One week ago today, I passed out in my classroom. In front of my pre-algebra students.
I had been feeling poorly all morning and had thought that I just needed to eat some lunch. After lunch, though, I still felt awful -- perhaps even worse. I remarked to several of my colleagues about how I was still feeling shakey and dizzy. I even went to the special ed teacher who works across the hall from me and asked her if she was going to be around in her room (she often watches the class if I am feeling poorly and have to run off to the restroom, etc) because I had a feeling that I might need some assistance. The afternoon just kept getting worse until my pre-algebra students were working with their partners and I went to stand up out of my chair to go over to one of them. I immediately crumpled to my knees and then fell all the way down to the ground.
I barely lost consciousness. I was out for maybe a few seconds -- maybe even less -- before I could hear my students saying, "Ms. Arden?" and "Why is Ms. Arden on the floor?" I got the attention of one of them and told her to go get the aforementioned teacher from across the hall.
I don't have great memories of all the events that happened next. They're still a bit hazy. The most detail that anyone would want to know, though, is this:
- My colleagues were great and they took care of my students and contacted my midwife group and my husband.
- Ben came and drove me to the hospital.
- Everything checked out as normal. Nothing wrong with my urine or blood samples, flu test came back negative, etc.
- Despite the previous bullet point, we didn't overreact. Everyone confirmed that coming in to the hospital was the right thing to do. It's always nice when the folks who are treating you don't make you feel like you're wasting their time or acting like a hypochondriac.
- Basically, the most likely hypothesis is that the baby was just taking up too much of my abdominal space and not allowing me to take deep enough breaths. This seems likely, since I felt so much worse after eating (since filling my stomach further restricted the space that I had for breathing). It's likely that it was compounded by the fact that my hemoglobin has been on the low side -- I'm taking the iron supplements, but it's still not back up to the normal range yet. So restricted breathing + low hemoglobin = poor oxygen circulation.
So that was my Monday. On Tuesday I stayed home and rested because I was still a bit shaken up. In the afternoon, we went out and bought some new bras that had a slightly larger band size for increased lung capacity, which I think has been helping.
Also on Tuesday, we went to an evening "Expectant Parents" class at a pediatrician group's office. It was really interesting to learn more about what to expect from a pediatrician and how the whole process works. It's kind of strange to remember that, at the end of all this pregnancy stuff, we're going to be parents. We're going to have a baby. A baby who will need to come in for well-baby visits, and who might have trouble breastfeeding, and who might get sick or develop allergies . . . It's so easy to focus on the pregnancy and forget that at the end of all of this, we're going to start the process of actually being parents.
Back at the first ultrasound, I'd suddenly had the realization that the little squirmy figure on the screen was our baby and that we were it's parents. Sometimes, I still think of us as parents -- to an "inside baby." At other times, though, like right now, I am very aware of the fact that our status as "parents" is still a very different status from what it will be like once this baby is actually born. There is going to be a big (and terrifying) shift when we actually have an "outside baby" and the process of taking care of it is much more involved than not eating/drinking certain things and going to the midwife regularly. When we actually have to worry about whether we're using the diaper/carseat/swing/swaddle correctly and safely.
And, most terrifyingly of all, when our child starts to actually give us feedback about what we're doing right/wrong. I was telling Ben the other day that right now I can blissfully live in the illusion that my bambin@ loves me and thinks it's awesome when I sing to him/her in the shower. At some point, though, I'm going to sing to my baby and the baby might give a more cutting critique than I was hoping for. It's easy to interpret a kick as "Wow, mama, you're a great singer! Thanks for making me so happy. I love you!," but when they have a more full range of communication skills -- like disturbed faces, and ear-piercing shrieks -- I might realized that I do not have the power to enthrall my baby in the way that I'd thought.
Anyway, that was Tuesday.
Also this week, we received our first gifts from our registry. It was pretty exciting to get a package in the mail that had something in it that we'd picked out. It kinda felt like magic. I had mentioned before that I've been wanting to do a post about the process of registering, and since today's blog is bound to end up very long no matter what, I figure I'll do that here.
