Got my first "experience" in Labor and Delivery

So, I've been working on hydrating myself much more as well as eating more. Saturday, we went to the water park that just opened and had an absolute GREAT time there for a bit over an hour or so. The kids loved going up the bridges, down the slides, and E just LOVED standing in the pool where this huge bucket of water gets dropped every 5 minutes. Towards the end of the time there, I saw on the steps in the pool and just soaked in the cool water while watching everyone...I was in heaven (I love pools!).

After the water park, we went out to lunch. On the drive there, I felt a HUGE kick from the baby. Biggest kick yet. I felt like my hold body moved with it! Shortly after that, I had another heat spell (clammy, hot, having to sit down, nauseous, back pain, feeling horrible, etc.). After we got home, I slept for 2 hours, and the weird thing was that I wasn't even tired, so I thought! Later that night, I had another heat spell which fortunately wasn't as bad because I was lying in our bed with the fan turned right on to me (even with the AC set at 72 degrees!).

Fast forward to yesterday. We had a great day. I worked extra hard staying hydrated. Even brought a 32-ounce water to a birthday party that A went to and drink almost all of it while I was there. No heat spells at all yesterday.

For some reason right before dinner, I was lying on the couch and I realized that I hadn't felt the baby move since that big kick yesterday around lunch time. I keep thinking back to being told the start monitoring baby kicks, and I couldn't remember any kicks that day or the night previously (which is unusual because she LOVES the nighttime to kick around).

I called the doctor's office just to touch base. I didn't want to be a worry wart, so if he said "Well, you are still early at 28-1/2 weeks, hang in there", I would be fine. However, the doctor on call told me to just come into Labor and Delivery just to make sure. So, we packed up the kids and went to the hospital.

Having the kids with us at the beginning was good because we couldn't get visibly nervous because we didn't want the kids to freak out. We just said we wanted to go by and check to make sure the baby was okay.

So, I got hooked up to the fetal monitors and they did a non-stress test on me for about 20 minutes. Took my initial blood pressure, which was really high at 158/90 (which is not like me since I haven't had anything over 118/70 this pregnancy). At first it took about 3 minutes to find the heartbeat, which seemed like forever at the time because I had thought the worst and first. But then she found it. The baby started moving around under the monitor strip (it was very snug), and we could see her little heartbeat just moving along there.

The nurse said things were looking really good, but she wanted to show the doctor the strip. About 10 minutes later, she came back with a sandwich and a huge jug of ice water. Apparently, the doctor didn't think the baby's heartbeat wasn't variable enough, so he wanted me to eat the sandwich and drink the water. Which I did, which seemed to take forever because I just was NOT in the mood to eat.

After I finally ate, we redid the non-stress test, and sure enough, the baby liked the food and was moving around like crazy. The heart beat definitely became more variable (not in a straight line like it was), and she was starting to kick her little heart out. What a huge relief!

So I got my first experience with where I'm going to be having this adorable little girl. I have to say, I was impressed with how quickly they took me in and how nice the two nurses were the were attending to me. Very, very pleasant...even with my two rowdy kids in the room with us!

11+ weeks to go!