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| Hush, little melon, don't say a word... |
Monday, May 30, 2011
Just plain silly
And now, after that saga, here's a ridiculous picture for you. Since my uterus is so bitchy, er, irritable, it makes walking for more than 50 feet rather uncomfortable. So with Karen by my side, I mustered up the courage to use an electric cart to go grocery shopping for our dinner night. It was embarrassing for five minutes because I was certain everyone was judging me, but then it was fun and I didn't care anymore. And then we took pictures in produce, because... well, wouldn't you?
My Eventful Night (which did not end with babies)
There's nothing like a late night hospital trip to make you face your level of baby preparedness. I learned that I was about an A- for gear, a C+ for a sparkly welcoming house, and a D for accepting that babies are actually going to come out of me very soon.
I should back up since it's been so long since the last post. Honestly, every day has felt much the same as the one before, so it didn't feel like there was anything to post about. But looking back, I suppose a lot has happened. My belly is huge and numb and 75% purple, my ankles aren't quite cankles yet but my shoes don't fit, and I walk verrry, verrry slowly. Not the most comfortable, but pretty darn standard.
I've only had two real complications. First, gestational diabetes, which was diagnosed around week 26. It's been a minor pain to check my blood four times a day, but I responded really well to diet change so I don't need to take any insulin. The biggest hardships now are that I can't eat cereal or fruit for breakfast and I'm really not motivated to cook eggs every day, and that I spend too much time watching bread pudding on Good Eats or marshmallow brownies on Paula Dean, and that just makes me whiny.
The second complication is placenta previa, which means one of the placentas is blocking the exit. They usually move out if the way when the uterus grows, so I didn't worry too much about it, but it hasn't budged an inch and it's clear it's not going anywhere. That means non-negotiable C section, since the placenta would get ripped away if I started dilating and then I would bleed my way through their blood bank.
SO, with all that in mind, my OBGYN told me that I could still begin labor on my own and then come in for the C section. But if I had any bleeding at all or any signs of labor, I was to immediately call the hospital, and the first words out of my mouth should be "twins" and the second should be "previa." Roger. So that brings us to my fun night two weeks ago. (Yes, blog updating lag.)
I had a three hour maternity photo session with the Woods and Matt, which was super fun and the pictures I saw look amazing! Here's one that I love because it makes me look a squash.
The session was mostly standing with occasional sitting or walking, but that's still an unusual amount of activity for me at this stage. I felt fine, if tired, and my belly was doing the standard amount of contracting that activity brings on. But later that night, when I settled into my recliner/bed, I noticed I was still clenching up now and then. That was strange, since getting off my feet has always made that stop completely. I decided to try sleeping to relax them away, but I woke up at 3am with a belly as hard as a rock.
Now this is where I started to get nervous, since I've read over and over: "False labor will likely ease with rest; true labor will not stop no matter what you do." I should have called the doctor right then, but I'm ashamed to admit that I chickened out. I had no pain at all, not even the slightest bleeding, and I felt I needed more data than just "My belly's hard" to make a 3am call. So I timed the contractions for an hour and found that they were exactly 10 minutes apart. All right, regularity. Check.
I called the on-call doctor and dutifully said, "Twins! Previa! Contractions!" She sleepily and somewhat reluctantly agreed that I should go to the hospital to get assessed. I felt guilty since she sounded so unimpressed by my symptoms, but I'd forbidden myself to let "I'm sorry" cross my lips. So I went upstairs to wake up Matt and said something to the effect of, "Hey, I'm contracting every 10 minutes and I'm going to the hopsital, but I know you have work so you can just stay here and sleep, okay?" He was all bleary and bewildered when he asked, "What? Are you in labor?" And I assured him no, no, there was no pain and no bleeding; they would just put me on fetal monitors for a couple hours and tell me to drink more water. I'd been through this rigamarole once before a couple months ago, and it went down exactly that way. Plus, I figured that if anything did happen, the doctors would stop labor anyway and Matt would have plenty of time to come. Practical, right?
Well, when I told my dear friend Courtney that afterwards, she freaked and lectured me about how fast complications and emergency surgeries can happen, and what if they couldn't stop the labor and it happened to this person and that person and OMG never leave Matt at home again!!! And Matt told me that he had trouble going back to sleep anyway because he was too anxious, so... I'M SORRY! I was wrong, and I promise I won't do it again.
