Tuesday night I had scary experience. It was early evening and I was sitting in the armchair (drinking some orange juice, if you’re curious) when I suddenly got a sharp pain in my lower back. I’m pregnant, so that’s not all that unusual. The pain immediately started spreading wider and higher on my back, though, so I got up and started walking around the house to try to loosen up the muscles. No success from the walking so I tried lying on the floor, the couch, the bed, sitting on a hard chair, standing, and nothing helped. In fact, the pain was getting worse. After about 5 or so minutes the pain was continually increasing and spreading now to my abdomen and even up into my chest.

I should pause and tell you that Jacob was home studying Tuesday night. A week or two ago that wouldn’t have been unusual but with midterms approaching (starting tomorrow) he has been studying at school in the evenings, leaving me home alone and without transportation. But on Tuesday school was canceled and the building closed for the day because of the death of one of the school’s founders. So he was forced to be home studying all day. Thank heavens.

At this point I felt my breathing becoming labored so I decided to get his attention. He tried rubbing my back but that hurt. He got the heating pad on the bed but no help and lying on the bed was really painful. He ran a really hot shower for me but it just wasn’t relaxing the muscles. It felt similar to the worst charlie horse I’d ever had but instead of being a leg cramp it was a tensing of every muscle in my back/torso/chest until I felt like I was in a vice. My breaths had become tiny, shallow things that barely brought in any air (and I’m sure this was making the tensing worse.) Jacob hadn’t seemed too worried until the breathing became gasps and we were scared I was going to pass out. We decided we should go to the hospital.

For the record, I KNEW that this wasn’t contractions or anything to do with the baby (other than the fact that being pregnant probably triggered the back pain, of course.) The pain was definitely in external muscles. But I was worried about causing stress to the baby.

Jacob tried to find the address of the nearest hospital while I somehow managed to get dressed again (looking like a wet mess from the shower.) He pulled the car up to the door and we dashed out in the rain. While the GPS was trying to find the address Jacob was also calling 911 for directions. He got an automated system that eventually hung up on him but the GPS found it for us anyway. Then during the 10 minute drive to the hospital, something finally triggered the muscles and they slowly started to relax and I could start breathing normally again.

By the time we got to the hospital I was feeling fine, just sore. Start to finish the pain had probably lasted about a half an hour. We waited in the parking lot for a little while to make sure the attack was over. I was only nervous about the baby. Jacob ran into Walgreens to get some candy to hopefully get her moving and once I’d eaten some of that and some dinner she started moving around. I was SO relieved!

I’m so grateful for Jacob. He’s so cool under pressure. The only hint of stress I got from him was when he was trying to find the hospital address but he took care of it and stayed calm for me. He was so good to reassure me that nothing that was happening would be hurting the baby and not to even worry about it. He’s my rock.

We’re still not sure exactly what happened. I think if it hadn’t restricted my breathing it wouldn’t have been such a problem. I did call my doctor yesterday and I’ll talk to her more about it next week at my appointment. But here’s hoping it was a one time occurrence.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Pregnancy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.