Tag Archives: Pregnancy

Post Cards from the Edge

Posted on January 27, 2012 | 27 comments

PostPartum Missives, maybe is a better title.  Only because Postcards From the Edge has already been taken.

I forgot a hundred things about being a new mom in the last six years. But I remembered one.  New moms put hormonal teenagers to shame.  I am out of my fucking mind.  Carrie Fisher style.  Crazy.  But lucid enough to know it. Carrie Fisher crazy without the booze.

But this time it has not taken me by surprise.  Four days.  I made it four days on virtually no sleep before I asked MQD to just sit by me.  He held my hand and I  wept.  First quiet, reverent, emotionally charged tears.  And then big, fat sobby, snot running down my face in to my mouth tears.  “What’s wrong, babe?”

“I have no idea.  I am pretty sure nothing.  I just started to cry and now I can’t stop. ”  MQD handed me some tissues and he sat back down next to me.

He sat back down.  And he held my hand.  And I smiled.  Because he sat back down.

Aside from a general state of crazy… the last few days have been unbelievable.  Eventually the weepy “I am so in love with this baby and my family is complete now” post will come.  But I haven’t had a chance to process all that yet.  Next week, after my family leaves, before MQD’s arrives, while Emily is in school and I can get my “stare at Lucy and contemplate my love for her” on it will come… but today all I have is some observations regarding my postpartum self.

Since my post regarding grooming was such a hit I figured I’d share this.  If you’ve ever ordered a draft beer  in a cheap pizza place then you will know what I am talking about.  The big mug arrives.  Oh, a frosty mug of beer.  Delightful.  And you pick it up to raise it to your lips and HOLY SHIT, you almost zing beer over your shoulder on to the backs of the people sitting in the booth behind you because it is so much lighter than you’d anticipated.

I climb in the shower yesterday, hair washed, face washed.  Listen for Lucy.  I hear quiet from the bedroom.  I picture MQD snuggling with our sweet girl in bed.  Drip, drip, drip go the boobs, no harm no foul.  We are in the shower.   I have five more minutes to shave my legs.  And I grab my razor, lift my foot up to the corner of the shower (where I propped my foot before I could only reach the side of the tub) and HOLY SHIT if I was a cheap plastic mug of beer I’d have been ass over head on my back in the shower.  Without the giant stomach to stop me,  body still hopped up on relaxin, the hormone that makes your joints limber for an easier labor….  I can damn near put my foot behind my ear from a standing position.  Stretch marks, stitches and a total absence of abdominal muscles makes this a much less appealing visual than it might have been at nineteen…but nonetheless, I had a smile as I imagined my post-pregnancy body… not too different from a cheap plastic mug of beer.  It’s no frosty pint glass.  But at least it’s beer.

Feeling rather full of myself I jumped out of the shower.  And took the first long look in the mirror. At 29, after Em was born I had high hopes.  Aspirations of bouncing right back to my pre-baby body.  This time, I know better.

Yesterday I pulled all of the super pregnant third trimester maternity pants out of my closet.    And I replaced them.  With the super comfortable elastic waist band pants of early pregnancy.  Elastic waistbands, we’re thick as thieves, you and me.

I’m not going to turn my back on you just yet.  We can’t stay friends like this forever. But for now… please take good care of my belly.  Do what you can to not let it fold over your elasticy goodness.  No one needs to see that.  And I promise to keep you covered with a tank top as often as possible, choosing to pull my boobs out the top of my shirt instead of lifting up my shirt to expose myself as an elastic pants wearer.

In the meantime, I will try to see past the stretch marks and the belly and the big black circles under my eyes.  And I will try to remember the wondrous thing my  body did for me less than a week ago.   You gave me my Lucy Quinn, body.   So I will give you a couple of months of elastic pants.  But just a couple.

A couple of years after Em was born  I had the pleasure of stumbling in to this website – The Shape of  a Mother.   I struggled with posting this picture today and then was reminded of the brave women that came before me, telling their stories.  Stories of birth and rebirth, of love and fear and shame and pride and all the emotions in between.

