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I feel as though I am going to die from the pain w/ my kidney stones. I had my first attack four weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon. I was 21 weeks pregnant. The ER sent me home with a UTI and told me to drink plenty of fluids and take antibiotics. Needless to say that just added to my pain. Two days later I called my OB in tears and he sent me for an ultrasound. That afternoon he gave me percacet and told me once again to drink plenty of fluids b/c I had a kidney stone. Well by Wednesday I reached my breaking point. I went straight to his office again. From there he looked at the ultrasound on my kidney stone and all of a sudden realized that it was 13 mm. My left kidney was completely blocked. I had drank at least 4 gallons of water in the five days leading up to this b/c they told me to drink as much fluid as possible. I hope I have not done perm. damage to my kidney. They hospitalized me and he called in an urologist who placed a stint inside of me. This stint will have to be replaced every four weeks. It has been three weeks since my surgery to place the stint and something is wrong. It hurts so much. My left kidney all the way around to my ureter is throbbing in pain. I've taken the pain meds, but nothing is helping. I've tried calling my doctors, but have not been able to reach anyone. I don't want to go back to the ER because they look at me as though they have no idea of what to do with me. I am now 25 1/2 weeks pregnant. I'm scared the pain is going to send me into preterm labor. At this point I really don't know if I would even be able to tell the difference between contractions and the throbbing pain I'm already experiencing. I want my baby to be okay. I just don't know how to deal with this pain. It feels as though I have sharp knives stabbing me repeatedly in the back. Any advice will be appreciated. Are there foods I should or should not be eating? If I have a c-section can they remove the stones at the same time? Can more stones form while this one is in there? The only relief I have is when I fill the tub with 3-4 inches of water and submerge my kidney area or if I place a heating pad on the kidney. Will this harm my baby?

Hi everyone, I have a quick update...After almost 3 weeks of dealing with unbearable pain, I finally passed my kidney stone (33 weeks pg). I went to the hospital because I was having pain again, it was burning when I urinated, and I thought I was having pre-term labor. They did a catheter to collect a urine sample. They removed the catheter and yes I was having major contractions. An hour later, I went to the bathroom at the hospital and the stone popped out. It was at least the size of a pea! I truly think getting the catheter helped dislodge the stone that was just sitting in my bladder waiting to come out. Now that the stone is gone, I am pretty much pain free. I hope the best for everyone and that you too can pass your stones. The results came back and it was a calcium phosphate stone with a mass of 78 mg. To lars3210, I believe you are doing all that you can to manage the pain. I have a love/hate relationship with the bathtub and heating pads. My urologist also suggested drinking tons of lemonade. Not sure if it helped but I passed my stone about 5 days after drinking more lemonade. I get weekly ultrasounds for low fluid issues, and all of the HOT baths, HOT heating pads, and large does of NARCOTICS do not appear to have affected my baby. They keep telling me she looks great and she is passing all of her diagnostic tests. Hang in there...I am thinking about all of you!

I am 37 1/2 weeks pregnant and last week I spent 3 days in the hospital with Kidney Stones. They seem to think that my son could also be blocking my kidney causing more pain. The pain is almost unbearable at times. I have been sleeping in the recliner with a heating pad on my back and taking the pain killers my doctor gave me. I am about to freeze my husband out of the house because between the heating pad and the pain killers I am burning up all the time. However this doesn't seem to causing my son any problems he is always rolling around and seems to be just happy as a lark, none of this seems to be bothering him at all. However I do feel for everyone out there dealing with this pain. It is comforting to know I am not alone, because I was beginning to feel gulity for taking pain killers, but I just simply can not bear the pain. I have also found that if I take the pain killers at the first sight of the pain, it tends to help quicker then if I try to hold out.

I'm back again...I am now 37 weeks pregnant and was enjoying being pain free once I passed my kidney stone. However, tonight I started having blood in my urine. It is 2am and I can't sleep because I am freaking out that I am going to deal with another kidney stone. This is exactly how my other stone started. I had blood in my urnine with no sypmtoms of a UTI. I went 1 week with periodic back pain and abdomonal cramping. Then the real back pain started and I ended up in the hospital. My last ordeal was 3 weeks long, I had to take pain meds and I had to take medical leave which counts against my maternity leave. AGHHH! I am so close to the end of pregnancy and feeling really discouraged right now. I am going to the store in the morning to stock up on lemonade in hopes that I can make the stone smaller before it hits my ureter and causes the pain.

