Acid Reflux is horrible, HORRIBLE!

Yesterday night, while I was making dinner for the hubs and myself, I started feeling kinda "heartburney". This has been going on for about a week now, because of the pregnancy, and everything squishing my stomach and insides.... so I thought nothing much of it, and just went and popped 3 Maalox chewable tablets.

Unfortunately, the pain got worse and worse and was not relieved when the hubs made me take 3 more Maaloxes.

When I get heartburn, the worst place I feel it is in the back, in the interscapular region, and it like radiates up to my head or something. Anyway, yesterday's acid reflux attack was like nothing I had ever felt before. The pain was extremely excruciating, I was doing all I could to hold back my tears.

That scared the hubs really badly, because I'm usually stoic about such things, and seeing me on my knees on the floor, asking him for help really shook him up.

I had him massage / thump me on the back but the burning from the acid was so bad, I was tensing up with every "backflow". I couldn't talk from the pain, and when I tried to drink some water, it would feel like my throat was closing up on me and I couldn't swallow, with the water coming back up and choking me, not to mention it was friggin' PAINFUL! I couldn't swallow, I couldn't burp...It was really hard to fight back the tears. At some point I felt like I might black out, and all I could do was pray and wait for the antacids to start working.

Junior was pushing up against my chest/ diaphragm, plus the pain made it really difficult to breathe, and the hubs finally brought me to the bedroom, where I was propped up with pillows on the bed, trying to relax. I was breathing so shallow and quickly from the pain and pressure that the hubs thought I might hyperventilate and black out from THAT. He kept coming by to check on me, and would be really worried when I kept holding my hand up to tell him that I just needed some time for this "attack" to abate.

The hubs kept asking me if it was something else other than reflux, and was on the verge of scooping me up and rushing me to the emergency room.

At some point, I DID need him to bring me an empty cup/mug because my mouth was filling up with saliva quicker than I could swallow - a symptom of acid reflux ( water brash or hypersalivation ). That's when I knew it wasn't something more sinister.

After about 45 minutes ( it may have been less, but I wasn't paying attention to the clock at that point ), the pain slowly subsided, and I was able to breathe easier again. Being in constant pain for that long makes you terribly exhausted.

I couldn't help wondering throughout that episode though, about how I would make it through hours and hours of contractions and labour!