SO Much Pain!

At the 35 week mark I was in drastic pain 24/7. I thought I was uncomfortable being pregnant with one baby but I would do anything to feel how I did then at this point in the twin pregnancy.

During this point in my pregnancy, I was having weekly OB visits. When carrying twins, you start going to weekly OB visits much sooner than you typically do when having a singleton pregnancy. With a singleton you don’t start going to weekly appointments until the 36-week mark. Twins you start going weekly at the 28-week mark. Again, this might be different depending on the healthcare team you are working with but for the clinic in my area these are their guidelines.

Another thing that I want to mention since we are talking about the prenatal visits with twins is that you will have sonograms every two weeks once the second trimester starts. This is because carrying multiples puts you and babies at a higher risk so they want to keep up on everyone’s health and have eyes on everything moreso than they would do with a low-risk pregnancy.

When I went in for my 35-week appointment they did some more blood work to again test for pre-eclampsia. My symptoms at this point were just all lining up to it. I also told them that I thought I had a yeast infection. They had me do a urine test for yeast as well as they were going to test the urine for protein. Well, whoever was in the lab at that point forgot to test the urine for yeast.

How this clinic runs is that if you do not get a phone call or text from them after labs are run than you are in the clear, good to go. If you do get a call, then something came back abnormal. I never received a call, so I figured everything came back normal.

At that appointment they also put me on bedrest. I opted for the “work from home rest” because I did not want to start my maternity leave before I had my babies with me. I wanted to spend as much time with them as I could!

I was in so much pain that next week that it was UNBEARABLE. I literally was crying almost 24/7, I could not sit/stand/laydown without being in pain and I could not sleep (which made things worse). The pain was located on my right back side about where my last rib was located.

I went in for my 36-week appointment and I told them the pains I was having and that I needed something done about it. They told me that they did have an induction date come open sooner than I had originally planned for. Since my twins were measuring 2 weeks ahead, they wanted me to deliver as close to the 38-week mark as possible. I had originally scheduled my induction for the 38 week and 3-day mark, but they said a date came open a week earlier making it on the 37- and 4-day mark. HECK YES I TOOK THAT SPOT! They didn’t have to ask me twice. I was ready to get these babies OUT!

For the time being, they recommended that I go see a chiropractor because baby B was probably pushing on a rib causing it to become out of place which in return was causing the drastic pain. Luckily, we have a chiropractor that specializes in pregnancy adjustments, and she was able to get me in right away. I got adjusted and guess what…I was still in pain.

I was in so much pain that I ended up going to the hospital a week before my induction date. This happened to be a Thursday night. I was not going to go but my husband kept telling me we needed to and then when we called my mom to ask if she would come stay with Kaison she told us it sounded like I was in early labor. Once mom got to the house we went to the hospital. Did I mention this was at 9:30pm?

Long story short, I was not in labor, and they did NO tests to figure out the pain. They told me again that it was just baby kicking on me.

That next day I couldn’t take it. I worked half a day from home, but I was crying all day. I started throwing up due to the pain I was in, so I was also getting dehydrated because I was throwing up a lot. My husband ended up taking me to the hospital again that afternoon. This time they did hook up an IV to help with the dehydration and they ran a test for my iron level. That lab came back fine so again they sent me home with no medication, no words of advice other than a baby was kicking me.

I ended up going back that NIGHT! At 1:30am I knew something was wrong and that it was not just a baby kicking me because I can feel their kicks at this point and this pain was different. We went back and I told them that I think it had something to do with my kidneys and the fact that I told people that I thought I had a yeast infection, but no one seemed to care about it.

That got them moving this time. I don’t know if it was because it was a different round of medical staff in there this go around or what, but they ran multiple labs, they had a sonogram done of my kidneys and they did a urine sample. Did I mention I was severely shaking at this point due to the pain as well. So, you can imagine how the sonogram went. It was so hard for me to sit still due to the pain and the shaking. The only thing that seemed to give me some relief was getting on all fours and spreading my legs around my belly then getting into a child’s pose (yoga reference).

About an hour after the labs were done, they came back and said I had an extreme yeast infection that had backed up into my kidneys. I knew a baby was not CASUING ME THIS PAIN! I asked them if they saw a yeast infection result on my urine sample, which I did at my 36-week appointment, and they said one was never completed. Meaning the lab technician forgot to run that test. This could have been caught and could have saved me so much pain if they had caught this.

This was so frustrating. Being in the hospital is not fun, let alone being in pain and having people give you no reason for why you were having pain. I was also hooked up to the baby monitors every time because they wanted to monitor babies while I was there. Well, when I was already in extreme pain and not able to sit still you could imagine how difficult wearing these were. The nurses kept coming in telling me that I needed to sit still so they could get a good reading on babies. It was overall so stressful and so frustrating to deal with. I have a high pain tolerance to begin with so the fact that I was willing to go to the hospital in the first place tells you something was wrong with me, and I was not just making this up.

Anyways now that they knew I wasn’t making up this pain, they prescribed me very strong medication to clear up this infection before I went in for my induction date. They also gave me pain medication that was safe to take in pregnancy to help deal with the outrageous pain I was having. These were great except for the fact I get loopy on any pain medication, so I ended up only taking 1 dose of those.

The pain was still there up to the day I gave birth, but it was so much more bearable. And I think I actually ended up getting 5 hours of sleep the day before birth! The good news is that the yeast infection did clear up in time for the induction date thanks to the medication.

Alright let’s go have these babies!