Birth Story, Part IV of IV

So, after 26 hours of labor and FTP (failure to progress), I had a C-section. The doctors put up a screen in front of my face to separate me from the surgery, and Mark got to come in and sit on my side of the screen with me. Before the operation began, the doctor in charge—-the appropriately named Dr. Masters—-gave a severe lecture to the medical team that had been taking care of me, which was pretty disconcerting. I am not positive, still, exactly what he was angry about, but it sounded as though he was angry that the resident who had been taking care of me, Dr. Lantzman (whom I really liked, by the way) and the nurses in charge of me hadn’t put an internal monitor on the baby. I am not positive that this was the issue, but he kept saying something about how bad it was that the baby hadn’t been monitored. He sounded very pissed off and he repeated the rebuke about three times, while everyone looked shame-faced. He said, “I’ve seen this sort of thing before and I can’t believe I’m seeing it again now!” It was a very strange way to begin the surgery, making me feel that things were not so well under control. I remember exchanging worried glances with Mark.

But then the surgery happened, unbelievably quickly-—about fifteen minutes. I asked Mark to distract me from thinking about what they were doing by talking about other things, and he obliged me (later he told me he was so excited about being about to meet his daughter that he almost fainted). I thought I’d be entirely numb from the waist down, but while there was no pain, there were sensations of pressure, and I could feel them taking the baby out, which was strange. Then I heard her crying, but I didn’t get to see her right away. I lay still and was very patient while they called Mark over. He cut the umbilical cord, something he’d told me he didn’t want to do, but apparently they told him to do it without offering him a choice and he stepped up to the plate. I concentrated on being patient and not demanding to see her. It felt like about five minutes passed before they told Mark to bring the baby over to meet her mother (it probably was five minutes, since they must have done the one-minute and five-minute APGAR tests on her—-she got 9 out of 10 on both).

Mark brought her over to meet me as I lay on the operating table. I remember the huge beam on his face. She was fussing a little but we both spoke to her and she seemed to calm down. I am convinced she recognized our voices from all the chatting we did with her while she was in the womb. Then, after a minute or two, they told Mark to come with them and they took the baby to the nursery so they could sew me up. Mark and the baby were gone, and I was repaired and then brought back to my room. After the doctors finished the repairs on me, the shaking started-—the most unbelievable shaking you can imagine. My whole body shook, my teeth chattered, I couldn’t form non-shaking sentences. All this was normal, I was told! I also had a strong urge to vomit, and they gave me something through the IV, maybe Phenergan, to counteract that sensation. By the time I was back in my room, the nausea had begun to subside. (I had with me again the little throw-up tray I’d been clutching all the way to the OR, but I never used it). Back in my room, my cousin held my hand and reminded me that the shaking was normal, and I lay there for about an hour, it felt like, till the shaking was mostly gone. My family crowded around, telling me the baby was beautiful.

“I want a Sprite,” I said. I said it over and over again. I can’t remember if anyone got me one; actually, my memory of it is that I didn’t get one till Mark finally came back in the room with the baby and then he got me one. He got me about seven Sprites, since I kept drinking them and demanding more. Later I found out that this had been a bad idea-—I should only have been drinking water. But I can’t say I regret it. Mark brought me Sprites and orange juices on demand until a nurse finally told me I was on the "clear liquids" diet and that the bubbles in the Sprite weren't going to help with the gas pain that C-section patients get.

After about an hour, Mark was allowed to come back in the room with the baby. He had the proudest look on his face and had enjoyed the fact that he got to bond with the baby for an hour, uninterrupted. This is when one thing, finally, about my labor and delivery story went right: the baby seemed to get the hang of breastfeeding right away.

I spent three more nights in the hospital, in a different room, recovering from the C-section (not that I was entirely recovered when I was sent home—far from it). I slept for perhaps an hour and a half, total, over the course of the days I was there. At the time, I thought I was euphoric, though now, looking up some “post-partum” conditions in my little brochure, I think you could probably say I had “post-partum mania.” I had no desire to sleep; I felt like I was on top of the world; I had never been so happy in my life; I wanted the baby with me the whole time, and not to be placed in her bassinette. Although I had no need to sleep (I thought), I was ravenous and enjoyed my hospital meals more than I've ever enjoyed any food in my life.

