...this child molester could have been a pediatrician.
(Not that child sex abuse is ever OK, but a part of me that still hurts from losing our first baby feels Schadenfreude that it was NW Perinatal the guy worked at, since that was where Matthew and I learned things had gone horribly wrong.)
I'm being induced tonight around midnight. I'm still completely in shock that it's gone from "ordinary and boring pregnancy" to preeclampsia and 36 week delivery (where I'll be tomorrow) in just a few short days.
Well, another high BP reading and someone from the perinatology team came in to talk with me...I'll be staying here for a while longer yet. They're moving me to a "more comfortable" room and talking about my being on bedrest until they can safely deliver the baby without problems. My labs look good still, but the fact my blood pressure spikes when I do things like, say, brush my teeth, is a big indicator that I'm on the pre-eclampsic path.
I'm hoping that I'll figure out a way to be at home on bedrest, although I was honest with the doctor about how awful I am about sitting still at home. If I can't, then I'll be here for the next week and a half. He said if we were at 37 weeks now, they'd probably go ahead and induce. But, since I'm at 35.5 weeks...
I knew I was screwed as soon as the doctor started asking me about my support structure at home. And I knew I should have moved my office last weekend. Sigh.
So, I'm back up on the hill (Oregon Health & Sciences University) in Labor & Delivery for monitoring. This time it's because I had a god-awful high blood pressure reading when I went to my regular appointment. And another high reading, then another, and another. When everyone was out of the room, I had Matthew take my BP (I trust him more than anyone else - he is an awesome nurse), and it was still super high.
The good news is that my blood pressure is back down in the normal range. But...I'm still spending the night. I'm getting to do fun things like a 24-hour urine test, which means I pee into an upside-down plastic hat-looking thing (Matthew calls it the hat -- "Just go pee in the hat!").
Poor Matthew: I have really frightened him. One of his first nursing jobs was taking care of pre-eclampsic women in rural California. He's gone home to get my iPod and a book (my overnight bag I've kept in my car since the last time I ended up here for monitoring). I keep apologizing to him, which he points out is silly, but I still feel guilty, like it's some sort of moral failing to have high blood pressure. (Even if it is back to normal now.)
On the plus side, I guess, I'm getting to know more of the nursing staff where I'll be delivering.
UPDATE: well, I was disconnected from my monitors; my blood pressure isn't my ordinary 120/60-ish, but it's not scary-high, either. I still have to spend the night, but they'll probably release me in the morning.
In any event, it's nice to have wireless access in a hospital bed, no? Matthew's been and gone, and I've had two dinners (which made up for not having lunch). The rooms are fairly well soundproofed (important in L&D), but the bed is really not comfortable. At least my blood pressure isn't automatically being taken every 15 minutes any longer...that would have made for a miserable night.
I can't get over the feeling that I'm somehow taking scarce medical resources away from people who need them more than I do, even if I am here on doctor's orders.
Yesterday I spent the bulk of the day (the part where the temperature went from 60 to 90 degrees) inside a big building in a smallish, too-warm room, participating in a mediation for a civil (not family law) case.
Most of the time in mediation is spent sitting in the room waiting for the mediator to come back and let you know what the other side has said. What surprised me was how tiring mediation is. I suppose it's the emotional part of things, the uncertainty and the waiting, but I wasn't expecting to be tuckered out by the end.
I probably didn't help myself by going back to my office and doing other work afterward, but when I got home -- oh, lordie. My feet were massive sausage-things. They're still not back to "normal" (for pregnancy) size. I ended up so knackered that I collapsed on the couch, weakly asked Matthew for some water, and then fell asleep for over an hour. (Whereupon I got up and watered the garden, which probably didn't do much for the massive feet or exhaustion, either.)
So. Today is "take it easy but still work" day, which means when I go to the law library and research, I'll keep my feet up on a chair nearby, and when I'm working at home, ditto keeping the feet up. And if I want a nap, I'll let myself take a nap.
