Blog: Bed Rest is Fun Only in Theory

I know most busy people at one point or another have wished to be put on bed rest. Days-and-days of just relaxing and doing nothing. I myself said two weeks ago how I would love to have a few days to lay around and do nothing. Be careful what you wish for!

It started last Wednesday when I awoke to find I was bleeding- a lot. That’s something no pregnant woman wants to see, because you automatically think miscarriage. It was 6 a.m. and I called my doctor’s office. Obviously my doctor wasn’t in so the machine gave me the on-call number to call and very shortly I received a return call from Dr. Jeffrey Downing, another Zanesville OB-GYN. Turns out I have really bad timing and got sick when my normal physician, Dr. Robert Aepli, was on his family vacation. So unfortunately for Dr. Downing he got the early wake-up call!

Dr. Downing told me to go to the emergency room. Needless to say the trip from our house to the hospital was one of the most nerve wracking of our lives. We got to the emergency room and the very first thing they did was check the heart beat. It was there loud and clear! It was most likely the biggest sigh of relief I had ever breathed in my life.

The next challenge was to figure out where all the bleeding was coming from, because that’s a precarious situation for a pregnant woman. I went up to Dr. Downing’s office and had a sonogram done. He was slightly worried my water may have broke, if so at 16 weeks I would have definitely lost the baby. But the test showed everything was fine.

They can’t say exactly, but the most likely cause for the bleeding turns out to be an issue with the placenta. Apparently sometimes part of the placenta will detach from the uterine wall. I had never heard of that before, but it is a common problem. Once I asked around I found out my cousin had the same issue two years ago when pregnant with my god daughter.

Doctors cannot do anything to stop the bleeding, it will just quit on its own. So I was put on bed rest from Wednesday to Monday. It was fun for the first few hours, but doing nothing really gets old fast. Having time off work is pointless when you can’t get any errands done or do anything fun!

Now I’m back and taking things easy. I went to Dr. Aepli’s office yesterday and he put me on “Level One Bed Rest”. There are four levels. In “Level One” you are allowed to work as long as you decrease your activity, you cannot do heavy household chores and you need to spend two hours laying on your left side a day. In “Level Two” you cannot work, you have to rest most of the day, you need to get help with chores and avoid exercise. If you’re on “Level Three” you’re pretty much confined to your bed. They even want you to eat meals in bed. If you need to be on “Level Four” you are admitted to the hospital.

There are some important things I learned from this experience. First, you should always call your doctor if you see any kind of blood, it signals some type of problem. Second, remain calm. Keep in mind there are a lot of other issues that can caused bleeding besides a miscarriage. Oh, and one of the most important things I learned, we’re having a boy 🙂