Baby shower and food poisoning all in the same week!

It's definitely been a rough few weeks to say the least. I started having some difficulties with high blood pressure a few weeks ago. As of right now, I'm not on any medication, which is good. I get my blood pressure taken every day and as of recently, I've been getting blood work and non stress tests done weekly. Hopefully my blood work will continue to be good and I won't end up with preclampsia. I only have a few more weeks to go!

My baby shower was on the 7th, and the week before was pretty stressful. Because of some circumstances, I ended up having to do a lot of the planning, the work, and food preparation for the shower. I was beginning to wonder if I could pull it all together! Saturday before the shower we got the hall pretty well set up. We got done around 1pm, and my husband and I decided to separately run some errands. I was starving (of course), so I stopped for some lunch on the way home. I ate my sandwich around 1:30 and about 2 hours later I started feeling a little...off. I was a little nauseated and my stomach started cramping a little. at first, I thought it was braxton hicks contractions and that the nausea was just from the heat.

My husband and I had to attend a Baptism and party afterwards. There was a huge spread of food and I didn't want to touch any of it...not even a CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER CUP CUPCAKE!!!! What? We then went to his parents' house for a short visit and I started getting more cramping and nausea. We left their house so I could go home and just go to bed. Well, around 11pm, I the spasms were coming frequently and I started throwing up with some of them. I honestly thought that I was having contractions. I even started timing them! At one point, they were about 4 minutes apart and ranged from 1min to 1min 30 seconds long, so I thought, "Holy crap, I think I'm in labor"! I called the labor room, told them my symptoms, and they told me to come in and get checked. We got there about 15 mins later. I was hooked up to the monitor, they took some blood, and they checked me. I wasn't dilated and what I thought were contractions weren't "labor contractions". I also had a fever. They looked at the results of my blood work, which indicated I was dehydrated and my white blood cell count was elevated. They gave me some IV fluids, medication for the nausea, and told me it was most likely "something funky with my lunch" that was causing the problems. They monitored me through the night. Although my midwife was thinking about keeping me longer for observation, she allowed me to go home at 10:30 the next morning so that I could attend my baby shower.

I went home and rested for a little while and then pulled myself together to get to my shower. I can not say enough about how my husband stepped up to the plate that morning. He got all of the food ready that I still had to prepare, finished getting the hall ready, and decided to attend the whole shower with me instead of just showing up at the end.

I got to the shower and honestly, don't remember much of it. I was still feeling sick and I was just pretty much out of it. The shower ended around 5, and we were cleaning up (well, not me...I was kind of sitting there praying that I wouldn't throw up in the church hall). We got the gifts home and I pretty much collapsed into the bed. About 3 hours later, I started throwing up again. It progressed to the point that I couldn't keep any fluids at all down and the contraction type pains were back with a vengeance. Around midnight, I couldn't pry myself off of the bathroom floor because it hurt so bad to move. I called the labor room and back I went.

This time, my fever was even higher and I was even more dehydrated. My little girl was having some signs of distress because of my fever. Within minutes, I was surrounded by the big kahuna perinatologist at the hospital, 2 midwives, and a slew of nurses. They were giving me oxygen, putting 2 IV's in my arms, and stuffing me full of IV fluids, anti-biotics, anti-nausea medication, and Tylenol for the fever. Thankfully, she started responding to the treatment! I was still struggling a little though. I started having actual contractions and dilated a little. Thankfully, with all of the interventions, the contractions stopped as well as the dilation.

The perinatologist thinks it actually might have been Listeria. YIKES! I was on round after round of penicillin, ampicillin, and was sent home with 10 days of amoxicillin. Finally, the ordeal was over and I was sent home Tuesday afternoon. I was still pretty sick and exhausted up until this past Tuesday! It definitely has been a struggle over the past couple of weeks, but I'm so lucky that I'm feeling better and the baby is doing well. I just have to keep her in a few more weeks!

I'm still having some difficulties with my blood pressure, which is being monitored carefully. They're guessing that she's going to be a pretty big baby, so I have an ultrasound scheduled for next week to see just how much bigger she's grown since my 32 week ultrasound. I would prefer not to try to birth a toddler, so if she's getting a little too large, my midwife is talking about inducing at 39 weeks. I don't know how I feel about induction. I would definitely prefer to go into labor on my own, but the thought of trying to push out a 10+ pound baby is a little frightening! I guess we'll just see what the ultrasound says next week.

Well, I suppose that's enough rambling for now. I thought I'd attach some pictures of the shower. I'm very thankful that a friend of mine took a lot of pictures, so I can actually see who was all there!

The hall:

The cake!!!

Me with some of my greatest friends:

Me with my MIL

Me and my grandmother (My "Nama") I'm so thankful she was able to make it. My pap isn't doing well, and she was worried about leaving him for the day. I'm so excited for them to meet this little one. They've only been asking me to have a baby for the past 15 years! HA!


Hopefully these next 3 weeks will go a whole lot smoother than the past 3! As much as I'm still pretty scared about becoming a mother, I'm just as excited to meet this little lady!