I'm fine. The baby is fine. My labs were all fine. Today we had our ordinarily scheduled appointment and had already been slated for an ultrasound. We finally got a nice view of the baby's (I call her Little E or Ed now) face (our previous view was half-alien head). She has chubby cheeks! She's weighing in at 4 pounds 7 oz and her head is 8 centimeters in diameter. She's still on the small side of growth (45th-ish percentile) which is fine with me. Matthew and I were both pretty small babies, and I'm cool with having a small baby, especially as visualizing passing something 8 centimeters in diameter is hard enough without imagining that it could get much bigger.
38 days and counting. We're to the appointment-every-week phase now. As much as I'm looking forward to being done, I wasn't quite aware I was THAT close to being done. Total weight gain to date: 14 pounds.
For Sarah: one of the nurses said, "what a cute button nose!"
Avoid tripping and falling on your left side. You'll get a free (courtesy of Federal Blue Cross) trip to Labor and Delivery for four+ hours of fetal monitoring and tests.
And you'll find out you're having contractions as an extra special bonus. (Fortunately, I didn't actually go into labor, and they sent me home.)
You know how you can talk to these massively pregnant women and they're just so excited at the prospect of getting the child OUT? I didn't quite get it, because by and large, I've been enjoying myself.
However, I was that woman last night, and probably for the duration.
I have some wills to draft today, and fortunately I brought the files home. I think I'll work on them this morning (with my feet up).
On the plus side, I had a dream about the baby last night. I haven't had a lot of baby related dreams (there was the weird one where I gave birth to a Malinois puppy) but this was a sweet, somewhat reassuring one.
I took German in high school and at university, for a total of five years. The last German class I took was a very, very long time ago (10 or 11 years), and aside from occasionally seeing German films (and my not-so-secret German punk/industrial music habit), I get no practice.
But pregnancy has made me remember my German. Last week I caught myself thinking in German, using vocabulary and grammar rules I couldn't have recalled if I'd tried. This morning, I woke up (late) from a dream where I was yelling "Wachet auf!" I couldn't for the life of me remember what this meant, so I looked it up....
It means "wake up!"
We'd heard about studies which revealed pregnancy (in mice) caused stem cells to migrate to the mother's brain and repair damage, but this is just strange. Also, does anyone else think it's weird that the part of my brain that needs "fixing" is the part that learned German?
It's all going. I'm feeling better, Matthew's feeling better. I'm wrapping things up (or trying to) at the office as much as possible. I committed to closing the office the first of June, which naturally means two things would get set over for the beginning of June. I guess I'll just wing it, office-less. It just didn't make sense to keep up the expense for the duration of my maternity "leave." (Is it leave when you work for yourself?) Also, I couldn't imagine trying to get it all moved any later than that. Just the thought alone gives me nightmares.
After this, I have to run to the courthouse and then back (it sounds dramatic, but it's a block away), then make a trip into Portland. Fun stuff, and with gas $3.32 a gallon (at COSTCO!). I know Americans have it soooo easy, price-wise, but it's been less than a year and a half since I was paying $1.79 a gallon.
Our last ferret has taken a nosedive, health-wise. We knew he had systemic problems, but this is probably the fastest I've seen one go downhill. One of life's cruel ironies is that such fun and sweet animals never, ever have "good" deaths. We will probably end up having to take him to be put to sleep this week, which is as close to a good death as it can get. It's the end of an era: we've had ferrets since 1992.
The baby is still very active, and has had some mammoth cases of the hiccups over the past few days -- much more dramatic than they were a couple of months ago. It's amazing how loud her heartbeat has gotten when I listen with the doppler. (Matthew: "Well, it's a much larger heart now.")
Trying to get the house organized has been a nightmare. I organized about a third of the baby closet and got the baby stuff out of the loft and into the room. We may not be worrying about a full-fledged nursery for a while, but that stuff still has to go somewhere. Aiiee, what a mess. Anyone interested in my Batman: The Animated Series VHS collection? (We long ago replaced them with DVDs.) A recumbent exercise bike? An old upright piano?
Anyway, back to the salt mines.
