Two posts in one day? Yep. Figured I'd keep everyone in the loop, even though after everything is said and done, there isn't much going on in the loop.
At 4:00pm today I was talking to a co-worker. When she walked away I noticed I had a blind spot in my vision as if someone had just taken my picture. I racked my brain trying to think if I was staring at any lights while talking to my co-worker. Did she have something on that was ultra-bright? Nope. As I sat there, the "floater" got bigger. I had read somewhere that having floaters in your vision was a bad sign in pregnancy. However, when I went to Google it, I realized I couldn't see well enough to type or read! My vision was distorted so that when I looked at a 7-digit phone number, I couldn't see the first 3 numbers. This spot continued for 15 minutes, and then I decided to call my doctor's office and leave a message for a nurse.
While I waited for my call back, I called my mom. My "floater" moved over enough that I could now see a bit so I started searching online and found vision issues could be a sign of pre-eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia is a condition that can occur late in pregnancy and can result in Eclampsia if untreated. Eclampsia is defined as convulsions during pregnancy. Eclampsia is VERY serious, but in most cases doctors can treat the pre-eclampsia and danger to mom and baby can be avoided. So, after reading all of this, my mother arranged to have my blood pressure taken by one of the nurses at work (she used to work in the same office). My blood pressure was not high, but it was higher than it has been for me in any of my previous appointments.
I decided to call the doctor's office back to let them know my blood pressure in case it made a difference in their plan for me. As I was calling, they were calling me back. I told them the info and they told me they wanted me to go to OB triage at the hospital to get checked out. I was only having one symptom, but they just wanted to make sure everything else was ok.
So, I headed over to Sparrow. I was nervous, partially because you just are when you don't know what's going on, but also I was still a little tired from the previous night (see Long Night #1 blog). By the time I got to the hospital, the floater seemed to have disappeared, but I still needed to be checkd out. I waited until they had a room and went in. My mom showed up shortly afterwards. Tim was picking up Kaitlyn and arrived after that. Finally, after everyone was hanging out with me in the room, a nurse came in and hooked me up to 2 monitors - one for the baby's heartbeat and one for contractions. They checked out my blood pressure, which was good (lower than at work) and there was no protein in my urine (GOOD). The doctor had a chat with me about what happened with my vision and went to review more of my information. Eventually she came back saying that they wanted to do an ultrasound because even though the baby's heartbeat looked good, they had seen one tiny blip that made them want to double check the fluid level.
The ultrasound definitely focused on "deep pockets" of fluid but we did get to see some of the baby. The doctor found PLENTY of fluid and said the baby was looking wonderful. They also commented that I had had one contraction while I was hooked up, which is expected this late in pregnancy.
With all that they reviewed, they found that the baby and I looked good. The floater incident appeared to be "normal". They said I should come back in if it happens again, just to be safe. And we happily got out of there at 7:45pm!
After arriving, I must admit I was freaked out and did NOT want to have the baby just then. I'm not sure if I just didn't want to have it as a result of something bad, or if I just wasn't ready. Either way, I was SO relieved to go home pregnant. WHO KNEW??? A piece of me is now actually hoping to be induced. At least when that happens you walk in happy and leave happy! Walking in with pain must be tough. And to have to wait for who knows how long in triage must be even worse!
So, wish me luck. Apparenlty, I'm much more scared of "real" labor than I thought! I wonder if its too late to set up a "home birth"... ;)
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