Kidney Stones? Gotta be Kidding!

Well, this has been a crazy week. Some of you know the details, so bear with me as I let everyone else on the chaos of this week.

Wednesday morning I started feeling a lot of pressure and was sure that he had dropped. I was going to the bathroom every ten minutes and feeling a lot of back pain. I was also having a lot of braxton-hicks contractions. (these are the tightening of the uterus practicing for the contractions of real labor) The feeling was getting pretty intense by mid-day and I was having to take a couple of breaks to go lay down and try to relax. I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to be able to take this kind of feeling for another 5 weeks. As the day progressed I decided i should call the doctor just to make sure everything was ok. She suggested that i go home and lay down and try to relax. So, i left a little early from the office and did as she suggested. Once I was home the relaxing was helping a little. Robby went on to church while i continued to rest. When he returned I was not feeling much better and in fact a more intense pain was hitting my right side. I tried every relaxation technique we had been taught and different positions but nothing helped. I was also doing kick-counts for the baby and wasn't getting very many, so this had me concerned. By around 11:00 I called my mid-wife to tell her what was going on and she suggested we go to the hospital and check into triage for them to make sure everything was going ok.

Robby and I got in the car and made our way to the hospital. Once hooked up to the monitors, they found that i was having contractions 3-minutes apart and seemed to intensify the pain on my right side. The baby was doing fine and had a regular heart beat. I was also not progressing and still had a closed cervix. They check for a bladder infection and I was clear of that, so they gave me three shots in the arm to stop the pre-term labor. This seemed to stop even the pain in my side. Robby and I left feeling we had done the right thing. We got home around 2:30a and went to sleep. Around 5:00a (when the shots would have worn off and been out of my system) I woke up with the pain in my side returning. I thought that i was just not relaxing and tried to lie still and breath deep. This wasn't helping and I soon found myself running to the bathroom throwing up my dinner from that night. The pains were intensifying and we were back to where we started. Robby and I were distraught and gathered our stuff to head back to the hospital. We returned around 6:30a with a very confused nurse wondering why we had returned. This time i was not having any contractions but the intense pain in my side was there. After 5-6 hours of excrutiating non-stop pain, an IV for fluids, blood work and a kidney ultrasound, they decided that i had kidney stones! Yes, the next best thing to labor pains. Only they are NON-STOP! They gave me some pain medication and monitored the baby to make sure he would do ok and then sent me home with pain pills to last me through the passing of the stone. The next 24-hours were spent taking a LONG warm shower, drinking lots of water, sleeping and taking a pain pill every four hours as the intense pain would come on again. This laster through early friday morning. As of 6:30a friday, the pain has not returned and we are assuming I have passed the stone, though we had no evidence of one. Hopefully all is well and we will have no more issues like this for the rest of the pregnancy. I suppose God was preparing us for labor. Robby and I had a lot of practice during those hours of how to deal with labor and we are confidant that we can take it on again. Just a bummer that i didn't get a cute little baby out of the hours of pain I had this time! LOL It just wasn't time yet.

Alright, well, enough drama! Attached are the picture i promised from the baby shower and our baby's update below. I will have an appointment on Monday with our doctor and to get my Strep B test done. Then we will be on a weekly basis! HE IS REALLY ALMOST HERE!! ENJOY!

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Baby Update:
Your baby's getting big. He weighs a tad over 5 pounds (think bag of sugar) and is just over 18 inches long from head to heel, and it's getting so snug in your womb that your baby isn't really floating anymore. But tighter quarters don't mean less-frequent movement — your baby should still be kicking at the same rate he always has. Your baby's kidneys are fully developed now, and his liver can process some waste products. Most of his basic physical development is now complete — the next few weeks are all about putting on weight.

Baby's Image at 35 weeks:
http://www.babycenter.com/general/1498743.html