Pregnancy – My Truant Pen

Done nursing

I’m done.

I’d hoped to nurse Thane through to a full year – he’s nearly 10 months old now. I made it just about 7 months with Grey. But I think this phase of my life has come to a close.

I’m a big supporter of breastfeeding. I’ve also had problem-free experiences. My milk has come in well. My babies nursed easily and right away. I’ve always had enough supply to meet demand – at least when they were little. But I start having trouble once they start crawling. I’ve come to the conclusion that the people who manage to nurse to a year or more have children who sit more quietly than mine do. You should see some of the acrobatic feats Thane has accomplished while attached to me. He’s got two teeth now. He’s started biting. He twists and winds. Unless he’s 90% asleep, it’s not really a pleasure to nurse him. I’ve been pumping for nearly 7 months now — a huge part of my day spent in a super-cold server room. But without the pumping, the supply doesn’t keep up. And finally, my trip to Washington not unexpectedly put a huge dent in my supply, even though I diligently pumped all the time I was away from Thane.

I have three options: keep trying to nurse him and attempt to deal with all these complications one by one, stop nursing him and feel like a failure for not making it to a year, or stop nursing him and feel like a success for having nurtured such a big, strong, healthy kid for as long as worked for both of us. I’ve decided to go with the latter.

There are a lot of emotions around this. Nursing is pretty cool. I mean, suddenly your body does this awesome, useful thing that very few other people can do. Imagine if your belly button suddenly started producing Hershey’s kisses on demand? It’s just awesome. I’m going to be sad when my body turns this new functionality off. I’d kind of rather keep it around unless I need it, you know? But no. If you don’t use it, you lose it. On the other hand, I might now be able to wear some of my more fitted blouses. Or (gasp) dresses. Or get some bras that do not look like they came from the 30s. I’m not going to have this little alarm clock in my head reminding me I better get some private time with a pump or my baby soon. I won’t look down in surprise to see any warm stains spreading when I don’t succeed in this.

It’s time. Thane has shared my body for over 18 months now. I’m ready to get it back to all mine.

I’d like to close up with some numbers. I know lots of people seem go online to find out “what’s normal”. I think I had a pretty normal nursing and pumping experience. I’d also like to give some perspective to people who think pumping is easy. I actually kept detailed records on how much I pumped (because, well, I do love me some data). Here’s how it plays out.

I pumped:

For 26 weeks
For 261 sessions over 108 days
1626.5 ounces

That comes out to:
15 ounces a day
6 1/3 ounces a session (on average)
62 ounces a week
2.5 sessions a day

If you assume I spent 15 minutes a session pumping (I think it’s likely to be more) I spent a total of 62.25 hours pumping. Over those six months, I produced 12.7 gallons of breastmilk.

Please note that I nursed during lunch, during weekends and during time not spent at work. The above figures reflect the amount of milk produced while working full time.

Good job, Tigris and Euphrates.

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

Where to start? My keyboard decided to suddenly have three letters not work. I’m 10 months pregnant. My hormones…. OMG my hormones. I’m not sleeping. I have a three year old who is a great kid but, let’s face it, three. And I am kinda at least a little sick.

None of these are dire, drastic, horrible things. These are what we like to call “annoyances”.

So I went in to my midwife appointment. I spent my usual 5 – 10 minutes HATING the daytime tv they have on with strict notes that we patients are not to touch it. I am subjected to a woman who hates her facial hair and a serious discussion of which kind of nose job is better.

Then I go into the room and don’t really like what the scale says and the nurse-person has trouble taking my blood pressure, as usual. I wait the standard 5 more minutes with a piece of paper across my legs, reading an article in a parenting magazine. It is about a problem I do not have and will never have.