Today I experienced my first Aliens moments.* My daughter, who has been a rather polite passenger to date (it's helpful that she's slightly below the mid-range of the growth curve -- I'm so, so grateful that Matthew and I were both small babies!), decided today that it was time to do this crazy stretching routine. You know, so much so that Matthew could watch my belly contort from the outside. (The legs in the lungs -- also a fun thing. Really.)
I'd thought the whole popping-chest-nightmare thing was bunk, but I'm getting it now. I've been waiting for her to fall asleep for...um...six hours now, but not yet. This is why it's almost midnight and I'm still working. Sigh. At least she seems to be having fun.
*I also experienced my first swollen ankles. Hypochondriac that I am, I immediately called over my husband, the RN, to investigate. He scoffed. "They're not that swollen, period, and definitely not for a pregnant woman." I made him take my blood pressure, but it was only 118/68 -- business as usual. He went back to his computer.
I've now gained 10 pounds since the pregnancy started, which is fine; I've been told I will have to gain more and I don't expect to have a lot of say in the matter, anyway. The weight I haven't gained but was able to recycle has migrated to different parts of my body, too, so my limbs are thinner than ever, but oh, this belly, and have I mentioned it takes four alpha-numeric characters to write my bra size instead of three? Friend Robyn pointed out my bra size seems to be stuttering.*
Shelley (in other room): So...I put this shirt on because it is big and comfy.
Matthew: Oh?
Shelley (enters room in shirt that is now neither big nor comfy and sighs).
Matthew (frowns): What happened to the shirt?
Shelley: Nothing happened to the shirt.
Matthew (blankly, then finally getting it): Oh.
*40DD. Yes, that's before nursing. Anyone who brings a milking stool to the baby shower is in deep, deep doo-doo.
I've never had a gift type shower, bridal or otherwise. Matthew and I semi-eloped when we married in 1992 (try 10-15 guests, depending on my memory), and obviously this is a first child. But I've never even been to a shower and have no idea about the etiquette I'm supposed to follow. The whole idea makes me vaguely uneasy, because I've always seen showers as a call to gifts.
So imagine my surprise when I went from planning on having no showers to having two showers in the works. Aiieee! I am supposed to have given an invitation list to the person holding the traditional shower already, but have I? Um... It makes me squirmy, so no. I can't even generate a list.
(I've been informed by more knowledgeable people that I need to chill and put aside my cynicism: people really just want to share the joy of the event. Still...)
But the gift thing bugs me. I don't want to be perceived as begging for stuff (it took a lot for me to send out law school announcements when I graduated, and finally I only did so because I was damn proud of being done), hence my inability to generate a list of guests. And if they're invited, they ask about registries. I hate it when I get someone's wedding registry and it's chock full of really expensive tacky stuff -- I can't help it, but it lowers my opinion of them slightly. What if people look at my registry and they think the same thing about me?
The Target registry I created way back when, more as a shopping list for me, with the thought that only my family would even been interested in looking at it.* (I was wrong: my generous friends have already provided me with a lot of the essentials: breast pump and assorted "boobie supplies," high chair, linens and bedding, diaper genie, snugli.) I was floored and amazingly grateful, and I still am.
So it's kind of embarrasing to confess I created a second registry at PoshTots. My excuse was that I couldn't find a diaper bag I liked at Target, but I admit that's a pretty lame excuse. (I did find one at PoshTots.) The real reason is that -- in addition to some of the jaw-dropping overpriced things up there (if you value your sanity, don't look at or show your daughter this -- they had some neat clothing, bibs, and assorted gifty stuff that didn't break the bank.)**
Of course, all of this is somewhat moot if I can't bring myself to generate a guest list.
*I won't register at Babies 'R Us. I grew up in a home that boycotted Toys 'R Us, and I can't cross that line. I can't even bring myself to go into a store.
**Well...so I registered for the Redbeard's Revenge Pirate Ship Playhouse. Don't hold it against me, OK? *I* want to play in it!
