Hospital Jail

So, it's no surprise that bleeding means another night in the hospital. A few days ago, I woke up from a nice mid-morning nap to find... well... more than "spotting" but less than "flow". I grabbed the doppler, was flooded with relief to hear the little guy's heart banging away, and called my OB.

I am sooo glad I got the doppler back, by the way, since it is really the only thing between me and full-blown panic at this point. I suppose I could just get a stethoscope, but I like the digital readout and the fact that I can compare the sounds to what I'm used to hearing.

Anyway, she did an ultrasound and an hour of monitoring in her office and decided that I was having too many contractions and needed to go for overnight monitoring until they subsided. Which I didn't mind - better safe than sorry and all that.

The contractions were the same sort of tightening that I've had for a while now, so I hadn't thought much of it. But at the hospital they were getting bigger and closer together, so my OB finally ordered terbutaline, which shut them right down. Apparently, it sometimes just takes one dose to calm the muscle and sort of reset things. The theory is that my little tag of placenta gets irritated and then it bleeds and the whole uterus gets irritated and that causes contractions. Obviously, the main problem would be if the placenta gets so irritated that it starts to detach. And of course, the thing that is most likely to irritate it is Mr. Baby himself, mashing it with his (relatively) gigantic feet.

So, a night in the hospital isn't so bad, right? Except that when I called my husband to tell him what was going on and ask him to bring me my computer and my already-packed bag, he said he was "really, really sick" and didn't want to go out in the rain and into a germy hospital and that it was exhausting enough that he had to pick up our daughter and figure out dinner, etc. etc., and that he would just pick me up in the morning.

Um.... really? For one thing, I hadn't eaten anything except oatmeal at about 7:00 am. And even though the hospital looks kind of like a fancy spa, the food is the same old soggy bland stuff that any hospital serves. I pointed this out to him, and he told me to order take-out. Yes, that's right - my husband told his pregnant wife, in the hospital for the third time, that he wasn't going to drive the twelve blocks to see her, much less bring her anything like decent food or a toothbrush.

I am pretty sure I will never forgive him. I mean, I won't hold it against him actively, but it will go into the general understanding of how our relationship works. And the thing is, he's basically a good guy - I am always caught off guard by his detachment from me when I need him the most. I mean, it's not like I was asking for much.

And to make matters worse, the on-call doctor never showed up the next morning. I was supposed to be released if the contractions hadn't come back, but nobody would officially let me go. By lunchtime I told the nurses that I was done, I took off the monitors and got dressed - there was a hep-lock in my arm, but no IV, so at least I could get my sleeve on. I called my husband and told him to come immediately.

I hadn't had any real food (graham crackers the night before, a soggy pancake and old lukewarm coffee for breakfast - the ideal pregnancy diet!) for almost 30 hours. I hadn't brushed my teeth or taken a shower. I felt like I was in jail. The nurses made some half-hearted excuses for the doctor, but it was pretty obvious that if the on-call isn't your own doctor and you're basically fine, there isn't hope for much consideration. I asked if I could just take the hep-lock out myself, so they paged the doctor and I was released over the phone. Why did I have to wait until noon for that?

My husband did at least come to pick me up, but he wouldn't come up to L&D. A wheelchair guy took me down to the lobby - my husband had somehow managed to gather the strength to drag his carcass from the ten-minute parking spots right outside the door to the seating area inside.

I am telling you, I have a lot of sympathy for anyone with a horrible respiratory illness. I've had bronchitis (several times), whooping cough and mycoplasmic pneumonia. I worked on a master plan for the redevelopment of a major respiratory hospital, including interviews with long-term patients and staff. I know how weak and awful you can feel when you can't breathe properly. But I also know that if you're doing that badly you wouldn't be able to go watch basketball with the guys later that day.

I'm just focussing on the fact the baby is doing well, that I am past 34 weeks now, that in another week and a half my OB won't do anything to stop my contractions, and that I may have a chance to raise a boy to be a considerate and compassionate man. The kind who would bring his hospitalized wife a spinach salad with grilled chicken, maybe.

Bedrest, Schmedrest...