I have been honest about so much of this journey.  And this is where I am today.  Six days post-partum.  Weepy.  Joyful.  Falling in love a hundred times a day.

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And Then We Were Four: Part Four

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 26 comments

It was decided that I would stop trying to push through the last centimeter of my dilating, that I would  stop and take a break, let my body finish doing the work.  Then it was determined I should change position.  In spite of the enema I had managed to give myself during early labor the shred of privacy I had been maintaining was holding on to the fear that it felt like I had to go to the bathroom.  When Sarah suggested I go sit in the bathroom for a while it sounded like as good a plan as any.  Pillows were placed on the back of the toilet and I sat backwards with my face against the cool, soft pillows.  In the dark it was easier to let my mind go.

Earlier, I had gotten very sick.  Throwing up like a freshman at a fraternity party, I couldn’t even open my eyes lest I see the bucket and get sick all over again.  (Hello, chinese food, I had to have!!) I took a new bucket with me to the bathroom just in case.  There, in the clean white bucket from the birthing center was a single dog hair.  Even amidst the mania I felt… I smiled, Fisher… his damn hair gets everywhere.

Changing positions brought no physical relief.  If anything it required the body to  acclimate to new pressure points, new pain.  At this point each contraction seemed to radiate down in to my legs.  Later I would have IV fluids to hydrate me and the pain in my legs would  almost immediately subside.

Physical relief did not come while I was in the bathroom, but it did give me a moment to regroup emotionally.  I’d had my eyes closed much of the previous hour and now in the darkness I could  feel only hands rubbing my back.  Not knowing if it was MQD or Erin  – it almost didn’t matter.  I cried out as my contractions peaked.  Spoke quietly to myself and to the baby in the interim.  I don’t know how long I was in there.  But when I came out, I knew it was time.  I said more than once that I felt like I had been asleep.  And like I had just woken up.  I asked several times for Erin to tell me again what was happening.

For a time I felt like I was trapped between the bathroom and bed. My body had returned to the bed, my mind had stayed in the bathroom.  Eventually we all reunited and a feeling of calm alertness washed over me.  MQD smiled at me and I could see in his eyes the relief I was experiencing.  Never once did he look frightened, but he looked so happy to have me back that I know it must have been quite a scene there for a bit.

As with so many things in our lives the clearest pictures are those that we can see only after the fact. From this side of things I know that it was the final stages of transition in the bathroom.

As much as it was almost unnecessary to check, I needed to hear it. When Sarah said “You’re ten centimeters, we can have this baby any time you’re ready,” tears began to flow down my face.

I had watched a lot of birth videos.  I had seen images of these smiling women as they pushed their babies out in to the world.  But I had imagined I would be more of the Linda Blair/Exorcist labor and delivery type  than the Blissed-out Commune Mama type.  This picture does not tell the whole story, certainly.  But it captures the joy, the lack of a sense of fear and urgency, the calm that was in the room before Lucy made her debut. 

Our doula, Erin, pulled triple duty as she held the mirror, the flash light and my iPhone throughout the home stretch.  Sarah suggested I reach down and touch the babies head and I asked her to guide myhand.  In keeping with the sense of levity throughout my labor Erin said “I don’t know how big your vagina is exactly, but you’ll find it.”

As soon as I felt her the waterworks began again and I wondered how I would  ever continue to push slowly, not risk tearing.  At one point (after I had the moment of clarity wherein I asked for my glasses and could  actually see in the mirror!) I saw her head begin to emerge and then as I tried  and relaxed between pushing I saw it retreat.  “No, no, no, baby, come back….” and I wept.

I told Sarah and Missy and Erin the story of my dream, how Baby D came and knocked on the door and I didn’t pick him/her up.  How I was so terribly afraid that I didn’t do the right thing.  Sarah reassured me that the baby would descend at least as far as they had previously with each push.  So, I relaxed.  And spoke.  “Come on baby, I promise I will pick you up, and I will never let you go, just come out… Come on… I am right here.”

