Pregnancy Bloopers and Life's Practical Jokes

As of today, we're starting Week 3 as a family of three. So far, so good. Jaideep eats every three to four hours most of the time, and sometimes thrills me with a five hour stretch of sleep at night. When not eating or sleeping, he continues to practice mixed martial arts by punching and kicking in the air or at whatever part of a grown up body is nearby. As I'd noted based on the kicks and jabs from the inside out, he's strong. This is now very apparent to others.

Being above average, he's already figured out how to roll from back to side to front by swinging his swaddled legs in the desired direction until the rest of his body follows. While the nurse at the pediatrician's office says this is just reflexes, I'm sufficiently sure it's skill that he is laid down with rolled blankets to prevent movement.

We'll go for a 3-week well baby check up on Friday, so until then there's not a lot of new baby news. That being the case, I thought I'd go ahead an fess up to some embarrassments from the past nine months -- then, when the new weight and length numbers come on Friday, those will be read and these little 'oops moments' will be forgotten.

Top Three "Are You Serious?" Moments
3) The Milk Comes from WHERE?
We've all heard that public education is failing our children, but I thought my public education had been the exception to the rule. Our school was good -- we had small classes before they were good policy, certified teachers with what we were sure must have been eons of experience, and parents that we were sure were far TOO involved. Well, I think that my sophomore spring semester of Health or the senior semester of Parenting (taken when I decided Physics wasn't for me and I didn't care if I would need it in college--which I didn't) might have needed some tweaking.
Oh, poor Pete. (Mrs. Peterson to some, I'm sure, but we all called her Pete.) She got saddled with teaching us about all the things that the other teachers didn't want to get involved with (well, not on school time)--Health was mostly about drugs and sex. I remember a June calendar being used to explain 'natural family planning' and about half the class being able to draw the conclusion that no one should have sex on Flag Day without understanding why. I remember watching a classic 80's comedy that we argued (somehow) dealt with depression after our mental health unit. (Yes, I now realize it was the end of the semester and she wanted to teach almost as much as we wanted to learn.)
I do NOT remember being told anything about breastfeeding. One would think that either in Health or the semester of Parenting I took from Mrs. McNeil this might have come up. Parenting, as it turned out, was more about NOT getting into a condition that would require one to do any parenting. The miracle of life, as AlWood High School would have it, was something none of us should be thinking about for a long time to come.
That being the extent of my education about the topic for the next 15 years, it was a shock when I learned from a fellow teacher in my current public school that apparently girls are NOT constructed like bottles. You could have knocked me over with a feather when she explained to me in detail how the "milk comes from everywhere" and that it doesn't only exit at feeding times. Why didn't someone tell me that girls are more like fire sprinklers than baby bottles? She followed up her description with, "Oh, didn't you KNOW that already?" No, I didn't... but, this would probably have a pretty positive impact on reducing teen pregnancy in Illinois were it included in the curriculum.

2) It's Not Working, Maybe I Should Try It Somewhere Else...
I got a breast pump as a gift. Once I got over the idea of milk coming from "everywhere" it seemed practical to get ready to save up some of this wonderful stuff in the freezer for those times when it's needed and I'm nowhere to be found.
So, I hook up this milker (as I affectionately call it). Pretty simple. A bottle twists onto a tube that attaches to a pump, and this hooks onto a funnel-shaped plastic thing that goes on the udder, er... breast. I turn it on and stick it against my stomach. Nothing happens. How odd-- it's got new batteries, it's making a milking noise. So, I turn up the suction to medium and still nothing. I figure that maybe it's defective and turn it up to maximum. This is when it dawns on me that, maybe, it needs to be attached to the correct body part to work. I hold it up to an udder and, come to find out, it's working GREAT. So great, in fact, that the milker starts to make a straining sound and I feel a sucking pressure that makes me think it's going to either do damage to its motor or me.
Lesson learned: Do not milk on max unless cosmetic surgery is in your future.

