Scary day

We have been lucky that this pregnancy has been practically complication-free with the one exception of the low-lying placenta which was confirmed at the 28 week appointment has moved and is no longer a concern.

This morning however, we were not so lucky. I will start with saying that the baby is fine, I am still pregnant and this experience likely didn't affect him in the least (with the exception of a slightly elevated heart-rate that he could likely sense).

I had high hopes for this weekend. My plan was to get my hair cut, which I have been excited about and waiting for for quite sometime. This was to be followed by some maternity photos that J was going to take for me. I stopped by the craft store on my way home to pick up some props for this shoot and even had the camera professionally cleaned last week for the occasion.

This morning I woke up and got in the shower. I was feeling fine until I was getting dressed and seemed to catch the light coming through the window in my eye in a weird way that caused a spot that wouldn't go away. I tried to shrug it off, put my make up on and be on my way, but my body had other plans. I came in and sat on the couch, told J what was going on and he had my lay on my side and got me some tylenol while I drank a little coffee, thinking that this was likely the start of a migraine. I started feeling better after about 20 minutes or so, so I picked up the phone to call my mom. The conversation started out fine and as normal until I started having trouble getting out the words that I wanted to say. Then when I would try to say them, either a different word entirely would come out or it would come out slurred. Mom started to get worried and J could hear what was going on and made me get off the phone. He sat in front of me for a little while, trying to hold a conversation with me to see if it got better. It did, but it took about 45 minutes. At that point I was scared, he was scared and my mom was of course scared because there was no explanation for it.

I laid down for a little while longer and then my right hand went numb. Then it moved to my face, then to my tongue. I got up and walked around outside for a few minutes in the case that they had just fallen asleep or something, but once it got to my face and tongue I knew I had to call the doc.

I called the OB's office and the on-call doc wanted me to head to the ER. He gave them a heads up that we were on the way and as soon as we got there they brought me into triage, then to what they were calling an MCU room (which I have no idea what that stands for - I just know that it was the same area that they brought J when he had to be in isolation due to being severely neutropenic). They came in and took some neurological tests, brought someone in from OB to read the baby's heart beat, which took a good 10 minutes to find and scared the heck out of me. Except, all the while she was looking for it, he was moving away from the probe so that was giving me some comfort. They finally got it with an ultrasound and that showed that all was well with him.

The gave me an IV, drew blood, hooked me up to a bag of fluids, some stuff for nausea (which I told them I didn't need) and then a bag of magnesium which they said would help the headache. It took awhile, but it did take the headache away. When I started to feel better, I got a little antsy because I wanted to leave. However, they came in a few hours later and wanted me to give an MRI. We were nervous because we had no idea if this could have a bad effect on the baby. Our fears were comforted by both the doctors and by J's mom who worked at an MRI office for years. Luckily, the scan only lasted about 25 minutes and we were done. The reason that they chose MRI over CT scan was that there was not radiation with the MRI. The worst part was waiting again back in the ER for the results. Luckily, they were fine and we were released.

Diagnosis - an A-typical migraine.

A-typical because of the speech problem and the numbness. They said that if it happens again, I should see a neurologist so they still don't really have any idea why those two things happened.

I am home now and feeling better, just really worn out and tired. The baby is moving away, as he has been all day so at least that is not a worry. I did spend most of the day yesterday out and about on then working on the nursery so I was on my feet a lot. There really is no way to tell if that might have contributed, but just to be safe it looks like I will be taking it as east as possible from here on out.

Hoping to reschedule my hair cut for sometime this week before the shower next weekend and so that we might be able to fit in some of those maternity photos in beautiful VT while we are there :-)

I have an OB appointment tomorrow with the doc that is covering for mine while she am out. I have to bring along the paperwork from today's ER visit and see if there is anything further that they want to check. Hopefully it will just be routine and I will see them again in another two weeks!