To say the pregnancy started off a bit rocky might be an understatement. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't anticipating feeling lovely during the 1st trimester. On the contrary, I was fully expecting the queasy, nauseous morning sickness that everyone is supposedly plagued with. I even went out and bought ginger tea and ginger candies when the blood test came back positive, in full anticipation of said morning sickness. The thing was, it never happened. To date, I have not been more than mildly nauseous the entire time. (Knock on wood)
What I got instead were what I considered 'scarier' symptoms. I had severe abdominal cramping, persistent pelvic pain and lots of lower back pain. It started right around Christmas (week #5) and lasted until a day or two shy of week #8. After 15+ years of gymnastics and it's related injuries, I'd like to think that my pain tolerance is still pretty decent... that being said, this sucked! It would come in waves throughout the day, and get worse at night. After a few evenings of finding myself in the fetal position on the bathroom floor at 2am, I was a bit nervous. Googling the symptoms didn't help, as my computer then told me I had anything from a kidney stone to intestinal cancer. I checked my preggo books and most of them were just as bad.
Ectopic Pregnancy came up nearly everywhere I looked. At this point, I didn't have my 1st doctor's appointment scheduled for another 7 weeks. Because I was pregnant, and all prenatal care is done on the local economy, the base would not see me (read: I'd need to go to the ER at the German hospital if I had any issues before my scheduled appointment). So, I did what any fighter pilot spouse would do in the case of a medical concern; I got a consult via Facebook from our flight doc! Our new flight doctor was back in the states for the holidays with his family. He and his wife have 5 daughters (yes, 5... how they do it is beyond me!). Needless to say, I figured he'd be a good resource, and he was. He wasn't overly concerned because I wasn't bleeding at all, but he said that a trip to the ER couldn't hurt, for piece of mind if nothing else.
Unfortunately, this all happened in between Christmas and New Years-- right when Brian's parents and brother were visiting. I still feel terribly guilty for the painfully long day that we all spent waiting around the OB wing of the St. Elisabeth Krankenhaus ER. Although, Bri's brother was just finishing med school at the time, so perhaps it was interesting for him to see how a German hospital operated. This is what I tell myself to justify the fact that they waited for several hours to have the doctor see me, and tell me that it was too early to be able to tell if all was well, or anything was seriously wrong. He did an ultrasound, told me he saw an amniotic sac and that it was just too early to see anything else. He told me to take tylenol if the pain was "unbearable" (I never did) and that was that.
I suppose the one good thing that came out of going to the hospital that day, was that the doctor was concerned enough to want me to come back in two weeks for another appointment and ultrasound. So, I got to meet my OB (who I actually like a lot) and I wouldn't have to wait 7 more weeks to see if everything was okay.
The rest of the visit with the Morrissey clan had gone well, and we headed to Brussels for an overnight excursion just before New Years. We also got to witness some of the most fantastic amateur firework displays Id ever seen, right outside our front door... literally. These were definitely not just sparklers and bottle rockets either! Our neighbors had bought enough fireworks for New Years Eve, that their display outlasted the one on base, by a good 20 minutes!!! Knowing our awesome neighbors and their love for German schnapps, we stayed close to the front door, lest a wayward firecracker head in our direction!
After New Years, the Morrisseys made their way back to the states and Brian and I settled back into our work schedules. We also assembled our 'dream sheet' of places we'd like to PCS to next. All of our top spots were overseas... it's just too bad we can't stay here in Germany!
Two weeks later I was back in the OB ward for appt #2, still crampy and sore, but managing it with heating pads and warm baths. Brian had to work that day, so I brought my kindle, some goldfish crackers, and passed the time in the waiting room reading (OB appointments here never begin at the scheduled time...it's usually at least an hour wait). When I finally got in to see the doctor, he did another ultrasound and lo and behold, there was something there! According to my preggo guilty pleasure, thebump.com, the alien in my belly causing all the commotion was roughly the size of a blueberry at this point. It was still too early to see a heartbeat, but the doctor could tell me that it was growing in the right spot (read: not ectopic). Hooray! This was a huge relief. He surmised that my aches and pains were a combination of stretching ligaments, a UTI, and good old fashioned indigestion. He wrote me a prescription and made an appointment for another 2 weeks. A few days following that 2nd appointment, I started feeling considerably better.