1) I'm Your Demo Model
Finally, knowing where milk comes from and how to extract it, we go to the hospital to have this baby via induction and, after tons of paperwork, we're told to get comfortable and take a walk -- the IV will be coming soon and that will be the end of walking outside the room.
I put on a cute little terrycloth nightie I'd picked out at Target in the NOT maternity section (so, it's a little snug, but terrycloth stretches and I'm not going to be pregnant for much longer), throw on a hospital gown as a robe, and get the flip flops back on (since they still fit the fluid-fattened feet) for a spin around the L&D floor.
Ajay and I head out on the trek, and as I waddle toward the doors to the outside world in my delivery best--sans make up or good hair-- they swing open to reveal a heard of pregnant women and their husbands along with our former birth class instructor!
Yes, we'd ended up in the middle of her tour of the Labor and Delivery unit, we become the evening's sideshow for these people-- rather like the poor woman who was screaming "Carter!" and her husband, who we assumed was named Carter. And, of course, the instructor not only recognizes us but presents us in all our glory to the 20 people following her. "This is Ajay and Britta. They were in my last class. How are you?"
Well, that was a dumb question to ask because the woman in labor waiting to be hooked to machines for the foreseeable future will tell you the truth. I tell them about the amniotic fluid leaking, having to get induced, and about not being able to use the pool or shower. After telling them that they'll all get to be here just like me someday, I invite anyone who'd like to watch to come on down to our room.
We had no takers.
What? Was it something I said?
When we sent an email to the birth class people to let them know we'd delivered, she wrote back to say that she was 'excited' we'd always have her class as a part of our L&D memories. I bet 'excited' might not be the first word that came to mind, but that it probably seemed nicer in an email than some other words she could have used.

So, more baby news to come. For the time being, check out the pictures I'm uploading to Picassa at: http://picasaweb.google.com/britta.watters/LittleJaideepTheFirstMonth#

He's Here (...or, Why I Loved the Epidural)

Jaideep Reed Chawan is here and he's now a day old. He's managed to do a lot in the past day -- he's got the eating thing down, he's busy making us little (and not so little) gifts in his diapers, he sneezes, and makes a lot of interesting faces. And, after the initial self-abuse, he's had his hands covered and he's stopped scratching his face. So much progress! Clearly, he's something special.

While the journey is important, his arrival reminded me that getting there isn't always half the fun. Granted, this journey didn't involve taking off my shoes for security checks and making sure all my liquids were in 3oz containers, but there were some hassles and delays. We got to the hospital a little after 5PM and filled out a ton of paperwork. They put us into a room and the nurse took a bunch more information -- all things that should already be in my charts, but... maybe this is the secret double-check? By this time, we were almost at the 7PM shift change, and one of the nurses delivered the bad news to me that having had Pitocin ordered meant 1) it would be delivered via IV along with fluids and I'd be tied to an IV tree for the duration, and 2) there would be no happy pain relieving showers because Pitocin also means continuous monitoring of baby's vitals and mom's contractions. Delightful.

Once they got this monitoring going, the checked me over again and found that we were 80% effaced and 3cm dilated. Surely this Pitocin would help things along quickly. Or not. Five hours later, it's midnight and I'm checked again. Everything's the same on the inside. On the outside, I'm feeling some mighty pains. How was it possible this had been for nothing? Grrrr. So, the midwife tells us that we'll give things another hour or so and then we might need to make some decisions about what to do (read: how to intervene and get the kid out).

As nature / Pitocin drips would have it, by 1AM I'm standing and squatting next to the bed, miserable with pain that is apparently doing nothing. I tell Ajay to call the nurse -- I need some drugs of the dangerous sort. Whatever you have, I'll take two and pronto! Fortunately, because I was out of my designated location, the nurse came to me and we didn't even need to call. She called the anesthesiology people and we waited for them to come for what seemed like hours when, all of a sudden, there was a giant popping sound and a giant movie-style gush of water and other mess splats to the floor. I thought I'd been in pain before, but I'd been wrong. This event brought me to tears and started me shaking with pain. Not exactly something I'd expected.

