Pregnancy Stress

The night before the kids' piano recital was Ryan's work Christmas dinner.  We went to Ruth's Chris in Park City.  I was excited for a nice evening out and a yummy dinner.  Unfortunately it didn't quite work out the way I had hoped.  After an hour of sitting and visiting I starting hurting.  I got up and walked around to see if my stomach would feel better but it didn't.  Just as they were finally serving the main course I realized I was having contractions and that they were getting regular.  After only a few bites of my delicious steak I went out to the lobby to see if I could relax.  Instead I noticed that the contractions were 2 - 4 minutes apart.  I wasn't too worried, though, because this seems to happen with every pregnancy.  I just knew that I would need to get a shot to make them stop.  I could tell I wasn't really in labor but they still hurt pretty bad.  We finally left the restaurant around 9 pm and drove all they way home with the contractions 4 min. apart the whole way.

Ryan was pretty convinced that if I just tried to go to bed or maybe even took a warm bath that they would stop.  Nope.  Finally around midnight I told him I was exhausted and just wanted to go to the hospital and get my morphine shot so they would stop and I could finally get some sleep.  He called his brother who came right over and we drove to the hospital.  The one nice thing about having your sixth pregnancy is that you can pretty much dictate to the nurses exactly what's going on and what you need and they say, "okay".  My nurse was great.  She called the doctor and they did a few tests to confirm I wasn't in labor and then gave me that wonderful morphine shot that I had been waiting for for about 8 hours.

As relaxed as I was mentally through it all I woke up the next morning and sort of freaked out thinking that it could happen again and maybe the next time I wouldn't be able to stop the contractions with a shot.  I realized how much I had left to do before Christmas and almost started hyperventilating.  Despite the fact that all my shopping was done for my kids I still had some odds and ends to do, Christmas cards, packages to send, teacher gifts to put together, etc.  So for the next week I frantically ran around getting everything done and praying the stress wouldn't cause any more contractions.  I couldn't stand the thought of having the baby before Dallin's birthday or before Christmas.

So far, so good.  I ended up spending the next friday on the couch unable to move (I guess I overdid it a little) but at least I got those things done that I needed to.