A C-section is a grueling recovery. For the first day, you eat clear liquids. You take regular installments of painkillers (they gave me megadoses of Motrin and Vicodin), but the pain starts to creep up on you nonetheless. You have a hard time doing anything that involves your abdominal muscles: laughing, coughing or even choking a little if something goes down the wrong way, sneezing, pulling yourself up into a sitting position. You have to re-learn digestion and going to the bathroom, so they give you stool softeners and medicine to relieve the pain of gas building up. Going to pee for the first time after being de-catheterized was a big ordeal, largely because it meant I had to stand up and make my way to the bathroom. Sitting up and putting your feet on the floor for the first time is a big deal. I had to practice walking, leaning on my IV stand for support. At first you walked all hunched over, as it's too painful to get yourself up straight. There is a lot of bleeding, and so you feel weak and tired. Even if I had been inclined to sleep, I was almost never alone for very long: a steady stream of doctors and nurses came and went from my room, checking all my vital signs, renewing the antibiotics in my IV till my fever went down, checking on the baby. There was the birth certificate guy, the First Foto woman, the lactation consultants, the newborn hearing screen woman, and a pediatric nurse who told us her job was to "manhandle" the baby in front of us so as to help us get over the first-time-parent neurosis of thinking the baby is much more fragile than she is and hence not doing what needs to be done efficiently.

Before I could walk, they told me to practice wiggling my toes and moving my leg muscles around. There was some concern that blood clots or embolisms could form from all the lying down and not moving. They also strapped two little contraptions to my calves that vibrated the muscles in them for me, and it was totally heavenly--a calf massage. Wish I could've taken them home with me. There were other gadgets for my recovery that I understand less well the function of. One was a breathing tube called an "incentive respirator" or "aspirator" or something like that. You released all your breath, then sucked in until a little floating lever reached a demarcated level. I am not sure what this did, but it definitely puts a little pressure on your stomach muscles. At one point, I forgot how to use it and was blowing into it instead of sucking in; as a result, the lever did not move at all. Unfortunately, I rang the nurses' station and informed them that my breathing gadget was defective. They must have been laughing at me, because when Dr. Lantzman came to visit me and check on my recovery he said, "I hear you were blowing into the [thingie] instead of sucking in. That happened to me, and I thought I was the only one!" He was a nice man, to make me feel better.

Another fun stage of the C-section recovery is the removal of your staples. They will tell you it doesn't hurt, but don't listen to them. Even if it doesn't hurt too much in the moment, it will, shortly.

At one point the baby was taken away for a significant amount of time to have blood tests done, related to the fact that I had an infection. They wanted to see if she had the infection, too, so as to determine if she needed antibiotics. The test results were inconclusive; they ran the tests again, and again they were inconclusive. They ended up not giving her the antibiotics because she seemed so healthy in every exam they gave her.

They told me not to kiss her on her face because I had somehow developed an incredibly swollen lip that they thought was probably a cold sore (though I think I may have bitten it during labor, hence the swelling). So I am only now getting to do what I wanted to do all along, which is to kiss her all over her face, because she does not object!

An entire additional chapter could be written about recovery from a C-section, but I will stop here. Thanks for reading my grueling tale :-)

Birth story, Part III

Eventually, the pain was so unbelievably horrific that they offered me an epidural and I accepted, though I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do at only 4 cm. The anesthesiologist, who was a very jokey fellow-—if I wasn’t too delirious to remember correctly, he called himself “Dr. Feelgood”—-came in and did it for me. Now this part was very hard. I had to sit up and lean forward, during a contraction, and try to hold still, despite the screaming pain, while he did things to my spine. I think he did a local anesthetic first, and then the epidural insertion. When I did as I was told, and leaned forward into a nurse’s arms to prepare for the epidural, my mom let out a loud gasp of horror that made me almost fall off the table. I later learned that she thought I was pitching forward in an out-of-control freefall. Unfortunately, the loud gasp flustered everyone, including the anesthesiologist. I think that with one more episode like that, she would have been ejected from the room.

