This pregnancy thing is scary and confusing..

First of all, I'm not going to keep you in suspense. The baby is fine. I'm fine. But yesterday I kept feeling jabbing pains in my pelvic region. I started out a little bit concerned. I instant messaged Corey, and he encouraged me to call the doctor. I called my doctor at around 1 PM, left a message for the nurse and sat and waited. And waited. And waited. And grew more and more worried and frantic.

What if this is how a miscarriage starts out feeling? What if it means my baby is missing some kind of vital nutrient? What if I broke my vagina doing the kegel exercises everybody keeps telling me I need to do? Obviously, the more I waited, the more outlandish the reasons for the ridiculously painful jabbing feeling on the right side of my pelvis.

The majority of my responsibilities with my job involve calling people to discuss very important matters related to their cancer treatment. So while I had people I should be calling, instead I was avoiding calling people and working on anything else that I could focus on for a few minutes just in case the nurse called back since I didn't want to miss her call. So basically, I was completely useless at work yesterday.

I finally ended up calling her again at 3:00 PM and left ANOTHER message. By this time I was feeling dizzy and a little bit nauseated. I was sure that there was something major with the baby. They finally called me back around 3:30, and when I told the nurse my symptoms, she said she wasn't sure what could be wrong with me. Said it might just be pregnancy-related pains that are normal or something else. She said if I felt like it, I could come into the office and they would try to fit me in. Of course I said yes, try and fit me in.

I went to the doctor's office. The nurse's assistant, who I've already complained about here at least once (so far, she has mislead my doctor to believe that I'm two weeks further along than I really am, she thought I was a teacher, and she asked really dumb questions during our first appointment) came out and brought me into the office, weighed me (weight hasn't changed by the way, which is suprising based on the massive amounts of food I've been eating) had me pee in a cup, and then came back into the room with someone else's chart and said "Heather?" (REALLY?) Um, no. You just called my name 2 minutes ago in the waiting room. And really, shouldn't you be able to keep the pregnant lady complaining of severe pelvic pain seperate from whoever Heather is? That woman needs to go away.

But then, my doctor came back, and she did a pelvic exam, listened to baby with the doppler, and said that everything looked fine. In fact everytime she would get the doppler in a good spot to listen to baby, baby would move--probably reacting to the pressure for the doppler; I took that as a good sign. She thought it might be round ligament pain (which Corey, my awesome googling husband, had already determined might be the culprit) but she was glad I came in because if it is some kind of urinary infection they need to know ASAP and they can figure that out with my urine sample. She also told me that I can come in anytime I have a concern, but that I probably will be dealing with weird, sometimes inexplicable pains throughout the rest of the pregnancy and that it is completely normal.

She said that there are certain things that I should watch for that would be indicators of something more serious, and a reason to go in to see her:

1) Fever

2) Severe vomiting

3) spotting/bleeding

4) after 24 weeks, if I don't feel the baby move for a whole day (scary)

So I guess in some ways, this is the story of how I freaked myself out. I have a history of doing this. Which probably has something to do with my crazy medical history--I'm conditioned to expect the worst.

But I need to chill out. Because now, everytime I'm really stressed, baby feels it to. And I don't want my baby to be stressed out. I want a calm, happy baby. So I guess I need to focus on being calm and happy, too.

That's all for now.
Elizabeth