When the bearers of good drugs appeared, they couldn't find some oxygen monitoring sensor and I was forced to wait -- sitting upright on the edge of the bed, curled over, clutching a pillow and the nurse, while not moving -- though another 3 or 4 miserable contractions. They gave me something in the drip that was supposed to feel like a 'couple glasses of wine' and --having had a couple glasses once upon a time, I can say with certitude that this was more like a bottle and a couple glasses. It didn't help the pain, but I didn't care as much -- call me a cab, it's time to go home! Finally they get the right equipment, hook me up to more things, and proceed with stabbing me in the spine. Comfortable it was not, but when she offered to do a second stab to put in some combination spinal something that would make things take effect faster, Ajay reports that I said, "Faster is good." Things were bad enough that speaking like a 2-year-old was the best I could do.

Another jab later, and my legs started feeling tingly and heavy, and relief was on the way. For the first time since getting hitched to my little IV wagon at 7, I was able to do what they'd been telling us to do: relax and be comfortable (never mind the beeping, constant blood pressure checks, people in and out, ...). Forget that I was shaking like a leaf from the effects of the epidural, I wasn't feeling like the pain was going to kill me anymore! Hooray! Finally, things started to change--when they checked where I was after I stopped shaking, we had a head locked in place, 90% effacement, and 6cm of room to work with.

Not even an hour later, at about 3:45, I asked the nurse to have the midwife come back and check me at 4AM because I was feeling something that wasn't pain but that was absolutely a pressure. She came in, told me we were ready to go and to give her a couple trial pushes to see what I could do. The results: I'm apparently good at pushing, so Ajay was made to get out of bed... where he'd just gotten comfortable after my little ordeal. We, and by that I mean "I", started pushing with the next contraction at 4:00, and 6 contractions later we had a baby at 4:07. If Pitocin is evil, the epidural is God's gift to a laboring Britta. Seriously, with a first baby, who has 7 minutes of pushing? It's unheard of for a reason.

Maybe it wasn't crossing the backbone of the Andes on foot, or taking a mule train with food into a jungle camp after the roads flood and the supplies have run out. It's not solving the mystery of why a kid can't read or how to finally make something make sense when it never has before. It's not the kind of physical or mental adventure I've had before, but it was by far the biggest. No mountains, or floods, or mysteries compare to this. And, that's how two became three with a little help from a lot of people and, in the end, with a little modern medicine applied to something as old as time itself. Pretty amazing stuff.

The Baby Cometh!

Well, maybe... We're heading to the hospital later today to see if the miracles of modern medicine can jump start the labor process. It would seem that my body's on the fence today.

At 1 in the morning, I thought that I'd either 1) decided to channel my deceased cat and urinate outside the designated location (so one of his favorite things toward the end, but... I digress) or 2) experienced some sort of baby housing fluid leak. Since it was one in the morning, I did what any non-thinking very pregnant person would do. I got up, went to the bathroom, came back to bed, gave the sheets a smell test... nope, didn't smell like I'd had a loss of control... then I laid back down for a minute (because it wasn't so much a puddle as a spot and changing the sheets would mean needing to wake a sleeping husband, maybe for nothing).

I had to think it over. So, laying next to my spot, I spend some time contracting and listing a bit from one side to the other -- like a large ship -- decide it's the bed that's making me uncomfortable (this is the sleepy, non-thinking part), and that IF my spot IS evidence of bigger things to come, I'd better get some sleep (logic spills in). So, about 2:30 I give up on our bed, go take a couple Tylenol, and move with a towel to the baby room's twin bed so that Ajay can keep sleeping.