The epidural insertion was kind of uncomfortable, and it was weird to be on a catheter, but I clung to the hope that afterward, I would not be in so much pain. Everyone had told me the relief from an epidural was so good it was almost euphoria-inducing. Here is where you will probably feel sorry for me: the epidural didn’t quite work. The left side of my body went numb, but I could still feel pain on the right side. I thought it wasn’t such a bad thing, because when the time came for me to push, I’d still be able to feel the contractions. But the pain went on, and I went on having to breathe through the contractions, which the nurses told me missed the whole point of the epidural. Eventually, we called the anesthesiologist back-—it was around 4 pm and another one was on duty—-and he tried to help me by upping the dose of medication. But this did not help either. The pains in the right side of my body continued. So finally, he was summoned back yet again and he re-did the epidural. I was afraid he’d be annoyed but he said he had decided on his own that my level of pain was not acceptable and that something wasn’t working. He removed the old epidural, which involved ripping pieces of tape from my back (and, I’m pretty sure, ripping a layer of skin from my back, too). I burst into tears, I am sad to say. After all that I had been going through, you wouldn’t think the tape part would have been the thing to push me over the edge, but it was-—well, the tape part, and the fact that I was now going through the horrible experience of having yet another epidural. Again I had to sit up, with terrible contractions racking me, and try to hold still while the epidural was inserted.

This time the epidural worked, and all of me went numb. I could barely feel the contractions at all anymore. For the first time since Wednesday afternoon, I was feeling no pain, though I was completely exhausted and weepy. I was also dying of thirst, but they told me not to drink anything; I couldn’t even suck on ice chips. This, I gather, is because if they have to do emergency surgery on me, involving general anesthesia, it is better not to have anything in one’s stomach. They kept reassuring me that I was not dehydrated, because I was on an IV, but I couldn’t believe it because of how thirsty I was. I have never felt thirst like that in my life. I chewed on gum and used chapstick to comfort myself a bit, but I couldn’t get my mind off of thirst. To be frank, I wanted a Sprite. I wanted one really, really bad. I wanted a Sprite more than I wanted a baby, at some times.

For the record, the epidural is a very weird experience, when it works. I stopped being able to feel much of my lower body. For the short time the epidural was working, I felt only the slightest sensations of the contractions, and had to look at the monitor to see when a particularly big one was coming on. At some point or another, I can’t remember when, the doctors broke my water bags with something that looked exactly like a long hook. The hope was that this would help me progress, but I was a little worried when they told me the baby had taken her first poop already and there was meconium in my waters; I remembered from childbirth class that this could be a sign of fetal distress.

The doctors checked me again and again; I was at 5 cm, finally, and possibly 5.5 cm. After that, however, the “no progress” theme was repeatedly reinforced. At last the doctors told me I had a fever and an infection (corteo-vaginal-something), and, what scared me the most though I have heard it’s not so unusual, they said the baby was “tachychardic” (?) and in danger of getting whatever infection I had. Now they said decisions had to be made, and all the doctors went to consult with each other out in the hallway. They came back and told me they wanted me to have a C-section. Actually, the doctor now in charge of me, who was very nice, said, “Prepare to meet your daughter.” Pretty exciting, though the news that I wasn't going to deliver vaginally was of course disappointing after 26 hours of labor.

The official reasons for the C-section: failure to progress (of course), despite the fact that the doctors said my contractions were regular and strong enough to “drive the labor”; for some reason, I wasn’t dilating and the baby wasn’t moving down the birth canal, either. She remained at -2. Also cited was the conviction that I had that pelvic disproportion problem—that my pelvis was too small to fit the baby down it. And finally, of course, the fever and infection were factors.

So they decided to do the C-section, and the nurses wheeled me down the hall to the operating room, being careful to bang my gurney into every single wall, door, and corner they encountered. I realize this sounds whiny and ungrateful, but it is true, and was particularly awful because I was trying not to throw up. Then they banged me roughly into the OR and tried to turn my gurney in such a way that I could be moved onto the operating table, but a wheel was jammed so that when they made jerking motions with it, it didn’t move. They kept jerking it ever more violently and saying that it didn’t work. It was very surreal, like they weren't aware that I was lying there right below them and experiencing all this bumping and slamming. But I want to add that in general, the nurses I had were wonderful and I'm pretty sure some of them are headed for sainthood.

