23w, 2d

Tuesday I was officially 23 weeks. Tuesday was also my first trip to the labor and delivery (L&D) triage. It was like a right of passage almost! Pretty much all UU girls do it. Many several times. The dr there even told me to plan to come back often. It was incredibly boring and frustrating and I could probably type up thousands of words on my trip there, but I will try to stick to the important details.

Tuesday I got up with some minor stomach cramps. Figured I had to poop. Took care of that, and the cramps hung around. My lower back was also hurting, but I have lower back issues as it is and had been hanging out on a couch in pretty much the same position for a few days. The abdominal pain was seriously minor, but it was there. That combined with Dr. Jim Carey telling me last week that he felt that my cervix was softened and shortened... well, I decided I would rather make a trip to my dr and inconvenience everyone in my life for no reason, than not go and there end up being a reason.

I called and the dr office suggested instead of coming in there, to head to L&D instead. Both in the same building, but they figured L&D would be better able to monitor me longer. My poor dad got the job of driving me there. Anything at all remotely related to being female or me having a body that needs any sort of attention in any way, is most certainly not my dad's thing. So we went. I went back and stripped down and got hooked up to a monitor to check contractions. Then I had a nurse go get my dad. Someone to ask me questions and there was a whole slew of questions about the pregnancy in my rudimentary horn and the removal, something my parents don't know about. My dad was sitting right there. I doubt he was really listening or understanding things like "ectopic" and "rudimentary horn". I don't see him saying anything to my mom. Honestly at this point, I don't care. I know it wouldn't break her heart to know about the loss at this point. ANYWAYS, back to important details...

They did an u/s to find the heartbeats. (Dad hung around for that.) They checked my cervix. (Dad made a beeline for the waiting room at that point.) They gave me fluids. They took some blood. They checked my urine. Monitor showed I was having very minor contractions every 3-5 minutes for awhile, then they stopped, then they came back, then they stopped for the remainder of the time I was there. They did an u/s to check my cervix. You know how my dr last week said my cervix was shortening last week? WRONG! It was holding long and closed at 3.3 cm, which is pretty much where it has been for every check. Another manual check of my cervix was done before they kicked me out. They said my cervix might have been softening a bit, but it could just be normal for my cervix. All my test results came back fine. No UTI. Nothing to indicate I had some sort of infection. They did an FFN test and it came back negative. So out the door I went.

I actually left feeling way better emotionally than I have been feeling for the past several days. Everything at this point is pointing towards these babies cooking for awhile longer. The last dr I talked to even said to just take it easy Tuesday night but after that I could resume regular activity. I'm still trying to take it easy and do as little as possible. Unfortunately, that doing nothing much else than laying on the couch has resulted in me having severe all over back pain that caused me to spend most of the evening in bed.

And that is all for now. Guess that I should add that I haven't felt any movement on my left side where Baby B is for the past two days. Now I get to be paranoid about that.