Technical Difficulties

When I was seven weeks pregnant (the day after our confirmation ultrasound), I had such terrible cramping in my abdomen and lower back that I crawled into bed with a hot water bottle. About an hour after the cramping began I went to use the bathroom and a big glub of bright red blood fell into the toilet. The cramping had concerned me, but when I saw the blood I whispered, "Oh my God" and started to freak out.

I paged my reproductive endocrinologist, who did nothing to reassure me, as I'm sure he couldn't. But he did schedule an ultrasound for the very next morning and thankfully, everything appeared to be fine -- the baby had grown since our previous ultrasound just two days before and its heartbeat was still strong. We had one more ultrasound five days after that and everything continued to be fine.

Here's the bean on that day:


Then, at almost twelve weeks, I got out of bed at about 9PM, had some...ahem...unpleasantness on the toilet, and started feeling just horrible. I was suddenly very hot and nauseated. When I was done I stood up and called down the stairs to my husband and the next thing I knew I was lying on the tile bathroom floor, my right knee and left cheek throbbing.

After wiping a cool wet washcloth on my face and resting for a minute, the buzzing left my ears and I was able to go back to bed.

I guess I'm lucky I didn't land mouth-first on the porcelain sink, but it was still pretty scary. I called my midwife the next morning and she said that fainting is not uncommon in pregnancy and recommended taking an iron supplement and staying hydrated.

I haven't had any scary episodes of cramping, fainting or anything else since then. In fact, I've felt pretty good, although most nights I still go to bed with Henry at around 7:30pm.

Last Tuesday I had my first official midwife appointment and everything checked out fine. I'm hoping it's smooth sailing from here on out.