29 posts tagged “knocked up”

So I am having this baby no later than Friday. At my 39-week checkup yesterday, my cervix was 4 centimeters dilated and 75% effaced, and I hope this is the very last time I ever use the word "cervix" on this blog, not counting the birth story I may or may not post sometime before this baby turns 5. I'm scheduled for an induction Friday morning at (eek!) 6:30; and while I'm kind of nervous (okay, terrified) about the whole induction thing, I'm trying to focus on the bright side: namely, I shouldn't have to wait long at all for an epidural. And my impressionable baby boy will be exposed to a minimal number of swear words on his way down the birth canal.

False alarm AGAIN. Sent home empty-handed. Fluid apparently is not amniotic. Resident OB informed me matter-of-factly that "By this point in pregnancy, especially your third pregnancy, many women experience some incontinence. What you felt was probably just some urine leaking." This is not consoling, and I'd rather believe that it was just some of the other ick, mucus, brake fluid, whatever, that comes out of Down There late in pregnancy. Anyway, am ready for this whole stupid ordeal to just be over.

Am leaking fluid, slowly. Extremely slowly, in fact. Think it's amniotic fluid, think water has broken, but not 100% sure - could be odorless, incontinent pee? Called and awakened doctor - fortunately not the same on-call I had last time, I think I'd die of embarrassment if this turns out to be another false alarm - and he says sounds like water broke, head to hospital. No contractions yet - figures; first time in three months I haven't had contractions. Would like something obvious to go by, but this baby is proving to be stealthiest, most ninja-like baby ever, first with his false labor fake-outs and now with his miniscule, trickling maybe-water-breaking trick. Am going to name him Leonardo Donatello Michaelangelo Raphael, unless can come up with better ninja name. (Baby-san? Crouching Tiger Hidden Fetus?)

I've read a lot of birth stories lately*, and I found myself musing that when I write mine this time around, I'd like to have some sort of Compelling Plot Point. Nothing too compelling - "And all of a sudden my water broke in the middle of Target!" is acceptable; "And by the time the elevator doors opened, the baby was crowning!" is not. 

I'd like to think John Cusack would approve.

Okay, Internet, I know I've balked at discussing baby names here, but I need advice, the sort of advice that only a bunch of strangers with computers can provide. We have the baby name list narrowed down to a handful of contenders, my favorite of which is Peter. The problem I'm encountering is that my favorite middle name to go with this is Gabriel; so I walked around for two days murmuring "Peter Gabriel B____" to myself before it occurred to me that the name has already been taken. 

I think there is something even more unique about these last few weeks of crankiness [as opposed to the pregnant woman's crankiness during the preceding nine months]; something that, to the experienced eye, indicates that this woman is about to erupt. Think of her as a volcano; she is a big old mountain of a thing, as she has been for a few months now, but from the outside you can't tell if she is dormant or filled with seething lava. Only a thin trickle of steam indicates that she is about to blow. ...

As they face the biggest task of their lives, many women begin a subtle kind of withdrawal from their everyday lives. They develop what I call the "Stranger in a Strange Land" Syndrome, where they go through the motions of their usual business, but feel distanced from and uninvolved in it. Things that they would normally find amusing become trivial or irritating. They are sick and tired of being pregnant. They want to get the ordeal of birth going so that they can stop dreading it, once and for all. This is a good time for friends and family, especially husbands, to stay out of the pregnant woman's way as much as possible, and to answer "yes" to anything she asks, because any confrontation now is bound to be messy.

This is it: 36 weeks. This baby is cooked. At my appointment yesterday, my obstetrician estimated that Darth Baby is already around seven pounds. Furthermore, [WARNING: I AM ABOUT TO DISCUSS MY CERVIX; SKIP AHEAD A FEW LINES IF YOU'RE NOT INTO THAT SORT OF THING] I'm juuust shy of three centimeters dilated, the news of which made me wonder if I should be racing home to pack my hospital bag. "It's not predictive," the doctor said in a tone that was probably meant to be reassuring; "This is your third baby, so you could go into labor tonight or not for another two weeks. It's impossible to say."

I'm 35 weeks pregnant today. In the past week, I've gone from medium-pregnant-looking to HOLY ZEUS, THAT WOMAN IS PREGNANT-pregnant-looking. This is reassuring, as my obstetrician claims that in another week my baby will be cooked through and I can finally heave myself off the couch and waddle back into civilization without the looming threat of pre-term labor - because it won't be pre-term. This is frightening: I am possibly days away from pushing out a healthy, fully formed little person whom I will have to bring home and keep alive and protect from preschooler germs and airborne Matchbox cars. (What is not frightening about this is the hope of being able to eat a full meal and of no longer having a foot mashing into my ribcage, but so far that doesn't outweigh my trepidation at parenting an infant again. Ask me in a month if this is still true.) At the very most, I am five weeks away from this - because of my Previous Rapid Labor, my doctors plan to induce me if I somehow manage to make it to 40 weeks, to reduce the possibility that I deliver the baby on my living room floor or in the cereal aisle of the grocery store. (If for some reason I am forced to choose between just those two locations rather than the nice, sterile hospital, my preference would be the grocery store, as my living room carpet is light beige and less than two years old. Also, I have a faint hope that delivering in the grocery store would mean this baby will be made grocery store mascot and get free cereal for life, or something, which can only work to our advantage, even if it means I have to name the baby Giant Eagle.)

One sunny morning five years ago, when I was seven months pregnant with David, I woke up and lost my mind. It was my day off, Aaron was at work, and I took our tax return to Babies R Us and spent $500 on baby supplies. When Aaron got home that afternoon, he found me sitting on our living room floor, belly resting on my lap like a globe, surrounded by freshly-laundered onesies and crib sheets and cloth diapers, and sobbing. I had open containers of diaper wipes, Dreft detergent, Johnson's Baby Wash, even a tube of Desitin; and I was holding them up to my face and smelling them while I stroked a flannel receiving blanket and rocked back and forth.

Eight-pound man removed from woman's vagina. Oh, you people just have no idea how much I love the Onion.

Greetings from my couch! I saw my doctor yesterday morning, who expressed appropriately forehead-furrowed levels of concern for my tender, crampy abdomen and diagnosed me, again, with an "irritable uterus." Basically, all the cramping and contracting is awfully obnoxious, but isn't affecting Darth Clive or bringing me any closer to premature labor, at least so far - although they're going to have me in for more frequent appointments and cervical exams from here on out, to make sure things don't start progressing. Meanwhile, to manage the cramping, she said I could take all the Extra-Strength Tylenol I want (which is a bit like telling someone dying of dehydration that you'll spit on him as often as he'd like: useless, and somewhat insulting); and she wants me to go on "as close to bed rest as I can manage," with specific bans on housework and cooking.