And slowly, I saw this tiny flash of baby hair become a baby.  I was waiting for the ring of fire, and as I saw the head emerge I can recall thinking this must be it… and then the head would grow bigger.  Later they would  tell me Lucy was born with her hand against her face contributing  to her already giant sized baby head.

I felt it, finally. The mystical ring of fire, the moment that your body is open, allowing passage of your child in to the world and then I saw her face.  Red and smushy, bloody and quiet.  With little effort  her shoulders appeared and I had my hands hooked beneath her armpits and I was pulling her on to my chest.  Our baby. She was here.

I cried out for Emily. I had been adamant that no one tell me if we’d had a boy or a girl and we realized as Emily entered the room that from my vantage point I really couldn’t tell.  And no one else had gotten a decent look. So, it was Emily that told me.  My sweetest girl, my Emily June, it was she that said “It’s a sister.”

“You got your sister, baby girl…” I said,my eyes flooding with the realization that my baby girl, was no longer my baby girl.

We stayed at the birth center only a few hours before we headed home.  Our family of four.  Mom and Dad in the front seat.  Our girls sleeping quietly in the darkness of the early morning.  I carried Lucy Quinn in to the house.  A teeny tiny girl in her car seat.  MQD carried Emily June up to her bed, her long legs looking even longer as he carried her past me up to her room.

It was just after six in the morning.  A new day.  We were home.  And then we were four.

MQD's girls

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And Then We Were Four: Part Three

Posted on January 25, 2012 | 9 comments

The final  parts of Lucy’s birth story are likely best told as a series of pictures in my mind.  Moments I thought I would never forget… my hazy memory of Emily’s birth tells a different story.  I’ll make some effort to put them in a narrative order… but that is the best I can do.

We took the room in the front of the birthing center, the same room I’d been in only twelve hours earlier.  Only at night it was different, quieter.  As we arrived and our bags were put down, cell phone chargers plugged in, I could not help but imagine that it would be in this room we would meet our baby.  These people…. these were the players.  Me, MQD, Erin, our doula, Sarah, the midwife and Missy, a kind and gentle nurse on call for the evening.  Later that night I would laugh between contractions, laughing to cover my embarrassment and apologize for what I feared seemed a rude question and ask Missy why she was there?  “I know you are not actually a scary person… but no one told me that there would be a nurse here the whole  time.  Is something wrong with me?  or the baby?  Is that why you are here? You’re scaring me.”  We all got a good chuckle over this, my being frightened by this addition to our cast of characters.

As we organized ourselves, each of us finding our place in the room I decided to change my clothes. I had a black nightgown, with a racer back that I had envisioned wearing for a while.  I pulled it on and realized it was backwards and started to giggle, pulling one boob out each side I said “So, I was gonna wear this, that’s cool, right?  A great nursing gown, too, right?’ It set a tone, showcasing my absurd sense of humor, in even the most reverent times.

Sarah checked me and I was six, maybe seven centimeters dilated.  Not as far along as I had hoped but lots of progress had been made since the morning.  She said that she thinks my water had ruptured up high in the amniotic sac, there was plenty remaining so there was no reason to be concerned about the baby.  I recall her telling me that we had plenty of time, and thinking, sure, loads of time, what’s the rush?

Shortly after we got to the birthing enter my contractions began to get closer together.  The experience of the stopping and starting of active labor was an incredible feeling.  The relief felt as each contraction ended, the way I could see it in MQD’s face as they peaked, the reflection of my own pain in his eyes and the strength I knew I had to endure them, these were all new experiences to me.