My midwife comes in. I like her, I do. But she has HAD IT. She was in an accident on Friday and no one in the office even asked how she was doing and she came in and the phone calls were stacked high and instead of concern they just told her that people were waiting for her already and when she asked for time off they talked about how it would affect her numbers for the month… in the course of our 15 minute exam, she broke into tears three times. Dammit, I’m the hormonal pregnant woman here! Her staff really do probably not give her much support or nurturing. They’re the sort of “It’s 5 so I’m leaving” types who are all about just meeting their obligations and not noticing what other people need. (In fairness, they’re also pretty efficient.) Her corporate structure (she’s part of a huge organization) is totally failing, because someone in her chain of command should have noticed that she’s really struggling with what’s being asked of her and taken some steps to find ways to address it — just as a good management technique. And she really needs to do a better job of managing her own stress. Maybe she should have the conversation with her staff about how they’re not being supportive — or her boss. Not her 40 week and one day patient who happens to be a good listener.

Oh, and do you remember when she did the pelvic exam at 36 weeks and I was 1 cm dilated and 90% effaced and I told all y’all not to get excited? According to today’s pelvic exam, all the contractions I’ve been having have accomplished…. absolutely nothing. In fact, she said I was 1 cm dilated and 80% effaced. (I suspect the effacement numbers are rather subjective.) So yeah. They haven’t done anything. I’m at exactly the same spot I was a month ago and there is no sign that I’m going to give birth any time soon. I think she didn’t strip my membranes because I wasn’t “ripe” enough. (Although I am having the fun of crampiness and discomfort, so maybe she did strip ’em and it just hurt less than last time.)

At least the baby is at -1. (That means his head really is in the birth canal — ready to go. See also: I have to spread my legs in order to bend down.)

She decides not to send me in for an NST because the heart rate is fine and I’m not looking imminent and there’s no reason to think there’s anything wrong. There really isn’t.

So I decide on some retail therapy. There’s a Linens ‘N Things going out of business right across the street. Surely I can find something I need on sale. Or at least can find a roundabout way of justifying purchasing.

The sale sucks. The prices are all way more than I’m willing to spend. 10% off is not a great sale.

Then I go to Staples. At least I can get a new keyboard.

They don’t sell the split keyboards I use anymore — they only have these weird humpy very expensive keyboards now. While I probably could expense it, why pay more for something I like less? I notice they have also stopped making/selling the mouse I like.

I fail retail therapy. FAIL.

I should probably focus on the bit where everything looks fine with my baby and even in a worst case I only have to work for another 4 days and maybe one of these days I actually will give birth and my husband and I are both gainfully employed and we have no risk of losing the house and my son is adorable and healthy. These are all true and good things.

But waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

40 weeks and a day

In the Bible, whenever they want to express “a really long time” they use the number 40. 40 days for Noah’s flood. 40 years (I think) the Israelites wandered in the desert. 40 days Jesus spent being tempted by the devil.

And 40 weeks shall a woman be with child.

In this case, a child who has the hiccups again.

So here I am at 40 weeks and a day. I’ve spent the last, oh, three or four weeks knowing that I could give birth at ANY TIME. Having constant contractions hasn’t helped me forget that either. The room is ready. The laundry is mostly done. The projects at work that I needed to do are done. I have plans in place. My social calendar is notably bare.

OK, Grey’s Halloween costume isn’t done yet, but did you really think it would be?

We’re ready to go here! Any time! Yup! Ready! Still ready! We’re at the point where everywhere I go people ask me, “Are you still here?” I suppose my only saving grace is that I really don’t look TEN PLUS MONTHS pregnant. No, I only look about 7 or 8 months gravid. Lies, damn lies and statistics.

It’s hard to stay ready this long.

For me, too, it’s hard knowing that while I’m OVERDUE, based on the family history I’ve been nattering on about for the last 7 or so months, I’m still not as likely to have the baby, say, today as I am say, Sunday. Or a week Sunday, if this baby follows his brother’s lead. It may not seem like a long time to stay ready and waiting, but it is.

It’s especially hard because I’m not feeling really well any more. I’m not sleeping well. I have trouble falling asleep and I have trouble staying asleep. This is NOT NORMAL for me. Yesterday I got my hopes up because I was nauseous and crampy. Turns out I was just nauseous and crampy. I’m having these very odd pains in my back, as though the muscles up and branching out from my spine periodically catch on fire. It takes my breath away with pain. I am an old hand at back pain, but I’ve never experienced this particular kind of back pain before.

I find myself fantasizing about Ibuprofen.

