27 WEEKS PREGNANT

It's been a ROUGH week.
To start things off the abdominal pain with walking/standing has continued. I thought that would be the worst part of this week, but I was wrong. So wrong.
Monday night I didn't have any baby movement. Which was uncommon, but not totally alarming. I fell asleep quickly and didn't think anything about it until the afternoon when I realized I still had felt any movement or kicks. I put a call in to my Doctor and her nurse calls me back and says to drink something caffeinated and eat something sugary and if after 30 minutes I still hadn't felt any movement, then I would need to go check in at the hospital. 30 awful...intense...prayerful minutes later, I still hadn't felt movement. I got in my car, went to my husbands work and we headed to the hospital. We had a quiet, tearful, stressful drive to the hospital. I got checked in and they got me hooked up to a monitor and we heard the heartbeat. I don't think there has ever been a sweeter sound. The nurse immediately heard the baby hiccuping and moving around, yet I still didn't feel anything. They gave me some apple juice to drink and after about 45 minutes, I finally felt her move. They decided to keep me a little bit longer, to get ahold of my Doctor before releasing me. Shortly thereafter, I mentioned to my husband that the heartbeat sounded weird. Not 15 seconds later and the nurse was in adjusting the monitor. She tried for a few seconds, then picked up her cell phone and just said, 'can you come help me'. A few seconds later, 3 nurses and the on-call doctor come rushing in and they are prepping me for an IV and there is "doctor speak" being thrown around the room. I start to panic. The nurse finally explains that they are having trouble finding a heartbeat. Seconds later she finds it, but they go ahead and put in the IV and want to monitor me for 2 hours to see if it happens again. After three and a half hours, they decide that they want to keep me over night for monitoring.

It was THE worst night of my life. It was uncomfortable, unrestful, and stressful. It was hard to sleep because anytime I moved the monitor would shift and a nurse would be in to fix it. I was also just waiting for the heartbeat to change and them to come rushing in again. Thankfully, by 7 the next morning they informed us that there had been no further issues with baby's heartbeat and I would be released. They just told me I have an extremely ornery baby. There really wasn't an explanation for what happened, but just a lot of it could be this or it could be that. It was comforting that in the 15 hours I was at the hospital, it only happened once.

On Thursday I followed up with my Doctor and she said because of the issue at the hospital, it was now time to begin the twice weekly appointments. I knew from the beginning that this would happen, but it was a bit sooner than I had hoped. So every Monday, I get to go in for 20 minutes of heart monitoring and every Thursday I go in for a sonogram.

I have now started using a kick counting app to make sure that things stay within the normal range.

I'm truly hoping for a less stressful, less intense 28th week!

-Julie