Wherein the Dog Caused Me to Contract

I'm twenty weeks pregnant now. Here's another glorious image of my increasing roundness -- such torture to post! There's something magical about moving out of the teens and into the twenties, gestationally speaking. I feel like my pregnancy is more valid here in the twenties. Still, if I had my way, I'd fast forward through the next ten or twelve weeks.

On Friday, I had a bit of a scare and considered going to Labor and Delivery. Our dog escaped out the front door and I ran out after her. I chased her down the sidewalk, and as she stopped to smell a mailbox, I reached out to grab her. As my hand touched her back, she took off and pulled me down to the ground. It all happened so fast, but not fast enough that I couldn't turn mid-air to land on my side instead of hitting the sidewalk face first.

I took the impact on my hand, elbow and hip, and scraped up the side of my leg. Bub, who was chasing the dog after me, was worried, asking again and again if I was okay. The dog even knew she'd messed up and stopped running to cower. I drug her home to her crate and closed myself in my room to cry for a while. James called to tell me he was coming home early about the time I shut my bedroom door. When I answered the phone still sobbing, he made it all the way home faster than ever.

I soaked in a warm bath to clean up and calm down, but I began contracting not long after my fall. I had five or six contractions an hour for the first couple of hours. They were obvious enough and uncomfortable enough that I considered going to L&D. However, after lots of water and plenty of rest, they went away. I had no other threatening symptoms and the baby sounded fine on the doppler, so I stayed home instead of spending the evening at the hospital. If the dog escapes again, I'm not chasing her -- she can just run until she finds herself a new home.

As for the present, I'm still taking injections to prevent preterm labor, and despite the discomfort of the shots, I'm glad they've been ordered. The nurse comes every seven days, but by day six each week, I'm having some definite uterine irritability with a contraction or two here and there. I've mentioned them to the nurse and they're very common among her other PTL patients right before injection day. I've mentioned them to my doctor and he's unconcerned, provided I'm not having five or more and hour. I'm not having even two an hour -- in fact, it's rare that I have more than three in an entire day -- and they're always resolved with water and rest. The post-fall contractions I had on Friday were two days after my injection. I can only imagine how bad they would have gotten had my uterus not been medically forced to relax.

Other than that, I have a checkup and repeat sonogram in the morning. Even though I'm scanned every two weeks, I'm still excited to have an ultrasound. Time between appointments passes so slowly. I really don't know how people have only one or two sonograms over the course of an entire pregnancy when one or two a month is still not enough! James and I are both very curious about cervical measurement since my cervix changed dramatically in both of my previous pregnancies by 21-22 weeks. I'm anxious to see this transabdominal cerclage doing its job. Updates to come...




cross posted at About the Baby