I got my first ride in an ambulance on Tuesday. I wasn't excited so much as horribly embarrassed. I was reluctant to go to the GP as it was so, when the GP turned around and said 'Kel, your oxygen levels and blood pressure are low enough to have me worried and I'd like you to go to the hospital in an ambulance', I was hoping the floor would open up and swallow me.
In case you haven't noticed, I don't enjoy being made a fuss over. And as far as I'm concerned, ambulances are for real emergencies - heart attacks, severed limbs, babies being born in carparks.
It was exactly why I didn't tell anyone that I'd fallen over and it really hurt. The only thing that gave me away was the increasing shallowness of breath...and the fact that every time the baby moved on my right side, it brought me to tears.
Needless to say I got a bollocking from The Man for not being honest with him, and a bollocking from my Mum for the same thing.
The Man said he nearly had a heart attack when he got the call saying to meet me at the hospital. And then he almost passed out when they put my drip in and for some reason blood started to pour down my arm.
The nurses were very sweet, and the midwife who checked out bubba was lovely and spent a lot of time on my belly with the doppler so I could listen to the comforting sound of our baby's heartbeat.
I would like to clarify that baby is 100% okay - when I fell, my biggest concern was not falling flat on my belly...hence why I ended up crashing down on my right side a little harder than I might have done if I had more notice of the floor rising up to meet me.
Now, I'm not saying that ALL toys are the devil...but small, pointy, plastic toys on polished, wooden floors in a dark hallway - poised to meet the foot of a woman who's centre of gravity is changing by the minute - are right up there on my shit list.
My only complaint of the whole hospital experience was that they kept trying to give me pain relief that contained aspirin...no matter how many times I told them I'm allergic to aspirin. Right about the time The Man was ready to strangle someone, a nurse had the sense to write these things down on my chart.
Did I mention they also tried to give me an x-ray without a lead apron to protect the baby because the x-ray tech didn't read all the clinical notes?
Yeah - I'm not even sure where to start on my concern for the training these people receive.
Ahem. Moving on.
Thankfully they didn't make me stay overnight (sleeping with 3 thousand pillows in our own bed still isn't perfect, right now, let alone having to sleep on a shite hospital bed!) and I was discharged. But not before they gave me Endone.
Holy crap - I don't remember a lot of the rest of the night, but I do remember feeling completely out of control and at some point having a spew-fest in the loo.
Vomiting in the car is still the lowest point of my life to date, but this experience was pretty close. The Man tells me I kept telling him not to go home without me, could he take the chicken out and I was getting upset because apparently my chin was getting stuck to my shoulder.
I'm not even sure what the hell to think about all of that. I'll probably just continue to feel embarrassed and hope that one day my husband can look at me without seeing a vomiting, beached whale who can't breathe properly.
My rib won't completely heal while I'm still pregnant because every thump from bubba slows the healing process. And I feel awful for saying that...like I'm blaming the baby somehow. But I'm not. Every thump, as far as I'm concerned, is a sign that everything is okay and baby's health is my priority.
As far as The Man is concerned, this is the last straw and he wants me to go on maternity leave. I can see his point - if I don't take the pain killers then I can't sit and if I can't sit, I can't do my job. However if I take the pain killers, they turn me into a zombie, so I still can't do my job!
I'm not sure how I feel about it...part of me feels like a burden for being so clumsy and stupid, part of me feels guilty for being happy about the prospect of going on leave and not having to worry about work or daycare anymore, and part of me just feels tired and doesn't want to think about it - I just want someone to tell me what to do so it can be done.
And I suppose, in a way, it appears fate has taken the drivers seat in this situation and there's no way to escape the inevitable outcome. So someone is telling me what to do. I just have to do it.
Perhaps this is a life lesson in letting go and accepting that things happen for a reason? Regardless, it looks like things will be taking a different path than I had originally planned...
