Trip to Women's Hospital

Dear Munchkin,
During the course of this week, I begun feeling more and more crummy. I finally decided that I needed to see the doctor because I was pretty sure that the infection was back. I was starting to feel all of the same symptoms as last time. I knew I didn't want to head into a long weekend feeling badly and without my doctor's office being open. When I arrived at the doctor, I had to see the Nurse Practitioner since the appointment was made on such short notice. While the NP is a very nice woman, she wasn't really sure what to do with me. And I am sure she doesn't have very many pregnant patients, since she exclaimed "Oh, I didn't know you were pregnant!" when she came into the examine room. I had to explain to her (and the nurses) several times the situation from a month ago and how I came to be diagnosed with the Strep B infection. After she did an internal exam and swab test, she felt like I needed to be put on the monitor to rule out any chance of preterm labor. This monitor is the NST machine that I will be hooking up to twice a week from now on. At this point, it was after 5:30 PM and my blood sugar had dropped rapidly. I didn't have an afternoon snack because I was rushing at work, stressing out about all this going on, and simply forgot. In addition, at 2 PM my blood sugar reading was only 79 and should never be lower than 60. I finally asked them for a piece of hard candy so I wouldn't fall over and I knew that I had to eat some dinner ASAP. I stayed on the monitor for about 20 minutes and because you were moving around so much, they were unable to get a good read on your heart rate, but they were able to see my contractions. The NP told me that they were pretty certain the contractions were the results of infection, but wanted to run it by the on-call doctor before I left. The on-call doctor decided that since they couldn't get a good "tracing" on the monitor, she wasn't comfortable sending me home without ruling out preterm labor. So it was off to Women's Hospital for further testing. Before I left, I nearly had a breakdown complete with shaking and sweating. I knew I needed to eat...like now. The NP called Women's to tell them I was on my way. Your Daddy picked up some food and meet me in the maternity admissions area. They got me all set up on a new monitor and let me have some dinner while being on the monitor. Boy, that was a relief. I really thought they were going to have a pregnant lady on the floor, but at least I would have been in the hospital! Anyway, they kept me on the machine for about 45 minutes and then took us for another ultrasound. You looked great and had a perfect ultrasound score. After that, they sent us back to the room for more monitoring and questioning. My blood pressure was a little high (duh), so they checked it a couple times. Finally, they talked to the on-call doctor, who released me to go home. Of course, on the way home we had to stop by the pharmacy to pick up my antibiotics. Which is all I really needed to begin with! I totally understand that the doctor needs to everything to protect us and I am not upset about it, but it ended up being a really long night for a simple problem. The whole process took about 5 hours from start to finish. When we got home, I took my medicine and crashed. I am feeling better today and will have a nice long weekend to take it easy. Rest assured that we have had lots of testing done to let us know that you are one healthy and very active baby!
I love you,
Mom