I have since told anyone that I have spoken to that the stopping and starting of contractions can be compared to only one other mind-altering, if not life-changing experience in my life.  In my wilder, younger days, as I sat in a hotel room after a concert with a handful of friends, looped on whatever was our pleasure for the evening, sweaty from dancing, all of us in our own mental spaces I can recall the moment when the trip was over and I’d blink my eyes.  And in that instant, I was back.  “Guys, hey guys!  Are you normal? I feel totally normal.  Is anyone else normal?”

As each contraction came to an end I’d revel in having my body back, my mind returned to me, all at the same time clinging desperately to the fleeting memory of the experience, knowing that I had experienced something while I was gone, something I wanted to remember forever.

This picture is everything that I wanted from this experience. My smile, MQD’s support, Emily’s pinkie blanket in my right hand.

My greatest weakness as an individual and as part of a couple is my struggle with asking for help.  And this experience was life changing in that respect.  To see and experience what I am capable of achieving if I am willing to lean on others, specifically someone who loves me, was empowering.  To experience that strength that comes when you need it most.

My contractions continued to escalate for some time, growing increasingly more difficult in their peaks, and slowly my need to entertain, to hold court, to make up for perceived weakness during those moments with a clever commentary during the time between contractions slowly waned.

It was during the first of one of these quieter moments that my water broke. Again.  This time I got to experience the rush of fluid that you see in the movies.  It was comic, nearly missing soaking Erin.

This was another moment that I could feel the energy of my own mind shift. My water had broken completely.  It was to time to get the baby out.   Shortly after this Sarah checked to see how dilated I was, at my request.  I was beginning to second guess my intuition.  What is an “overwhelming desire to push?” I have had a nearly overwhelming desire to meet this baby for weeks.  How would I know that this was the time when I could not fight the desire any longer?

I was only 9 centimeters, but feeling more and more like it was getting closer.  I was afraid that Em’s absence would hold me back.  That I’d not be ready to meet our baby until I knew she was here, the final players in our cast of characters.

MQD called Amy.  Or maybe it was Erin that called.  I knew they could get here within half an hour.  As soon as I knew they were on their way I started feeling more and more like I couldn’t wait any longer.  Sarah told me she could  help me, she could try to ease my cervix back that final centimeter if I felt like I needed to start pushing now.  Later, when my sweet girl was born with a head not unlike that of Megamind I would see that this early  pushing, the pushing that I felt had been wasted energy, it had been significant.  Moving Lucy down in my birth canal, it had also made for one hell of a bruise as I tried to squeeze the poor girl out a not quite open door.  Days later with her  perfectly round little noggin in the crook of my elbow as I type, I can laugh.  If I doubted my strength I need only look at those first few pictures of her.

Eventually the struggle of pushing before it was time became too much and both Sarah and Erin suggested I take a break, change positions.  I had been so certain that I’d want to labor in the bath but intermittently through this labor I was afraid of falling.  Off the bed, down to the ground, I just felt like my grasp on the planet was tentative enough, the addition of water seemed too much.  At one point, we started to fill the tub, but the sound was overwhelming.

Amy and Emily got to the birth center before I got up, I think. I know that Em came in, sleepy eyed and tentative.  She stayed through the duration of a single contraction.  And I told her that each one ended. And when they were over, I was okay.  I recall telling her that it was just like when we were at home.  Amy took Em out to the lounge area to watch a movie and I think that was when I started feeling like I needed affirmation.   I asked Erin to tell me what was happening, that I was okay.  I remember her saying “this is not like when you were at home, this is transition.”

It gives me goosebumps now to type it.  Transition.  The most difficult  part.  The last part.  The period of labor that comes right before pushing.  The hardest work is done now.  This is the time when it is officially “too late” for an epidural.  I was tired.  And frightened.  But in the back of my mind I knew then when she said that single sentence,  “This is transition,” I had this.

We’d done it…. part four.  

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And Then We Were Four: Part Two

Posted on January 24, 2012 | 4 comments

I spoke with our doula, Erin, shortly after three in the afternoon. She told me that she had class at the Durham Tech campus not far from our house that evening. She planned on stopping by and checking in on us shortly after seven.