But in any case, I drove to the hospital and waddled heavily up to the front desk at 4:30am. Reception dude: "Third floor?" Me: "How'd you guess?" And then, even though I walked into the hospital, got onto the elevator, and walked a fair bit through the maternity wing to get to their reception desk, the nurse still said, "Your room is the third door down the hall. Do you need a wheelchair to get there?" Arggh, humiliating. I said I'd be quite fine, but they still had another nurse escort me down. And I'd promised myself I wouldn't say sorry, but that didn't stop me from blathering, "I'm really not in labor! I know this is all a big false alarm, but my OB told me to be vigilant, so that's why I'm here, but you don't need to worry, and... yeah." She just ignored me.
So I got to the room, put on my gown, peed in a cup, and got fitted with my three monitor straps, just like this pic from the last time.
Then they told me that since I clearly wasn't in labor, they were going to wait for the doctor to come in at her regular time in a few hours, so I should just try to sleep until then. Part of me thought, "I told her I wasn't in labor so why am I here now?" But mostly I was just happy that I was low priority and not a concern. So I settled in for my nap and asked, by-the-by, "Now if the monitors do show me going into labor, you'll just stop it, right?" And the nurse said, "Nope! You're far enough along now, we'll just go ahead and do the C-section. So... good night!"
AAACCCKKK!!!
That's when I earned my D for baby readiness because I freaked out. I absolutely could not comprehend going home with babies that day. There has to be some kind of build-up; you can't just have one of the most important moments of your life thrust upon you like that! I was 95% sure that I wouldn't actually go into labor, but it was such an unsettling idea that I then freaked out even more about why I wasn't ready and was I being a bad mother already? They were telling me I could finally meet my children and all I could think was "NOO!! Do not want yet!!"
So I got to dwell on that for four hours, and then when the doctor finally came in, I got just five minutes out of her. The babies were fine, I wasn't in labor, but I had Irritable Uterus. (Yes, I totally giggled at that description.) Essentially, my uterus was super stretched out and constantly grumbling with mini-contractions, which she told me to ignore unless they turned into something big and painful. I was surprised that she was so blase about it since my instructions had always been, "Be obsessively paranoid about the slightest twitch!" But that's when I realized that they weren't worrying about pre-term labor anymore. I was no longer pre-term! That realization was worth the whole hassle. After a whole pregnancy of precautions and worries and NICU stories, I'd finally made it past the point of fear. The girls and I were golden.
However, there was still one bit of cautiousness left. Every nurse that I talked to in the hospital asked me if I had my C section scheduled yet, and I told them that my OB was going to wait until I went into labor on my own. And then every single nurse got a tight, stressed look on her face that she tried to cover up with a stiff smile, and chirped, "Oh! Okay then!" and left the room. That was less than reassuring. So it was a relief when the doctor said at the end, "I'm going to schedule you for a C section and talk to your doctor, because it's really unlike her not to have done this already." Whew! I was happy before about laboring on my own because I wanted to feel at least one real contraction, but everyone else was making me feel like I'd be playing chicken against a bleed-out, so I was happy to get a date. I told the doctor to make sure it was an auspicious day in the Chinese almanac, which earned me a blank look, so I told her I was just joking, and that got me a blanker one. But five minutes later I got my appointment card for Thursday, June 2nd at 5:30am. A beautiful date! 6 and 2, good round numbers. It felt like a birthday, and that was enough to make it finally start to seem real and okay.
And now here I am, two weeks later, with only two and a half days left to go until the big day. Luckily, I'm feeling more at peace with the baby-meeting part. But I am still going through the whole spectrum of emotions about it: joy, excitement, panic, sadness. I feel envious of people who are nothing but excited about giving birth and being done with pregnancy. I'm going to miss my gigantic belly; it's part of me and I'm not happy about losing it. I know who the rippling elbows and feet are under my skin; they have names and personalities and they push back at me when I poke them. I'm happy to meet the people they'll become, but I'm sad to lose my relationship with the ripples. I'm happy to gain a whole new dimension of myself with motherhood, but I'm sad to leave my self-thus-far behind. It's hard to prepare myself emotionally when there are so many different emotions to deal with. But as I said, there are only two and a half days left, so I might as well just enjoy them and not try to force myself to feel any particular way. When the birth actually happens, there will be no forcing emotions anyway. They'll come out big and messy and pure, and whatever form they take will be okay.
