Two weeks

About two weeks before Scarlett was born, I came home from work and decided to take a bath to ease my aching back. I was soaking and looked down and noticed something between my legs. I grabbed it and realized it was my mucous plug, the plug in a woman's cervix that holds everything in. I immediately called my OB-GYN at Camp Lejeune's Naval Hospital. They told me it wasn't my mucous plug, not to worry, and to wear a panty liner for a few hours and monitor it and call back if there was any blood or a gush of water. I didn't have anything other than a little more mucous, so because the Doctor's thought it was fine, so did I.

Then the Mucous started to increase. I called a couple more times, to hear the same thing. I asked the midwife about it at my appointment on March 3 and she checked the baby's heartbeat, said everything sounded fine, that sometimes pregnant women have a mucous like discharge.

I still felt like something was wrong, so on March 14, I went to an appointment with my regular doctor, explained what was going on and asked for a pelvic exam. She told me she wouldn't do one because if there was something going on then it could jeopardize me or my baby. She told me that if I felt that much like something was wrong, then go into OB triage. If I went in they were not allowed to refuse to see me. I decided to wait and see what happened. I went to work on Saturday as usual.

I set my alarm Sunday morning, March 16, to get up and go to work. When I went to the bathroom, I checked when I wiped out of habit, because I had been monitoring. When I looked at the toilet paper there was blood. I called Ma and asked her was there any reason I should have even the slightest bit of blood. She told me no and told me to call the triage department. I called and they told me to come in.

I dressed immediately and Ben and I headed to the hospital. When I got there the went in hooked me up to the fetal and contraction monitors. Scarlett's heartbeat sounded strong and I was in pain already, so I don't know if I was actually having contractions then or not. I'm sure I was because when they did the exam I was 3-4 cm dilated. Lots of people started rushing around. I got an IV in each arm, one with a Magnesium drip to slow labor down. I was hooked up to so much stuff I wasn't able to move. I got sick from the meds, so they had to give me more meds. They called New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, Nc, and they sent an ambulance right down for me. It took the ambulance about 30 mins to get there. By this point I was alone, Ben had to go get stuff from the house. We didn't have bags made, so he had to go get the stuff I needed. The ambulance ride to NHRMS took about an hour, and when I got there they took me straight to Labor and Delivery. It was so scary. I could see the worry on Ben's face.

Last pic I took of my belly before Labor