I can't believe how long this is turning out to be. I think I'll save the end for a Part IV, which will be the last part of this riveting narrative. Thanks for your patience!

Birth story, Part II

Things start getting a bit fuzzy from here on, because I was so tired and greater pain and hence disorientation were ensuing. I know they put me on an IV shortly after admitting me, and that it was administered by a nurse in training, under the supervision of a more experienced nurse. I completely understand that a nurse has to be trained, and has to have first-IV-insertion experiences; if every patient refused to be that person, how would nurses be trained? That was with the calm, rational side of my brain. With the pain-riddled, needle-phobic side, I was inwardly screaming, “Get this novice off my arm NOW before I slap her!” Yeah. She hurt me quite a bit and did not get the IV in properly. The experienced nurse informed me that my “vein was about to pop.” I didn’t like the sound of that. They took out the bad IV and put in another one. I had bruises all over my arm and a surprising amount of pain—who knew an IV could be so painful. This turned out to be true for the next four days of recovery. The IV area hurt and every time they swished something through it, flushing it out, the pain was bad (though compared to contractions, not much).

Some time after the IV, they started me on pitocin in the hopes that the labor would pick up speed. They also gave me a dose of Fentanyl through the IV. It had to be administered in installments of 3, each one given during a contraction. So the nurse and I would sit staring at the monitor that showed my contractions, and then she’d stick a little more Fentanyl in, with each of three contractions. I discovered that Fentanyl doesn’t do much to help with pain, but makes you sleepy. So then I was sleepy and in pain, instead of fully in possession of my senses and in pain. I think I must have sounded a bit disoriented when I was conversing with people, but was not nearly sleepy enough to actually go to sleep. The contractions also got a whole lot worse on the pitocin—-much more painful. Now I could feel the pain in more than just my uterus; it radiated through other parts of my body and was longer in duration. This period of the labor went on and on and on, with little to differentiate it. Nurses came and went, checking on my “progress,” and there were two doctors who came and went and checked on me, too. I think one was a resident, because the other doctor would sometimes ask her questions, what she thought of this or that, like it was a test, and then either agree with her answers or qualify them.

My parents arrived around 1 on Thursday afternoon, and my Aunt Sally, Uncle Tim, and cousin Megan arrived sometime later. When my mom walked into the room, she took one look at me and burst into tears. This was distressing. The whole time I was having the contractions and in pain, I would look at Mark to see if he was distressed, too, and equally convinced that I was going to die, and it was immensely reassuring when he didn’t appear to think I was going to die. Mom, poor soul, looked like she thought I was done for. (Dad claims he expressly told her not to cry when she saw me, too.) Mom is a big believer in the power of breathing through contractions and in the “focal point,” which she had selected for me—a pink conch shell with a lot of little edges and points to focus your eyes on. So she began waving the shell in my face during the contractions, while other people were commanding me to “breathe through it.” Megan took a now-comical picture of Mom leaning in toward the bed, waving the shell mesmerically in front of my eyeballs, while I moan and scream with my beautifully matted hair clinging to the sides of my head. I was doing my rhythmic breathing, and I did try to focus on the shell, but at some point the pains were so bad that I was kind of screaming. I tried to modulate the screams into the low-pitched moans we were told to do—for some reason, low-pitched moans are supposed to be more helpful than loud, high-pitched screaming. But to be honest, I am not sure I succeeded.

The whole time, I could watch the contractions on the monitor. The line would shoot right up into these scary pikes, and when the contraction lasted a long time, you could see it going along, level, on and on and on, at the top of the mountain. Then someone would say, “I think it’s subsiding now,” but sometimes it would shoot right back up and not be over. What I really wanted was for someone to estimate how long they tended to be and then tell me how much more pain I could expect, as in, “45 more seconds; 30 more seconds; 15 more seconds.” That was the only thing that ever gave me any hope. The doctors and nurses kept checking me, and at some point they said I had dilated to about 4 cm. Whoopee!