(But my money's on happiness.)
I should back up since it's been so long since the last post. Honestly, every day has felt much the same as the one before, so it didn't feel like there was anything to post about. But looking back, I suppose a lot has happened. My belly is huge and numb and 75% purple, my ankles aren't quite cankles yet but my shoes don't fit, and I walk verrry, verrry slowly. Not the most comfortable, but pretty darn standard.
I've only had two real complications. First, gestational diabetes, which was diagnosed around week 26. It's been a minor pain to check my blood four times a day, but I responded really well to diet change so I don't need to take any insulin. The biggest hardships now are that I can't eat cereal or fruit for breakfast and I'm really not motivated to cook eggs every day, and that I spend too much time watching bread pudding on Good Eats or marshmallow brownies on Paula Dean, and that just makes me whiny.
The second complication is placenta previa, which means one of the placentas is blocking the exit. They usually move out if the way when the uterus grows, so I didn't worry too much about it, but it hasn't budged an inch and it's clear it's not going anywhere. That means non-negotiable C section, since the placenta would get ripped away if I started dilating and then I would bleed my way through their blood bank.
SO, with all that in mind, my OBGYN told me that I could still begin labor on my own and then come in for the C section. But if I had any bleeding at all or any signs of labor, I was to immediately call the hospital, and the first words out of my mouth should be "twins" and the second should be "previa." Roger. So that brings us to my fun night two weeks ago. (Yes, blog updating lag.)
I had a three hour maternity photo session with the Woods and Matt, which was super fun and the pictures I saw look amazing! Here's one that I love because it makes me look a squash.
The session was mostly standing with occasional sitting or walking, but that's still an unusual amount of activity for me at this stage. I felt fine, if tired, and my belly was doing the standard amount of contracting that activity brings on. But later that night, when I settled into my recliner/bed, I noticed I was still clenching up now and then. That was strange, since getting off my feet has always made that stop completely. I decided to try sleeping to relax them away, but I woke up at 3am with a belly as hard as a rock.
Now this is where I started to get nervous, since I've read over and over: "False labor will likely ease with rest; true labor will not stop no matter what you do." I should have called the doctor right then, but I'm ashamed to admit that I chickened out. I had no pain at all, not even the slightest bleeding, and I felt I needed more data than just "My belly's hard" to make a 3am call. So I timed the contractions for an hour and found that they were exactly 10 minutes apart. All right, regularity. Check.
I called the on-call doctor and dutifully said, "Twins! Previa! Contractions!" She sleepily and somewhat reluctantly agreed that I should go to the hospital to get assessed. I felt guilty since she sounded so unimpressed by my symptoms, but I'd forbidden myself to let "I'm sorry" cross my lips. So I went upstairs to wake up Matt and said something to the effect of, "Hey, I'm contracting every 10 minutes and I'm going to the hopsital, but I know you have work so you can just stay here and sleep, okay?" He was all bleary and bewildered when he asked, "What? Are you in labor?" And I assured him no, no, there was no pain and no bleeding; they would just put me on fetal monitors for a couple hours and tell me to drink more water. I'd been through this rigamarole once before a couple months ago, and it went down exactly that way. Plus, I figured that if anything did happen, the doctors would stop labor anyway and Matt would have plenty of time to come. Practical, right?
Well, when I told my dear friend Courtney that afterwards, she freaked and lectured me about how fast complications and emergency surgeries can happen, and what if they couldn't stop the labor and it happened to this person and that person and OMG never leave Matt at home again!!! And Matt told me that he had trouble going back to sleep anyway because he was too anxious, so... I'M SORRY! I was wrong, and I promise I won't do it again.