My too-sick-to-move husband has gone to NY. Yep, couldn't manage a trip to the drugstore, but going to the absolutely other side of the country was okay. Hmmm...

To be fair, he didn't want to go - but he didn't even try to get out of it. And, also to be fair, when you are self-employed you are always semi-worried that you may never work again, so you do things you might not do if you had a regular job. It's not like there's someone else to be sent in his place. He's not only the business, he's the product, too. So, while I admire his determination and his commitment...

I am pretty sure things will be worse when he gets back.

Meanwhile, I am allowed up a bit more now, with all kinds of warnings to take it slowly. I waft slowly around the house like someone playing a ghost in bad community theater. It takes me half an hour to fold a load of laundry.

My favorite new item is one of those grabber-things with a handle on one end and pinchers on the other, so I don't have to bend and twist if I need to pick things up from the floor. I ordered it from Amazon, which tracks your orders and suggests other things you might like based on recent purchases. When I signed in this morning, Amazon wanted to know if I'd like a J-shaped handle to hold the toilet paper so that I don't have to twist to reach behind me when I wipe...

Should have just bought the grabber at the hardware store. And paid cash. Am kind of worried about the database associated with my credit card now.

Sick Husband

My husband is sick. By which I mean he is moaning and whimpering and hacking dramatically and has taken over my spot on the couch.

So, yeah, he's back from his trip, but he's basically of no use to me. The eleven year old is the only reasonably fully-functioning one in the house. Except she's at school all day, so I'm stuck here with Hacky.

At this point, I'm hoping it's the swine flu, because at least my daughter and I have been vaccinated against that.

More Yuck Than You Ever Thought Possible

Okay, pregnancy is weird. I get it. In fact, I embrace it. Theoretically.

After I peed today there was a gob of yuck in the toilet. A thumb-sized tannish-shredded-something-with-dark-reddish-brown-spots in it. Now, I never lost my mucus plug before my daughter was born, but the phrase "mucus plug" is so yucky that this seemed like it might fit the description.

I called the nurse. She seemed perplexed by the whole description and had me fish it out of the toilet (note - use slotted or perfed pasta spoon, not ladle, to get anything out of the toilet, otherwise you just have to chase it all over the place and it tries to go down the plumbing) and bring it in.

And you know what that means - another hour of toco/fetal monitoring, an ultrasound and a speculum check. Yay! But it's nice to know that things look good in there, even if nobody's quite sure what the yucky thing was.

People actually kept coming into the room to look at the yucky thing. It was like an obstetrical roadside attraction.

I probably should have charged admission.

"Natural"

First off, I hate that the word "natural" is used to describe a non-medicated birth. It just seems like it's co-opting a universal but often vague word to describe something that is actually very specific. Plus, as someone who had anything but a "natural" conception, it seems silly to start assigning words like that to any part of the process. So, I'll work on a better semantic descriptor, but in the meanwhile, let me tell you about the apprentice doula who was better than drugs.

I had a doula for the birth of my daughter. That was back in the dark ages of the 90s, when it was harder to find people on the internet. I wanted a doula because my husband gets nauseous at the sight of blood - I knew he would be of no use to me. I didn't want my mother there, because, well - I've written about my mother before. I wanted to have someone supportive and knowledgeable and calm by my side, and I figured I'd have to hire someone. But it was hard to find a recommendation - there were some lists at the hospital and a national organization that gave our names in the area. Finally I decided to use the woman that also taught a pre-natal class at the hospital - I figured that at least she had some relationship with the staff.

She was fine. I think she knew what she was doing and her class was informative. I didn't feel an instant connection with her, but I respected her level of experience and she seemed like a caring person. After we hired her, she asked if she could bring a doula trainee with her to my birth. The trainees had to attend a certain number of births as part of their program, and she said it would be to my benefit to have an extra person helping me. I figured it would be to my benefit to have an extra person helping her, so that she could concentrate on me, so I said sure.

It was the best decision I could possibly have made. The apprentice was exactly what I would have wanted in a doula if I could have figured out exactly what all the options were. She was calm, she knew when to distract me from a mild contraction, she knew when to do accupressure massage for a stronger one. She would tell me stories about being a new mother (she had two young children) while we were in the early phase, and then later she would rub my feet while the nurses watched my contractions on the monitor and made a big fuss over how intense they were. Honestly, all I could feel was the best foot rub I had ever had.