My family kept me company, and it was nice that they chatted about other subjects, like George W. Bush’s stupidity, the Israel-Lebanon war, and The Daily Show. I wasn’t capable of responding much or participating in the conversation, but it was reassuring that life was going on, despite the utter horror that mine had become. I think if they had all looked panic-stricken and talked about nothing except my failure to progress, it would have been worse. (Well, Mom looked panic-stricken, but I can forgive her.) Mark’s family came and went at some point—I’m not quite sure when, since time blurred together so seamlessly.

Birth story, Part I

On the Tuesday before my due date (Friday, July 21), I had my last official prenatal ob gyn appointment, at which my doctor checked me out and said she would “strip my membranes” if I was at all dilated. She examined me, said I was 2 centimeters dilated, and did the membrane-stripping. This, she predicted, would help stimulate labor within 24 to 48 hours. I was quite astonished and chipper about this. I had been assuming I would be late, since I’d heard it was so common with first babies. I left the hospital feeling very excited.

Nothing happened for about 24 hours. But then, sometime in the afternoon on Wednesday, I started feeling some mild contractions and I lost the (apologies to the squeamish) mucous plug. I had read that this could happen weeks before actual labor started, but instinctively I felt things were in motion. As the day went on, I felt the contractions more regularly and a little more strongly. By about 5 in the evening, I was quite sure I was in early labor. I felt just like the ridiculous facial expression in the Kaiser pamphlet: happy, with neatly arranged bangs. But I tried to keep the deranged woman without bangs in mind as I went through the early period of the experience. Anyway-—I could still eat a little something, I did some bills, I cleaned my house up a bit, I finished packing my hospital bag, etc. Then, somewhat later, Mark and I started timing the contractions. They came ten minutes apart for a long time and were only somewhat painful. But they got increasingly painful, and longer in duration, and we started calling the hospital asking for advice. They were clear that there was no point in coming in until the contractions were 3-5 minutes apart, and about 60 seconds long, for an hour. They suggested walking around the apartment to help the labor progress, and so I did that—-lots of walking, and also the different poses with my birth ball that I’d learned in my classes. It did seem that the more I moved, the more the contractions came.

At about 3:30 Thursday morning, we went to the hospital. I was getting tired and the pain wasn’t so delightful anymore. The contractions were coming 5 minutes apart, more or less consistently, but I noticed that when I had to sit still (in the car) they were less frequent, and this discouraged me. I really did not want to get to the hospital only to be sent home. We arrived at the ER, where they insisted on wheel-chairing me up to Labor and Delivery, a fact I found ironic given that the second I arrived, they told me to get up and start pacing the hallways. (This was after they examined me and said I was still only at 2 cm—truly discouraging after all the contractions I’d been having). The nurse suggested I walk for two straight hours in the halls, and said he’d check me again at that point to see if I’d made “progress.” I hate the way this word is used in the discourse of childbirth. You feel like such a failure when you are told you have made “no progress.”

So we walked for two hours in the halls. This was much harder than it sounds. I was feeling exhausted and also nauseated. The hallways were also damned repetitive. Back and forth, back and forth we went, coming to loathe the sight of the same couches and gurneys and ugly paintings on the walls. When contractions hit, we would stop and I leaned on Mark till they went away. The pain was getting so bad that there was really no position to be in, sitting, standing, or leaning, that helped in the least. It was odd, too, to see strangers walking by while I was having the contractions. They probably knew exactly what was happening, and there would be this polite averting of the eyes as they passed us.

Finally, the nausea got the better of me and I went back to my room and threw up. I was beginning to think pregnancy had been a very bad idea. I knew this part would be painful, but I hadn’t quite taken in how terrible the combined effects of pain, exhaustion, and nausea would be. I felt like I was running out of steam and was still only in early labor. They examined me again and said I was pretty much at the same dilation as before. So, they told me to walk for two more hours. I can’t begin to tell you how discouraging this felt, but we started walking again. At this point, the night shift rolled over to the morning shift, a new nurse was assigned to me, and she stopped me in the hallways and told me to go back to the room and take a hot shower, as maybe this would help relax me and help me dilate. I was so relieved not to be walking anymore that I was willing to try this, even though I thought sitting down would not progress the labor. The nurse gave me a stool and I sat in the shower for a long time. It was blissful, but I threw up again as soon as I got out.

