On Monday, November 3rd I had an uneventful appointment with my midwife. I did my 1 hour glucose test. The baby was fine and I went home. I went to work as usual and had a great day. On Tuesday, November 4th I started having lower abdominal pain. I didn't know what it was, but it wasn't constant, and I just assumed it was Braxton Hicks. I continued to have these pains until Friday, November 7th they got to be very persistant and painful. I called the midwife who told me to come in and check for a UTI. I'm prone to UTIs, but this didn't feel like the same pain. She checked the baby's heartbeat, and everything was fine. She sent me home, and told me to buy a belly band. I thought that was rather a dumb suggestion since I had gained all of 5 lbs and had no "baby belly" so to speak of. I called my mom and told her what was going on. She told me to just put myself on bedrest that weekend and see if I felt better. After the weekend I decided bedrest definitely wasn't for me. I went to the grocery store on Sunday for two hours, but by the time I got home I was in so much pain that I just took a shower and went to bed. On Monday, November 10th I went to work as usual only I was having the same pain when I stood or walked which is a problem when you're babysitting a 19 month old. I left at the end of the day, and after talking to the neighbor of the friend I work for I decided to call my midwife again. I told her the pain was back, but more frequent and she told me to go to the ER.

At the ER I was sent to L&D since I was over 20 weeks (I was 27 to be exact). They had me give them a urine sample. When I gave the urine sample and wiped I noticed that my mucus plug had come out. I informed the doctor when she came in my room, and she told me she was going to check for dilation. Let me tell you that hurt more than the cramping that brought me to the hospital. She popped up and stated that I was 100% effaced and 2-3 cm dilated, so I wasn't going home. I was sad becaus I had planned a homebirth, but I decided to make the best of it, and smile anyway. My husband was amazing during my entire bedrest. There was some discrepencies with my ultrasounds so they sent an internal fetal medical doctor to review my ultrasounds and change my due date. His calculations made me 26 weeks and 6 days with a due date of 2/10/15 instead of 2/9/15 as we had previously thought. They had the NICU doctor come in and talk to me and he gave me all the worst case scenarios of what I could expect. My best friend had preemies, and they had a lot of issues being born at 25 weeks 4 days so I knew to expect some complications.

Bedrest was mostly uneventful. They had me in a head down/leg up position (Trendelenburg) for about 3 days. By the fourth day they let me get up to use the bathroom and take a 5 minute shower, then return to bed rest. By the fifth day my cramping had returned. I called the nurse who hooked me up to the monitor. After an hour she stated I had uterine irritability, but no contractions. I argued that I still had pain, but she told me to go to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom to pee, but when I wiped there was a lot of blood. I got back in bed, and called the nurse again. She called the doctor. The doctors rotate shifts, and it just so happened that the doctor who admitted me was on for the day. She checked me again only this time there was no pain. She informed me that I was fully dilated and that my bag of waters was sitting in my vaginal canal, and I would need an emergency c-section since the baby was still transverse, and her head was wedged by my hip. I tried really hard not to cry. NOTHING was going the way I had imagined in my head. They wheeled me back to the OR and gave me a rather painful epidural. They pulled her out feet first at 4:15 pm on Saturday, November 15. She was perfect, and has been in the NICU since. She is doing fabulously well, and I hope to have her home sometime in January.  I have a thread where I update her progress. Feel free to check it out: http://community.babycenter.com/post/a53461819/she_made_her_entrance._trigger?cpg=43