Confessions of a Starbucks addict

Not really, but it's an eye-catching title, isn't it? The story...

Thursday Kaycee came home from school and said she felt sick. Immediately upon entering the house, she threw up. She was sick for the next 24 hours.

Saturday I became sick. I threw up multiple times all day and had stomach cramps that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy....okay, well maybe *her*. :p That night, Shayna got sick and a few hours later so did PJ. I was swimming in vomit. Nice picture, yes?

Sunday morning finally comes around and I'm *still* sick. Shayna and PJ are over their troubles, but I'M STILL SICK! At around 11AM Troy tells me to call my OB since I said to him the night before that if I was still sick I'd call my doc in the morning. So fine, I call my OB.

A midwife calls me back and tells me to get to the hospital since I must be dehydrated. Plus they can give me anti-nausea meds that will help my stomach cramping. So off we go. Instead of going all the way to St. Joe's, I decided I wanted to be close so we went to St. Francis. In the ER, they sent me to L&D so the baby could be checked. His heart rate was tachy so I needed fluids before they'd send me back to the ER for the anti-nausea meds. I didn't think I'd be in the hospital long, so I let the nurse put the IV in my left hand. OUCH! After 3 hours in the L&D, I was finally sent back to the ER.

Of course, I had to wait in the ER waiting room until they could get a bed for me...ugh. Picture a woman in a hospital gown, sitting in a wheelchair, thin blanket, shivering and cramping. I'm sure that made the other people in the ER waiting room feel safe! They did quickly get me back there though.

So, I'm in ER10...a room with sad memories for me. It's the ER room I passed out in from blood loss when I miscarried once. I also know it's the only ER room where the remote for the TV doesn't work! I would have liked to watch something on TV to take my mind off the cramping, but oh well... Anyhow, after another 2 liters of fluids, this time potassium bags (not banana bags, to distinguish), some IV Reglan, 8mLs of Morphine, and another 4mLs of dilaudid, they realized that the stomach cramps weren't going away and that I was still puking up everything I drank (they let me have ice chips and water). So I was admitted to the hospital. Fun stuff figuring out where they were going to put me too...

First they took me to the L&D "recovery" section. I got all settled in a nice, private room. It was heaven, except I was sweating like no tomorrow. Then the nurse came in and told me that they put me in the wrong room, on the *wrong* floor. Apparently the L&D people don't know how to take care of sick preggo people, just healthy ones. Duh! I get transported, yet again, to the 3rd floor. That's the "medical" floor. Where I don't get the window bed and my roommate is an 80 year-old complainer. If there were awards given for the most complaintent, she'd win for sure! Especially if anyone "stole" on of the 4 chairs on her side of the room! I mean holy hell, how many chairs do you need when you have one visitor at a time, who only stays long enough for you to lodge half of a complaint to them and then leaves? And I want to know whose smart idea it was to put vomiting me into the same room with a woman who can't keep her heart rate up? I swear my little bugs were gonna be the end of this woman!

Anyhow, I was drugged up most of the time, except when the nurses were too busy chatting with each other to remember that one of their patients actually "needed" those pain meds or they'd get royally ill with the pain... Would you rather give pain meds on a schedule and not have me remind you, or do you just like cleaning up all the vomit all over the place? I did have some great nurses though. One was a guy. I think he was the one who really liked cleaning up the vomit. I wanted Katie to be my nurse all the time. Of course, that can't happen in a hospital where there are shifts...no! They took her off my side of the floor and put her on the other side the next day...that was so unfair. She was great! She never forgot a time for dosings, blood sugar checks, meals, etc. I'll get to it in the next paragraph, but she stayed up with me all night when I had to have a blood transfusion. I'm so mad that she was switched to the other side of the floor when she came back to work. :(

So some of my labs came back funky. Apparently there's this thing called an H&H...hemoglobin and hematocrit. Hemoglobin has a normal value of 12-16 gm/dL in women, and hematocrit has a normal value of 37-48% in women. Mine were well below normal. I've put a call in to my doctor to find out the exact number since I don't remember, but as I said, they were well below. I needed a blood transfusion. 2 units. Thank you blood donors. :) The type and cross match on blood was funny since I know my blood type, MedicAlert knows my blood type, the Red Cross knows my blood type, but apparently the hospital can't take any of our words for it. Yet another 3 vials of blood gone, like I could spare any! Sheesh!

Getting someone else's blood pumped into you is an eery feeling. Really, you don't feel anything, but it makes your blood pressure drop. Who knew. So while they're pumping in the new blood, your vitals have to be tested every 15 minutes. There's this whole protocol. They have to have three nurses sign off that the blood you're getting is the blood that was sent to you. Then they have to sign off that they've inspected the blood. Like they have little microscopes to make sure that the tags were sewn into the cells properly...hahah. A little bloody humor.

