Everyone's Okay

I'm okay, baby's okay, everything's fine.

Tuesday I left work shortly after writing my blog and went to the OBGYN. They midwife poked around my back and stomach, asked alot of questions about my urination and checked my cervix. There was actually nothing going on with the baby at all (Thank GOD) and it was kidney issues. She scared the daylights out of me because she thought it was some terrible kidney infection that puts pregnant women in the hospital for weeks but they finally decided on kidney stones after doing an ultrasound to check it out.

The remainder of Tuesday I stayed in bed taking 2 Tylonol Codines every 4 hours. I didn't sleep much that night, I was hurting too bad. Brent didn't sleep much either because I was kicking and moaning and screaming from pain. Wednesday I felt all right in the morning and decided to try to go to work. Ten minutes down the road I puked because I couldn't handle the sudden pain that decided it'd announce itself. I took the kids to the sitter, swung by work to make sure I could switch my day off so I could get paid for the holiday, and went home. I continued my pattern of medication and screaming and writhing until about 11pm. I fell asleep and slept (still in pain some) until about 4 am when I woke up to pee, went back to sleep and then I woke at 8am on Thursday. That was when I asked for meds again, and Brent hadn't given me any since midnight so I saw that as improvement. I laid low for a while in the morning, took the kids to Nene and slept on her couch for an hour or two. By noon I felt really well and took the kids home for their nap. I was still taking meds but I'd cut back to one pill every 4 hours instead of 2. I decided to make us lunch after I put Raziel down and I sat down to have lunch with Alina. I ate about half of my grilled cheese sandwich and stuck her in bed with the other half because I felt like passing out.

I gave Alina a Jolly Rancher and went to bed. About 10 minutes later Alina started screaming. I leapt out of bed and went to her room and she was choking on the candy. She stuck her hand in her mouth to try and get it out and she told me "it's too far mommy." I took her into the bathroom because she was gagging and I thought she would puke it up. Nothing came. She was screaming and coughing and I was terrified. I called Nene and she came right over. In the meantime, I tried to get Alina to drink some water but she just got more upset. We couldn't get it out and didn't want to keep trying becuase as it was she could breathe and we didn't want that to change. So, we got her to settle down and she fell asleep. I took her to bed with me and watched her carefully to make sure she kept breathing easily. When she woke up about 45 minutes later she'd swallowed the thing compleatly and she wasn't choking anymore. She was a happy camper, laughing and chattering away so I was very relieved. I could tell she was relieved too - I'm sure that freaked her out pretty badly. She told everyone at Thanksgiving about how she choked on her candy and coughed and Mommy and Nene made it go away while she slept. I thought this was adorable. She has also been pretending that her imaginary friends are choking on candy and that she is helping them by rocking them to sleep. I love how she takes her experiences and acts them out -it seems to help her cope with the trauma.

Anyways, that evening after the candy trauma and everything, I was feeling all better. I was tired, but up and cooking and eating with everyone. I slept well last night and I'm all better with no meds today. I'm a bit sore and tired - like I'm recovering from a long trip or something - but I'm at work and all so I'm doing abundantly better.

Now that I've experienced both a kidney stone and childbirth, I will clear up this massive disallusion that men have that kidney stones are worse. Let me make this very very clear; Kidney stones suck really badly. The thing that makes kidney stones so terrible is that the pain never lets up - it's all the time and it takes longer than many labors - where as contractions are every so many minutes like clockwork. You know when your contraction will be done and when to expect another one. BUT the delivery of a child is much worse than a kidney stone. That 30 or so minutes of pushing and breathing and pushing and breathing beat a kidney stone by far. So, yes, kidney stones are worse than labor. Kidney stones ARE NOT worse than childbirth. Now - that's given you're doing the childbirth naturally... Epidurals don't count in this little comparison because I've never had one so I can't tell you. I took IV drugs for the childbirth (which takes the edge off the pain) and I had codine for the kidney stone which totally knocks you out but epidurals supposedly numb everything so I can't see how that would hurt anything like the other two...

Well that's my thoughts on all that and my update on my disasterous few days.