I'm currently 30 weeks pregnant and getting excited for the home stretch. I remember getting to the last 10 weeks with Greta and feeling like every week was this huge chip away at the remaining time.
30 weeks pregnant means that there are 7 weeks left in the schoolyear. This is both exciting and terrifying. I'm looking forward to the last 7 weeks going by quickly (please! please!), and hoping that the last three weeks of pregnancy will go by nice and slowly (so long as I'm still relatively comfortable and healthy, of course). I fully expect Piccola to wait until her due date to arrive, although I must admit I am hoping that she doesn't come much later than that. I am really, really hoping that she doesn't arrive on July 4. July 4 was the day that we found out we were pregnant with Sparkie last year. I'm sure, if it happens, with time it will simply become Piccola's birthday and I won't have such strong associations with Sparkie. But I'd just rather not go there at all. I'm just really hoping that Piccola makes her appearance before that anniversary.
In pregnancy news, I'm feeling her kicking around quite often now. These are the days when I'm actually glad that I have an anterior placenta -- Piccola's kicks are consistent, but still mostly pleasant and fun. It is rare that she delivers a jab that is truly painful -- and usually when it happens it is to the cervix, which makes sense because it is (thankfully) not covered with placenta.
I still sometimes have to stop myself and recognize that we are going to have a baby in 10 weeks or so. A baby. What should I be doing? How should I be preparing? I feel weirdly even more clueless than with my first baby. I think it's because, ultimately, a newborn doesn't need all that much and can't get into all that much trouble. The rest of us adults can adapt to the newborn and we can decide as we go how we're going to do that. But a newborn entering a home with a toddler? That's a whole different picture. I have no clue what that's going to look like to get Greta on board with our adaptations.
Today I took Greta out for a walk and she was very upset that I made her ride in the stroller when she wouldn't listen to directions about holding my hand. I thought about how grateful I am that we have a double stroller so that I can have both kids buckled in at the same time. I also thought about how scary it would be if the single stroller had had a little baby in it when I was reaching for my disobedient toddler.
The biggest worries that I have right now are around whether to speed up or slow down Greta's transition from babyhood to childhood. She's in a crib right now -- do we transition her to a toddler bed before or after the baby's arrival? She's in diapers -- do we potty train now or after the baby arrives. With 10 weeks left to go, I feel like we have to fish or cut bait. Either we can make these transitions now and have enough time that she might not regress when the baby arrives, or we have to wait until after we've settled in with our new arrival. I feel like waiting until the last couple weeks of pregnancy to make big changes is a bad idea. It's just darn awkward timing.
And then, besides the baby's arrival, there's the worries about the actual birth. At this point, I'm sort of in la-la land about that. I'm just kind of assuming things will go however they're going to go and there's not much I can do to prepare. Which is probably mostly accurate. But I'd like to be somewhat prepared. Maybe have a few breathing techniques in my back pocket. Certainly have a bag packed. Perhaps have purchased some supplies for taking care of myself during and after labor.
There's a lot to do in these last 10 weeks. It's hard to focus on anything except surviving the last 7 weeks of school, though. Head down, power through.
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
The Rough Days of Pregnancy
We're in the third trimester. And things are getting tough.
Last week I had a cold/hot/clammy dizzy spell and ended up having some food and lying down for about a half hour in the nurse's office at school before continuing with my day. That evening, I had seven hours of painful, semi-regular contractions. They eventually spaced out and I was seen in clinic the next day and there hadn't been any cervical changes, so we just sat down and made a plan of action for finding opportunities to drink more water and empty my bladder more frequently throughout the day.
Then yesterday I actually fainted. During 2nd block, in front of my students. I felt embarrassed and frustrated. It was likely just due to a bad combination of low blood sugar and not drinking enough. (My co-teacher was unavailable because he was filling in for another staff member and so I wasn't taking care of myself the way I usually do.) I left work early, moved up my midwife appointment, and made another plan -- this time to eat more frequently to keep my blood sugar up.
