Waiting Is Hard

Here I am, on August 30th, waiting...again.  By the time you reach this, we will have announced that we are pregnant (hopefully), and alllll of these posts will be available to the world, but for now, we are waiting in secret, and my heart is pounding because it's been a rough few weeks.  Here is a recap for you:

I am 6 weeks and 6 days pregnant today, but we found out around 4 weeks. Week 4 was actually pretty easy.  Nothing felt different, a few light cramps here and there, but almost right after week 5 hit, I began experiencing some really awful cramping.  I have a relatively high tolerance for pain, but these were put me in the ER, radiating to my back, and I can hardly walk cramps.  They happened often, and went from lasting about 10 minutes to over 45 minutes of the worst pain I have ever felt in my life.

When I went to the ER for the first time, I was by myself in Southern California for work.  It was 3am, and I was exhausted, and terrified.  By the time I got to the hospital, the pain had stopped.  They ran tests, did an ultrasound, and everything thankfully came back normal.  They said the cramping is normal during pregnancy and can sometimes get pretty bad but (as long as there is no bleeding) everything is fine. "It's just from growing and stretching." I was back at my hotel by 8:30am.

I had a follow up appointment with my OBGYN a few days later, and she mentioned that my symptoms are tough, because so early nearly everything is a sign for your period, miscarriage, or a normal pregnancy.  I was already aware of this though because...Google.  That being said, she wanted to run more tests before having me come in a week and a half later to see if we can get a heartbeat.  My blood tests came back showing hormone levels were still rising correctly, which gave us some peace of mind.

On Tuesday, the fear set in again though as the cramping was the worst I had felt of all the days.  Remember me mentioning cramping that radiates to my back?  The part about not being able to walk?  Bingo.  That was it.  My incredible husband took me to the ER, where we once again had tons of tests ran only to be told that it's still from growing and stretching.  Good news, but at the same time, is this life for the next 9 months?  I don't know how to experience this amount of pain while also living life and working, but I had to do something.

With much hesitation, I decided I needed to take whatever could help the pain so I could start getting rest again, and get back to work.  Tylenol is the only thing that I'm able to take, and 500mg doesn't help at all, so they recommended 1000mg, 3 times a day until it stops.  2 nights ago was the first time I've been able to sleep through the night in almost 2 weeks.  Last night was even better.

The pain is scary, and it makes me sad that I couldn't tough it out - especially because I'm really hoping for a natural birth without an epidural.  This is the first time I've felt like I can't do that;  a failure before I've even gotten to that point.

There are a lot of mixed emotions happening right now, but right now the biggest one is fear.  We are just a few hours from meeting with our doctor where I am praying there will be a heartbeat and that everything will be okay.  Pregnancy is actually pretty scary, way more than I had expected - and waiting is really hard, but that's all we can do for now.  So...we wait.

-jennilea