And the plot thickens

And we left off before the "real" fun began lol.

Enter 20 weeks.  Half way through.  I can start to relax, right?  It's should be smooth sailing from here.  Less fear of a sudden loss.  Surely at this point they can do something about it should something go wrong.  Right?

21 weeks and I fly to LA for business.  I notice my first day there that I am peeing a LOT more.  I mean a LOT more.  Like every 30 minutes.  No big.  I have some belly.  Evening comes and my back is KILLING me.  And I mean killing me, fall down and want to bawl killing me.  But I push through, get through the dinner and back to my hotel room.  I'm woken in the middle of the night by lower pelvic cramps and think, huh. That's odd.  They stop after a few minutes and I go back to sleep.

I wake the next morning and they continue, as well as the frequent bathroom trips.  A call into my doctor and I'm told to go to the hospital.  In LA.  Since I could be in labor.  Really?  So off we go...and after a trip to urgent care (thinking it would be faster than an ER) and after a 90 minute wait to get pulled back to be told that I'm too far along to be seen in urgent care and that I need to go to the ER.  Nice.  So off to the ER...to be shipped up to Labor and Delivery.  I'm thinking now this is service!  Hooked up to monitors and peeing in a cup...and they have trouble finding the heartbeat.  So of course I freak.  Thinking here it is.  It's over.  Nope, just turns out baby is small and hiding and my uterus is showing signs of "irritability."  Basically very small contractions that aren't strong enough or long enough to cause any change in cervix.  I'm diagnosed with an UTI and sent home.

24 weeks and I wake up over night with strong, painless contractions at 6 an hour.  I drink water, change positions, pee, and yet they continue for 2 hours.  Call my doctor, who somehow fails to get the message.  An hour later, contractions still continuing and no call back, I call again.  At least this time I get an immediate response and am told to make my second trip to L&D.  Sent home again, this time with just "one of those things" as the "diagnosis" and told to call again if they start back up.  Which they didn't.

At the tail end of 25 weeks and 5 days, we head off to watch a friends soccer game and I noticed that I had some pretty sharp cramping.  Thinking I'm not drinking enough, I start stocking up on the liquid and resting.  They stop and I go on with the evening.  25 weeks and 6 days, the cramping starts again that evening.  Laying down and drinking water and they stop, but I decide to call my doctor the next morning anyway, thinking I had another UTI.  26 weeks, I call in and am told they are most likely stretching pains and not to worry.  The cramping returns that evening.  26 weeks and 1 day, I notice an increase in discharge, so I call again and demand to be tested for a UTI.  They agree, test me and it comes back negative.  They are unconcerned about the increase in discharge, again telling that this is just "normal almost 3rd trimester symptoms."  26 weeks and 2 days, cramping returns in the evening...as I'm packing for my trip to Arizona.  I drink water, and head to bed, thinking this must just be my pattern anymore.

26 weeks 3 days.  I wake up that morning and immediately notice something is different.  I'm still feeling this low pelvic cramping/pain.  But I brush it off and head to the airport.  After all, my doctor kept insisting this was normal for this point in the pregnancy.  But I wasn't feeling "right."