We're down to the 60 days or less phase. Are we ready? Uh, no. I keep stressing on this, until Matthew reminds me that all we really have to acquire between now and then is a car seat/stroller system and a crib of some sort (we're going co-sleeper at first, then will probably end up getting something at Ikea that'll hold her over until she can sleep in a regular bed) and the rest we can wing as needed.*
Hormonally, I am a mess. I don't like emotional drama, particularly when it's mine. I hate crying and I hate losing control. Not pregnant, I go long periods of time without crying (save the occasional "Cold Case" episode, mind). Now? My hormones are incredibly out of whack: I have no emotional reserves. Days like today are great: nothing upset the apple cart and I got an incredible amount of work done for two attorneys I work for and for my own clients; I played some City of Heroes, exchanged several emails with my sister, and had a good chat with my father. Days like yesterday, when something triggers a meltdown? Let's just say they're not so good. It's kind of like being 15 again, only without the pink hair and black eyeliner.
My daughter seems to be doing well. We're going up to OHSU tomorrow for an appointment; no ultrasound scheduled (the last few times my perinatologist has ordered ultrasounds, the ultrasound perinatologist on duty always seems annoyed when he comes to tell us that there is still absolutely nothing weird or wrong with our daughter -- we really don't need to keep having the ultrasounds) but that's OK. As active as she's been of late, the reassurance would be nice but really isn't necessary.
We've had the hospital tour and seen the birthing suites, so that's not a mystery any longer. While everyone else was asking about squat bars and birthing stools and tubs, Matthew was scoping out the fetal monitors and in-room incubation/testing stations -- it all looked exactly like he remembered it from his clinical nursing days, and it was fun to watch him slip into nurse mode; the nature of his early career was such that I'd never seen him actually work. By the way, OHSU doesn't have a regular nursery -- babies stay with the moms unless they need to go to neonatal ICU. (I though this was all wonderful and touchy-feely, until Matthew pointed out it's more to make sure the moms bond with the kids than the other way around.)
I can't actually bring myself to think about labor yet -- I keep my mind off the scary bits by working on my Labor & Delivery and Baby playlists for my iPod. I'm having a hard time avoiding the ironic/funny songs for L&D, like:
And so on. I have fourteen hours of this compiled so far, and I really hope I don't need much more.
*Incidentally, we aren't doing a nursery, at least not for a little while. I might be more antsy if I felt I had to fill up a spare room full of baby things. Why aren't we in a rush? We plan on having the baby sleep in our room for the first year, and I detest the idea of purchasing overpriced, cheaply made baby furniture. Even the stuff that "converts" looks crappy to me. Also, we have a three bedroom, 1680 sq ft house, which is great for the two of us and our fifteen years of accumulated stuff -- one bedroom is ours, one is an office, and one is a den. The den will be converted into our daughter's room, and the TV, couch, entertainment center, bookcases, and so forth have to move downstairs, into my formal and rarely used living room. This is fine, except it will require a massive reorganization and partial replacement of furniture to fit the space, and I'm not in a hurry to go there -- it requires energy and money that I don't have to spare.
My body is starting to betray me. I know it's just temporary, but it's frustrating. Last week was a busy week: lots of more-than-full days with lots of different tasks. But heck, I can handle it, right? I have the luxury of working at home (at night) when I need to, right?
Only if my body lets me, anyway.
I got the big things done. But between the pregnancy and the remnants of the sinus infection/ongoing allergies, I can't push myself, or I crash. It's maddening. I'm slowly settling cases and finding new attorneys for my remaining dom/rel clients, which is helping: I can concentrate on my other work. But there's still so much to do. I went from having to make one court appearance last week to three. Sigh.
And let's just say that after six months of easy pregnancy, things have gotten a bit harder. On the irrationality scale, my hormones are whacked. I can't remember a time (since, say, 15) when I was this on edge.
Friday was the worst: I was extraordinarily uncomfortable (imagine having two bowling balls in your stomach rolling around and around and putting pressure on all of your other organs) and had to work my ass off to get something done in time for the courier to pick up and file in a neighboring county. I called the department in the neighboring county to make sure there was not going to be any additional fee for filing the documents, and was assured there was not.
Needless to say, I was not happy when I came home Friday night (around 7) and learned from voicemail that the department didn't accept the filings because there was no additional fee accompanying the documents. This isn't fatal (it's not like it's federal court) and it's not even that much of a big deal because it's easily remediable. But it was the end of a long, draining week and I had no reserves left. I threw the headset across the room. (It broke. I fixed it with superglue.)
