Week 37 - waiting

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Waiting

Jun 3, 2001, 10:00 am - Sunday morning on June 3td I was getting worried: I had been nauseous for a couple of days, en had to throw up once in a while, but since that Sunday morning I was unable to keep even water down. That is slightly disturbing, especially if you're pregnant because you dehydrate even quicker than normally, which is of course bad for mother and child. So we called the docter. I talked to a gynaecologist on the phone whom I never met before during the checkups (we use a group of five gynaecologists). This docter told me that I didn't strike her as someone who would call on a Sunday morning unless there was a reason for it, and we agreed to meet in the hospital. I would be given an IV to keep my fluids up, a standard check up, and perhaps something to suppress the nausea. After that we could go home again. Or so we thought.

11:00 am - Upon arrival at the hospital I was brought to a little room behind the nurses station. It served as storage room, recovery room, and emergency examination room. There were three stretchers surrounded with drapes, there were big cold fluorescent lights, there were people walking in and out all the time. In other words, cosy and lots of privacy ;-). I couldn't care less at that moment: after a bag of fluid I was going to be sent home again, so I wouldn't need a room. I was hooked up to an IV and was given a bag of fluids, sufficient ice chips to lessen my never-ending thirst, and we could here bab'y heart beat again. They also monitored fetal activity, contractions and blood pressure. The gynaecologist had order the IV, and had given instructions to draw a few tubes of blood for analysis. I spend some time there with Erik, lying down and feeling pretty sick, looking around and watch a little TV. In the drapes next to us a couple had arrived for another check up. They were joking about the kind of room they were in.

12:30 pm - Meanwhile I was throwing up acid (I had been unable to keep down any food for a couple of days already, so it didn't look like anything and only hurt my throat terribly). The nurser were feeling sympathetic for me by now; I couldn't stop throwing up and they weren't allowed to give me anything. When the second bag was hooked up to the IV we got some explanation: the results of my urine and blood lab work were contradicting one another and required more extensive tests. There were some hints that there might be something going on that needed to be checked before they could send me home. If that thing happened to be the case, then the nausea medicine would only do harm and that would not be very good. So more patience was required.

Continued: the roller coaster