Saturday, August 30, 2008

37 Weeks

Justin's back is still out and he is scheduled to go in for an MRI next Saturday.  His Doc has put him on Vicodin now which puts him in a much better mood, but means he shouldn't be operating heavy machinery, i.e. a car with a laboring pregnant woman in it.  

I hate to be so "it's all about me" right now.  I know he's in a lot of pain with a possible diagnosis of a herniated disc.  But I am in a bit of a panic about a) physically getting to the hospital when labor starts,  b) having to listen to Justin moan about his back and when it's time to take his pill while I am contracting, c) going through labor and delivery with no moral/emotional support from my drug-induced husband and d) homeward bound with a crippled husband and fragile newborn to contend with while my bottom is still healing and I'm on no sleep.   Ok, I very much am all about me right now.  I make no apologies.

My sister is on call to jump in the car at the first contraction and my neighbor offered to drive us to the hospital should we need her.  But I might be on my own for a bit with the whole waiting game of cervical dilation.  I think I can do it though.  I've plowed through so much on my way to this moment.  I just have to channel my inner Wonder Wheel and keep up a steady dialogue with B the G.   Since the dry run at the hospital with my tumble down the steps, I feel pretty confident that I'll have a great team there helping me out.  

I just got a pedicure and will get one once a week from here on out so I can at least look at my toes with pleasure.  The rest of me is pretty much hilarious at this point.  My belly looks prosthetic to me.  Like I should just be able to unhook it in the back and remove, it is so round and taut.  Some say these bellies are gorgeous and while that is not the word I would use, I do find mine vastly entertaining to look at.  Foreign and funny at the same time.   My belly button has timidly popped outward, giving up the fight of remaining inward under all that pressure.  And blue veins lace all across the surface, always there before, but in stark relief now because of my fair skin and stretched abdomen.  Like I said, I'm fascinated.  It's like a freak show kind of vanity.  

  

  


Thursday, August 28, 2008

Tight Fit

I know this is bizarre, but I can't help wondering if, when I poop, it gives the baby more room to stretch around in there.  I envision her stretching her arms out next to my intestines and  thinking "Whew, now I can move!"

Monday, August 25, 2008

Ripe


Don't let the smile fool ya.  I am really, really uncomfortable, pretty much all the time.  My back aches and the only thing that fits anymore are my earrings.  I wish there were a little zipper in there that B the G could undo and come on out.  I don't think she's dropped down yet, because I still have heartburn and it's hard to catch my breath sometimes.

BUT.  Other than that, my foot is on the mend, thankfully.  Justin is still battling his back pain and I need him to hurry up and get past it so he can move into the manager's position when we go to bat.  Right now, there's a lot of moaning and whining going on and it's not coming from me.   I know I sound unsympathetic.  I think I am.  There's only room for one moaner and whiner in this town and it's the one carrying the extra 25 lbs.  

As of Friday I'll be considered full term which is quite a victory for me and B the G.  We can go pretty much anytime from here on out and while I'm ready, I don't think she is quite yet.  I'm practicing my patience and my yoga breathing.    She is busy poking me in the ribs with her feet.  But at least they are the right way up...


Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Usual Suspects

On Friday I woke up to find Justin in the guest bed groaning in pain with his back out.  Neither of us are sure what exactly caused the pain, but it's probably related to his recently re-starting a morning workout coupled with assembling the enormous dresser/changing table for the nursery.  The workout involves lifting weights repetitively and the changing tables involves millions of little screws and pegs, a Makita drill, instructions that look like cryptic writing from ancient Mesopotamia, beer, and apparently the ability to swear like a sailor.  It's like a mathematic formula for pain.

We called the doctor and made an appointment for Justin to come in at 11:00 am that morning.  In the meantime I went about my daily business, in quite a cheery mood because my sister was arriving the following day, because B the G had been given the all clear with the IUGR and because now Justin was the one who had to keep still and I could legally do a little more around the house without hearing it from him.
 
I shared my good news about B the G with Mimi who calls about every morning for an update and we discussed the trials of her pregnancies and mine and she begged me now that this latest crisis had passed, to just sit still and not move for the next five weeks.  Ha. Ha. Ha.  

A morning chore I've done since we got Gordon is to open the gate connecting our yard to our neighbor's which allows their dogs and Gordon to frolic together at will.  He loves it, they all get exercise and it doubles the size of their play area.  This involves a little duck under a chain link fence and then lifting a doggie door cut into the fence.  I've been very careful about holding onto the fence, stepping slowly, and minding the dogs since my belly has gotten so big in recent weeks and lately I had been asking Justin to do it, but of course he was incapacitated in the bedroom.  I was thinking these exact thoughts as I went through the motions on Friday.  Watching my feet, placing my hands carefully on the fence, opening the gate.  It went like clockwork and I was practically whistling like Tom Sawyer on my way back to the house.  

Then. Coming down the terraced steps in the backyard, the ones that have no rail because they're TERRACED, I slipped off the edge of the steps, flailed my arms wildly and went down like a bag of dirt.  Most of my weight went on my right foot which bent inwards and my butt.  I sat their stunned for a minute while the dogs circled around me wondering what this act was all about.  Then my foot began to ache, then fear for B the G set in, then I started to cry like a toddler lost in a mall.  Big, scared tears, panting, breathing, the works.  I let everything out on those steps.  All of the fear I was experiencing at that moment, plus the angst of the last three weeks, the pain in my foot, the frustration of my situation.  The dogs began to bark and howl around me, sensing the emotion and I thought maybe Justin will hear and come help me.  He didn't.

