#1...

I'm sure this won't be the first time, but it was a shame it had to happen at only 18 weeks 3 days.

I ended up at the Emergency Room on Monday night about 8 PM. After I got home from work my round ligament pain (which has been REALLY bad) was worse than usual. After dinner I decided to lie down for a while.

After laying down for a few minutes the same round ligament pain was occuring, but I wasn't moving - which made me think it wasn't round ligament pain. I haven't felt the baby move much because I have an anterior placenta so even movements confuse me - I didn't get many with my first pregnancy because of the same reason so even, what could be, normal movements confuse me. So I decided to call my doctors office. The OB on call quickly called me back and I was very frank about my situation telling her I didn't think it was something serious and wanted to know what I should do.

She told me to play it safe and come in to the ER to get checked out.

I know, at 18 weeks there is nothing they can or will do and that scares me. We were all sitting in Arianna's room when I took the call and after I hung up the phone I just started bawling - something I haven't done in a long time. Arianna was so confused - she kept yelling 'mama! mama!' and trying to get close to me. I couldn't help but look at her and think of how lucky we are to have her - I picked her up and gave her a big hug when she said 'all done crying?'... and I laughed and said 'yes, all done crying'. She's so precious.

I then tried to call my parents - I wanted someone to come by and stay with her while we left. It was close to her bed time so it would be easy for someone to stay at the house - I was pretty confident we wouldn't be at the ER long. Well... no answer at my parents house, no answer on moms cell, no answer on dads cell, no answer on my brothers cell - but his girlfriend answered so I asked her if she could come down to the house and watch her while I went to the hospital. She was a wreck, even more so than me I think! She ended up calling the VFW post where my brother tends bar and my dad was with him and told them of the situation - my dad was more than just a little rude with her and I felt bad, she was only trying to help.

So a little after 7:30 my parents showed up at my house and took Arianna home with them and Shawn and I drove down to Providence to the ER.

We were very lucky there were only two other parties waiting - both women were obviously very full term and then there was me, who just looks fat rather than pregnant. I got in very quickly and the on call doctor and my nurse were very nice. She gave me a quick exam and said my cerclage looked wonderful and I was still long and closed (music to my ears!) and then we struggled to find bean baby on the doppler - we found him/her after a few tense minutes. I must have a tilted uterus - I didn't know it would STILL be so hard to pick him/her up at this stage but the nurse wasn't surprised.

Then they did a test to see if I had a urinary tract infection (which was negative) and sent us home. I was hoping the UA came back showing an infection so that it was easily explained but instead I got - everything is normal, its just round ligament pain, get a maternity belt.

I don't feel bad about going in but I have found I'm much more anxious now. I stayed home from work on Tuesday and felt really good so I'm hoping that my ultrasound on the 21st shows that my cervix is still behaving (fingers crossed)!