In the very near future I will, once again, present myself at my midwife’s office. She will strip my membranes this time around (probably). She will likely send me to the hospital for a non-stress test. There will likely be at least one misunderstanding with a hospital staff person where they assume I’m there to be induced, being post due and all. I will at some point tonight get my hopes up that THIS IS IT. And it probably won’t be it.

I wonder how many more times I can write about being READY ALREADY. I was going to say, how many more times I could write about it and be entertaining, but I suddenly realize that it’s possibly too late to accomplish the goal of “not annoying all four of my readers”.

Are we THERE yet?

Insanity

A popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.

According to this definition, I really will be pregnant forever.

I’ve had lots and lots of contractions this pregnancy. I swear the contractions started before I started feeling fetal movement. I get contractions nearly every time I stand up. Walking up or down stairs (and I live in a 3 stairway house) is almost guaranteed to initiate contractions. Pretty much every afternoon I start getting contractions, and they are worst while I’m getting dinner on the table. By the time I sit down for dinner (nearly every day this week) I’m mentally packing my hospital bag.

Then they go away. I go to sleep. I wake up the next morning, still very very pregnant and feeling slightly foolish about the night before.

You see where I’m going with this?

SOMETIME in the next, uh, 18 days those contractions will actually be for real. And they will be going somewhere. And I just know that by then I’ll have subconsciously learned my lesson and completely stopped paying attention to the damn things. By the time labor pains get truly unambiguous, it’s really pretty late in the process. With Grey, labor was only for-darn-sure maybe 3 – 4 hours before he was actually born. And second babies come sooner. And this time around, we have to get someone to be with Grey while we’re gallavanting off to the hospital, so we NEED the time more.

So every night, when I get the contractions, I think of saying, “Oh, here we go again.” And then I think, “But what if this IS the night?”

Insanity.

In other pressing, important, critically interesting news, I decided yesterday that something had to give. Something simply HAD to change.

My hair was pregnancy-thick and just past shoulder length. It was heavy enough to laugh off most barrettes and hair bands, but too short to braid.

Now, it is much shorter and rather more layered. I don’t think this is my Platonic Ideal of a haircut. I dare say it looks a touch too mommyish. (What? Just because I have a 3 year old and am 18 months pregnant doesn’t mean I have to THINK of myself as mommyish.) But it is also a vast improvement over what came before.

And yes. I am still pregnant. Yes. Still.

No, I have not given birth yet

I promise you are not as disappointed by this as I am. (I’d forgotten that about this stage of pregnancy not only do people get *really excited* when you call them, but if you — heaven forfend — do NOT contact them they get all excited.) But no. Still pregnant.

I do, however, have significantly less hair than I did this morning. I just washed it, and I’ll let you know tomorrow if I like it. But it needed to be done — I couldn’t do anything with it but put it back and it failed to please me. To the headsman! Or the stylist! Pictures will be forthcoming.

One of my cats has gingivitis. Let me tell you how excited I am about paying for full anesthesia for appropriate dental care. I increasingly suspect these two felines are the last freeloaders I’m going to have for quite some time.

These and other FASCINATING events are the substance of my life. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some terribly exciting things to do. Like pay bills.

39 and a half weeks pregnant, but who’s counting?

I once again got through an exam ungroped. Next exam will make up for it.

My belly has apparently gotten smaller — I measure 34 cm. So basically, I look 7 months pregnant, not nearly 10. This seems true — I really don’t look nearly as pregnant as I am, and not as pregnant as I did a few weeks ago. I think this is because my son is SO LOW that he’s not actually all the way IN my belly. I would be more worried if we didn’t have a recent ultrasound pointing to a very reasonable size.

His heartbeat was 160. This is high for him (he likes 144) and the high end of normal. I would be more worried if I hadn’t eaten 3 cookies on my way to the doctor’s office.

He’s moving less than he used to. I’m pretty sure this is because he’s so low/engaged (his head is stuck, so he can’t do the wild gyrations he was doing a few weeks ago). Also, moving LESS than he used to still more than meets the criteria for moving several times an hour. It’s just less vigorous. And he still loves his 11 pm workout.

