Wow. I feel like a haven't posted about this second pregnancy at all, kinda makes me feel bad. I am already 30 weeks today. This pregnancy is going by so fast!! I have had it pretty easy this pregnancy, no swelling and no high blood pressure, the two main "complications" with Dallas. I had it easy until Jan. 7th, that was the first trip to labor & delivery... which is were this story starts.
On Saturday night, right after dinner I got a horrible pain in my chest that radiated to my back. I have had this pain before, I thought it was heartburn. The pain was the same with Dallas. Anyway... The pain this time seemed worse, I couldn't sit or lay or even stand up straight. I also started vomiting. I took tums and walked around for about 20 minutes and I still couldn't get it to go away so I decided to go get my mom. My original plan was to have her call my doctor and see if they could recommend anything that I could do, but my mom told me to just get in the car since they would most likely just tell me to go to labor & delivery. So 5 minutes later we were heading out the door..
I'm going to interrupt my own story, because I am sure your wondering why my mom was taking me and not Russell, Russell was camping. I had talked to him earlier and told him I had really bad heartburn, (which is common for me) and that I would talk to him later. He told me he was driving back to camp and wouldn't have phone service and that was the last I got to talk to him.
Anyway I felt like a dork for going all the way over there for heartburn but when I told her that's what I thought it was and where my pain was, she just smiled and said I am pretty sure its not heartburn but your gallbladder. They put me in a room to monitor the baby and give me some meds for the pain. They ran my symptoms with the on call doctor and he agreed that it was most likely my gallbladder. After the morphine kicked in they sent me down to ultrasound to take a look. She let me know that I had gallstones and she would send the findings back to labor and delivery for the doctor to decide what to do. They told me that I needed to contact my doctor on Monday to get the name of a surgeon to determine what to do. So fast forward to Tuesday when they told me the doctor I was meeting and when, which was that Wednesday. While I was at the meeting with the surgeon I learned the risks of leaving the gallbladder in for the next 10 weeks or taking it out now. It was a really tough decision for me. To sum it up I could
1. Have the surgery as soon as Friday. They don't usually like to operate in the 3rd trimester but the surgeon felt he had plenty of room to do it safely. The risks were the same with having any surgery pregnant or not, the difference was that two of us were involved. I also ran the risk of premature labor, which this surgeon said he has never had a patient go into labor, even the ones he does further along than me. He felt good about the surgery because the stones hadn't tried moving, I am healthy and the gallbladder is not infected or inflamed.
2. Wait it out 10 weeks. This ran the risk of me having another attack. The stones could try to move which could result in more pain and that they could get lodged in other body parts which is not good! I could also risk the gallbladder becoming infected and having to have surgery further along and at a higher risk. If nothing happened I would be able to have them removed after I healed from birth.
I decided that I didn't want to risk it getting worse and decided to have surgery Friday morning. My doctor felt really good about it and I had this feeling that it needed to be done. I however kept going back to the thought of preterm labor. I felt safer about it knowing that the baby was far enough along that she would be ok, and that they would have my doctor in the room and they would try to stop labor if it happened. Then again the surgeon had never had it happen so the risk was low.
Friday morning my mom, dad, Russell and I headed to American Fork Hospital Out Patient Surgery. The surgery went smoothly. I did learn after that the stones had moved and were clumping together, something the surgeon thought I was low risk for, that was the reason I had the option to have surgery or not. Anyway once I recovered down stairs they moved me up to labor & delivery so baby girl could be monitored. Once we got there we did have a little scare because she seemed to be in distress and I was starting to have contractions. I had one contraction and they had me lay on my side. Once I turned over the baby calmed down and I didn't have anymore contractions, we were very lucky!! The nurse said it was because I had been on my back for so long. I had been flat since 7:30 and it was going on 10am. I am home now and haven't been in too much pain. Dallas has been great, we showed him the incisions and I think he really understands that I can't hold him or be played on. He does come give me kisses and tells me I have owies
Friday, January 13, 2012
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