I had a long early labor - almost 24 hours at home (easy, very mild contractions - not even as bad as a period) and then about 12 hours at the hospital. The doulas were there for maybe ten hours. I think the first part of the day was fairly easy, some contractions and a lot of walking around the courtyards. I have low blood pressure normally, and lying down for a long time tends to make it even lower so we tried to keep moving. Plus, walking is supposed to help move labor along, and I was obviously on the long, slow plan. After a while the nurses had me stay on the L&D floor because I was so dilated. I remember suddenly feeling like I had to lie down, and the apprentice doula put me on my side and began doing counter-pressure massage on my lower back.

Just as I was thinking, hmmm, this labor thing isn't so bad, the other doula came back with a nurse and said she thought I was ready. The nurse checked, and suddenly there were people flying in and carts being pushed around and they were telling me that the doctor wasn't there yet and I needed to wait. I was fully dilated. The apprentice doula kept rubbing my back and then she whispered that I had gone through "transtition" - the worst part of labor - in 8 minutes, and that if I wanted to push I shouldn't worry about the doctor. She told me that my nurse had been a midwife for 20 years in Australia, and that she was perfectly capable of delivering a baby.

I remember thinking that I was glad for the nurse-midwife, but that I really wasn't worried about waiting for the doctor anyway. I mean, L&D nurses knew what to do, right? I was in this perfect zone from the counter-pressure massage, and I was going to just stay there. Suddenly the nurses were yelling for a resident. I just decided to go with the pushing feeling, and the apprentice was guiding me into a better position and then my doctor showed up and before she could get her gloves on my daughter was born. We have photos of Dr. D waving at the camera with her hands all bloody.

Afterwards, things were so easy. We just got wheeled to our room (now that hospital has labor-delivery-postpartum rooms, but at the time there were separate areas for the before and after). I had never gotten to a point where I desperately needed an epidural. I had felt like I was in charge of my own experience. I could tell that everything was fine. I was so glad that I had the chance to feel what childbirth was like without being in terrifying pain. And I don't know if any of that would have happened without the apprentice doula.

So, that's my experience with "natural" (substitute your own phrase here) childbirth. I would sum it up by saying it's really not bad if you have the right kind of labor - and don't rely on your husband to get you through it, of course.

Afterwards I found out that long slow labors almost always slow down with an epidural, and then need pitocin to pick back up again. Labors that are naturally long and slow suffer the most complications from pitocin, with decreased fetal heartrate, retained placenta and maternal hemorrhage topping the list. Um, yikes!

Some people have drastic, incredibly painful labors and can't imagine going through the whole thing without an epidural. My most "all-natural" friend went into the hospital swearing she would never stoop to anesthesia, and was screaming for medication after a few hours. She had a hard fast labor and it was just too much for her. So, I get it. And if I have a different kind of labor this time I am totally open to needing the drugs. After all, it was less than a month ago that I was willing to kiss the nurse who put morphine into my IV.

Anyway, I figured it would be easier to find a doula today. Anybody who wants to be found has a good internet footprint, and it only makes sense that doulas would make sure they can be googled. So, I typed the name of the apprentice doula into the search bar and - voila! She's a midwife now, but she will work as a hospital doula in high-risk cases. I have high hopes for another great experience with her, and if I have the same kind of labor I'll be glad to go through a little pain to avoid more serious complications. (If I have the hard, fast, incredibly painful kind of labor, I'll be glad that I'm in a hospital with an anesthesiologist right there.)

And, in case you were wondering, I don't think I'll be going in for an emergency low-fluid C-section any time soon. Since I've been on bedrest my AFI has gone up to 14. I saw my OB this morning and she said that as long as I keep resting and glugging liquids she doesn't think I have any more risk than anybody else of an early birth. So, yay! I am allowed to do a little bit of light activity, but other than that I have to stay horizontal as much as possible. As long as it's working, I won't complain too much!

