A scary morning

I should have known that when the alarm went of at 3:25 a.m. on Saturday, it wasn't going to be a great day. I was woken out of a restless sleep to drive Brad to the airport for his 6 a.m. flight to Gainesville (he was there for some family business and flew back today, poor guy). I got home and sunk back into two glorious hours of uninterrupted sleep.

I woke up at about 7:30 and stumbled groggily out of bed to feed the cats so they'd stop bugging the crap out of me. One second I was at the top of our steep staircase, pictured above. The next second, I was at the bottom, lying on my back, with my right arm and shoulder shoved against the wall. For the record, this isn't actually the first time I've fallen down these stairs (I believe it's the third?) but at 32 weeks pregnant it was obviously a bit more of a concern!

I got up in a daze, wondering if I should go back to sleep, call Brad (he was on his layover in Charlotte) or go to the ER. Honestly, I wasn't in pain, wasn't bleeding anywhere, and hadn't hit my stomach, so I figured I was probably fine. Going back to sleep was out of the question though. I spent about 30 minutes googling various iterations of "pregnant and fell down stairs" to reassure (ha!) myself that all the other women on the message boards who were also clumsy assholes were fine. I was almost convinced I was OK until I realized I couldn't remember the last time I felt the baby move. THAT was when I freaked out.

I called Labor & Delivery and the triage nurse told me to come in ASAP. I ran out the door and was at the hospital in 10 minutes flat. I probably should have called my mom or a friend to drive me, but since I wasn't in pain or bleeding, I figured the fastest, easiest route was to drive myself. However, I could definitely sense looks of pity from the valet, the security guard and the person at the information desk when a visibly pregnant, teary-eyed woman with no companion and no wedding ring (hey people, you're lucky I put on a bra before leaving the house!) asked for directions to Labor & Delivery. By the way, I didn't call Brad. The last thing I wanted to do was to freak the poor guy out while he was stuck in a North Carolina airport.

The nurses were SO nice. I was pretty freaked out at this point, but those amazing nurses calmed me right down and kept telling me how glad they were that I'd decided to come in. They got me set up in a bed with warm blankets, hooked up an IV to keep me hydrated and strapped a fetal monitor on my belly. For the next 4 hours, they monitored Baby T's heartbeat and my uterus. Thank GOD everything was fine. (They warned me that if I had more than 4 contractions in an hour, they would have to keep me there for 24 hours. Oy.) Of course Baby started moving just fine. He tends to slow down when I get anxious. The monitor picked up a few contractions but they were just Braxton-Hicks and barely big enough to register on the printout.

After two hours, I was pretty sure that everything was fine, so I called Brad, my mom and my friend Katie, who I was supposed to go to the Farmer's Market with today. Unfortunately, I posted a Facebook status update from the hospital that led several people to believe that I'd actually given birth ("Just fell down the stairs and just spent 4 hours in Labor & Delivery" really confused the non-pregnant people, including my brother and his fiancee. Uh, whoops) so I had to spend a few hours last night clearing that up. How embarrassing.

Honestly, the worst part of the whole thing was that I went until 2 p.m. without eating anything all day. In the event that they have to do an emergency c-section, they won't give you anything to eat or drink, and I was so hungry I was about to pass out. When they finally unhooked me at 1:30 and a nurse gave me two pieces of stale wheat bread and a packet of peanut butter, I wanted to kiss her.

So, more than 24 hours later, we're all doing fine. Brad's home, I have bruises on my ass, and Danny has made himself at home inside my full-body pregnancy pillow:



I am so thankful everything turned out OK, but this incident just reaffirmed how ready I am to no longer be pregnant! 7 weeks to go!