False Alarm

Yesterday, we had a false alarm with miss Kaycee.

Yesterday was my dad's, Jake's dad & Keisha's {our soon to be sister-in-law} birthday. I've been thinking the entire pregnancy how awesome it would be for Kaycee to come on December 29 - she'd have the same birthday as both of her grandpa's and an aunt! But I didn't have any reason to think she would come - no signs of labor whatsoever.

Yesterday was also our last day of 1 o'clock church. The awesome thing about 1 o'clock church is we can sleep in and not wake up to an alarm, which is so awesome! Jake woke up around 9 and insisted that I keep sleeping. I woke up around 10, ate some breakfast and immediately felt tired so I went back to bed. I asked Jake to come wake me up around 11:30 so I could shower before church, but when he came to get me I wasn't feeling ready to get up so we decided not to go to church. I slept for another few hours, then went out and laid on the couch since I wasn't feeling comfortable in bed.

Around the time I went out on the couch, Jake casually mentioned our little girl and asked how she was moving. I realized I hadn't felt her move in a while, so I had Jake get me some ice cream. Usually eating something cold gets her going right away, but it didn't work. I ate some lunch, making sure to eat lots of protein to see if that would help. Nope, no movement.

It'd been about 45 minutes since I ate the ice cream, and normally I can get probably 30 movements in that time. I decided to call my midwife on call and let her know what was going on and see if she thought we should go to the hospital. My midwives always says that their goal is 6-10 movements in an hour, and normally she hits that in 10 minutes or less. I left the on call midwife a voicemail, and figured that she would tell us to go in to the hospital so I decided to hurry and jump in the shower. While I was in the shower, she called back and left a voicemail {my phone wasn't working right and kept going straight to voicemail} and said that yes, we should go down to the hospital and have her checked.

Up until she called back, I had been thinking maybe I was being a little paranoid. Yeah, she wasn't moving, but going to the hospital? I thought maybe she would suggest something else to get her moving. I had been planning on actually doing my hair, but as soon as we got the voicemail, we decided to just get to the hospital as soon as we could. I already packed the hospital bag, with the exception of a few last minute things {like blankets & pillows}, so I had Jake grab the last minute stuff, loaded it all into the car and headed to Orem Community.

Around that time, I text our families to let them know what was going on. Everyone was texting us saying that they were praying for us and to keep them posted. I kept thinking "I am not ready for this - I can't have a baby today!" and Jake was super quiet, which most likely means he was thinking the same thing. I tried talking about lighter stuff, or talking about fun aspects of it and not focusing on how drastically our lives could be about to change, since we were both already freaking out.

As soon as we were close to getting off the freeway, I suggested we say a prayer. Jake asked me to say it, since he was driving. I had been thinking I wanted to pray that I would not hyperventilate if we ended up getting induced and having a baby today, and instead as soon as I opened my mouth I started bawling my eyes out. Like full on ugly crying. I immediately got SOO scared that something was wrong with her. All I could say, over and over again, was "please let her be ok. Just please let her be ok." I pulled myself together just as we got to the hospital. We left all our bags in the back of the car and went in.

They did some stuff to get us checked in and then took us back into a monitoring room. They put a little heart rate monitor on my tummy, and right before she put it on, the nurse told me not to freak out if it takes a minute to find her heart beat because it could just be her positioning. I was just praying over and over again that we'd find her little heart beat. And the second she put it on my tummy, I heard something.

I wasn't sure if it was her heart beat or mine, but I heard something.

It took a few seconds before I could say the words - "that's her heart beat right?" And the nurse smiled at me and said "Yep, sure is. Unless your heart beat is 140. Which it isn't. So yes, we found it. That's her heart beat."

And I totally started crying again.

She found a position where she could leave the monitor on my tummy so we could monitor Kaycee's heart beat for a while, and then put a different monitor on to track if I had any contractions. It took maybe 3 minutes before Kaycee was doing everything she could to kick the monitors off. It was HILARIOUS to listen to - we could hear the heart beat, and then it sounded like a little kid breathing into a microphone because she would kick it so hard. The nurse had to come in a few times to re adjust her monitor because she kept moving it with how strong her kicks were. It was SUCH a relief to have her be so active. They monitored her for about half hour, and then we got the all clear to come home! And throughout that time, not a single contraction. I had kinda been worried maybe I was having them and didn't realize it or something, so that was kind of a relief to realize that I'm not missing something.

I felt really embarrassed to go to the hospital and be sent home, but I'm glad we went and got her moving and made sure she was ok. I was kinda ornery when we got home because I felt so dumb about  it all, but Jake has seriously been amazingly supportive and made me feel a lot better about it.

Princess, you scared the HECK out of your mom, dad, grandparents & aunts! Please don't do that again!

Hopefully the next time we go to the hospital, it'll be for real!