That afternoon, Ben and I went to get some food and then headed home so I could rest. I was lying down and then got up to use the restroom. As I was sitting up, I suddenly felt a bad pain in my upper abdomen. I gasped and held my belly and stumbled to the bathroom, hoping it would improve after emptying my bladder. The pain continued and, in fact, got considerably worse. I called out to Ben in a panic. I was pushing on the top of my abdomen because it felt like my belly was about to explode outward. It felt like a combination of an uncontrollable pushing contraction, mixed with the baby lodging a foot behind my placenta. I don't know that that makes much sense, but that was the only thing that came to mind.
I asked Ben to get me a hot pack and to Google whether it was okay to use one on my belly. When he brought it back, I was standing in the doorway, swaying and holding my belly. I put it on my belly a few times, but the pain was the same or worse and so I took it off. I was moaning and pushing on my belly, which felt hard and like it was bulging. I was gasping and having a hard time breathing in and I told Ben I thought I should call the midwife on-call line. I called and the midwife on-call directed me to go to the ER immediately, and to go to the ER at the hospital where they could deliver a 28-weeker, if necessary.
By the time we got to the hospital, the pain had subsided considerably. It felt more like just gas pain or heartburn or a muscle ache. After several tests and some monitoring of the baby's heartrate, the midwife who saw me felt convinced that it was probably due to a muscle spasm of the thinned walls of my abdomen where the muscles separate -- perhaps compounded by the baby pushing on the muscles as they spasmed, and perhaps also compounded by gas or heartburn pain.
As happy as I was that the baby was okay and that nothing that I was experiencing was putting either of us at considerable risk, it was also very scary to know that there was virtually nothing I could do to prevent this kind of pain from happening again. I am hoping it was a fluke accident and I am thinking I should do more to strengthen my core as much as possible . . . but I'm also afraid of straining those muscles at all now. I stayed home from work to recuperate and even talking has been difficult.
I'm also nervous because the midwife mentioned my gallbladder several times while I was there (although at the time I had no idea what she was talking about and so I wasn't really paying attention), and today I looked up what a "gallbladder attack" is like and realized that it sounded exactly like what I experienced. But without knowing if that's what it was, I'm not sure what, if anything, I should be doing.
I think that this is my modus operandi during pregnancy. I seem to have a lot of frustrating, painful, uncomfortable stuff happen to me (like fainting, dizzy spells, braxton hicks contractions, sciatica, food poisoning, this weird muscle spasm/gallbladder attack, anemia, nosebleeds -- oh yeah, more on that in a bit...), some of it very scary, and then it turns out to be relatively normal and without much that can be done for treatment (except the anemia, for which I take iron and then suffer the side effects of that). Am I a wimp? Or just super unlucky?
Speaking of unlucky . . . the nosebleeds. Holy moly, this is a new thing with this pregnancy. I don't remember having any trouble with nosebleeds when I was pregnant with Greta. I have been having bad nosebleeds from my right nostril for a few weeks now. At least a couple a week, and sometimes more than one in a day. They got worse last week after I began having a bad cold and needing to blow my nose more frequently. No matter how gentle I am about blowing my nose (or even if I am only blowing the side that doesn't bleed), I run the risk of starting a gushing stream of blood. The morning that I fainted, I had been awakened at 3am with a nosebleed, which took a long time to stop and then didn't allow me to get back to sleep because I couldn't lie in a good position. At other times, I have had one start just as I am getting ready to go out the door -- necessitating a prolonged period of management and then clean-up, followed by a complete change of clothes.
Yeah, the third trimester is rough. I am so grateful that the baby is doing so well (the nurses and midwives commented that her heart accelerations were particularly good for a 28-week fetus), but I am really hoping I can get a few weeks of just blissful pregnant-lady normalcy before the summer heat sets in and we get to those last few weeks where I know I'll be especially uncomfortable.
C'mon, Piccola! Just one or two weeks to enjoy my pregnancy? Pretty please?
Last week I had a cold/hot/clammy dizzy spell and ended up having some food and lying down for about a half hour in the nurse's office at school before continuing with my day. That evening, I had seven hours of painful, semi-regular contractions. They eventually spaced out and I was seen in clinic the next day and there hadn't been any cervical changes, so we just sat down and made a plan of action for finding opportunities to drink more water and empty my bladder more frequently throughout the day.
