There was a moment in the middle of last night when Abby was kicking gently, rhythmically, inside of me, and my husband was kicking less gently, restlessly, beside me in the bed. I was sitting upright in the dark, with my wedge pillow on its end, staring out into the darkness. I smiled at the parallels between my two sleepy, busy loves.
Why precisely my night was largely sleepless is rather a mystery, in that I'm not sure why sometimes I sleep well and at other times everything is too uncomfortable. Last night was a conspiracy between absolutely raging heartburn (I am even refluxing when lying on my slanty pillow) and pain in my sides, where the tension between my spasming back muscles and my contracting uterus appears ready to rip my abdominal muscles (or maybe it's the ligaments?) right off the bone. I keep thinking of a weightlifting competition I attended in high school (as a spectator; never fear), where I witnessed a man's pectoral muscle detach from whatever once anchored it in the middle of a bench press. There was suddenly this big bulge where the left side of his chest used to be, and he passed out from the pain and shock. Come to think of it, the whole thing bore certain similarities to uterine contractions.
This day will be over before I know it, and tomorrow is full of doctors' visits and pre-admission blood testing, so I assume it will fly by, too. Before I know what's happened, I'll be headed off to Sibley in the very early morning Friday (I'm to be there at 5:30 am) to have this baby. I don't feel scared right now -- I feel more excitement and anticipation and curiosity than anxiety. All I can think about on the negative side is IVs, which I really loathe, and otherwise I am just full of mental images of a beautiful new baby girl cuddling with her daddy and me -- the most precious thing that anyone could spend so many months working and praying for. God bless her. God bless all of us.
p.s. I can't wait to wear real clothes! I am craving silk charmeuse blouses like I have been known of late to crave chocolate ice cream . . . .
14 November 2007
30 October 2007
Here She Comes
Sorry to everyone I owe an email -- Aunt Syl, Deb, many others! Quick update: I went into premature labor on Friday, and we went to the hospital on the instructions of Dr. Fraga. They stopped the labor with terbutaline shots, gave me a couple of steroid shots (ow! that ain't fair! givin' a gal a shot down there! interjections . . . ) to boost Abby's lung development just in case, and sent me home on bed rest. On Thursday, we have our regular ob appointment, and we'll go off the terbutaline, and if Abby comes, she comes -- at that point she'll be 36 weeks.
The other news is that because of the neurological complications, they're going to do the C-section under general anesthesia instead of awake with an epidural as is usually the case these days. I am somewhat disappointed that I won't be awake for her arrival, but at least I won't have to lie there anxious.
More later, folks -- I need to lie down. We're all fine here; send your good vibes!
p.s. It's clear to me that Abby tried to please her daddy by coming into the world on a Ravens bye week (so he wouldn't miss a game), but her best intentions were thwarted. Instead she'll probably end up coming during this Monday's night football game -- Steelers versus Ravens!!
The other news is that because of the neurological complications, they're going to do the C-section under general anesthesia instead of awake with an epidural as is usually the case these days. I am somewhat disappointed that I won't be awake for her arrival, but at least I won't have to lie there anxious.
More later, folks -- I need to lie down. We're all fine here; send your good vibes!
p.s. It's clear to me that Abby tried to please her daddy by coming into the world on a Ravens bye week (so he wouldn't miss a game), but her best intentions were thwarted. Instead she'll probably end up coming during this Monday's night football game -- Steelers versus Ravens!!
19 October 2007
Secret Society?
In other, related news, I had a phone conversation that actually sent me into shock last night. The conversation was with Tracy L., a friend of a friend of D's friend Jen. Tracy had a child 3 years ago, her second, and about 3 weeks after she gave birth, she very suddenly couldn't walk, had disorienting diplopia, and experienced weakness and tingling in her extremities. (True, she didn't have neck surgery, but then, she didn't have preexisting spinal stenosis, either.) The docs told her she had MS, but she had no lesions on her brain scans and nothing wrong with her spinal fluid. Her (female) neurologist suspected it wasn't MS at all, but an immune response of some kind to the pregnancy hormones. Unfortunately, the neurologist couldn't find any research at all, even case studies, to back up that hypothesis. She asked Tracy to stop breastfeeding anyway, so that the hormones would more quickly flush out of her system. It's not clear to me how soon after she stopped breastfeeding that her problems went away, but she said that, in all, it was about five months of symptoms and then suddenly, everything just cleared up. Although most of her doctors would still say that Tracy has MS, she hasn't had any recurrence of symptoms in the 2 1/2 years since she got healthy, which is a much longer time period, she said, than one would normally see between MS episodes.