The late afternoon passed slowly. I anxiously awaited contractions to begin. Emily, MQD and I sat side by side and hand in hand on the couch. We watched a movie, Fast Girl, about a girl that learns to drive race cars and we talked about how this would be the last time Movie Night would be just the three of us.

MQD said to me at one point “We are gonna have a baby in this house. It just hit me. I’m crying a lot right now. I just cried over Wizards of Waverly Place. Fisher is too ashamed to even look at me.” And we laughed.

We firmed up plans with Amy for the evening. Em would go to school in the morning if necessary. We would call her if things started progressing.

Some time between an early dinner and Emily getting ready for bed I started having fairly regular contractions. True to form, I timed each and every one on my iPhone. Seeing the numbers change as it averaged “all contractions” vs “last five” or “last three” I had to admit that things were progressing. Not unbearably. An uncomfortable 45 seconds or minute every five to seven minutes was more than tolerable. I’d not remembered this predictability. I could feel myself making a checklist of things to do during my next break. Give myself an enema. Put your bathrobe in the dryer. Run the vacuum. Empty the dishwasher. One task at a time we got closer to “ready.”

When Erin called just before seven I assumed she would stop by and say hello. Go home and tuck in her kids. Rest, maybe. Early labor with Emily was a long day of movies and worrying and I’d not imagined this would be different.

When Erin arrived I noticed my contractions slow down for a short while. I told her about how I had felt that after my visit with Maureen I was emotionally ready in a way I had not been yet. That my water breaking felt very mind over matter.

In the moment I did not connect the dots. But hours later it was obvious that my contractions began as soon as I knew that Erin was close by.

We laughed a lot. Told stories about our kids. Took the chance to just get to know one another. The more comfortable I became the stronger my contractions became.

At one point I can recall rolling forward off of the ball and falling to my knees, in quiet tears I said matter of factly “I do not like this. I am NOT comfortable.” and seconds later I was laughing. Not comfortable? No shit? You don’t say?

Erin said more than once that this would be a fun labor.

Eventually I connected the dots between an event and with what I perceived as the next stage of labor. Maureen told me I was ready and my water broke. Erin was near by and my contractions began. She was with us in our home and they progressed.

Shortly before ten I felt like I’d not see any more progress until I was at the birthing center. Mike called and spoke with Sarah, the midwife on call. He passed me the phone and I tried to keep my head screwed on. Eventually I had to say out loud “I know you’re just keeping me on the phone until you can hear me… Here we go….” and a little over a minute later I said “So, that is pretty much where we are. Every three or four minutes. We will be there soon.”

Amy came over and we woke Emily. I asked Em if I could take her pinkie blanket and I kissed her goodbye. And we piled in the car. Still clutching my iPhone contraction timer I started doing the math. A fifteen minute drive should be no more than seven contractions even if they started getting closer. I counted the first few. Chatting with Mike between the rest. He pulled up to the door to drop me off, parking spots only fifteen feet away I cried out “No, park the car. I’ll walk. I don’t want to be away from you.”

He came around and opened the door and helped me out. Slowly we walked away from the Maternity Parking spots I had driven by the last nine months and it dawned on me that we would come back to the car with a baby if all went as I had hoped…. part three.

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And Then We Were Four: Part One

Posted on January 23, 2012 | 10 comments

On Thursday morning at 9:45 I wrote on the Excitement on the Side facebook page. “is going out in to the world. Because nothing funny happens to you while you sit around on the birthing ball, not birthing, talking to your dog. Here’s hoping I have a blog worthy afternoon.”

I had another appointment with the midwife to have my membrane’s swept. I’d had such a groovy time the day before that even though my appointment was not until early that afternoon I was eager to go ahead and leave the house. “Hurry up and wait” is not a state of being I tolerate well, so I thought I’d head out of the house. Maybe run a few errands. Perhaps swing by my office and grab a few things to do in the afternoon.

