Living in America

At least for several months.

Joshua and I have arrived and the action never stops for us. The plane ride was long and uncomfortable but especially this time around considering I'm carrying about 10-15 extra pounds of "baby fat". I was thrown a lot of challenges this time around namely the awesome customer service of airline employees (I hope readers can note the sarcasm in my last statement). However, I will try and keep this positive. Joshua slept for about 2 hours of the 9 hour flight and I got around 3 thanks to the Thomas The Train DVD that Daddy downloaded onto our iPod.

My mom picked me up in San Fran and all was well. I was uncomfortable but I chalked it up from being on such a long flight, in quarters so close to a large man who snored. Joshua stayed awake until about 7:00 local time and Grammi read him a story. No sooner was she about to finish up the book than we found him snoring. Needless to say, he was just a little tired. I stayed up until about 9:30. As long as I'm talking, I can stay awake! That night, I woke up several times: once with Joshua having a nightmare and the other times were because of discomfort. The next day, I took it pretty easy. I ran a couple of errands and then came home, all the while still having this uncomfortable nagging pressure. My mom came home from work around 4:00, and I told her about it. She called the doctor's office and encouraged me to go in and get checked out.

After speaking with the receptionist at my future doctor's office, she informed us that because I was not officially a patient of theirs yet, I had to go in to urgent care and not to labor and delivery at the hospital (the general rule of thumb is that if preggos are past 23 weeks, they should go directly to labor and delivery if they are in any pain or discomfort). She (the receptionist) said that urgent care is open after hours and that they should be open when we get there. We drove to urgent care only to find that they didn't open for another 45 minutes. We waited and were the first in line. When they opened, the front desk woman informed us that they didn't take pregnancy, and in fact, they didn't even have a fetal monitor there. She said that we would have to go to the ER. After my mom played "mama bear" and laid into the receptionist (I pulled her away saying it wasn't her fault and there was nothing she could do to help us.... it's not worth it, etc.), we headed to the ER. Before signing in there, I informed them of my situation and the receptionist there (we'll just call her my savior) told me I needed to go directly up to labor and delivery. Even if I wasn't quite yet a patient, I was 27 weeks pregnant and they don't take any chances. So we headed up and I was treated immediately by some very awesome nurses.

Turns out, everything was OK, but I have been banned to sitting on my butt, or should I say laying down on my side, this weekend. Because of sitting in one position for so long and getting dehydrated on the plane, along with the bad air quality from the Northern California fires and the summer heat, I could have been experiencing early contractions. Needless to say, the labor and delivery ward was packed with preterm moms that evening, so I wasn't alone.

I felt guilty about dragging my mother to this 5 hour ordeal when the family needed to eat dinner my sister had swimming and volunteer work she needed rides to, etc. but my mother called me silly and informed that it's better to look stupid and have it checked out than to not go and have something happen. She's right and I know that Mike would have done and said the same thing. Joshua was early and my stats go up about 70% of having another early if not earlier baby the second time around.

Oh, how I missed little Yokosuka Navy hospital at this moment! Despite my bad experience, Sacramento is actually rated high for giving great care to pregnant women and their babies. In fact, all of the labor and delivery staff that I met were great. My first doctor's apt. is on Tuesday but now they'll have me in their system!