Sickness and socks

The rockin' socks are more than halfway done! Considering that I only started them a couple weeks ago, this is pretty impressive by my usual standards. However, I've had both motivation and opportunity. Last Wednesday I started feeling sick to my stomach. I had tea and toast and stayed home from work, but by 9:30 that night I wasn't keeping anything down, including water, and I was feeling like absolute hell. We called up the hospital and fortunately my wonderful doctor was on call that night, so she told me to come on in and get some IV fluids. When we arrived they set me up in one of the really nice labor & delivery rooms, hooked up my IV, and attached some monitors as a matter of routine. A few minutes later, the nurse looked at the monitor screen and pointed out that I was having contractions every few minutes.

Well, no wonder I felt so terrible. Contractions! At 34 weeks! Not good! We knew that dehydration could cause preterm labor, but I hadn't realized it was already almost happening - I thought it was just more stomach pains. So I stayed in bed with my nice IV and had three liters of fluids, a dose of anti-nausea meds, and a shot of anti-contraction meds. My doctor determined that I wasn't dilated or effaced at all, so I wasn't in labor for real and the baby was probably going to stay put for a while longer (though he is Extremely Active and apparently likes to throw dance parties in there). After four hours in the hospital I was feeling a lot better, and we decided that the contractions had eased up enough that I could go home, but I had to stay in bed all day Thursday and drink more water than I had previously thought possible.

So, I stayed in bed on Thursday, and spent most of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on the couch with my knitting. I'm feeling fine now, or at least as good as I can feel at 35 weeks pregnant, but I'm still taking it easy, working at home, drinking tons of water, and so on. When I started these socks I was struck with the realization that if I wanted to finish them in a timely fashion, I'd better do it before the baby arrived - now I know that could be earlier than expected, but I actually have more time for knitting, so I'm hoping to have a pair of socks soon, and a healthy baby a few weeks later. :)