As far as future planning goes, at my next appointment on Monday I’ll be officially post-due. We’re planning on having her strip my membranes then. (No, still not going to explain what that is. You can look it up.) She is operating on the assumption that it’s likely to work. I’m operating on the assumption that I’ll be going nuts and happy to try relatively non-interventionist methods of inducing labor. (See also: lobster bisque, chocolate, marital relations, raspberry tea). I’ll probably go in for a non-stress test on Monday too, just to make sure everything’s ok.

Turns out she’s going on vacation November 4th. ARGH! NO PRESSURE!

I also negotiated ahead of time for getting to wait until the 10th before being induced (instead of the 7th). She says that as long as the non-stress tests are ok, and given the family history I’ve harped on constantly (she complains about their computer systems, I never pass up an opportunity to point out how late I’m likely to go), that should be ok. (But she won’t be here so I’ll have to argue with her OB.)

Yeah, so I guess I should actually write out my birth preferences.

What the heck, you’re all fascinated, right?

I would like:

To have as few interventions as possible
To labor in the tub as long as possible
To retain my mobility during labor, and possibly use alternate birthing positions (squatting, etc.)
To eat and drink during labor if I feel like it
To push when I feel I am ready to push
The umbilical cord to stay intact for as long as blood is being transferred
To try to nurse right away
To exclusively breastfeed my baby, and have him in the room with me as much as possible
For any tears to be stitched using a crown stitch, if possible
My husband to speak for me in the case that I am not able to communicate my wishes

I would not like:

To be offered pain medication — I will ask if I think I need it
To have an episiotomy unless medically indicated
To have labor-intensifying/inducing drugs unless medically required
A C-section except when medically required
To be constantly monitored
To have an IV
To force my husband to cut the umbilical cord

I am ok with:

Trainees or students being present during the labor/birth
Participating in very low risk studies regarding birth/post birth care
Standard newborn treatments (vitamins in the eyes, blood test from the heel)

Am I missing anything?

Does this woman look 9 months pregnant to you?

The waiting game

Every time I have a midwife/medical appointment this late in pregnancy, I always feel like I should be ready to report to the hospital, do not pass go, do not collect $200. It takes so little to get them worried, and there’s no medical reason for me to stay pregnant at this point, other than the baby isn’t ready to come out. I’m always wondering, “Should I take my work laptop?” (I’ll want it at home with me.) Should I clean out the perishables in the ‘fridge before I go?

Then again, I pretty much go through the same checklist every night, too.

I figure my “Ready or Not” date is no later than November 10th. (That puts me 15 days after my due date and assumes that I successfully negotiate induction AFTER the weekend that marks the 2 week mark and not BEFORE.) That’s 20 days away. My due date is 5 days away. My best-guess date is 10 days away.

Are we there yet?

Fun with false labor

So last night I was experiencing pain, as though all my muscles had knotted up and I was short of breath and a little panicky, and the pain seemed to be coming on a regular basis. Yeah, the first 7 innings or so of the Red Sox game downright hurt.

Oh, and I was having strong contractions that seemed, at least for a while, to be coming in five minute intervals.

When I was pregnant the first time around, this wouldn’t have caused much angst. I was in labor or I wasn’t. Time would tell. Maybe we’d have gone for a walk to see if exercise would solidify the contractions or diminish them. Maybe I’d just take a hot shower, pack the bag and go to bed, and see what I felt like in the morning.

But the second time around, there’s an additional complication. Yes, the product of the FIRST pregnancy needs to have a grownup around at all times. (Funny how that works.) So the question of whether I was in labor or not took on added importance. Did we need to call backup or not? I texted a friend in the middle of a date to let him know that he was on call. I watched Dice-K give up another homer. I attempted to watch the baseball game, gchat with my mom, text message with my friend, read some blogs, check the contents of my hospital bag and have my husband read to me about the difference between false labor and real labor simultaneously.

I felt slightly distracted and as though I had difficult focusing. Clearly, it was labor.

