Better safe than sorry

So, we had our first trip to the hospital last night.
And no, I'm not still at the hospital, nor do I appear to be anywhere close to having this baby yet, so just simmer down. ;)

Actually, it wasn't contractions or thinking that I was in labor that sent us to the hospital. I had a brief episode yesterday evening in which I lost vision in my right eye for a couple of minutes. Come to think of it, it was very similar to that feeling one gets when riding Goliath at Magic Mountain... on that long turn at the end where your vision starts to fade because of the centrifugal force? Yeah, it felt like that. But in one eye.

I happened to be with my nurse-sister when it happened, who conscientiously took my blood pressure (three times!) and then strongly suggested (in her best nurse voice) that I call Kaiser just to be safe. After sitting for a few minutes, I felt just fine and normal, but eventually was persuaded to agree to call Kaiser after I drove myself back home for the evening. So, call I did.

I don't think the nurse advice line people EVER advise you not to come in. So, in keeping with history, the nurse in L&D triage (which is where I was transferred since I'm almost 39 weeks pregnant) thought it would be best if I came down to the hospital just to be sure.

So I called up Jacob, and he came home from dinner with his grandparents, and the two of us set out for the hospital. Neither of us really expected anything to happen, but I was glad to have my bags all packed and in the car anyway, just in case.

When we arrived at the hospital, we checked into L&D, and I got hooked up to fetal monitors and they took my blood pressure another four times. Normally a midwife would have come and checked me out, but this time they wanted to have a doctor see me because of the vision problems. Since the doctors were all called into an emergency C-section about the time we got there, we got a nice long monitoring time in the triage room. Whee. As expected, when the doctor arrived, he cleared me to go home, since it was such a brief episode and everything was looking normal on the monitors.

While the trip was probably not essential to make, it was better to be sure. And on the upside, we got to make a "practice run" to the hospital, including figuring out check in procedures and getting a feel for how things will go once the real thing happens. And, the doctor did an ultrasound to make sure the baby had enough fluid, and confirmed that it does indeed still look like we are having a little girl. :) I've been just a little concerned about the possibility of our first ultrasound being wrong (as you hear many stories about), so that was probably the best part of the evening for me. Oh, and we got to watch the cool little contraction machine slowly spit out the readings on my (lack of) contractions.

This is NOT what my monitor tape looked like. My contractions (the line on the right) were pretty much just a flat line.

All in all, I'm glad we went down to double-check that everything was okay. I'm still holding out for this baby to wait just a little longer before arriving, so I was relieved to get sent home with no incident (and relieved there was nothing obviously wrong, of course!). We'll chalk it up to good research and preparation for the future... something that highly appeals to my little data-collector personality. :)

I do hope we don't have to make that kind of trip too often, though! And I am now convinced that it is best (as we have been learning in our birth classes) to do as much laboring at home as you can, and not rush to the hospital right away. The staff were very friendly and accommodating, but home is SO much more comfortable. I can tell you right now, I'm NOT a fan of those fetal monitor belts, or hospital beds. Or having to lay still on my aching hips for an hour and a half.