My son's first trip to the ER

I've been assured my many people that I will have a lot of adjusting to do when it comes to dealing with an active little boy. G's parents are even a bit giddy at the thought of our having a child that is anything like he was. Sweet revenge after a long 38 years. I've resigned myself to the fact that there will inevitably be bike crashes or some sort of superman like stunt involving the roof of our house and a cape that will land us in the ER at some point in his life. As it turns out, we didn't even have to wait for him to crawl, or even breathe oxygen. Looks like we are already well on our way to a personal relationship with the ER nurses!

Last night I got in bed for the night and was almost immediately hit with intense stomach pain. I had no idea what it was and it wasn't like anything I'd ever felt before. I sat there for a minute hoping it would pass but no such luck. Not to be a big whiner but I've never felt pain that intense before except possibly when my appendix was hours from rupturing. I couldn't open my eyes and could barely move. The pain spread from my stomach to my back, to my stomach to my back... We called the doctor on call at my OB's office who said it was most likely fine but I should get to the ER and make sure I wasn't having contractions. Contractions!!??? Excuse me!!?? I'm impatient to meet the little guy and everything but I really think he needs to stay in there longer. Talk about terrifying.

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I managed to open my eyes and unwrap myself from the fetal position and G drove me to the hospital. Good practice for later, I guess, to be making a midnight trip there with me wailing along the way.

Much to my surprise the doctor actually seemed to know exactly what was going on with me. (Pardon my lack of faith in the medical profession.) He said that my internal organs were being squished and under a lot of pressure from my enormous fetus. As a result my stomach went into a spasm and caused some major nerve to freak out (medical term). He said the nerve firing was what caused the radiating pain throughout my entire torso. As glad as I was to hear that the baby was totally fine I'll admit it makes me a little nervous that my organs are literally convulsing from their current level of smushing. I can only imagine what will happen when baby is the size of the produce section's biggest offerings. The doctor explained to me that this was a fairly common occurrence in women "my size" and that pregnancy would be much easier on me if I had started out obese like "most women these days". He told me that one way to help was to prop myself up on pillows at night to reduce organ smushing.

ER doctor*
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To summarize: the baby is fine, the medical profession recommends obesity, and there are roughly zero sleeping positions left that are allowed for me.


*not the actual doctor I saw but that would've been fun