pain. I rang the surgery again and told them about the pain and they said to come straight over and they may try to get me in quicker. Thankfully my GP is only a 3 min drive down the road and when I got there I was ushered to a room down the back with a bed to lie on. Still in tremendous pain I then realised I was going to throw up. I was really going well. As I was throwing up into this plastic bag, on the other side of the curtain a baby was getting his needles! I felt so sorry for the mother. Not only did she have to hold her baby as he got jabbed and screamed his head off, she had to put up with Miss Sicky here throwing up and groaning in pain right next to her. Surely not a pleasant experience.
When I finally got in to see the doctor I had stopped throwing up but was still in a lot of pain. He asked me some questions, had a prod, asked me to pee in a cup, and told me he thought it was an infection. He also told me to go next door and get a blood test and prescribed me with antibiotics for the infection he thought it probably was. He thought a hot-water-bottle might help too. The pain had died down a little by the time I was having the blood test or maybe it was just because I was distracted. When I got home I went straight back to bed (with my hottie) but the pain came back. I think I managed to doze a little but by about 1.30 or 2pm I had to call Daniel and ask him to come home. After only a short time home Daniel realised how much pain I was in and rang the surgery again. They told him to take me to hospital. So he did!
I think we got there about 4.45pm. Luckily when we had been at RWHB a couple of days eariler we had taken notice of where the emergency room was so Daniel dropped me off there and went to park the car. He was back with me before I had managed to see anyone. As soon as I gave my symptoms to the guy behind the desk they ushered me straight through to the curtained area and got Daniel to give all my details. Apparently under the pressure Daniel had trouble remembering my date of birth, poor soul. I had to wait about half hour I guess before a doctor came to see me and then they took my blood pressure and put in a drip to give me some fluids as my blood pressure was quite low. I asked if Daniel could be with me and the doctor went to get him. I'm sure this time Daniel had to wait by himself was quite stressful as he had no idea what was going on. However, it wasn't much better as he sat next to me not being able to help as the pain got worse. Eventually they came to the conclusion that it was probably a cyst on my ovary giving me grief and they wanted me to have another ultrasound to confirm it. As my pain was so bad they decided to give me morphine. I really didn't like that feeling as it took effect and I don't remember it making that much difference. Originally they were going to make me come back the next day for an ultrasound and confirm it all then but as I was in so much pain they managed to get the go-ahead straight away. We had to wait a couple of hours after the ultrasound for the radiographer to confirm it was what the doctor thought it was and during that time my pain subsided quite a lot. Finally, around 11pm they came to tell me it was the cyst causing the pain and all they could do was advise me to go home and take a couple of panadol for the pain if it got any worse again. Hopefully, however, it should not get any worse from then on.
And it hasn't. I took the next day off work too and took it easy and by the time of the wedding the day after I really couldn't feel it much at all.
Well this must be the longest blog in history. Sorry to bore you all but it will be good for me to look back at later I'm sure. Until next time...
