(Super long post, the last paragraph before the post script note explains what the visit was for, but there’s a fun surprise in the thick of it)

Yesterday around 4 pm after my fiancé got home from work, I was having some round ligament pain. I was also having a tiny bit of back pain, but thought nothing of it.

Later in the day, I drove about half an hour to a community pool where I had my first day teaching a couple of ladies how to swim. That was all fine, the lesson was an hour long, but when I got out of the water, the right side of my back in the middle hurt a lot more. I texted my fiancé before driving back home that my right side (back) really hurt.

After I got back home my fiancé was replacing the kitchen faucet, and normally I’d help out with that type of thing, but I was in a lot of pain, so my focus was on trying to get rid of it. I tried lying on the couch on my stomach, on my back, on my side...I tried hanging upside down on the Teeter Han-Ups contraption his mother has in the living room, none of that helped at all. So I decided to tell my fiancé that I was sorry I couldn’t be company while he worked but I needed to try to take a bath and relax.

So I took a hot/warm bath, and that did absolutely nothing to help. So I figured maybe hot water while standing would help. It didn’t, so I gave up trying to relax what I thought was muscle pain, and I turned it into a cold shower trying to dull the pain at the very least. Nothing. I cried in the shower, figuring that I had muscle pain or regular pregnancy pain and I thought to myself “if I can’t get through this, how on earth will I get through the rest of this pregnancy, let alone labor?!?” I texted my friend who is almost a certified yoga instructor and asked if she had any moves for back pain and/or round ligament pain.

She suggested a few moves, but I was in so much pain I decided to just go lie down on my bed and see if I could fall asleep. That turned into my writhing in pain, crying, constantly moving. I’ve never cried out in pain like I did, I figured it was hormones making my pain tolerance lower or something and I figured I just needed to tough it out.

My fiancé went to the store because he needed a part for the kitchen faucet and he picked me up some Tylenol while he was out. I ended up calling him and asking when he would be back after about 20 min because it got worse. His mom and her cousin and two kids (boys; 7 & 9) were at Disney land, so I figured I’d go down stairs and wait on the couch to be closer to the drugs when they arrived. They all got back and the boys walked in so I stopped writhing so as to not alarm them. After I took the Tylenol I went back up to my room and decided to wait for the drugs to kick in while my fiancé agent to finish the faucet project.

I didn’t last long before asking him to come upstairs to me, and I asked how long it said for the drugs to kick in. He came up to find me writhing in pain and moaning, and he said it says 30 min. We’ll be grabbed my phone and started looking up what it could be, made sure I wasn’t bleeding/spotting, and then kept looking stuff up. He said if it didn’t go away by the 30 min, he was taking me to the ER. He didn’t wait that long, said everything he was finding was short term pain that should go away, but I’d been in pain for hours already, so we went.

My blood pressure, systolic was all I recognized through the pain, which was normally a max of 108 for me, was at 131.

They took urine and blood samples, and then took me back for an ultrasound to make sure the baby was doing ok. On the wheel chair ride down the very long hall, I felt the baby move a lot, very obviously, which I hadn’t ever felt before. They did a full anatomy scan, the tech was amazing, and my last ultrasound was at 7 weeks so the baby looked like an oval. But we got to see our little baby, and the tech even found out the gender for us. We found out we’re having a baby girl! I was hoping for a boy, but my fiancé has been saying he wanted a girl this whole time, I don’t think I’ve seen him so happy before, but seeing that our baby was happy, moving around like crazy, as the sweetest little girl was beyond amazing.

They tried to see my appendix, but they couldn’t because the baby was in the way, but after pushing on my abdomen they decided appendicitis was unlikely.

After waiting in between all of those things for large chunks of time, and writhing in pain at random intervals and almost puking at one point, the doctor said they found a bit of blood in my urine, but my white blood count wasn’t too high, so it wasn’t likely a kidney infection, so his best guess was kidney stones. They had me in a room at that point and the ultrasound tech wheeled the machine into my room and he checked out my kidneys and bladder.

He found a kidney stone in my right kidney, and said because I was in pain, and my kidney was swollen, that meant there was another that I must be in the process of passing. The doctor and every other person in the room took the liberty of telling me because I’m pregnant they are very limited in what they could prescribe me for pain, and also that passing kidney stones is one of the most painful things ever, only second to child birth. So in this pregnancy journey, I’m going to experience the two most painful processes known to human kind. And I spent from midnight until 5:10am in the emergency room finding that out, well after the Tylenol wore off. I guess I didn’t need to feel it was something to just toughen up about, because it is considered to be such a painful event for anyone.

P.S. Sorry for the long post, if you actually read through it all, thank you!