Pregnancy Sympathy Gone Too Far

Amniotic Fluid Level: 22-23

It's not uncommon for husbands to feel the same kinds of aches and pains that their wives feel during pregnancy. Some husbands feel nauseated, some get back aches and some even put on weight.

Not my husband. He skips all the relatively easy-to-relieve symptoms and jumps right in to labor.

Tuesday night at 8, Justin began having severe lower back pain. He paced all through the house, panting, beating his head on the wall and on the verge of crying for two hours before I was able to talk him in to going to the ER. The area he complained of pain, and how the pain kept coming and going, made me think he had a kidney stone.

By 10 p.m., we were at University Medical Center's ER. They got him right in for a CAT Scan and confirmed that yes, indeed, he had kidney stones. Two to be exact and he'd already passed them both through his kidney and had them on their way to his bladder. For the last two hours or so, he'd been experiencing the equivalent of labor pains without an epidural!

Unfortunately, we weren't registered to the ER until about an hour later and once we were moved to an ER room, he had to wait another 15 minutes or so, pacing and banging his head on their walls in severe pain, until they finally gave him some morphine around midnight.

There I sat and he slept for the next three-and-a-half hours until a room opened and he was admitted to the hospital. At 4:45 a.m., we were calling it a night and I curled up next to him in his hospital bed.

The next day, they flushed him with fluids trying to get the stones to move down into his bladder but determined with an X-ray that they were lodged in the narrow part of his ureter. It's no wonder - one of the stones was 6mm which is the cut-off size that people can pass on their own. Justin's Mom, Jene, got to the hospital by 1:30 p.m. and by 5 p.m., he was going in to surgery so that they could laser the stones by taking a scope up through his bladder and into his ureter. He was back to his room by 8 p.m. and we were home by 10 p.m.

We slept 'til 3 p.m. the next day. I had a nonstress test but Grandma Jene went with me so that Justin wouldn't feel like he had to. She and I got to see Baby Daniel open his eyes and hiccup and she even got to hear his heartbeat!

Friday, Justin wanted to make the push to Meridian so that we could attend my youngest brother's graduation (congrats, Roo!) and so that we wouldn't have to cancel our second baby shower. I gave him 'til Abilene to get his pain under control or we were going to turn around. I drove all but an hour of the way and couldn't believe we made it, but we did.

Our "metroplex family and friends" shower was a huge success and a real treat. We were able to see and visit with friends we hadn't seen in a very long time and we got lots of stuff from our registries and even some handmade special touches! My grandmother, Great Mema, surprised me with a glider and ottoman for the nursery!

So, after all the drama and pain, Justin actually began feeling better as the weekend went on. I, however, began to suffer from swelling feet. I HATE how fat my feet look and especially how jiggly gross they feel when I walk. I keep telling myself I'm fortunate - I could've had to experience swollen ankles and feet as early as the second trimester.