This is probably why I spent most of Saturday sleeping (that and the benedryl I had to take in order to breathe -- and the fact I had to sleep sitting up on Friday, on the couch, in order to keep breathing all night). And that Saturday slothfulness is why I spent most of Sunday being superwoman - gardening, organizing, cleaning - and why I'm so freaking tired right now.
Gemini is in a growth spurt, which isn't helping: in the last four or so days, I've gained three or four pounds. This would shock me, except that back when my mother was speaking to me, she mentioned she tended to gain very little weight except for one month of each pregnancy, when she would gain ten. The doctors would freak out each time, but that was just the way it worked.
To add insult to injury, Matthew is home with either food poisoning or some other intestinal woe -- and after feeling a bit smug that I'd escaped it, I'm starting to sense that I haven't. Nice. I guess I'll be exercising that work-from-home thing today, too.
For those of you who prayed or thought good thoughts for my little brother Phil when he was serving in Iraq, please spare another prayer or good thought for him now: he's off to Afghanistan, though not for very long this time. I hope. It just about broke my heart to put the family-member-in-service flag back up in my window this weekend.
In browsing comments following a 'stay at home or not' article, I found one by "Drea from Michigan" that posits that more women would be able to stay at home to take care of children/families could survive on one income if women would just stop entering the workplace to do men's jobs for less money. I kid you not. She wrote:
"Plus..men would get paid a lot more if us women were not so willing to do their jobs for less, and this economic strain of two incomes would not be so great. We are doing it to ourselves. Why? Because we want it to be about us. Me time, my needs, my emotions, etc. Buck up people!"
"Willing to do their jobs for less," indeed. I'm guessing Drea wouldn't be up for the ERA -- you think?
Interestingly, we always had thought one of us would stay home and not work -- but that it would be Matthew, not me. I'll do as much working from home as I possibly can in the beginning for the benefit of the kid, but the idea of not working for me is a lot like the idea of going to prison. It probably wouldn't kill me, but I wouldn't be sane at the end of it, either.
Anyway, I'd blog more, but I have to go rest up -- stealing legitimate income from men can be very tiring when you're also running a household and bearing children. Besides, I have an early breakfast date with another evil job-stealer before I head to the office in the morning.
Today I woke up feeling almost normal -- thank you amoxicillin.*
(I knew it was a sinus infection a while back, but I'd been hoping that if I remained patient, stayed hydrated, and kept rinsing my sinuses that it would clear up on its own. Er...right. The big clue this wasn't working was when I put 60cc of saline in one nostril and it never came back -- so urgent care it was. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to working a full day without going through a box of Kleenex.)
I just realized that If I posted this topic on a pregnancy board, a dozen or more women would respond with poorly-spelled diatribes against antibiotics during pregnancy and how my baby will suffer untold traumas for the rest of her life as a result. If they had any idea how long my med list remains, even during pregnancy, I'm sure they'd firebomb my house.
This is part of the growing public "ownership" interest in my body and my baby. If I were less hormonal, I might find it funny, but...I'm not and it's not. It's just annoying. There is a lot of pressure in the great, granola-eating northwest to have "natural" childbirth experiences and "natural" pregnancies. Home births are common, and I've no doubt mammary gorillas breastfeed until kindergarten. If I see another white, upper-middle-class woman with a toddler attached via brightly-colored sling while perusing organic produce at New Seasons, I'll retch on her Birks and call it hyperemesis gravidarum.
Well, probably not. It would be OK if they did their thing and left me alone to do mine. But no -- there is the inevitable questioning. After the usual when-are-you-due niceties, it goes something like this:
Nosy Do-Gooder: Are you going to have a home birth?
Shelley: No. Actually, hell no.
NDG: [shocked] Why not?
S: Because I want to be as close as possible to a whole blood supply.
NDG: [splutters] Hospitals...evil....male doctors...should have a midwife...at least a doula
S: Do you have any idea how many women used to bleed out during childbirth?