The nurses examined me again and I was at 3 cm this time, the minimum for admission to the hospital. I was terrified that they were going to send me home, but two doctors came in and told me they’d decided to admit me. This was around 8:30 in the morning. So they had me fill out a bunch of paperwork and sent me to a labor and delivery room.

View from my recovery room

(And gorgeous flowers from kind people.)

Good times

Sleep-deprived

At about 3 am last night, I found myself wondering whether it was possible to actually die of breastfeeding. If so, I hope they don't charge Daisy with homicide. THAT is a mother's love.

Check out Mark's Daisy entries sometime--3 entries so far, more pics:
http://mundanemark.blogspot.com/

Yesterday I learned the phrase "intertitial time" from Noe. Because she is an ob gyn, at first I thought she was using abstruse medical terminology and was nodding sagely and saying, "Oh yes, of course, uh-hmm, I know all about intertitial time." Then I realized the phrase's etymology in the Latin prefix "inter" and the Germanic "tit." I am now using the term to its fullest extent. This is VERY significant time, as the baby has had one boob and so is not fussy and you can do things to it like change its diaper, which you would not want to do in the post-duotittal time, when you are hoping--hoping, hoping, HOPING--it will go to sleep.

I do not understand infants. Daisy had the most wonderful schedule during the day. She would have her nursing session, then sleep for a nice long period of time, then wake up asking for more. Okay, it was a little monotonous, but it was predictable and orderly and I could get used to it. I assumed the night would go the same way, so I'd have nice stretches of 2-3 hours of sleep.

Er...I was wrong. As it turned out, her plan all along had been to rest up during the day so that she could eat ALL NIGHT. This is where the homicidal breast-feeding came in.

So as much as I want to finish the blog post I am writing about her birth, I am now convinced that people aren't joking when they said I should sleep when she is sleeping, even during the day. This is going to be hard.

She's here!

Official blog birth announcement:

Daisy Susannah Meritt, born at 8:37 PM on Thursday, July 20, weighing 7 pounds, 7 oz, and measuring 20 inches long.

She weighed only 7 pounds when they discharged her. The weight loss is nerve-wracking but normal, I suppose.

So, as it turns out, I was wrong: newborn babies are not strange little pickled aliens with out-of-control facial muscles. They are, I now see, perfect, extremely beautiful, and utterly accurate reflections of their parents' splendidness. I can't believe I was so blind before! I have seen the light.

typing one-handed

more to come, soon!

Er, wow

I had a doctor's appointment today and it seems I am 2 to 2.5 cm dilated. Wow! I wasn't expecting that news. My doctor did something to me, too, that is supposed to (maybe, probably) stimulate labor within the next 48 hours or so. (I am not trying to be prudish, but I honestly can't remember exactly what it was--something to do with removing a membrane.) She thinks the baby is likely to be on-time-ish. Wow again! So, I don't know--it could be soon.

As exciting as everything is, I was still shallow enough to note that I have lost a pound.

Mom? Me?

Mark and I are making a photo album for the baby. The first two pictures are of us: one of me, pregnant (which I carefully labeled "Mom") and below it, a terrifying picture of Mark in KISS makeup (which I carefully labeled "Dad").

I then put in some pictures of my parents, and also labeled them "Mom" and "Dad," by instinct. Hmmmmm, it occurred to me. Something isn't quite right here. This photo album is rapidly collapsing into textual chaos. The baby will be utterly confused. Oh no.

So I put little arrows from the second "Moms" and "Dads" and wrote in "Grandma" and "Grandpa." Now the pictures of my mother say "Mom-Grandma."

The truth is-- this whole thing is weird. COULD I be "Mom"? It doesn't seem possible.

No Baby Yet

Yeah. No baby yet.

