Practice Run

What did we do this weekend?

As always, that is the easiest question to spin into a blog topic. Had the weekend gone as planned, there wouldn’t have been a lot to say, other than that our friends from church had a nice baby shower for Heather, and that we don’t really have anything else on the calendar until the baby gets here.

As it happened, Heather wasn’t feeling great Saturday morning, but figured she could power through a little discomfort if she just laid down for a few minutes. An hour later, she threw up, and we thought maybe that was going to be the turning point to her feeling better, so she composed herself and headed to the shower.

When she got home several hours later, I learned that she had thrown up three or four more times, and was feeling much worse. Given that every day of pregnancy is uncharted for us, and she didn’t seem to be getting better, I contacted our doctor. Her advice was to take Heather in to the hospital “just so they can check on her”

We grabbed a few things and headed out the door. Once at the hospital I don’t actually know how much time they spent thinking about her symptoms before deciding to send her to the maternity area as I was parking the car. On the bright side, Heathers mom had been a guest at the shower, and was able to accompany us to the hospital, so I didn’t have to abandon Heather while finding a place to legally leave our vehicle.

I made it inside just in time to accompany Heather down to the maturity area, where they immediately hooked up monitors for her vitals and the baby, followed by an IV running at what the nurse described as a quick pace. Once all of that was in place the nurse told us they had been seeing a lot of the flu that  weekend, and that Heather should be fine once she got hydrated.

Four hours and two liters of IV fluid later, the nurse recommended that we spend the night, because Heather was still dehydrated. This meant that I needed to take Heather’s mom back to our place, and pickup a few overnight items for myself and Heather.

Once back in the hospital room, I discovered a few things: First, that the cot the nurse had so helpfully provided wasn’t very comfortable, Second that I was too tired to really care, and finally, that the monitor tracking our child somehow got turned up making the dominant sound in the room her heartbeat.

It was an interesting experience. I hope it’s the last time I ever fall asleep listening to her heartbeat, but at the same time it was rather reassuring.

By morning, Heather was feeling much better, and the doctor came in to look her over and gave us the all-clear to head home. We decided it was a good practice run for our “real” trip to the hospital coming up soon, given that we now know exactly where we need to go, and what items we should have brought (or a few more anyway).

-Jordan