The Emergency Room... An Embarassing Adventure?

So it's five past 8. Kids are on the bus (I so love that!). I've been up since 4. Why? Well first of all because Sam woke me up wanting to get into bed with me. Second of all, because I then began having wicked, wicked stomach cramps and couldn't get back to sleep. I could barely move. The pain was in the "lower left quadrant" of my abdomen and it was debilitating. I couldn't really find any position that felt good or made it go away... and when I got up to go to the bathroom I got hot flashes & felt like I was going to throw up or pass right out. I thought at first it must be gas pains but then I was like... since when do gas pains make you want to pass out? And the area was concentrated to one specific spot... so it was weird. I had a gut feeling that everything was okay with the baby and that perhaps this had nothing to do with that but I was a bit worried nonetheless and kept checking for signs of a problem. There were no such signs other than the severe pain and nothing seemed to be making it go away. Yes, I even passed gas, but nothing seemed to help.
My husband decided it would probably be a good idea to go to emerg, given the level of pain. I really just wanted to hear a heartbeat.

So off I went to emerg. This alone should be recorded in history... the emergency room was EMPTY. I sat with the nurse and gradually started to feel better. The pain went down from about 10 to about 2. After going through all the questioning the nurse sent me for a urine sample. I also took the opportunity to poo. Yes, I am publicly admitting that I pooed in the emergency room bathroom. Although I am not quite as liberal as a 6 year old boy, I was desperate. I handed in my urine sample and told the nurse she could change my answer to the "when was your last bowl movement?" question from 2 days ago to 2 minutes ago. We laughed.

I sat in the waiting room for about 15 minutes or so before going in. The pain had almost completely gone and I was definitely feeling better. Go figure. We listened to the baby's heartbeat and everything was normal. Great. Now I just had to wait for the cute young doctor to come in so I could tell him that I had cramps, pooed & now felt fine. No, that doesn't make me look ridiculous at all.

All in all I'm glad I went in. The pain was truly like nothing I ever felt before... certainly like no gas pains I've ever had. But the whole experience makes me wonder... although I handled the pain, it hurt like crazy. How the hell am I going to give birth, in my house, with no drugs, if bowel movements are that painful?