Kick in the (Maternity) Pants

I had another round of non-stress test and ultrasound yesterday, which showed that nothing has really changed. My fluid is still hovering just above 10, but the little guy seems to be growing well and doing fine. My official diagnosis is "borderline fluid." All of this leaking and low fluid and bedrest at least gave me a much-needed jump-start as far as getting some of the baby-stuff figured out.

I am basically torn between wanting to just get it all done now and knowing that I don't really need much in those first few weeks anyway. Since I am trapped on the couch, I have been doing oodles of research about every baby product I can find. And it's been interesting - there are so many new baby-contraptions out there! For instance, I had never heard of a Tummy Tub before, and now I simply must have one. Even though it's $40.

Yep, it's a giant expensive bucket. But there are hundreds of reviews raving about how fantastic it is, that bathtime isn't the screaming disaster that it is with the lounger tubs, that babies love to stay in the water when they are upright and mostly submerged. Okay, I guess you could just get a bucket at the hardware store, but this one is phthalate and bisphenol free, blah blah blah. Of course, I'll save my final opinion for after I've actually used it.

I did order a car seat and a stroller chassis, thanks to Gwynn's recommendations. I have my eye on a "light-jogging" (i.e, brisk walking, which is all I'll do anyway) stroller which won't be available until March, but really I doubt I'll have the gumption to do any actual brisk walking in those first few weeks. I still need to get a crib mattress (gah! latex vs. coconut vs. the pristine wool of hand-fed mongolian goats...) and some kind of Other Thing that can be the thing the baby sleeps in next to our bed for a while.

What this Other Thing is, though, is unknown. I am intrigued by the idea of the co-sleeper, but our bed is this upholstered platform thing with wide edges. The mattress sits about five inches in from the edge of the upholstered platform. I think that the edge of the co-sleeper won't be able to scoot all the way over to my mattress, so it's whole raison d'etre will be irrelevant. Other than that, a moses basket on a stand? They are really little, though, so probably only good for a few months. Bassinet? I can't cope with one of those poofy things that looks like a miniature coffin inside Scarlett O'Hara's petticoat. There is one intriguing option, but I have found two reviews of it: one person loved it more than anything, one person thought it was a death trap. Hmmm.

See? It could go either way - organic cotton and FSC wood, all very green and fabulous and yay. Or, flimsy and collapses on your baby. Although I am always suspicious that the person who thinks it's dangerous just put it together backwards. I did find one blogger who got it for her nursery back in November - I emailed her to find out what she thinks, and if the blogosphere is all it's cracked up to be she'll write back with the real scoop.

So, that's it so far. Next time - "natural" childbirth!

Ongoing Whatever

So, I am still low on fluid, but not super-low. My averaged fluid measurement is 10.4 - they like to see at least 11. I mean, it's close. It's not drastic. The little guy is banging away in there and it seems like he doesn't have any trouble moving around.

But maybe the bumping is just really dramatic because he isn't cushioned by a vat of fluid? I've had two ultrasounds since I left the hospital and I go back on Friday for prolonged monitoring and another scan. I'm at 31 weeks now, and I know that every week until 36 is important, so I'm just hoping to keep things going for a while with bedrest and liquids. I'm not having any contractions, so if my doc decides that this guy would be better off out in the world, I'm guessing that means the dreaded C.

My husband is going out of town for ten days at the end of the week. I think I can pull off the bedrest with the help of friends and carpoolers and delivery guys, but I can't pull off another late-night trip to L&D by myself. I semi-wish he would cancel, but it's a big deal thing that he's doing and he might never get a chance to do it again. I hate to take away something that means so much to him, especially since I have been so demanding in the past few years - IVF, private school for my daughter, a new house. (Sheesh, I'm like a Real Housewife of Somewhere!) So, he's been working more (which for a freelancer sometimes means taking dumb jobs with idiots he can't stand, or not getting any time off after a grueling project) and now FINALLY he gets to do something prestigious and meaningful and important to him.

I'm gonna try to make it work, but I hope he can get back here fast even if he might have to hijack a snowmobile if he ever hopes to make it to an actual airport in an emergency. My little guy better just hang in there until his dad gets back...