I feel terrible for you mother's who are suffering from kidney stones. JessicaAZ that was a huge stone. Just a question. Are they having you strain your urine so that they can analyze those stones. Many times those stones are made up of oxylate and when you follow a low oxylate diet it does help to prevent stones. Have you had a CT scan? Does it show anymore stones? Just curious. I am a nurse for a urologist and I always feel terrible for the pregnant women because it's so hard to do pain control.

I'm back again. I had to have a nephrostamy tube placed on 10/4/06. It worked for about a week and a half and then it suddenly stopped working. I went back to the hospital a week ago and they placed another tube completely. I feel like a walking talking lab rat. I have huge white crystals in my nephrostamy tube and I have to flush it at least twice a day. I am also taking 2000mg of Cephelexan a day to prevent infection, but I'm wondering now whether or not these crystals are infection. I can no longer take baths or showers because of the tube. I am now only 28 weeks pregnant. I am going to try the lemonade thing. What could it hurt?

I am now 1 week from my due date and two weeks from my scheduled induction, just in case I need it, the doctor says. I am getting so frustrated, also. I have past 1 stone and they can't tell me for sur that there is another one, but I feel like there is because I keep getting the same back pain, but the problem is that I never know when it is going to hit. I feel good for like a day and then that night it will start hurting. I am trying to drink lots of fluids and all but I hate going to the bathroom, because I never feel relief and it hurts so much to go to the bathroom. My doctor keeps giving me pain killers, but he offers no other real relief.

I had kidney stones at 16 weeks, after 5 days in hospital they finally diagnosed me with kidney stones. They told me my best option was to have a stent put in, this would help me to pass the stone and also reduce the amount of pain I was experiencing. It definately reduced the pain level and I did pass the stone about 3 weeks later. The stent was extremely uncomfortable but the doctors told me it was best to leave the stent in until after the baby was born just in case I had any more stones. I now have a beautiful, healthy 5 month old daughter and am about to undergo the 3rd attempt to remove the stent. The first try was during a procedure where I was awake and was pretty uncomfortable. This didn't work as the stent had calcified in my bladder because it had been in for so long. For the second attempt they put me to sleep and removed all of the calcification and then tried to remove the stent, it still wouldn't budge. So after an xray they discovered it had also calcified in my kidney. Unfortunately they haven't come across this before and now have no idea how to fix the problem. I am waiting for them to figure it out. My advice is if you have to have the stent put in, ask your doctor to remove it sooner rather than later or at least keep a close eye on it so you don't have the same problem I had.

I just had another kidney stone. I had them with my first pregnancy and didn't get them at all with my second. I am now 26 weeks pregnant with my third child and just got out of the hospial again with another stone. For any of who have had them I have two suggestions to help pass them quick. Drink lots of Cranberry juice. This seems to work well for me and I can usually pass them with-in a few hours because there seems to be something in it that breaks up the stone in the tube. Another idea is Hot Tea, just regular tea, no special tea is needed. Again, it works for me, all I can do is hope that it works for you too. Kidney stones in my opinion is worse than labor, it was for me anyhow!

I am 29 weeks pregnant and was diagnosed with a stone a week and a half ago based on right-side flank pain. One urinalysis showed blood, two others did not, and the ultrasound did not actually show a stone at all. My urologist believes that the stone could be in my ureter tube. He is hoping that because it is microscopic that it may pass on it's own. On Saturday, I have another ultrasound to see if my kidney is enlarged, and decide on the next course of treatment. For now as long as the pain stays stightly managable, I'll continue to deal with it with fluids and regular tylenol as necessary. He advised me that a stent would be more painful than the flank pain itself.

Good luck everyone!

When I was 5 months pregnant with my son I found out I had kidney stones. Not just one but three. they were too big to pass so I had to wait untill I had my son to get surgery. It was very painful. I didn't have to get a stent put in because I have two uraters on one side and one and a half on the other side. Yeah it's kind of weird but in my case its good. My Doctor calls it extra plumming. LOL!! My son is now four and Ive been getting stones ever since. Ive had two surgerys to get them removed. Now I am 34 weeks Pregnant and guess what I have stones again. I have to go see my uroligist and see what he can do. My kidney is really swollen (again) and there worried once again that it might go septic. I guess I will have to wait and see. The doctor thinks that I will probably get stones for the rest of my life. Im just a stone former. Woo Hoo thats what I always wanted to be. LOL!! I understand you pain everyone!!

Update: Stone free! After almost two weeks, I suddenly felt an enormas amount of pressure and pain in my groin on my right side for most of the evening. I took some Tylenol and drank a ton of water and went to bed. I woke up the next morning with a full bladder, and miracously the pain was gone. My follow-up ultrasound showed that although my kidney was still slightly enlarged, it was significantly better than the first ultrasound. I'll have another follow-up in April about ten weeks after my EDD.