I laughed to myself as I passed the vent from our chimney. Snapped a quick picture. It really summed up how I felt as I waddled out to the car.

Jumped in the car and figured I’d make the best of taking the day off. Turned on my car and… nothing. Tried it again. Nothing.

And proceeded to call AAA for the second time in as many weeks. My battery was dead. Lucky for me I remembered MQD’s excellent advice about being broken down in your own driveway from the week prior and went ahead on inside to wait for the AAA guy.

Less than 30 minutes later I was back in the car and on my way to the midwive’s office.

The visit was short and sweet.

But it changed everything.

As I sat on the side of the bed in the front room at the birthing center Maureen asked me about some of my tattoos. One pin-up girl from when Emily was born, one pin-up girl from when I came to find an apartment in Chapel Hill before my divorce. “And this one, oh it is the wedding present MQD and I gave ourselves.”

And Maureen’s face lit up and she began to laugh. “Oh, then you can stop comparing your two pregnancies. Your body doesn’t recognize this is as second pregnancy. Different dads, different sperm, different hormones.”

We chatted about a few other things. I can remember her saying “I think we will see you back here this weekend.” But the rest of the visit was fuzzy. I was standing in the door waiting to leave when I felt my eyes get wet when Maureen asked me if I had any other questions. She said “You got it this time…” and she hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and sent me on my way.

I called MQD on my way to the car, tears running down my face. “I am so ready all of a sudden.” Maureen is friends with the midwife I saw when I was pregnant with Emily and for that reason I feel like she understands how important this experience is to me, a chance to do it again, the way I’d hoped it would be with Emily.

I left the birthing center feeling inspired. No longer feeling “overdue” or anxious that this baby wasn’t “early” as so many people had suggested second babies would be.

I had pulled out three filets from the freezer and needed only to stop at the grocery store for a few things. We would have a nice dinner and I’d just relax, finally having reached that state of “the baby will come when it is ready” calm that I had been hoping to find all week.

I called an ordered myself some Chinese food for lunch, hoping it might keep me from buying a bunch of junk at the store, knowing that lunch was waiting for me. I was half way to the front door of the grocery store when my pants were soaked. Stunned, I stood smiling In the parking lot in my wet pants. I guess I knew on some level what had happened. But I was so afraid to believe that it was real.

So, I did what any pregnant woman would do. I got in the car and left the grocery store. Drove immediately to the Chinese food restaurant, wrapped a sweater around my waist and went to get my god damn egg rolls. If I was really going to go in to labor today, dammit, I wasn’t going hungry. It was just after noon as I texted MQD “Umm…. Call me.” From the line at China Fuji I told him “Either I peed in my pants just now or my water broke, either way I am getting Chinese food and going home.”

When I called the midwives office to let them know what had happened they suggested I go home and eat, get some rest and stay in touch. MQD texted our doula Erin and headed home.

In the ten minutes I was home before MQD got there I inhaled an entire order of steamed dumplings, some shrimp toast and three egg rolls. Labor or no labor I was full.

MQD and I settled on the couch to watch some TV and wait for Emily to get home from school. When she walked in from the bus stop I could feel how exciting the rest of the day might actually be. “Guess what happened today Em?” and her hand rose in front of her mouth as if she was in a silent movie as I told her that my water had broken She gasped and my eyes filled with tears.

This was really happening……. part two.

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Miss Lucy Q

Posted on January 21, 2012 | 12 comments

Miss Lucy Quinn was born on January 20, 2012 at 2:14 am. She weighed nine pounds and two ounces.

Her arrival was everything I had dreamt it would be.

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Needles and cups and Activators, oh my!

Posted on January 18, 2012 | 7 comments

Baby D isn’t gonna just roll over and do what they are told evidently.  This morning I have been poked, prodded, adjusted and meddled with inside and out.

