Fun times in Labor and Delivery...

So these have been an interesting few days. It all started Sunday with a trip to Noah's Bagels in Lafayette. The kids shared a cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese, Paul and I each had a lox sandwich. Everything seemed normal until about 11pm when Michael threw up in his crib. Yum. I cleaned up while Paul stayed up and tended to Michael. Michael finally settled down to sleep until about 5am when I went to check on him and noticed that Sarah had thrown up in her bed and neither Paul nor I had heard her. She required a full strip down, bath, and shampoo...at 5am. She went back to sleep and I went to the store to get the requisite Pedialyte, Jello, white bread, and laundry detergent. Luckily, both kids seemed fine the next day. And I chalked it up to a bit of food poisoning.

Monday went fine, although I was getting sharp pains in my stomach which seemed to go away after I ate. Tuesday morning I was fine, as were the kids. Sarah went to preschool and Michael came with me to my regular prenatal appointment with my OB. The appointment went well, baby Jakob is measuring on time and I haven't gained any weight in 3 weeks (yay!).

Fast forward to Tuesday evening. I was going downhill by the minute. Feeling very tired and not wanting to eat. I was able to eat a little baked potato but went to bed by 8pm. Around 10:30pm I woke up not feeling so fresh. I had a bit of Pepto Bismol thinking it would cure the nausea (I absolutely LOATHE throwing up). I'll spare you the details but: barf, barf, BARF. Got back to bed until 2am when the whole thing started up again with not only me but Paul started getting sick as well. Super.

Around 4am I was feeling slightly better (after all, there was absolutely NOTHING in my stomach at this point) but started noticing that the Braxton Hicks contractions that are usually painless were getting pretty painful and coming about 5 minutes apart. Hmmm...sounds suspiciously like labor, huh? I call my doctor and she says to try drinking some Sprite and relaxing and if the contractions still persist until 7am to call her back. Well, by 6:30am nothing had changed and the contractions were getting worse and closer together. Paul wasn't well enough to drive and had to stay with the kids so I called my sister-in-law to see if she could come down. She was able to but I had to drive myself to the hospital.

Can I just tell you how fun it is to drive yourself to the hospital while having contractions? And how much traffic is on the road at 6:30 in the morning? There was some crazy in a truck that nearly flattened me and kept weaving in and out of traffic. I said a prayer to my guardian angel that I would just make it to the hospital alive! I finally got to the hospital (Alta Bates in Berkeley) and had to park on the roof of the parking structure. Get up to the 3rd floor Labor and Delivery and explain my situation and they take me to triage. I leave a urine sample and they hook me up to a contraction monitor and one to monitor the baby's heartbeat. Jakob's heart was choo-chooing away but I have about 3 contractions in a short amount of time. The nurse came in the room and said that after testing my urine that I was "severely dehydrated" and it was a good thing that I came in. She paged my doctor who ordered a liter of fluid by IV. They also ordered a FFN test which would say if I was in danger of going into labor soon (I'm 31 weeks and due at the end of March so we want Jakob to stay put for a while longer!). Fortunately that came back negative and my cervix is nice and closed so no labor at this point but still contractions. The nurse took some blood before starting the IV and said that I was so dehydrated that my blood was "like syrup". Ew. I didn't look but took her word for it. Got the IV in and started the fluid. Contractions started going down but didn't disappear so my doctor ordered a shot of terbutaline which would calm my uterus and hopefully stop the contractions as well as another liter of fluid. Luckily the terbutaline worked and after the 2nd bag of fluid I was able to go home. Jakob had a fun time as well...he kept trying to kick the monitor off my tummy!

When I got home my dear sister-in-law, Diane had arrived and had her three youngest kids as well as my kids under control and was doing laundry and diaper duty. It was such a relief to have her here!

Thankfully last night was a good night all around and we are all now on the mend. And now Paul and I can say, "yes, we have survived stomach flu!"