Braden's birth story - pt 3

I have to insert something here before moving on.  I am very much an organized, like-to-be-prepared-type person, so of course I was reading like a maniac.  Every book that was recommended to me, online stuff, the whole gambit.  Unfortunately, a very deep fear took root in me and I lived in it the whole time I was pregnant all the way up until Braden was a year old.  I've been delivered from that now and I'm so thankful that God carried me through it even though I did not lay it at His feet for a long time.

So, Braden was fine, my body was being funky as always.  Well, right from the start I started having body aches and things going on that don't usually come on until later in pregnancy, so by the second trimester I was having some joint pain issues.  I was fine until the bed rest thing because I was so scared of losing the baby that I didn't want to start up a new exercise regimen.  I started to gain weight a lot more quickly, though I wasn't eating/drinking any chocolate or any caffeine of any kind.  The fear strikes again.  By the way, I still was going to work as usual by this time and where I worked the parking lot was like a mile away from the building I worked in, so I was getting some exercise, just really not enough.  The truth be told, because of all the pain I was in, I got slower and slower and slower.  I remember watching some of the other pregnant girls just waltzing around like no big deal and I would think, "Why do they get to have such a great pregnancy?" :) 

Well, things continued to progress and because I was considered a high-risk pregnancy I did get to have a lot of sonograms.  That was really cool.  We knew that he was a thumb sucker because we would see him sucking his thumb all the time on the sonograms.  Let's see, I think I was around six months along when I started having this major back pain.  It was horrible!  It felt like I had pulled my muscles and they wouldn't relax.  I tried everything I could think of to make it better.  I even brought my heating pad to work hoping that would help.  It didn't.  That same day, I went to the bathroom and saw blood on the toilet paper yet again.  Let me tell you, my heart just dropped!  I wiped again and realized that is was in my urine, not vaginal.  Also, what looked like a little stone was on the tp as well.  Off to the birthing center I went.  I was put in the prep room and had to get a catheter.  There's a first time for everything!  That was definitely a painful experience.  I found out after they put it in that there was another kind that wasn't supposed to hut, but they didn't have one in that room.  Right.  Just as I thought...I had kidney stones...in both kidneys.  More fun times.

More next time...