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.
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.
posted by Sarah Goss at 12:46 PM
13 Comments:
I guess you're getting lots of practice for not getting enough sleep! Sounds normal to me, if not much fun.
I read the New Yorker article that you mentioned--very interesting and engrossing. I thought of you while I was reading it, but decided not to mention/save it because of the ending. Very sad indeed, but a nice way to commemorate the almost-baby.
I read that article...it was totally sad.
Linda
Oh, God--you both read the article! Now I need to talk to both of you, obsessively :-( (No; must not! Must not!). I can't talk about it in anything like a sane way. I thought it was absolutely devastating. Interesting, too, the response it got. I saw on a "daddy's blog" site that most people responded to it by feeling moved, but at least one person wrote in and called the author cold and heartless for the sort of graphic and unsentimental way he described the birth...which missed the point, in my book. As Mark put it, he loved the baby more because he saw how she really was--not an idealized Gerber baby to love, but someone battered and damaged by her experience, her fight with whatever killed her..okay, see? I need to stop now before The Crying starts again. Aaaaaa!
Yes, one pain distracts you from another pain, and in fact distraction is helpful when it comes to enduring pain. That is a lot of what breathing exercises are about.
When I have to give blood for the doctor, I usually pinch my own leg to distract myself from thinking about the needle.
Dad, you are funny. You told me about how you pinch your leg in another post, too. It makes sense. I just didn't realize my body would do this of its own accord!
Oh, yeah...my friend Lee told me last week that brains can only really process incoming pain signals from one spot at a time. She learned that from a birth class, but then she recently got through a nasty dental procedure by twisting the skin on her forearm.
Hey, wouldn't it be nifty to have the baby on your wedding anniversary? Do that, okay?
Aha! Well, that is good to know. That's funny--it sounds like Lee has a similar method to the one my dad described!
We are trying to steer CLEAR of the anniversary, thank you very much...although if she were born on July 14, she would also have my friend Arwen's birthday, which would be cool. But I think I'm mainly hoping she misses our anniversary so she doesn't steal its thunder.
Celia was born the day after Valentine's Day. Guess what theme her first 6 birthday parties had.
Almost as bad as being born on Christmas!
At least we don't forget her birthday (which we've been known to do for the other two).
I read the New Yorker article, too. It did not make me "feel moved." It filled me with fear and horror and made me feel sick to my stomach. And anger, I also admit. Not because I didn't think the father didn't have "appropriate" feelings about it, but because it's yet another article designed to instill terror in every woman who is pregnant or hopes to be. I do realize that was not likely the author's motivation, but that's effect, well on me anyway. I have read and heard too many birth-horror stories lately. Just stop it, you people.
You know, you're right that "feel moved" doesn't seem the right way of putting it (is that how I put it? Probably). It was really devastating and gut-wrenching to read...a far more visceral experience than simply being moved. It seemed to offend at least one person whose opinion I read online, though not for the same reason you are saying (she felt the writer was cold and heartless in the graphic way he described the baby's death). I agree that it was stomach-sickening and I understand why you felt that way! I do wish I hadn't read it. I don't think I'll ever forget it.
What a great site, how do you build such a cool site, its excellent.
»
Post a Comment
<< Home