NDG: It's just not NATURAL.
S: Um, that would be my point.
I have a degree in history. I know what used to happen to women in childbirth. Women were rightly terrified of each new pregnancy, because they all had a mother or a sister or a friend who had died from complications, whether bleeding out quickly or from vile, painful, lingering infections. Infant mortality was high. I don't care how quickly the ambulance can get to my house -- it wouldn't be fast enough.
Part of the rationale behind the natural thing, I think, is the Dr. Sears mythos a lot of women bought into (I would have infinitely more respect for Dr. Sears if he was the one who borne and nursed the eight kids, instead of his faithful and trusty sidekick wife, Martha). Hundreds of years after Rousseau, people still believe in the myth of the noble savage and that if if it's good enough for the Yanomami, it's good enough for us (well, except for the cannibalism and not having SUVs, I suppose). It doesn't mean it's valid behaviorism.
(For whatever it's worth to Dr. Sears and Co., I think the idea of co-sleeping is a good one, but I'm not going to risk the kid's life by putting her in bed with us -- she can be right next to us in her own safe little bed.)
But I also suspect part of the objection from these women, the unstated part, is that if they accept establishment medicine for something as completely female-oriented as pregnancy, then they're somehow giving into the vast male conspiracy against women. And that if I choose to go the traditional medicine route, then I've betrayed my sex in some way.
I've tried, but my second-generation feminist self just doesn't get it. At all. I get sexism -- well, at least I experience sexism all the time. Some of it is fine -- this germophobe is happy not touching door handles, and I find being underestimated to be very, very useful in my work -- and some of it is not. "Not" includes just about everything that happened to me at the Deathstar and the patronizing I continue to get as a small, youngish looking female lawyer. (There is an attorney in Washington County who has called me "little lady." I would be offended, but it speaks volumes about him and not so much about me.) But heck, even the patronizing is helpful at times (see "underestimating," above).
I'm just having a hard time grasping the connection between feminism, sexism, and giving birth in a hospital. How does going up to OHSU to have a baby make me less of a feminist?
*I drafted a long post yesterday about my encounter with PP, Patronizing Physician from urgent care who wrote the script, but it just didn't work.
I've been sick and working and rather cranky, so no blogging. But on my way home from Lowe's (thistle seed run for the goldfinch), I reached a new pregnancy milestone. I sneezed (having been sick)...
...and leaked. Just a little, BUT.
It is possible to drive with your knees finishing-school-together. It's not possible to stop yourself from sneezing.
Sigh. I'm carrying the baby VERY low. I can't imagine what it's going to be like after her head actually engages.
I garden. I have the world's teeniest garden, but I love to be out there, trimming the espaliered apple trees, moving the potted annuals around, contemplating new additions. (New plan: some golden Heuchera around one of the paths as contrast.) Saturday I gardened (mostly puttering), and it was lovely (though I did get rained upon). Pollen situation? Not so bad.
Yesterday, I didn't garden. However, the pollen count must have been astronomical, because even upstairs with our two air filtration systems (not to mention the amazing air filters we have for our A/C), I could NOT stop sneezing. We went out for breakfast. Could NOT stop sneezing. Took a benedryl, which I'm no longer used to, and was completely gorked. Three hour nap later...still sneezing. Did you know you can sneeze so much you can hurt your back? Rinsed my sinuses with saline, which helped, but still, wasn't quite back to normal. Benedryl before bed, and here I am this morning, a little Benedryl-hung over, but not sneezing nearly so much as yesterday.
Before pregancy, there were Claritin, Sudafed, and Nasonex. Now, I'm stuck with benedryl and hiding inside. Even on lovely days, our windows have to stay shut and the A/C running.
I'm praying for rain today -- it'll knock the pollen out of the air. (There's a 40% chance, according to my weather widget, and the rest of the week looks nice and wet.) I'll also be hiding downtown, in a big office building, for part of the day, which means I will not be up against my other side of the urban-growth-boundary neighbors (read: just about across the street) who garden on a much larger scale (read: farming) and who make my springs miserable.
Labs look lovely!
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