Ordeal

During an otherwise lovely visit to Grand Rapids, where all of my siblings and my dad and step-mom had the very rare and wonderful opportunity to hang out together, I had a little scare. As I tried to go to sleep, my heart started to skip beats, beat very quickly and/or very slowly, and sometimes pound, sometimes barely beat at all. It was all over the place.  I waited about 2 hours, hoping the trick my uncle taught me (he's a doctor) would work. Nope. So I called my OB and she said that I needed to go to the hospital. Right about the time we left for the hospital my heart rate regularized, but was still beating pretty fast. So Jeanne took me to the nearest ER.

Thankfully, having a giant pregnant belly gets one treated pretty quickly in the ER. We heard Ciaran's heartbeat -- strong and healthy (whew!), then geared up for some tests. They thought there was a possibility I had a  blood clot, apparently not uncommon (but still dangerous) during pregnancy. So I was hooked up to a heart monitor, and then had an EKG. There were two potential abnormalities, so they ordered a chest X-ray and a nuclear test where they (gulp) injected radioactive material into my blood and took pictures of my blood flow between my heart and lungs. 

As a very important side-note, all of these procedures were safe for the baby, especially as I am considered full-term. The radiation I had was less than a CAT Scan, and they halved the dose to make it even safer. And the ER doctor consulted my OB, so I felt okay about getting this all done -- well, as okay as I could.

The good news is all the tests came back normal. The bad news is they still don't know what the heck caused the irregularities in the first place.  Hopefully it won't come back... I don't have to know what it was as long as I don't have to go through that again! 

So I pulled an all-nighter, slept until lunch, and plan on a good night sleep tonight.