I’ve been absent from the blog this week. Adaline’s birthday is coming up in just two weeks and I’ve been busy making and planning things for her party. Yesterday after spending the day making her party hat and then a balloon wreath, I finally sat down to relax. My mom was there to help out with Adaline while I finish things up. All of the sudden I started cramping. The cramps were down really low, almost in my pelvic area, and there was some pain in my lower back too. This didn’t feel like gas pains, or labor pains, or the kind of cramps I had during my miscarriage…it was really different from any kind of cramp I’d ever had before.

Well, long story short after about 20 minutes of the cramping I started to bleed. It wasn’t a lot of blood. It was very light and only when I wipe…it was a very light red (a pinky orange). I was 11 weeks and 4 days and I knew that if I was losing the baby there isn’t anything that they could do about it. Still I decided since I was cramping and bleeding I should go to the ER and get checked out just in case. I went upstairs to get dressed while my mom called to see if she could find someone to sit with Adaline. While I was upstairs I called Cool Daddy at work and told him what was going on. He said he’d find someone to come in for him and he’d take me to the hospital.

My hubby came straight from work and took me to the hospital while he was still wearing his uniform. We arrived at the ER and got checked in at 8:48pm, at this point I wasn’t cramping anymore and I was feeling fine other than being nervous and worried. We sat for a while before another desk nurse called me back to ask me some details. I was sitting in a wheelchair and hubby was standing next to me. After the nurse finished asking me questions, she looked at my husband and said, “Are you related?” and when he said that he was my husband she started to laugh. She said, “Here’s what I thought was going on. I thought you were taking her to jail and had to bring her to get checked out first. Then I thought, wow, she’s awful nice to be going to jail.” Of course we both started to laugh and I said, “He had to leave work to bring me here and he didn’t change first. Thanks, honey.” So there I was, a pregnant hardened criminal waiting to get checked before heading off to the slammer 😉

They got me into an ER room and into a gown. There was some waiting and waiting and then eventually and ER doctor came in. He said that he’d do an ultrasound to check for a heartbeat, they’d draw some blood to check my HCG levels, and take a urine sample to check for a urinary tract infection. So they gave me a cup and I went to fill it up. Right next to the toilet was an automatic toilet paper dispenser with a mind of its own. I was barely near it when it started dispensing tp onto the floor (and you don’t think I was going to use that do you? *shudder*). Then when I needed to use the paper and I waved my hand all around it nothing would come out, I had to reach my hand in there and yank some out. When I was all finished and walking away it started dispensing tp all over the floor again. Nice.

After all of the toilet paper fun the nurse came in and took my blood sample. Then she rolled in the portable ultrasound machine. And then we waited and waited and waited. Another nurse popped her head in and asked if we were down with the machine yet. I told her they’d never even used it and she said she would wait. A little while later the doctor came back in and said they were taking the ultrasound machine to someone more urgent. Eventually he came back at 10:44pm and we got this ultrasound thing started.

The doctor did an abdominal ultrasound (thank goodness), he showed us the baby and it appeared to have a good, strong heartbeat. He didn’t do the thing where they measure the heartbeat and tell you the number. Either this machine didn’t do that or he didn’t know how. So while we didn’t get a number of how strong the heartbeat was, we could see it and it looked good. The baby wasn’t moving (probably sleeping), although I thought I saw an arm move just a little.

The doctor said he was waiting on my test results and then we could go home. I was to call my ob the next day to let them know what was going on and to come back to the ER if I started soaking pads (I was barely bleeding at this point). Then he gave us a copy of the ultrasound. My husband looked at it and said to me, “Is your name, David?”

There on my ultrasound was the name David So-and-so, who I assume is the guy that got his ultrasound before me and the doc never bothered to change the name. Boy, won’t David be surprised to find out he has a uterus…and he’s pregnant!

After the doc left they seemed to forget about us again for nearly an hour. Hubby finally went to stand outside in the hall where a nurse spotted him and apologized and said that a shift change happened and he has my discharge papers. He apparently didn’t have my test results, but he assumed that everything was fine since they were discharging me. No one told me my HCG level. Oh well. I was too tired to care at that point. We got in the car to go home at 11:44pm.