My frenetecism was rewarded. My mom told me that my baby brother was actually on his was New Englandward a day earlier than I thought he was going to be. I called him and asked him to please come spend the night in our house just in case. The great thing about family is that you can inconvenience them and only feel a little badly about it. A few more contractions while I showered, two more runs given up by Papelbon, and I was ready for bed. I figured that the Sox season was over, and that even if my labor progressed while I slept my son would be taken care of.

That was, of course, just the wrong time to turn off the Sox game. But it wasn’t labor. It was just practice. I’m really, really, really hoping that I don’t have too many more ambiguous labor-like periods, or my friends’ love-lives may seriously suffer from ill-timed text messages. But hey, at least I’ll have one more Sox game this season.

On another note, I uploaded all my latest pictures a week or two ago, and got stymied at a near-final step and never got around to, you know, letting people know. So here, a few weeks late, are some pictures, including my birthday, my husband’s surprise concert for me, some apple picking, and Grey playing with Jefferson.

http://tiltedworld.com/brenda/pictures/October08/

The babies we never had

So most of you who know me know that I had two miscarriages between Grey and this pregnancy. Apparently October 15th was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. I think I did pretty well dealing with my losses, and it helps a ton to have a happy healthy son and hopefully another one on the way at any moment. But the loss of a pregnancy, even at an early stage, can be very difficult and sneak back to haunt you. And I can hardly bear to imagine losing an infant.

I’ve also been thinking about my pregnancy losses a lot with the debate last night. Apparently the presidential debate involved the abortion discussion. Plenty of feminist bloggers are just a touch irate that John McCain used air-quotes when talking about “the health of the mother” as a reason why a woman might need an abortion.

While I have always been pro-choice (and always hoped that very, very few women would ever need the choice), my experience with my miscarriages changed how I looked at abortion. With my second pregnancy, everything seemed swimming. I got to 10 weeks rejoicing that the morning sickness wasn’t so bad and that maybe this meant I was having a girl. Then I noticed a bit of spotting and in the “it’s probably nothing to worry about” vein got sent in for an ultrasound to make sure everything was hunky-dory.

It wasn’t. Where there should’ve been a 10 week old embryo with a beating heart, there was just a darkly silent womb.

They told me to come back in a week in case my dates were off by a month. They weren’t. In a week it was still as silent as a tomb in there. The baby had probably stopped growing/died/whatever you want to call it at about 6 weeks and my body hadn’t gotten the message.

I was told to report to the OR for an abortion (same procedure whether or not there’s a living baby). I didn’t. Instead I fought to take abortifacent drugs because I wanted control over how the pregnancy ended, and if it wasn’t going to end itself, I didn’t want someone DOING something to me — not when I had a choice. I did need to terminate the pregnancy because I ran the risk of infection if it didn’t clear itself out. (Also, let’s talk about the mental health of a woman who knows she’s carrying a baby inside of her who is not alive. Or maybe let’s not, because that’s not a thing that bears lots of thinking.)

The pro-life tagline is that abortion stops a beating heart. Sometimes it doesn’t. I assume that even the most ardently pro-life out there would be ok with my terminating a pregnancy that didn’t involve killing a baby. You can be pregnant with a non-viable child, or one who has already died, and still be pregnant. But now I wonder every time I read about abortion laws… would they have prevented me from being able to terminate the non-viable pregnancy I had? Would my doctor know how to do the procedure? Would my doctor have to provide some sort of evidence that the pregnancy was not viable? Would I have had to wait even longer?

What about situations that aren’t as cut and dried as mine was? What about a child who can’t survive outside the womb but can inside it? (Like anencephaly). What about ectopic pregnancies? What about severe preeclampsia/eclampsia, where if the mother doesn’t cease being pregnant right away NO ONE is going to come out of the situation alive and the baby just isn’t old enough to make it?

I’m not sure what percentage of abortions are of perfectly healthy, viable pregnancies. That’s all the political discourse seems to talk about — someone who just doesn’t want to have a baby period. But in my experience of abortion, it was about pregnancies where there was some issue or some reason that the end outcome wasn’t going to be a baby anyway, and the only question was when.

Like so many issues in life and politics, abortion is painted as a black and white issue. And like so many issues, while there are situations that fall into black and white categories, there are also a lot of situations that are firmly rooted in gray.