In a rare moment of good taste I didn’t snap a lot of pictures,  but allow me to take you back to the morning.  For the first time in a few days I had somewhere to be at a certain time. And that time was not anywhere close to lunch.  So, it seemed to wise to awaken somewhere between 3:30 and 4 am.  By the time I hopped in the shower at six am my email was cleaned out, online banking reconciled and RSS feeds fully reviewed.  Thank you, iPhone for giving the insomniac something to do instead of count sheep and stare at the ceiling.

The mini-me  got off to school safe and sound and MQD and I headed out to the first of our appointments.  I have always been an outspoken believer in alternative Eastern medicine.  But I have also been a largely healthy and largely cash poor person.  Neither of these states of being lends you to trying out new Wellness techniques.  However, add a healthy dose of desperation to an over funded Flexible Spending Health Account and you have a recipe for Sign Me Up For Anything.

This morning’s agenda?  Acupuncture and cupping.  Both are ancient techniques designed to stimulate the body and achieve desired results.  I invite you to overlook the obligatory tramp stamp and instead focus on the needles and the cups.  Needless to say if the chi and blood in my lower sacral area were lazy before, it is wide awake and moving now.  Fingers crossed it gets some labor started.

I cropped out a teeny bit of butt crack. Because I found I DO actually have boundaries.

Once the cups had cooled and those pressure points were no longer active I had a little break.  A break just long enough to pop next door and see my chiropractor.  I have long since drank the chiropractic kool-aid and I was not shocked when my midwives suggested I resume chiropractic treatment late in pregnancy.  Makes a fair amount of sense.  If baby is to descend more easily, why not have those hips in a straight line?  And if Mom is to get out of bed without colorful language every morning, why not have that back lined up, too?  Pregnant trips to the chiropractor have introduced me to the Activator.  It is a nifty little tool that allows for adjustment more gently.  And it has a neat name.  The Activator.

Popped out of the chiro’s office and back in to the open arms of the acupuncturist.  Needles to the hands, shoulders, feet and elbows.  MQD had his own acupuncture treatment started while I was with my chiropractor so he was blissed out in the back room while I got to have girl talk in the front.

Could our morning get better?  Yes.  It really could.  Because I started this morning with my membranes intact.

Membranes in order, totally capable of sitting, driving, not peeing my pants for fifteen minutes at a stretch

The membrane that  connects the amniotic sac to the wall of the uterus, of course.   Now my membranes and I are bros, but it was time for them to go, sweep those bad boys outta here.  So to the midwives we went to have them “swept,” a term that really doesn’t do justice to a gloved hand elbow deep in your vagina for the sole purpose of scraping part of your innards out of the way.  But it is known to occasionally kick-start labor.  And at this point, I’m game for anything.

And lo and behold what did I find at the midwives’ office?  I am still only three centimeters dilated.  Which means the hours I have spent squatting and sitting on my ball in the last few days have done nothing but amuse those with whom I watch television.  And Baby D?  S/he continues to rage against the dying of the light… the little bugger has flipped back over face up.  Perhaps only temporarily in order to see what the hell was going on back there this morning… but what is the solution to that?  Binding, ladies and gents (though at this point I suspect I have lost the gents.)  If you guessed abdominal binding you are correct!!  Lift Baby D upwards and backwards, so they can rotate and descend again.  Music to my pelvic bones ears, but the bladder is not so thrilled.

Sans membranes, the ability to drive, hold urine for greater than fifteen minutes or not resemble a sumo wrestler from the back

So, off I go…. to roam around my neighborhood some more.

Dear New Neighbors,

If I knock on your door and seem out of breath and crazy eyed it is only because I need to use your facilities.  Please, take pity on my hunch-backed self.

Love, Kelly, 40 weeks and 3 days pregnant

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Back to the Future

Posted on January 18, 2012 | 11 comments

1982 called…. They want their leg warmers and their six year old Kelly back.

I have been so focused on my future the last few weeks… and this morning my past came down the stairs, all ready for school….