I haven't posted in a while. So here is an update. My nephrostomy tube stopped working once again and the radiologist reccommended having it replaced every two weeks. After only having it in for four weeks, the tube calcified itself to my kidney and he spent an hour and a trying to pry it off of my kidney. I can't tell you how painful that was. My urologist is dumbfounded. He simply keeps telling me we'll remove the stone after you have the baby. I want to know what caused this. I want to know if I should consider whether or not I should ever have more children. I know that there is no way I could care for one child properly and become pregnant with stone issues again. My OB wants me to see a nephrologist. Has anyone here visited a nephrologist? The good news is I am being induced on 12/27.

I was hospitalized at 33 weeks for what they thought was pre-term labor...after many tests, they figured it was a kidney stone. They did 2 ultrasounds but found no stone. I was on a morphine PCA pump for pain, gravol for nausea, and some other type of anti-nausea medication. I couldn't take T3 with codeine because I had a seizure after taking it so that's when they put me on the morphine. I was terrified that it would affect the baby but they kept assuring me that it wouldn't have any ill effects. 2 weeks after being admitted to hospital, I finally had exploratory surgery to see if they could find a stone...and find a stone they did! They also did xrays (again, they said at 33 weeks there would be no ill effects...) and the stone didn't even show up on xray...apparently some calcium stones don't show up at all until they actually go in to find them...and It was a VERY large stone that they said would have been impossible to pass on my own. They removed it and placed in a stent to relieve the pressure from my growing uterus (which was removed a week later because my body was rejecting it). Now I am 37 weeks and am starting to feel the pain again...it's not nearly as bad as it was before, but it's the same "type" of pain that I had weeks before the hard-core pain hit...has anyone else experienced multiple stones throughout their pregnancies (and not at the same time?) Any info would be GREATLY appreciated! I am SO sick and tired of this...have never had any kidney issues before in my life so this is all very unfair!!!

I am only 9 weeks pregnant and am experiencing that old funny kidney stone feeling in my lower back. I had a stone with my first pregnancy at 32 weeks and they zapped it after my son was born at 39 weeks. I am wondering if many others experienced stones as early as I am this time around. Most posts I see are for the second and third trimesters like my first one. Thanks!

I am 10 weeks pregnant and before I even knew I was pregnant (turns out I was about 5 weeks) I was having bad pain in my lower abdomen and in my back. I thought it was possibly something bad that I ate or maybe cramps before I started my period. I couldn't stand up straight and felt very weak so left work early, went home and made an appointment with my doctor for the next morning around 10 am. The next morning I woke up early with severe lower abdominal pain on the right ride…I could not stand it and cried for hours thinking that I would just see my doctor at 10. At 8am I couldn’t take it any more so I went to the emergency room and was diagnosed with a UTI and a pregnancy! They gave me morphine while I was in the hospital and the pain subsided. They sent me home that afternoon with antibiotics. The pain came back once I was home and remained for the next few days, but eventually began to subside. I was okay for about two weeks, just super nauseous and weak and tired. I thought it was all just first trimester symptoms.

2 weeks later, January 14th, I began having major pain again, but this time it was worse. I finally went back to the emergency room the next day, on the 15th and waited for 9 and ½ HOURS! When they finally saw me they did an ultrasound, found an 8 mm kidney stone (a normal stone one can pass is between 4 and 5 mm) and immediately admitted me to the hospital. I stayed for 3 days, during which I received surgery and had the dreaded STINT put in. My doctor told me there would be pain for the first couple days and blood in my urine, but that it would go away and there would just be discomfort through my pregnancy. He plans to leave the stint in me for the remainder of my pregnancy – 7 and ½ MONTHS. I am in constant pain, urinate blood regularly and cannot be on my feet for more than 20 minutes without feeling like my vaginal area is going to explode! I work retail and need to be on my feet but I just feel like I can’t physically do it. I am in school also and just walking to class is exhausting – I walk so slow and clench my fists the entire time because of the pain. I don’t know what to do. My doctor informed me of the other procedure, the one where a tube goes through your back, but my urologist, general practictioner, on call OB and my regular OB all said they thought the stint would be better. But seriously, 7 and ½ months with this stint in me just does not seem viable. I am so distracted by the pain in my own body, I can barely even think about the baby inside me. I am afraid to take the painkillers for fear of hurting the baby, and according to many other women’s posts on here, they don’t work anyway. I honestly just don’t know what to do…