24W 4D

Saturday was eery to say the least. That was 24.4. I woke up feeling worse than I had Friday, I thought it was something I ate that was making my stomach upset and I just pushed through the day preparing for a busy weekend. At 8:30am I decided to call a nurse and see what I could take because I was in misery all through the night with abdominal cramping (the kind that comes with the flu), she told me what to take and asked me questions to rule out labor in her mind. I was sure it wasn't labor. By 11:30 I had no relief and was running a fever, and by no relief I mean I was cramping in a way that looked a lot like labor. I couldn't talk, had to breathe deeply and the pain made me want to grab something tightly to get through it. So I called the nurse back and she said that there is a nasty flu virus going around that causes severe cramping but go to the ER . I remained surprisingly calm, yet had that nagging thought "Your water broke two days from today with Audrey's pregnancy." I thought it was strange that she told me to go to the ER, but I also didn't want to go to L&D because of the implications. It gave me some comfort to think she also didn't believe I was in labor. As soon as I arrived and told the nurse my issue, she took one look at me and said, "We'll get someone to transfer you to maternity."
To make a long story shorter...I was hooked up to monitors in triage and put through testing to make sure our little girl was okay. I spent about 3 1/2 hours there to have a doctor come in and repeat the exact same thing I heard when I was admitted with Audrey. My heart sank when I heard him say, " Well, I have good news. Your white count is perfect and you don't have any signs of infection in your urine. Baby looks really good and you're not having any contractions."
I was pretty calm and for the most part I was there because I didn't know what type of infection can do damage to my unborn baby. I was there because I didn't know how high my fever could get before I needed a doctor's intervention. I was there because the nurse told me to go. Better safe than sorry right? So I couldn't help but respond to the doctor (another on-call, not mine), "I've heard those same words...that there was no sign of infection, was put on antibiotics ect ect. and 4 days later is when the white count went up, went into labor and my daughter died at 25 weeks. So I certainly hope this is not a case where I'm sick now and back in here delivering this baby 4 days from now. "
His response, " Well, the world could blow up 4 days from now,"Laughing," I mean there is no way of telling what is going to happen."
Me, "Okay what I am trying to say is, can this flu virus affect my baby? And at what temperature do I need to have my butt back in here?"
He answered my questions, could tell I was not amused and told me I could go home or get an amniocentesis if I really wanted to know what was in the fluid surrounding my baby, but that it would be a bit "premature" to do such a test.
The triage nurse suggested maybe I was constipated and a whole other slew of non-related crap..no pun intended- and acted as if I wasn't even sick with the flu despite my 100.7 temp! She made it quite obvious in that moment she'd never been pregnant by some of the stupid things she had to say.
WHATEVER! We got our discharge papers filled out and made note to self - put Dr. Laughter on s*!t list.
I then went down to the first floor, too weak to walk around to the other side of the building where we came in, and waited for Jamie to pull the car around. That is where I had a horrible flashback of our experience loosing Audrey.(Which I wrote about on her blog)

I am feeling better now after my weekend of fun had to be canceled. =( And I've finally decided it's time for a letter to care providers. I've tossed the idea around since March of 09 and I now have plenty more experience and suggestions and energy to make it happen. We have to advocate for ourselves, sadly. If I can save one patient from hearing insensitive words spoken by a doctor or nurse I will feel good about taking the time to give some advice in how to interact with us BL parents.
Onward we go still full of hope for this baby girl to home with us.