Last night I thought I was going into labor, but, er, not so much. Mark kept asking, "Are those contractions?" And I kept wailing, "I don't know! I've never done this before!" I think they were bladder spasms.

My due date is Friday. Why do I feel like I can handle this when the sun is up, and then the second the sun goes down, am gripped with icy existential terror?

The baby is kicking the bejesus out of me. She must be humongous. I have no need to fill out the kick chart anymore--don't even have to think about it. She is definitely in there. I feel the pressure WAY down there, like she's attempting to exit. I feel like she's pushing to get out, so why am I not going into labor?

Oh, ha: got car-pooled across the Golden Gate Bridge a few days ago (you must have three in the car to cross the Bridge without toll, during certain hours) by a kindly toll booth lady. This thing's paying off already!

Mom is worried that I won't keep her updated on what's happening, so I told her this morning, reassuringly, "Just keep reading the blog--I'm sure I'll be posting a birth announcement." My daughter had better not dream of being so saucy to me, ever! (Let the hypocrisy begin...).

Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. Sleep deprivation is melting my brain.

Rather oogly

I have not been feeling so well lately, and wanted to let folks know in case I seem like a remiss correspondent. Pride (and respect for your gullets) prohibits me from going into detail, but I've been having a food-poisoning-like problem for the last week or so, pretty consistently, and it got worse over the last few days. It's not food poisoning, though; I am 99% sure it's related to this pregnancy and to the squashage of my stomach and digestive tract as a result of my huge-osity. I have been having trouble with the not sleeping and the dehydration and the not wanting to be far from my home. I made it to a doctor's appointment yesterday and she told me to stay home and rest and eat what she called the "BRATT" diet (bananas, white rice, applesauce, dry toast, and tea). I am violating the orders today to go to Sonoma and see my parents, but I think I'd better try to be good about the regimen otherwise, because things in my stomach are in a most distressful state. I have this feeling they're not going to get a whole lot better, either, till I deliver the baby.

That, by the way, is supposed to happen in nine days. I know most women don't deliver on their actual due dates, but I am still in quite a state of suspense. I don't have the heart to even attempt any witty or cute comments on my blog. Everything feels serious. All my latent superstitiousness is rising to the fore to tell me that any cute flippancies now will come back to gravely haunt me or the baby when the big day comes. I am knocking on wood like crazy and avoiding a certain number that I will NOT repeat here (and multiples of that number). I intend to go back to being sane when the baby comes out, but not till then.

End of week 38

So, here I am at the end of my 38th week, knowing birth usually happens between 38 and 42 weeks. I think the baby has dropped a little (what they call "lightening"). I first noticed it on Monday, and I think she's gotten even a little lower since then. This means she's a'coming. Yipes! (But, good yipes.)

I am getting used to not being able to sleep very well. I get up to pee about four times a night. Often, afterward, I have a fairly painful menstrual cramp-like feeling that I have learned is what a Braxton-Hicks contraction can feel like at this point. This has given me a chance to practice my breathing techniques (though I realize the pain of the cramp is minor-league pain compared to what the real contractions will feel like). When I go back to bed, I try to practice the breathing till the cramp ends, to warm up a little for what is coming. In addition to the cramps, I am having sharp, shooting pains in my bladder that are called bladder spasms, my friend who is also an ob gyn, Noe, told me. (How great is it that one of my oldest friends in the world is an ob gyn? She's given me a lot of helpful information!) Strangely, when I am going through these pains, the other aches and pains (back and rib ones, and that awful burning patch on my skin) seem to go away. Is it possible that one's body just can't process all those different kinds of pain at once?

Another fun thing is that my emotions seem more chaotic than ever. I just survived a 24-hour period where I was either crying or trying not to cry. In fairness, I read a devastating piece of prose in The New Yorker about a couple whose child is stillborn, and I think I would have been upset anyway, but this was particularly bad timing for me to read the article. As soon as I saw it, I knew I shouldn't read it and knew that I would, simultaneously. The mother was about as far along as I am. She delivered the baby after the baby had died. The narrative of what this family goes through is far too horrible for me to even attempt to capture it here.

This morning, the crying seems either to be over or on hiatus. Let's hope for the former.