23 weeks and 3 days

Around midnight last night, I started bleeding. It was terrifying. It was at least as heavy as a normal period. We called the midwife and she said that sometimes it is nothing but sometimes it is serious. If it was a serious problem, cramping would soon follow so she said we could wait to see if I started cramping before going to the ER. I figured we weren't going to sleep either way so we might as well go to the ER and see if they could tell us anything definitive. We decided to go to townM instead of townR because their hospital is nicer and they're only 10-15 minutes further away. It took about 45 minutes to get there and it felt like forever. We were both really freaking out and imagining worst-case scenarios. The bleeding seemed to be getting worse. The midwife had said that before 24 weeks, they don't generally even try to save the baby since it just isn't possible to survive that young. (I'm 23 weeks and 3 days!) I think she was sort of saying there was no point in rushing off to the best ER because even if it was bad news, there was not much they could do. It just kept turning over in both of our heads though. (The midwife did end up being really great through the whole process and I'm chalking that comment up to the fact that I had just woken her up in the middle of the night.)

So we got to the ER and I said "I'm 24 weeks pregnant and bleeding" - hey, what's a few extra days right? The ER Dr. was a little bit of a nut. Granted, it was about 2am and we probably woke him up (the ER was completely empty). He certainly didn't seem experienced at a pelvic exam though. We were so incredibly stressed out and that was NOT helping. He was having trouble finding my cervix and since Erin did my IUIs she had to be pretty good at that so she finally said "try down and to the left". I felt like just asking him to get out of the way and let Erin do it. He did an exam and said that at least my cervix didn't seem to be dilating (he didn't seem totally sure about that either though). The bleeding seemed to be stopping. He called the OB on-call who said I should go home and follow up with an OB within the next 2-3 days for an ultrasound and to come back to the ER if I start cramping.

We got home around 3am. Both Erin and I talked about how, over the last 3 hours, we couldn't help thinking about what it would be like to lose him. I thought about what it would be like to pack all of the tiny little clothes into boxes. Erin said part of her regretted finding out the gender and giving him a name because it would be sooooo much harder to lose him now.

I was almost falling asleep when Erin said "Is he kicking now?" I said "No, not right now" she waited a few seconds and said, "Can I snuggle with him anyway?" She moved over so that her back was against my belly and Colby started kicking right away. It was pretty cool. We've done that quite a bit when he's really active at night so that Erin can feel him moving while we fall asleep. It felt so good just to know that at least for the moment, he was still doing fine and safely squashed between us.

We slept terribly until 8 and then got up and started calling doctors. We managed to get an appointment today with Dr C. who we'd seen to get our ultrasound 2 weeks ago. He was really great. Maybe this is TMI but just a basic explanation - I had a really small cervical polyp (weird little growth on the cervix that is no big deal) that I saw my PCP about back when we were trying to get pregnant. Dr. C. said that sometimes due to hormones and stuff, they'll grow like crazy during pregnancy and bleed. He asked Erin if it looked any bigger now and she said something like "OH MY GOD!" so that was pretty obviously the problem. He removed it quickly and painlessly (no drugs or anything, it just didn't hurt). He said that the problem should have been fairly obvious and it was unfortunate that the ER doctor just wasn't experienced enough to know that. (We told Dr. C. about how Erin ended up offering him some advice on finding my cervix and he thought that was absolutely hilarious.) He said there was no need for an ultrasound because any other problem would be a HUGE coincidence and 99% of serious problems also have severe pain along with them (but obviously to call if we had any other problems).

So, we're fine now. It sucked but it was actually nothing and our coping skills also weren't very good at 2am.