I get up a few times to check on the leaking, decide that I either have 1) a very uncooperative bladder all of a sudden or 2) there probably IS something going on, and sleep on and off until about 8. When I do wake up for good, though, I decide I'd better call the doctor to see what they want me to do since I don't like slow leaks of any type.

Our midwife, Nurse Linda, gets me in to be seen and... sure enough, I'm not like the deceased cat... just leaking all willy nilly outside my litter box. It really is a case of the baby's house starting to come apart at the seams. However, since we live in these modern times, apparently the medical community likes to give a girl 24 hours from this business starting to full blown labor, and if you're not doing it on your own they're willing to help you out. Hence, we're heading to the hospital later today for a little IV help. No sense ending up with infections or prolapsed umbilical cords, etc. because I'm wanting to wait things out and be all natural. Better healthy than according to my plan.

The true bummer of this all is that I won't get to use The Tub. Once you've gotten to this point, you're not allowed to sit in water, much less labor there for hours. So much for my fantasy of mixing spa time with labor. I have been assured that I do get a consolation prize instead: Hot Shower. Rather like The Price Is Right when they play PLINKO and you don't get the car, but get a blender with some lame attachments instead.

So, off to Labor & Delivery we'll go and... maybe... sometime in the next day or so... there will be pictures of the Chickpea to post.

39 is NOT "Just a Number"

Granted, I haven't turned 39 yet, but if anyone else tells me that 39 weeks is 'fine' or 'not even overdue'... I'm not sure, but whatever bits of Irish I have might come out.

We're 39 weeks and I'm still pregnant. For anyone on a 'day' counter, that's 273 days. It's 6552 hours or 393,120 minutes. I think that's about what it feels like, too. Basically, over the past week, I've continued to do nothing (following orders is not my forte--this alone would have been bad enough), had two doctor appointments at both of which I begged a woman to strip me (it's clinical, I swear), I've had a pretty bad sinus infection that no one wanted to treat with drugs (and steamy showers aren't worth much), I've had a few days that even walking has been nearly impossible -- more on this later), and I've resorted to cross-stitching tropical fish onto a baby towel to occupy my hands and mind. This has not been a week to remember.

I did find out that my extreme pelvic pain is not just of the normal variety. Come to find out, those of us fortunate enough to be super flexible in normal, non-pregnant life find our bodies totally out of control in pregnancy because the hormone called relaxin the body produces to help get things loosened up for delivery creates an overload of relaxed ligaments. We become super floppy and start coming apart at the seams. This, for me, has meant that my pelvis literally feels like it's coming undone in the middle every time I step or try to left one leg without the other because the ligaments the hold the pelvis together in the front are separating further than normal. Think walking, climbing stairs, getting in or out of bed, rolling over, getting in or out of a car, the bathtub, ... we do a lot with one leg then the other. This means that NOT everyone puts on her pants one leg at a time. I do that two feet and two legs at a time from a seated position, tray table up.

This has a name that's long. If you look up "Pregnancy SPD" you'll see things about this wonderful 'dysfunction' that can even result in the pelvis actually separating during delivery. A medically interesting possibility, but not one I'm hoping to experience. The good news is, it's NOT my imagination or me just being whiney. Bad news, it might not resolve immediately after birth and I'd be prone to having it again and earlier with subsequent adventures in baby making. (Shake fists, yell: Chickpea!!!)

So, until this baby decides to vacate this property, I'll probably just keep on keeping on. If things get really bad, I may take my things and waddle up to the waiting room of Labor and Delivery. Live off vending machines and 4 channels of TV until he decides to get a move on.

Photo highlights this week: I think he really IS moving down toward the exit, although still positioned off to one side a bit--whatever, upside down is upside down. We're told that we 70% effaced and 2+cm dilated, so I'll take that as progress. And, thanks to my superhuman flexibility combined with pregnancy hormones, I can still palm the floor. Apparently the sympathy hormones haven't kicked in for Ajay... he still can't touch his toes.