Spent the day in the hospital.

I fell down the stairs this morning. Which I was actually expecting, as I've fallen down with each of my pregnancies.

With Ella - I was carrying a drawer out to the car to take to Home Depot to do some stain matching and slipped on some ice and fell down on my knee pretty damned hard. Awesome. Since I didn't fall on my belly, I felt the baby was fine and didn't go to the hospital.

With Allison - I was carrying Ella on my hip, walked out into the garage and tripped on the top of the two steps. I fell all the way down to the cement floor doing everything I could do to protect my two babies. I twisted in mid air and held Ella close to my chest, as I took the entire brunt of the fall on my back. Ella was scared but not hurt. I was terrified I hurt the baby. I went inside and took out the trusty doppler and heard no change in the baby's heartbeat. No trip to the ER was necessary.

With Karl - I was just popping down a flight of stairs like I normally would. Suddenly, my feet were out from under me. My hand was on the railing, so I held on for dear life. My arm was what stopped the fall for the most part, but as you can imagine, the grip wasn't conducive to the position I would end up in, so it twisted my body and I ended up landing on my hip on my right side. My shoulder was screaming in pain but that was about it. I sat down and felt my belly for movement and Karl immediately kicked me to assure me of his existence. And then I remembered I have a velamentous cord insertion. On my right side. That scared me.

I called my OB's nurse line and left a message that I had fallen and I was going to go to the ER to get checked out. I knew that would be their advice, so why waste time? By the time I got to the hospital, the tears were flowing due to the pain in my shoulder. I checked in and they immediately sent me up to Labor & Delivery to check on Karl. He was happily kicking me, so I wasn't really worried, so I wasn't in any sort of panic.

Before I was even checked in, I was hooked up to monitors to watch for contractions. I actually had one braxton hicks contraction and a few "bleeps" but nothing disturbing. I did have some intermittent right sided pain, pretty bad, but it wasn't a contraction. I assumed it was RLP (round ligament pain) and the nurse agreed.

Through the monitor, she couldn't pick up the heartbeat too well, but did for a few moments and it clocked in around 150bpm. After 30 minutes or so of monitoring, she called my OB. Apparently, due to the pain and the lack of a documented heartbeat, my OB ordered an ultrasound. No complaint from me as I will never turn down a chance to see my little peapod. The tech went for all the main things first - heartbeat, fluid levels, placenta, cord, but before it was over I got to laugh at a few things. The first was Karl was pointing his finger like he was pretending to shoot us. The second was she showed me the gender money shot and declared "well, his penis is still intact!". The third was as we were finishing up and she was giving me a last "fun" look at him, he actually ~waved~ at us. Thank you baby boy. That made me smile.

Then they wheeled me down to the ER to get my shoulder checked out. I tried to protest, saying I only came to the ER to check on the baby, but the nurse said there was no reason NOT to, as I was already there. The doctor came in and performed an exam and determined I had a strained rotator cuff. I'll be pretty damned sore, but I should get better without intervention. Just ice it tonight and rest it all I can. Then he fitted me in a sweet sling. I look pretty hot in it. (Actually, I guess I looked pretty pathetic in it, as everyone who looked at me for the rest of the day gave me the "poor you" sympathy look.)

It's day two of ICLW and I need to get caught up on all my commenting. What a way to kick it off! Thanks to all of those whom have visted so far! I'll be to your blog soon!