Let's Play..."Guess That Fluid!"

We had a little scare the other night. I made the poor choice (yet again) of deciding not to get my nausea medication refilled. I figured that I’m at 22 weeks--there’s no way I should still be getting sick, right? WRONG! I take Diclegis every night and it’s worked wonders on helping me not feel nauseous. It makes me really drowsy, so I can only take it at night. So, after letting my prescription lapse, when I discovered that I am in fact still getting sick, I had to wait until the next night to get relief because it makes me so drowsy. 

Anyway, I was sick all day and dreaming of going to bed so I could get some relief. Going to bed is my favorite time of the day every day, but this day especially, it was all I could think of. Billy had only slept a few hours the night before and then of course had his longest day of surgery yet (7:30 AM-8 PM). Needless to say, we were both giddy to get into bed at 9 PM and watch Vikings until we fell asleep. Now, when I say I was sick all day, I mean nauseous. For some reason, I never throw up when I’m nauseous (even though I really want to). The times that I've thrown up during my pregnancy have been from my heartburn. So my nausea combined with my nightly heartburn really set me over the edge. At 10:30 PM, I ran to the toilet to puke my guts out. When I was finally done hurling, I notice that there was about a half a cup of fluid on the floor beneath me and my pants were all wet.

At first, I thought I peed from the force of throwing up. But as I was cleaning it up, I noticed that the liquid is extremely clear—no yellowish tinge whatsoever. I went in for a sniff test—nothing. So, that’s when I yelled to Billy “Come smell this weird fluid! I’m 65% sure it came out of my vagina!” Oh, the joys of marriage. Poor Billy was so tired and did not want to get out of bed, but got up to smell whatever came out of my body. He couldn’t smell pee either, which made us both think that I may have been leaking amniotic fluid.

So, we got back into bed (after washing up and changing pants, of course) and started Googling. I found a lot of posts about women who throw up so forcefully that they pee their pants. That made me feel better and made we think I was probably fine. But then Billy started looking at his doctor crap and he was getting more and more convinced that it was amniotic fluid. And when Billy gets nervous, that makes me nervous. I’m usually the nervous one telling him that I’m dying and he tells me I probably just need to drink more water. He never suggests going to the doctor. But, since we couldn’t know for sure what the fluid was, we decided we better play it safe and go to the ER. So, we got out of bed at 11 PM and saw our fun evening plans of slipping into a coma fade away. I put a bra on, grabbed my phone charger and kindle and waited for Billy to be ready.

We were both so annoyed at having to go, but we tried to remember we were doing it for the good of our baby. Is that what parenthood is? Trying to keep your child alive, but all the while being annoyed about it? As we were headed out the door, I remembered reading on Dr. Google about a woman who took her soiled pants to the doctor to be tested for amniotic fluid since she wasn’t sure if her water broke or not. So, I grabbed my dirty pants to bring with us for testing and took another whiff just to be sure and whaddya know? PEE! I’ve never been so happy to smell urine. I excitedly made Billy smell. He HATES smelling things. And I LOVE forcing him to smell things. After he confirmed it was indeed my urine, we went back to bed and slept peacefully. Even though I’m pretty sure we had traces of urine on our noses and who knows where else. So, don’t worry ladies and gentlemen. My water has not broken yet. I simply peed all over the floor. I have lost all control of basic bodily functions. And the moral of this story is: drink LESS water so it’s more yellow and fragrant and so you can always tell whether you peed your pants.