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention the best part! The hospital made me take off my insulin pump! Which was comical for them when I nearly went into DKA the next morning. If I recall correctly, I was +3 ketones and my sugar was 600+. I guess they forgot that if you need a pump and they take you off of it, then you *need* a basal insulin to replace what you're missing from your pump. Idiots. I got to put my pump back on after that. Yes, I did remind them about giving me a basal insulin, but they didn't get it ordered by a doctor. Stupid doctors.

All this, and I'm still dehydrated! Ugh. My mouth is dry, my eyes are dry, my skin is dry. I was released from the hospital last night. Guess what was the first thing I did as we drove away? I made Troy pull over so I could puke. Don't want that on my new car, you know? Also, my set for my heparin pump came out while I was getting dressed at the hospital, so I put a couple of gauze pieces on it and taped it pretty well. By the time I got home, I'd bled through that onto my clothes. As I write this, it's still bleeding and it's nearing 1PM! I look like I've been stabbed again, so does my bed. :( But hey, the baby is fine. :D

ETA: Finally got a call from my OB's office... my hemoglobin was 26% and my hematocrit was 9.1 gm/dL. As of yesterday at 8AM it was 31% and 10.3 mg/dL. I still feel like crap. :( Oh, it's 4:57PM on 3/19.

My blood pressure was great, which I was surprised about because I left my house late and got to my appointment about one minute before it was scheduled. Whew!

I have to say, I just love my OB. I'm totally comfortable with her if my plan of having an unassisted homebirth goes down the tubes... She told me today that she'd definitely be there for me if I want a waterbirth in the hospital, that if I go into labor and make it to the hospital in-time, that even if she's not on call, she'll come in. Woohoo! Of course, she'd prefer to induce me just after 39 weeks, but we'll see how everything goes. For now, I'm good with doing a UC.

The baby is looking great. He's still head down, starting to kick me in the ribs every now and again. His heart rate was 155bpm and strong.

I've gained 2 pounds, so that means I'm now at -4 pounds for this pregnancy. I'm expecting I'll gain another 10 by the time he comes. At my next appointment (on our 11th wedding anniversary!) I'll be getting an ultrasound done before my OB appointment. They like to start checking the fluid level and baby measurements monthly at 28 weeks. I believe that I'll have one more 3 week appointment after that and then it'll go to every 2 weeks.

Also at the next appointment she'll give me all the information for the hospital, getting pre-registered and taking a tour and such. I think I'll do all of that, just in case I don't end up UCing.

Okay, so I know that dreams are all about the fears that you may have or things that are going on, but this dream started out great and ended badly. So much so that I need to write it out!

The dream started out with me waking up in labor. We weren't in our house, I don't know whose house we were in, but it did "feel" like our house. (Which would be cool, since I liked that house and am sick of living in Seattle!) It was a very warm morning. There was another couple at our house, but I have no idea who they were, I'm assuming they were neighbors.

So I start laboring pretty hard in the living room and I end up giving birth on the floor of the room. Funnily enough, there was no time to fill our enormous garden tub, so I didn't get in there. (We don't have one of those in our current home.) The baby came out strong and healthy, it hurt but no too badly. I was on one knee and the other leg was kinda stretched out with my foot on the floor. I don't know what you'd call this position, but it worked out well.

I sat down and cuddled the baby, cleared off his face and just marveled at him. Soon it was time for me to birth the placenta, so I handed the baby off to DH. Apparently right after that I wanted to shower so DH and the neighbor guy got the baby cleaned up and dressed while I was showering. I went back downstairs and saw the neighbor guy with my baby, DH nowhere in sight. He had the baby in a bouncy seat and looking good, except that he had a bottle in his mouth!

I immediately took the baby away from him and took the bottle out of his mouth and tried to latch him on. He wouldn't nurse. I was so sad. :( Then I woke up.

The thing that bothers me the most about this is that my last two kids didn't nurse well after they were born. Shayna was actually hospitalized at 9 days-old because she was losing way too much weight. We learned later that she lost her suck reflex at her traumatic (cytotec induced) birth. Luckily a speech therapist happened in to our room at the hospital and showed me how to "exercise" her while she was nursing, and she quickly learned. She didn't quit nursing until she was 6.

PJ was born at 32 weeks. She had a slight suck reflex, but was quickly frustrated with nursing. People told me to pump for her and that when she was around what would be 40 weeks, she'd magically learn how to nurse. They were right, but that whole day (the day she was due), we went out shopping and I didn't bring bottles with me. She slept most of the day and when we got home she nursed like a champ. But that first 8 weeks was depressing for me... She ended up nursing until she was almost 4.

I really want to have the "magical" baby-knows-how-to-nurse-from-birth thing again. My first three were like that...I've had my hard to nurse kids, I want this one to be fine.

So I guess that's maybe my biggest fear - nursing. Not the birth, just the nursing.