The Rough Days of Pregnancy

We're in the third trimester. And things are getting tough.

Last week I had a cold/hot/clammy dizzy spell and ended up having some food and lying down for about a half hour in the nurse's office at school before continuing with my day. That evening, I had seven hours of painful, semi-regular contractions. They eventually spaced out and I was seen in clinic the next day and there hadn't been any cervical changes, so we just sat down and made a plan of action for finding opportunities to drink more water and empty my bladder more frequently throughout the day.

Then yesterday I actually fainted. During 2nd block, in front of my students. I felt embarrassed and frustrated. It was likely just due to a bad combination of  low blood sugar and not drinking enough. (My co-teacher was unavailable because he was filling in for another staff member and so I wasn't taking care of myself the way I usually do.) I left work early, moved up my midwife appointment, and made another plan -- this time to eat more frequently to keep my blood sugar up.

That afternoon, Ben and I went to get some food and then headed home so I could rest. I was lying down and then got up to use the restroom. As I was sitting up, I suddenly felt a bad pain in my upper abdomen. I gasped and held my belly and stumbled to the bathroom, hoping it would improve after emptying my bladder. The pain continued and, in fact, got considerably worse. I called out to Ben in a panic. I was pushing on the top of my abdomen because it felt like my belly was about to explode outward. It felt like a combination of an uncontrollable pushing contraction, mixed with the baby lodging a foot behind my placenta. I don't know that that makes much sense, but that was the only thing that came to mind.

I asked Ben to get me a hot pack and to Google whether it was okay to use one on my belly. When he brought it back, I was standing in the doorway, swaying and holding my belly. I put it on my belly a few times, but the pain was the same or worse and so I took it off. I was moaning and pushing on my belly, which felt hard and like it was bulging. I was gasping and having a hard time breathing in and I told Ben I thought I should call the midwife on-call line. I called and the midwife on-call directed me to go to the ER immediately, and to go to the ER at the hospital where they could deliver a 28-weeker, if necessary.

By the time we got to the hospital, the pain had subsided considerably. It felt more like just gas pain or heartburn or a muscle ache. After several tests and some monitoring of the baby's heartrate, the midwife who saw me felt convinced that it was probably due to a muscle spasm of the thinned walls of my abdomen where the muscles separate -- perhaps compounded by the baby pushing on the muscles as they spasmed, and perhaps also compounded by gas or heartburn pain.

As happy as I was that the baby was okay and that nothing that I was experiencing was putting either of us at considerable risk, it was also very scary to know that there was virtually nothing I could do to prevent this kind of pain from happening again. I am hoping it was a fluke accident and I am thinking I should do more to strengthen my core as much as possible . . . but I'm also afraid of straining those muscles at all now. I stayed home from work to recuperate and even talking has been difficult.

I'm also nervous because the midwife mentioned my gallbladder several times while I was there (although at the time I had no idea what she was talking about and so I wasn't really paying attention), and today I looked up what a "gallbladder attack" is like and realized that it sounded exactly like what I experienced. But without knowing if that's what it was, I'm not sure what, if anything, I should be doing.

I think that this is my modus operandi during pregnancy. I seem to have a lot of frustrating, painful, uncomfortable stuff happen to me (like fainting, dizzy spells, braxton hicks contractions, sciatica, food poisoning, this weird muscle spasm/gallbladder attack, anemia, nosebleeds -- oh yeah, more on that in a bit...), some of it very scary, and then it turns out to be relatively normal and without much that can be done for treatment (except the anemia, for which I take iron and then suffer the side effects of that). Am I a wimp? Or just super unlucky?

Speaking of unlucky . . . the nosebleeds. Holy moly, this is a new thing with this pregnancy. I don't remember having any trouble with nosebleeds when I was pregnant with Greta. I have been having bad nosebleeds from my right nostril for a few weeks now. At least a couple a week, and sometimes more than one in a day. They got worse last week after I began having a bad cold and needing to blow my nose more frequently. No matter how gentle I am about blowing my nose (or even if I am only blowing the side that doesn't bleed), I run the risk of starting a gushing stream of blood. The morning that I fainted, I had been awakened at 3am with a nosebleed, which took a long time to stop and then didn't allow me to get back to sleep because I couldn't lie in a good position. At other times, I have had one start just as I am getting ready to go out the door -- necessitating a prolonged period of management and then clean-up, followed by a complete change of clothes.

Yeah, the third trimester is rough. I am so grateful that the baby is doing so well (the nurses and midwives commented that her heart accelerations were particularly good for a 28-week fetus), but I am really hoping I can get a few weeks of just blissful pregnant-lady normalcy before the summer heat sets in and we get to those last few weeks where I know I'll be especially uncomfortable.

C'mon, Piccola! Just one or two weeks to enjoy my pregnancy? Pretty please?