Picking out items for a baby is a very odd process. First of all, we are rarely ever asked to pick out so many gifts for a person we've never met. By the time this baby is born, we will likely have an entire room full of items that we have bought or have been bought for us for our baby -- and none of them will have involved input from the baby itself. And even for those items that we could wait to purchase until we'd been able to consult the baby -- there will likely be few opportunities for the baby to "test drive" products and give us feedback ahead of time.
Instead, we are left to wonder and hypothesize. Will my baby like having a swing? Will s/he find this crib mattress comfortable enough? Will the baby notice that I bought the generic diapers instead of the brand-name ones? Will my baby be entertained by this toy/mobile/tummy-time gym? Will my baby refuse this brand of bottle? These are all questions that I cannot answer. Reading reviews for various products helps a little, but in some cases it only confuses the matter further. The internet is full of people with very strong opinions. No sooner are you done reading many glowing reviews about how this product stimulates the baby's development and how much they love it, then you read a review from someone else who says that their baby just ignored the product entirely. I just wish I could say, "Hey Bambin@, can you give me three or four little kicks if you think you'd like this product? If not, just jump on my bladder in protest."
So registering for our bambin@ was at least five times as difficult as it had been to register for our wedding. Somehow we made it through, though, and when we received that first gift it felt very rewarding and worth the frustration of all the review-reading and price-comparing (we'd registered at Amazon and Target, so for items where there was overlap between the two stores, we tried to register for the item at the place that had the best price). It feels good to add some more things to the nursery and feel like we're getting more prepared.
On Friday, I "saw stars" for the first time in my life. I was feeling a little off in the evening -- extra tired and my lower back was killing me. I drank some water and it went down the wrong way, causing me to start having a coughing spell. At some point, the coughing led to vomiting (as it often does). But before it did, I started seeing these little yellow spots flying all around me. They were sort of floating and sort of falling at the same time. It reminded me of the bioluminescence exhibit that Michelle and I went to in New York last spring. They lasted for what felt like a long time. I kept thinking that it was just a temporary thing (like a brief afterimage when you look away from a light) and that when I blinked or moved my eyes, they would stop, but they didn't.
Anyway, it was weirdly beautiful and disturbing at the same time. Eventually they faded, and then I went back to the task of coughing and vomiting. I went to the midwife today and she said that it sounded very strange, but that if it were pre-eclampsia (which is also associated with visual disturbances), it wouldn't be an isolated incidence like that. And since my blood pressure is so low, they really aren't worried about it. I'm to call in if it happens again, though.
To wrap up the week, I think we've finally chosen our hospital. We went on a tour of St. John's this past weekend and I felt very positively about it. It is still a longer drive away than St. Joe's, but the distance from the place where you enter the building to the maternity area is much smaller, so ironically I almost feel like it would feel like less of a journey for the pregnant person (although it might feel longer for the partner). One thing that I've always struggled with at St. Joe's (even though I've had great care experiences there so far) is that no matter where I'm entering, it always involves either a long walk or a long wheelchair ride in order to get to Labor and Delivery. I was surprised and delighted when I saw that when you bring an expectant mom in to St. John's, you walk through one lobby, one hallway, one secured doorway, and then you're at the admitting table for L&D -- rather than going through a labyrinth of hallways and elevators to get from the drop-off location to L&D.
St. John's is a considerably longer drive, though, so there's still a chance that -- depending on traffic and weather -- we may go to St. Joe's. I'd be fine with that, of course. They're a great hospital and the wheelchair ride isn't the only thing to consider!
We're also still going to tour at Woodwinds, but unless they offer something that is significantly better than St. John's, I don't think we'll end up with them. They are about as far away as St. John's and there are fewer ways to get there if there are traffic jams.
So that was our week! My apologies for the length. Things have been busy around here and I haven't had a chance to write smaller posts.
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