My mini-me

Emily June, someday you might look back on the time when I was pregnant with Baby D and think it was your hand holding, your patience, your back rubs with your tiny fingers and your pointy elbows that kept me sane…. but it isn’t any of these things.  It is times like this morning when I look right in to your face and I see me.  Those are the moments that ground me.  That remind me that this time will go by so fast.

I was six years old not so long ago.

You are as anxious as the rest of us to meet your baby sister or brother.  But this morning, you came down the stairs and you had a peanut butter and banana sandwich on toast. And  you waited for the bus.  And you gave me a kiss and said “Maybe we will have a baby today.  Maybe.”

No expectations.  No disappointment or weighty anticipation.  Just … maybe.

Maybe.

Tough to be too upset with these goofs in the house.  So, I wait. However impatiently… I wait.

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Fortune

Posted on January 17, 2012 | 9 comments

 

It is.  My dream is so much bigger than my fear.  I promise.  I finally got to that space in my head where I am ready.  Where there is nothing left to do but walk and walk and walk and eat spicy foods.

And now even my Chinese food fortune cookies are taunting me.

I’d imagined that today I would sleep in and rest.  Watch a movie, maybe.  Work on quilting another baby blanket.  But screw it.  When the fortune cookies are even mocking you… you might as well go to work and file some shit.

Now, to find something to wear that showcases my new cankles and my foul disposition.

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The Big Day That Wasn’t

Posted on January 15, 2012 | 10 comments

I feel like a little girl that woke up Christmas morning to a bare tree. No presents. No ornaments. Just a tree. Taunting me.

Intellectually I understand that a “due date” is an estimate, a guess. But I was not prepared to see this day arrive without a baby in my arms. Em was three days early. “Get ready! Second babies come early,” said so many well meaning people. And here I am. Without my baby.

Intellectually I know that “Babies come when they are ready” and yet there is a little girl inside me that feels like maybe I missed my window. Maybe s/he isn’t coming. And here come the tears that I have held inside for the most part all day.

This whole pregnancy has been different. Not finding out the gender of the baby has meant that I have lived in this moment, in this pregnancy, instead of wishing it away for the baby girl that would be in my arms, as I did with Emily. It hasn’t been until the last few days that I have even really imagined it…. The baby. Our baby. And as the days passed I felt more and more ready.

And then ready turned in to an almost feverish desire.

Last night I dreamt that the doorbell rang and I opened the door and there s/he was. In a little outfit. With a little hat and a little suit case and a little smile. And I opened the door and Baby D walked in on tiny bowed newborn legs. And they were home.

And then I woke the rest of the way up and my baby was gone. Our baby was gone.

In the last few years things have changed for me. I have remarked more than a few times that it feels like someone else’s life or that my luck has turned around. I found the boy that became the man that gave me a fairy tale wedding and a home… And a baby. And that baby was going to come on time. Because that is just how this new life works. I act stunned and revel in my good fortune… But somehow in the last few years it has happened.

I guess I expect things to go my way.

But what if this is the end of that road? I have said to every midwife, every practitioner I have seen this pregnancy that this is my Labor & Delivery Do-Over. It is supposed to be my all empowering natural birth, the one that heals me. And now I have this ridiculous seed of doubt. Because of the date. January 15th. Every time it pops up on another device, my phone, my iPad, my computer “Due Date” I think … Right. Sure. If this baby even wants me anymore.

And I go back in my room and I bounce on my birth ball and I watch more Sex and the City reruns and I cry like a teenage girl. And I look at my swollen feet and my hand without an engagement ring because just this week it has gotten too small. And I whisper between the sobs “Come out, baby… C’mon out baby, please…”

And I pull it back together. And tomorrow I suspect I will go to work and make jokes about how I might be pregnant forever. But today…. Today I am not weepy because I fear I will be pregnant forever. But because I am afraid that Baby D will never come back. I saw him/her this morning. I saw my baby and I didn’t put my arms around them fast enough, or smell his/her head. Or let their fingers curl around mine….

And as absurd as it is… Now it feels like I will never get the chance. Because today is January 15th.

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