STOP THE MADNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just CANNOT express how thoroughly I am ready to be done with the dizzy/fainting/whatever. Seriously...I spent Sunday through Tuesday in the hospital. Pretty much a full 48 hours. This time, I was in the Women's Health ward for half of my stay and then the telemetry (constant heart monitoring) for the other half. My hemoglobin (which, as you'll remember, should be about 12) is finally up from 8 to 9.7, so we're making progress, but my iron was done low again...not as low as 2 weeks ago, but still low. I had tests run, consults with several different doctors, and everything checked out normal as far as neurological, cardiac, stomach, etc. It's all just that this baby is sucking my iron down faster than I can manage to make blood and take in iron. They gave me iron on Monday and I had a terrible reaction to it this time. I'm not sure if they were giving it to me too fast or if they gave me too much...that was never really determined. Either way, I was the hottest I've ever been in my entire life. Seriously, like walking with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednigo in the fiery furnace hot...even though my temp was normal. The hot feeling made me nauseous (they ended up giving me the anti-nausea med Zofran) where I was wretching. THEN, I started having awful cramps in the muscles that are between your ribs (intercostal) and in my abdominal muscles where they would clinch really tight and spasm. It was just really not fun. I had wet wash cloths and my mom was fanning me...none of that affected my hot feeling at all. It took about 2 hours for that to calm down. Not fun...

Here's the BIG news, though: If baby doesn't come by June 9th, I'm being induced that morning. I have to be at the hospital at 6:30. ICK! I really, really do not want to be induced, though, so I'm going to do everything that I can to try to avoid that and convince him to come early. SO, we'll see what happens with that, but I'm hopeful. I am typically very anti-inducing, but when I'm having this many problems...it's just better to get him out ASAP.

Well, that's my story for now. More hospital...no baby. I told them that I wasn't coming back to the hospital unless the baby was crowning. :) Then I said, "Okay...maybe I'm not coming back unless I'm ready for an epidural..." :)

My hope is that this will carry me through June 9th. They gave me a larger dose of iron this time. Last time, it lasted 1 week and 2 days. I had ZERO symptoms between that week and 2 days. SO, I figure bigger dose should last me through just under 2 weeks, right? :) Plus, I'm taking iron pills, so that adds to the store in my body and I really feel like I should make it to then with no fainting. We'll see.

SO, June 9 is d-day. That's the important part of the whole post. :) Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers. I really appreciate it (and so does Mark)!