Then yesterday I actually fainted. During 2nd block, in front of my students. I felt embarrassed and frustrated. It was likely just due to a bad combination of low blood sugar and not drinking enough. (My co-teacher was unavailable because he was filling in for another staff member and so I wasn't taking care of myself the way I usually do.) I left work early, moved up my midwife appointment, and made another plan -- this time to eat more frequently to keep my blood sugar up.
That afternoon, Ben and I went to get some food and then headed home so I could rest. I was lying down and then got up to use the restroom. As I was sitting up, I suddenly felt a bad pain in my upper abdomen. I gasped and held my belly and stumbled to the bathroom, hoping it would improve after emptying my bladder. The pain continued and, in fact, got considerably worse. I called out to Ben in a panic. I was pushing on the top of my abdomen because it felt like my belly was about to explode outward. It felt like a combination of an uncontrollable pushing contraction, mixed with the baby lodging a foot behind my placenta. I don't know that that makes much sense, but that was the only thing that came to mind.
I asked Ben to get me a hot pack and to Google whether it was okay to use one on my belly. When he brought it back, I was standing in the doorway, swaying and holding my belly. I put it on my belly a few times, but the pain was the same or worse and so I took it off. I was moaning and pushing on my belly, which felt hard and like it was bulging. I was gasping and having a hard time breathing in and I told Ben I thought I should call the midwife on-call line. I called and the midwife on-call directed me to go to the ER immediately, and to go to the ER at the hospital where they could deliver a 28-weeker, if necessary.
By the time we got to the hospital, the pain had subsided considerably. It felt more like just gas pain or heartburn or a muscle ache. After several tests and some monitoring of the baby's heartrate, the midwife who saw me felt convinced that it was probably due to a muscle spasm of the thinned walls of my abdomen where the muscles separate -- perhaps compounded by the baby pushing on the muscles as they spasmed, and perhaps also compounded by gas or heartburn pain.
As happy as I was that the baby was okay and that nothing that I was experiencing was putting either of us at considerable risk, it was also very scary to know that there was virtually nothing I could do to prevent this kind of pain from happening again. I am hoping it was a fluke accident and I am thinking I should do more to strengthen my core as much as possible . . . but I'm also afraid of straining those muscles at all now. I stayed home from work to recuperate and even talking has been difficult.
I'm also nervous because the midwife mentioned my gallbladder several times while I was there (although at the time I had no idea what she was talking about and so I wasn't really paying attention), and today I looked up what a "gallbladder attack" is like and realized that it sounded exactly like what I experienced. But without knowing if that's what it was, I'm not sure what, if anything, I should be doing.
I think that this is my modus operandi during pregnancy. I seem to have a lot of frustrating, painful, uncomfortable stuff happen to me (like fainting, dizzy spells, braxton hicks contractions, sciatica, food poisoning, this weird muscle spasm/gallbladder attack, anemia, nosebleeds -- oh yeah, more on that in a bit...), some of it very scary, and then it turns out to be relatively normal and without much that can be done for treatment (except the anemia, for which I take iron and then suffer the side effects of that). Am I a wimp? Or just super unlucky?
Speaking of unlucky . . . the nosebleeds. Holy moly, this is a new thing with this pregnancy. I don't remember having any trouble with nosebleeds when I was pregnant with Greta. I have been having bad nosebleeds from my right nostril for a few weeks now. At least a couple a week, and sometimes more than one in a day. They got worse last week after I began having a bad cold and needing to blow my nose more frequently. No matter how gentle I am about blowing my nose (or even if I am only blowing the side that doesn't bleed), I run the risk of starting a gushing stream of blood. The morning that I fainted, I had been awakened at 3am with a nosebleed, which took a long time to stop and then didn't allow me to get back to sleep because I couldn't lie in a good position. At other times, I have had one start just as I am getting ready to go out the door -- necessitating a prolonged period of management and then clean-up, followed by a complete change of clothes.
Yeah, the third trimester is rough. I am so grateful that the baby is doing so well (the nurses and midwives commented that her heart accelerations were particularly good for a 28-week fetus), but I am really hoping I can get a few weeks of just blissful pregnant-lady normalcy before the summer heat sets in and we get to those last few weeks where I know I'll be especially uncomfortable.
C'mon, Piccola! Just one or two weeks to enjoy my pregnancy? Pretty please?
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