Interesting. As if that weren't enough -- Tracy also has several close friends who are ob-gyns, and they told her that what happened to her "happens all the time." Through them, she spoke to a handful of women from San Francisco to New York, all of whom went through exactly the same thing she did -- but all, like her, after giving birth. I am the only person she's heard of to go through this during pregnancy.
Tracy reassured me, saying she is certain that what I'm experiencing is pregnancy-related and that it will go away soon. Her advice was (a) not to breastfeed -- get rid of the hormones ASAP and (b) never go on the Pill, something else her neurologist told her. We compared Pill stories. I actually never used the Pill, because the first time I tried it, I had horrible, over-the-top responses to the hormones. Just like Tracy did. I didn't tell Tracy about my bipolar disorder, but of course that is very hormone-dependent, too. From my layperson's point of view, this seems to fit into a very coherent picture. Something like, Hormones = Bad.
I guess one reason my discussion with Tracy, revelation and relief that it was, put me into shock is that I had never considered that breastfeeding would have anything to do with it. Another reason, I suppose, is that I hadn't considered the possibility that the fluctuations in hormones after I give birth could potentially act as another trigger -- I'd just been thinking that whatever hormones came into the picture when I conceived Abby didn't agree with me, so when she left, they'd go away and I'd get better. I still think that's the most likely scenario, but I guess Tracy's story scared me a little bit, too. I am certainly hoping it doesn't take nearly 6 months after Abby is born before I get my body back to the way it was meant to be.
I asked Tracy at one point whether she, like I , felt offended that there was no research on this -- even case studies -- but she just laughed. Me? It makes me mad. I guess you can take the girl out of the women's studies program, but you can't take the feminism out of the girl. Or maybe you don't need women's studies to feel annoyed by the lack of information for women -- when my brother heard this whole story, he suggested I call Oprah.
Anyway, D was obviously thrilled to hear about concrete cases of just these sorts of symptoms occurring under just these circumstances and then vanishing like a bad memory. I was, too. In fact, I was very relieved to speak to someone who could make me feel like less of an aberration, something other than a medical freak show. My intuition that this is pregnancy-related was so strong, though, that I don't think I was quite as worried as D that we'd got it all wrong and I'd be like this forever. Instead, the million dollar question for me has been how long will it take to get back to normal -- a question that remains, now alongside another question that shares its space: to breastfeed, or not to breastfeed?
Interesting. As if that weren't enough -- Tracy also has several close friends who are ob-gyns, and they told her that what happened to her "happens all the time." Through them, she spoke to a handful of women from San Francisco to New York, all of whom went through exactly the same thing she did -- but all, like her, after giving birth. I am the only person she's heard of to go through this during pregnancy.
Tracy reassured me, saying she is certain that what I'm experiencing is pregnancy-related and that it will go away soon. Her advice was (a) not to breastfeed -- get rid of the hormones ASAP and (b) never go on the Pill, something else her neurologist told her. We compared Pill stories. I actually never used the Pill, because the first time I tried it, I had horrible, over-the-top responses to the hormones. Just like Tracy did. I didn't tell Tracy about my bipolar disorder, but of course that is very hormone-dependent, too. From my layperson's point of view, this seems to fit into a very coherent picture. Something like, Hormones = Bad.
I guess one reason my discussion with Tracy, revelation and relief that it was, put me into shock is that I had never considered that breastfeeding would have anything to do with it. Another reason, I suppose, is that I hadn't considered the possibility that the fluctuations in hormones after I give birth could potentially act as another trigger -- I'd just been thinking that whatever hormones came into the picture when I conceived Abby didn't agree with me, so when she left, they'd go away and I'd get better. I still think that's the most likely scenario, but I guess Tracy's story scared me a little bit, too. I am certainly hoping it doesn't take nearly 6 months after Abby is born before I get my body back to the way it was meant to be.
I asked Tracy at one point whether she, like I , felt offended that there was no research on this -- even case studies -- but she just laughed. Me? It makes me mad. I guess you can take the girl out of the women's studies program, but you can't take the feminism out of the girl. Or maybe you don't need women's studies to feel annoyed by the lack of information for women -- when my brother heard this whole story, he suggested I call Oprah.
Anyway, D was obviously thrilled to hear about concrete cases of just these sorts of symptoms occurring under just these circumstances and then vanishing like a bad memory. I was, too. In fact, I was very relieved to speak to someone who could make me feel like less of an aberration, something other than a medical freak show. My intuition that this is pregnancy-related was so strong, though, that I don't think I was quite as worried as D that we'd got it all wrong and I'd be like this forever. Instead, the million dollar question for me has been how long will it take to get back to normal -- a question that remains, now alongside another question that shares its space: to breastfeed, or not to breastfeed?
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