But in any case, I drove to the hospital and waddled heavily up to the front desk at 4:30am. Reception dude: "Third floor?" Me: "How'd you guess?" And then, even though I walked into the hospital, got onto the elevator, and walked a fair bit through the maternity wing to get to their reception desk, the nurse still said, "Your room is the third door down the hall. Do you need a wheelchair to get there?" Arggh, humiliating. I said I'd be quite fine, but they still had another nurse escort me down. And I'd promised myself I wouldn't say sorry, but that didn't stop me from blathering, "I'm really not in labor! I know this is all a big false alarm, but my OB told me to be vigilant, so that's why I'm here, but you don't need to worry, and... yeah." She just ignored me.
So I got to the room, put on my gown, peed in a cup, and got fitted with my three monitor straps, just like this pic from the last time.
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| Two for the babies, one for the uterus |
Then they told me that since I clearly wasn't in labor, they were going to wait for the doctor to come in at her regular time in a few hours, so I should just try to sleep until then. Part of me thought, "I told her I wasn't in labor so why am I here now?" But mostly I was just happy that I was low priority and not a concern. So I settled in for my nap and asked, by-the-by, "Now if the monitors do show me going into labor, you'll just stop it, right?" And the nurse said, "Nope! You're far enough along now, we'll just go ahead and do the C-section. So... good night!"
AAACCCKKK!!!
That's when I earned my D for baby readiness because I freaked out. I absolutely could not comprehend going home with babies that day. There has to be some kind of build-up; you can't just have one of the most important moments of your life thrust upon you like that! I was 95% sure that I wouldn't actually go into labor, but it was such an unsettling idea that I then freaked out even more about why I wasn't ready and was I being a bad mother already? They were telling me I could finally meet my children and all I could think was "NOO!! Do not want yet!!"
So I got to dwell on that for four hours, and then when the doctor finally came in, I got just five minutes out of her. The babies were fine, I wasn't in labor, but I had Irritable Uterus. (Yes, I totally giggled at that description.) Essentially, my uterus was super stretched out and constantly grumbling with mini-contractions, which she told me to ignore unless they turned into something big and painful. I was surprised that she was so blase about it since my instructions had always been, "Be obsessively paranoid about the slightest twitch!" But that's when I realized that they weren't worrying about pre-term labor anymore. I was no longer pre-term! That realization was worth the whole hassle. After a whole pregnancy of precautions and worries and NICU stories, I'd finally made it past the point of fear. The girls and I were golden.
However, there was still one bit of cautiousness left. Every nurse that I talked to in the hospital asked me if I had my C section scheduled yet, and I told them that my OB was going to wait until I went into labor on my own. And then every single nurse got a tight, stressed look on her face that she tried to cover up with a stiff smile, and chirped, "Oh! Okay then!" and left the room. That was less than reassuring. So it was a relief when the doctor said at the end, "I'm going to schedule you for a C section and talk to your doctor, because it's really unlike her not to have done this already." Whew! I was happy before about laboring on my own because I wanted to feel at least one real contraction, but everyone else was making me feel like I'd be playing chicken against a bleed-out, so I was happy to get a date. I told the doctor to make sure it was an auspicious day in the Chinese almanac, which earned me a blank look, so I told her I was just joking, and that got me a blanker one. But five minutes later I got my appointment card for Thursday, June 2nd at 5:30am. A beautiful date! 6 and 2, good round numbers. It felt like a birthday, and that was enough to make it finally start to seem real and okay.
And now here I am, two weeks later, with only two and a half days left to go until the big day. Luckily, I'm feeling more at peace with the baby-meeting part. But I am still going through the whole spectrum of emotions about it: joy, excitement, panic, sadness. I feel envious of people who are nothing but excited about giving birth and being done with pregnancy. I'm going to miss my gigantic belly; it's part of me and I'm not happy about losing it. I know who the rippling elbows and feet are under my skin; they have names and personalities and they push back at me when I poke them. I'm happy to meet the people they'll become, but I'm sad to lose my relationship with the ripples. I'm happy to gain a whole new dimension of myself with motherhood, but I'm sad to leave my self-thus-far behind. It's hard to prepare myself emotionally when there are so many different emotions to deal with. But as I said, there are only two and a half days left, so I might as well just enjoy them and not try to force myself to feel any particular way. When the birth actually happens, there will be no forcing emotions anyway. They'll come out big and messy and pure, and whatever form they take will be okay.
(But my money's on happiness.)
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