39 weeks 4 days- What a night

Just copying/pasting from an email I wrote my dad, I am tired and this is easier: Anything I didn’t send in the email and am adding now will be in parentheses and bolded. 

What a night we had last night. Our carbon monoxide detector went off in the late afternoon. We took it out into the fresh air, brought it back inside, and it didn’t go off again so I just looked up what to do if they go off, and everything said if the household was feeling any symptoms, to call and have it checked out. We both felt fine so I decided it must just be a false alarm. (Huge mistake that will always terrify me- please don’t ever do what I did and make an assumption like that!) I had been making a late lunch, so I finished that, ate it, and took a nap. I woke up probably about half an hour later feeling even sleepier than when I’d laid down, and went out to the living room where I sat for a while and was feeling a little dizzy and slightly out of it. (I couldn’t quite get my thoughts together. I felt disorientated and slightly irritable). I asked Jonathan if he was feeling ok, and he said he had a headache. I also noticed that this slight smell I’d been noticing for a couple of days- almost like gas, but not quite, just a smell that seemed off, had seemed a lot stronger since I woke up. I decided that with all of that going on I should definitely call about the alarm.
 
The firemen arrived incredibly quickly- the dispatcher told me to wait outside, so I went to the bathroom and headed outside and by that time they were already pulling up. As they walked up to the house, they were all asking each other, "Can you smell that?". The odd gas smell had gotten bad enough that they could smell it from outside coming up the driveway. It must have just been getting stronger and stronger, because at that point Jonathan was able to smell it, too, and he hadn’t been able to smell it before. I guess I had just picked up on it a lot sooner with my nose being more sensitive right now.
 
They walked around the house with their meters and at first didn’t get anything, but as they got closer to the hallway and bedrooms they started picking up carbon monoxide. They told us their meters weren’t that sensitive, so they were going to call PG&E out, but in the bedrooms they were picking up about 32ppm. I asked them what normal was, they said normal would be 0, around 30 is where you start noticing symptoms, and when it gets into the the hundreds it starts getting lethal. They called the EMTs then, and when they got here they started us on oxygen and took our vitals. They told us how much carbon monoxide was in us, but I was pretty disorientated and didn’t really know what the numbers meant. After a few minutes the levels went down, and they had figured out the source of the problem was our wall heaters which they got shut off and PG&E was on their way, so they told us we could either stay, drive ourselves to the ER, or go with them in the ambulance. We decided we would stay and I would call my midwife to see what she recommended for me (I really didn’t want an ambulance bill if at all possible), but when they called the hospital to let them know what was going on, the hospital told them not to leave without me. So, I got my first ride in an ambulance with Jonathan following behind. Once we were at the ER they kept me on oxygen and I finally stopped feeling so dizzy, and they checked the baby’s heartbeat (the nurse couldn’t find it at first…baby was actively kicking so I knew she was alive and I had to show the nurse where to put the doppler so she could finally get the heartbeat, lol) and checked my vitals a few times, and then sent us down to labor and delivery so they could monitor the baby better for a while since I was pretty much fine by that point.
 
Once they got me hooked up to the fetal monitors, they watched her heart patterns for a bit and didn’t like what they were seeing at first- there were a lot of rises and dips that showed them that she was still being effected by the carbon monoxide. They hadn’t really dealt with carbon monoxide poisoning before, so they called a high risk perinatologist who also had never personally dealt with it, but knew that it took a lot longer to flush out of a fetus’ body, so they put me back on oxygen to get as much to her as possible. They brought us some dinner and drinks and settled us in with blankets and pillows, and told us that once the baby’s heart patterns had looked good for two straight hours, they would discharge us. I was on the fetal monitors for 3.5 hours total. The nurses were very nice and helpful, but I was very ready to get home and go to my own bed and sleep after not really being able to move for a few hours (anytime I moved they would have to readjust the monitors so it was just easier for everyone if I didn’t).
 
While we were there, the PG&E man called because he had finally finished checking everything out- he said next to our one wall heater he was getting readings of 3000ppm. When he went near the other one it went so high it tapped his machine out. I guess they hadn’t been serviced in quite a long time, so they weren’t able to get enough air flow coming in to mix with the gas. When we got back home another PG&E man came out (it was nearly 2 am at this point, I had no idea they had people on staff all night to do that), to check the levels again to reassure us before we went to sleep. While he was here he got one of the heaters all cleaned out and working safely, but the other one is going to need another kind of specialist to come out so it’s just off for now.
 
It was definitely an interesting night, and a scary one. We’ve only had that carbon monoxide detector for a couple of months but I sure am glad we got it. It’s very scary to think about what could have happened. 
__________

Other stuff I didn’t include in the email to my dad but I’ll write out just so I remember-
I was trying to sleep for the few hours I was hooked up to the monitors and it was impossible. I kept having to pee (I always have to pee a ton at that time of night), so she’d have to come and get me unhooked, wait for me to pee, hook me back up, get my oxygen mask back on…such an ordeal. It was also so so uncomfortable having to lay on one side without being able to roll over, I was getting the worse cramps all through my legs and back. When she finally unhooked me to go home I stepped off the bed and there was a very audible painful crack in my pelvis, like when you twist weird and your back pops. Ow!

The few times I did fall asleep (I think the longest stretch was maybe twenty minutes), I kept waking up on my back, which I knew wasn’t ideal to get the most oxygen to baby so I’d have to roll back over, and then I’d lay there with so many thoughts going through my head. I would watch the monitors for a while and her heart was all over the place, 150 and then it would rise up to 170 and then crawl back down to 120…I didn’t know what any of it meant so it was just scary, but after the two good hours they said everything was looking really good so I believed them.

I also kept waking up thinking "What if there isn’t two good hours?", wondering if they would want to deliver her, or keep me until I went into labor…not fun thoughts, either. I didn’t google and tried not to wonder if carbon monoxide can have ill effects on a fetus’ brain. I mostly just laid there and read, I didn’t have my kindle so I was just reading stuff on my phone. 

It was very strange to have 4 giant firemen walking through my house, and then 2 more came, and then 3 EMTs…by that time the dizziness and disorientation were really setting in, and every time I turned around there was another person I hadn’t seen before, asking my name and birth date and how far along I was…it was so strange. When they told me I had to go with them, I asked the EMT if I could get dressed and he looked me over and said "You’re dressed enough". I just really wanted to put a bra and underwear on, lol. Being in the ambulance was weird, too, it was so bright in there I couldn’t see anything outside. The EMT in the back of the ambulance was very friendly, though, and we chatted about babies. It only took about 5 minutes to get to the hospital. I felt nervous because Jonathan wasn’t with me and it was all happening fast but he was right behind us in the car. I couldn’t see him but I could see our license plate and it was comforting knowing he was right there.

I feel sad that my baby is not even born yet and has already had carbon monoxide poisoning.

If you don’t have a carbon monoxide alarm in your house please please please get one.