(PS — be nice. This was a real and difficult loss for me. If there are any comments that are cruel, they will be deleted.)

38 weeks pregnant and needs more coffee

So I had my 38 week checkup today. Of course, I’m at the point in the pregnancy where I’m like, “I’m 38 weeks and TWO DAYS” as if those two days were critically important to understanding just how damn LONG I’ve been PREGNANT ALREADY.

I swear that the first time around I had weekly pelvic exams starting at about 32 weeks and every week I’d find out that I was exactly the same as last week and I got sort of in the habit of getting nekkid etc. I can’t say I’m disappointed, but apparently my memory sucks or things have changed. Not only did I get to keep my clothes on again this week, but apparently I don’t have to doff them until 40 weeks. Oh, and we rescheduled my 41 week appointment so that it happens on a day where she’s on call that evening.

I think she is wildly optimistic. She stripped my membranes (and no, I’m not going to explain what that means, but yes it’s just as much fun as it sounds) TWICE last time to NO AVAIL. But hey. It’s not like I have other big plans for that Monday. Except Linens ‘n Things is apparently going out of business and they’re totally right across the street. So this might all work out in my favor.

I confess — I’m not really sure why they want to see me so often when all they do is take my weight (don’t wanna talk about it), check my pee, take my blood pressure and measure my fundus. (I think that’s the right word. But it seems like the sort of word that it would be _BAD_ if I was close but not quite on in my usage.) Pretty much all of that could be done from the comfort of my own home, if I got someone else to look at the scale because I can’t see it because my belly is too big but I’m not sure this is a bad thing.

Ahem.

On the “my memory sucks” part of the argument, I was attempting to reassure a friend last night that although I am a figurative ticking time bomb, the “ticks” go on for long enough to run for cover. He brought up the quintessential scene of water breaking and I said that while that was a valid fear, I didn’t actually remember my water breaking with Grey.

At this point my husband pipes up to tell me that my water was broken while I was in labor. I totally and completely remember absolutely NONE of this. I mean, I thought I remembered labor pretty well: refusing to take the elevator to labor and delivery because I’d always taken the stairs, the skeptical look on the nurses face when a first time mom claims she’s in transition, the stuff they were storing in the tub where I wanted to labor, the unfair period where they wanted to take a “strip” to measure how the baby was doing, how they couldn’t get the remote monitors to work, how I fell asleep between contractions in the tub, how one simple request on my part clued them in that I was ready to push, the jokes I made between pushing, how my midwife appeared at the nick of time, the very unreasonable things I was asked to do at that point, the bit where my husband kept TOUCHING ME, both of us refusing to look at what was going on, Grey’s actual birth, the part where I had to bully A. into taking pictures of his newborn son which he didn’t want to do it was all “gross”, and the rather unpleasant few minutes that followed. I remember all of this. I do not remember anyone at any point breaking my water. Did they ask me? Did they need to? Don’t you think that’s the sort of thing that would, you know, make an impression? How long between when they broke my water and when I gave birth? It HAS to have been after I got out of the tub, but I was like pushing at that point. Doesn’t your water sort of need to break before you push?

The mind boggles.

I’ve thought of having some sort of countdown, but it’s rather too depressing. It’s not so bad with my due date — B minus 12 days! But then when you add in the 14 days I’ll agitate to go past due, well… let’s just say that I’m not sure I can maintain my sang froid (or my permanent wave — only family members will get that allusion) for another 26 days. TWENTY SIX DAYS. That’s like, forever. That’s like as many days as there are between December 1st and Boxing Day. People write novels in less time.

My husband said to me last night, as he worked the levers on the crane to lower me into bed, “I’m really looking forward to when you’re not pregnant anymore.” I shot him the look of doom and he hurried on, “I mean, I feel badly for your discomfort and how you hurt all the time and how difficult it seems.” I looked skeptical. “Also, I really hate your belly pillow and want to sleep on my right side again.” Light was shed. See, people? It’s not just me who’s sick of it all. Think of A. and how much of the bed the body pillow takes up. It’s all just unfair. Should he really be asked to put up with the bed interloper for 26 more days?