I called Gordon over and leaned on him while I hoisted myself up.  Hobbling into the house I yelled to Justin that I had fallen and then sat on the couch and cried some more.  He comes out of the bedroom walking like Frankenstein and tries to make sense of what happened through my blubbering.   He's worried about the fact that I'm crying so hard that I might start hyperventilating and tells me to try and stop.  So I did.  Once I turned off the waterworks I was able to make a plan to get to the hospital to check on the Bean and my foot at the same time Justin went to his appointment.        

I had to drive because Justin couldn't raise his arms high enough.  I felt B the G kick a few times on our way there and I felt fairly certain that she was fine which helped me stay focused.  I hobbled over to the ER and Justin went upstairs to his doctor's office and we promised to meet up later, as though for a lunch date.

The ER, which by the way is on the far end of the hospital, told me I needed to go to the Maternity Center to check on the baby and then come back for my foot, which by now is really beginning to throb.  I make it to the Maternity Center and god bless them, they kicked in and took over.  Checked me into a room, put me in a hospital gown, hooked me up to fetal monitors and I got to hear that lovely, reassuring heartbeat.  They went over me with a fine-toothed comb.  Questioning everything, drawing blood, urine sample, blood pressure, temperature, a cervical exam that felt like they were trying to reach my throat from the inside.  

Somewhere in there Justin found me after a trip to the pharmacy for muscle relaxers and sat uncomfortably in the chair next to me.  He popped some and began to sink lower and lower in the chair, informing me that he would be unable to drive home.  After about three hours and seeing nurses, interns, residents and the attending, and hearing from each one of these people how important it is to hold onto the handrail when I am on stairs (they're TERRACED!), they and I were finally satisfied that my Bean was just fine and they sent us on our way. 

I really felt like I should get my foot looked at, much as I wanted to get home, get Justin home and get something to eat.  So I went back down to the ER and Justin told me he couldn't sit in a chair anymore and was going to take a cab home.  I knew it would be a wait so I told him to go and settled in for more waiting.  

The ER at Emory is light years away from the cozy, warm maternity center and I began to feel yucky sitting there.  Everyone there looks miserable, staff, admins, patients, everyone.  When I got called back I talked to a triage nurse who told me I would have to have an x-ray to see if the foot was broken.  I don't know what I really expected here. I mean it seems like a normal procedure for my problem, but being 35 weeks pregnant, despite reassurances that I would be covered in lead and only the foot would be x-rayed, I began to have doubts about proceeding.  I really didn't think it was broken, as I could still bend it and there was no swelling.  I really just wanted somebody to reassure me of this without an x-ray, wrap it, and pat me on my head.  

Waiting for the radiology tech, I sat next to an old woman wrapped in a sheet who smelled like urine and a younger woman who looked like 10 miles of bad road, and hacked constantly into her hands.  I began to feel germs creeping onto me like army ants and when the radiology tech came out and called the next patient in, he had the same vacant, disconsolate look on his face as the old woman in the sheet.   I had enough.         

I told the administrative assistant at the front that I was leaving, I didn't want my x-ray I just wanted to go home.  She asked me to wait for the nurse which I did for about two coughs worth of time from Hackensack sitting beside me.  Then I told them again that I was leaving and she made me sign a form that stated that if I died as a result of leaving early, the hospital was not responsible.  They underlined and emphasized the word "death" and I signed happily and limped out of that place like Keyser Soze leaving the precinct on his way to freedom.   

Justin was there in the waiting room when I came out, having forgotten that he didn't have house keys and fitting right in with the wretched face theme that was de rigueur for the complete ER experience.  Sadly, my limp didn't fade like Soze's when I left the hospital.  It hurts and continues to hurt if I walk too much on it.  So I'm back to being immobile for awhile.   Only now I have company!  Groggy, grumpy JC.   But at least we have each other.  

 

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Chubba Wubba



Success!  After three weeks of gluey protein shakes, abbreviated bed rest and gallons of water, B the G weighed in at 5.7 lbs today and hit the 35th percentile on the growth chart.  Her Dopplers are all where they should be and there is a healthy amount of amniotic fluid for her to float around in there.  

I am so relieved, so grateful, so proud.  The doctor is thrilled with our progress and told me that we could continue coming in twice a week for evaluating or come back in three weeks when it's closer to go time.  Justin said "Three weeks" faster than I could get it out and the the doctor said she had already written that in the chart because she knew what his response would be.  They've gotten to know him pretty well in recent weeks.  We are both tired of the trips, the angst, and the stress of the visits.  Just let her bake a little more and we'll be satisfied with continuing the above regimen and monitoring kick counts.

She moved around in my belly all during the ultrasound, doing her own little victory dance.  Justin credits the water and the Krispy Kreme doughnuts he bought for me.  I think it was the rest and the protein.  But I also wonder if she would have grown anyway, that she just hit a lull.  It's hard to know.   

Regardless, I am thankful for the results and for the team of techs and physicians I got to know so well over the past three weeks.   It's a weird, loaded environment for all involved in peri-natal.  There's that gold-tinged advice to stay relaxed and stress-free for the baby coming in from all corners, but in the back of everyone's mind we all know I wouldn't be there if there weren't something unusual going on.  It's all unspoken and everyone is trying to protect me from worry and tension but also give me all the information I need.  It was a difficult balance for me and I did break a couple of times on my own.   To let it go and wait for her to make the next move is the easiest decision I've made in awhile.

 

   

Monday, August 11, 2008

Bananafanafofana

If I hear one more person suggest that we name the baby Sumatra, Venti or Folger's, I am going to shoot that person in the face with a bazooka.