Labor: Take 1.

Good Morning!

I thought I'd take a minute and update you on what happened. If you are my Facebook friend, this is all old news so feel free to skip over the following...or not!

My story begins like so: Monday night I woke up from a nap with terrible upper back pain. It felt like there was something blocking me from the inside. Almost like when you dry swallow a pill and it just hurts going down, you know? This had happened before, about two weeks prior and again I was woken up from my sleep with this pain that I couldn't get to go away. That time it had gotten so bad I threw up everywhere. Embarrassing, I know, but it is what it is. I got some great "mommy, I don't feel good...*puke*" experience. After the projectile episode was done, I felt fine and was able to go back to sleep.

But moving on to what happened this time...I decided that if it worked once, maybe letting everything go was the solution again. I was wrong. I hurt and it wasn't going away no matter how I sat and for sure not if I laid down. I called the hospital and the on-call doctor told me to take some Tylenol and use a heat pad for 40 minutes and then call back if the pain didn't at least start to go away. John was the sweetest and got me everything I needed before he went to work but after he was gone, I was on my own. The pain was still there, but it wasn't as bad so I decided to sleep in my recliner. At about 12:30, the pain was back and in full force but moving towards my lungs and upper abdomen making it really hard to breathe. I called the doctor back and he said to come in.

Luckily, my brother Jarom was in town and was kind enough to drive me to the hospital. When we got there, they took some tests and propped me up to make me comfortable. The pain started moving down my right side and then it was gone. We waited for about 3 hours until the tests came back and they showed that my pancreas had an unusual amount of enzymes, over 3,000. Normal is between 10 and 140. This was pretty worrisome and they thought, due to my history with cancer and since a couple members of my family have died from pancreatic cancer, that I had cancer again. So, I called John and had him come from work and stay with me since Jarom had more than fulfilled his brotherly duty...he's the best :).

When John got there, they took me for x-rays. They didn't see anything particularly wrong with my pancreas but they did see a lot of gallstones in my gallbladder. There wasn't one blocking my pancreas but just to be safe, they wanted to get Olivia (my baby) out of her comfy spot in my uterus  as soon as possible. 

Me during a very long labor.

I was scared and so excited at the same time! I was going to see my baby girl early! They started getting me prepped and I'll spare you all the gory details, but I will tell you how awesome it was to have my husband John, my mom and my dad there with me through this. Also, my two incredible friends Ally and Holly cleaned my house, brought my makeup and even washed some of Olivia's clothes so we would have the cutest outfits to put her into! I had the best support team. 
I was on the pit for 20'ish hours and had contractions but nothing else. This little stubborn thing just didn't want to come join the rest of us!

 They took more blood tests and my enzyme count was back to normal after awhile and they determined that it wasn't cancer after all but just gallstones. My gallbladder has to come out after I deliver but since neither she nor I are in any immediate danger, they sent me home to wait until she is ready to come out. I was incredibly sad about this...mostly hormones I assume, but still. I had been so looking forward to meeting this little miracle and now I'd have to wait again. Even so, I'm very glad everything is ok and I can wait.