Late Pregnancy Fears I Must Cop To

I haven't been sleeping for shit.  I am 100% aware that that makes EVERYTHING harder and more dramatic so, that said here is a little glimpse into the last 18hrs.

I have been having a lot more braxton-hicks contractions.  I had found this exciting as I took it to be a sign that my body was gearing up.  Last night, I started to have cramping in my low back and pelvis.  I was at the movies with my SIL and I was having consecutive BHC for almost 3 hrs.  It was sorta intense but not overtly painful.  Anyway, I fell asleep around ll:00 and awoke about 3 feeling nauseated and crampy.  I was up and uncomfortable until about 630.  I called my mom who gave me the "this is getting you ready for sleeplessness with a newborn" lecture.  I know on some level she is right and she is super far away and doing her very best but I just wished she were here to rub my back and head until I fell asleep and not 3500miles away.  It was an unsatisfying conversation.  It was even worse because she had a terrible time with both my older brother and myself.  She was on bedrest starting at 17 weeks with me....my brother was 6+ weeks early.  She is always very sweet and deferential when she points out "I wasn't up and active for as much of my pregnancy as you have been." or "I was no longer pregnant.  I never got huge and uncomfortable I was just psychotic and miserable from being in bed for MONTHS." So, on a lot of levels we have very different experiences of pregnancy.  I have to give her HUGE points for relating to me in terms of her own pregnancies and not telling me about all the hundreds of women she has taken care of and minimizing my experience.  She is doing a really good job of being my "mom" and letting the ladies be my midwives.

Ok, so, shit that has me freaked out a little.....The baby was quiet this morning.  REALLY quiet compared to normal.  This is a very active little soul and when it felt like hours of nothing but uterine movement and not baby movement I was worried.  I drank some juice, ate a bit of toast, tried to get a kick count and got 3 in 32min....fret, fret, fret....I decided I had to go for a walk so I leashed up the girls and we went for a short 30min walk.  I got home and still everything was quiet except the contractions.  I got in the tub with a little more OJ and viola!  The little stinker just woke up and is happily letting me know that "We LOVE OJ!".

The second thing is that I am having cramping and "pulling" discomfort down in my low pelvis like maybe cervix?  It hurts and it wraps around.  I am afraid I am starting to warm up.  I am NOT ready.  The nursery is a fucking war zone, the house is a mess, I have a bunch more to do and I was promised 4 more weeks!  Ok, so nobody promised anything but I demand 4 more weeks?  I don't want to end up at the hospital.  I don't want my baby in the NICU.  I don't want this baby to be so early.  I AM NOT READY!

The good news is that I have an appointment with my midwife in about 45 min so we will see what she says.  I think this may just be another round of changes that means I need to adjust my perspective.  I said this before "It's like my ultra.  Now is the point where you come to terms with the fact that your feet are going to hurt for the REST of the run.  Will you suffer in addition to the pain?  Up to you?"  I think I am now at the point where I realize my back and hips are going to hurt for the remainder of the run (10 more miles) and it is time to stop thrashing about and get the heck ON with it.  I choose NOT to suffer in addition to the discomfort.  I choose not to suffer under the worrying either.  I choose to stay strong and vigilant and fearless and joyful that my body knows what to do and the baby knows too....The baby knows it likes baths and OJ....and sleeping in sometimes.

Maternity Photos a Prequel

G and I were married in a tiny little brew pub over cheeseburgers and microbrew, with Judge Judy on TV in the background and 8 of our closest friends sitting around the table...2 years ago, today.  That day was pretty freakin' great.  Today, so many things are different.  I am no longer in medic school, we live in a house of our very own, I am working, I am 35weeks pregnant....Lots of things have changed in the last 2 years.  My favorite change is this, I love G more today than I did the day I married him.  Not in the rom-com, super smushy, "love grows every day" sort of BS.  I love him more than I ever dreamed possible.  I love who he has become and who he aspires to be day in and day out as well as on the grander scale, like who he wants to be as a father, a teacher, a medic, a man.  I love how dynamic he is.  He is ALWAYS learning and growing and trying.  He is never the same from one day to the next.  I love that he was a cargo pant fanatic, all I can talk about is work, nerd boy, afraid to tell me to stop being an asshole, when we first started dating.  Now he is a carhart wearing, house rewiring, home birth supporting, "honey, you're doing that thing that makes me want to run out into traffic" asserting, man who is about to become a dad.  He is 100 X hotter and more interesting to me than he was when we first met.  That sounds mean but think of it this way.  I found him interesting enough and hot enough to marry after a little over a year of dating.   I wasn't selling myself short or rushing into anything.  He was a "good" man and I loved him very much and was very much looking forward to spending our lives together.  These days I am giddy to report that I have a total crush on my husband and I honestly crave spending time doing just about anyoldstupid thing with him on our days off.  I should qualify all of this with the fact that when we are both working we go 4 days on and 4 days off.  During those 4 on if we are VERY VERY lucky we will see each other for about 45min total.  Our shifts are opposite and so we really do miss each other by the end of the work week.  This may impart some unfair advantage over the average married couple who goes through the first 2 years of being married spending, on average, much more time together.  But unfair advantage or not, being married is the shit and being married to this guy in particular is the freakin' Cricket's Knickers!  Its even better than the bee's knees.  I just wanted to put that out there.

SO, this all begs the question; How did we celebrate our 2 year mark today?  Well, after working a busy night G came home and slept for about 2.5hrs and then we went to the same park we had engagement photos at and we had maternity pictures.  The photographer, Sarah, was great.  She was very natural and easy going.  G and I just did our best to relax and get smoochy.  We wandered around the park kissing and rubbing my belly and gazing into each other's eyes for a while and then we went down to the water.  It was a gray, foggy day and the bridge seemed to go off into the fog like some magical, far away land.  It looked cool.  I stripped out of my tights and skirt, down to a bra, panties and some purple rain boots.  I wrapped up in the beautiful baby quilt and we took my "belly shots".  It was MAYBE 40 degrees outside but I didn't care.  I had spent a lot of time thinking about how I feel about my body and what I wanted from these pictures.  I didn't need more lovey pictures of G and I REALLY.  We had sweet engagement photos and I get to look at his mug and feel how I feel about him all the time...I wanted pictures that celebrate the power of what WE are doing, bringing this life into the world and pictures that celebrate what a fucking awesome thing my body is doing.  I don't mean that in the "I'm awesome" way.  More like "holy moses, my body has been doing this thing without my input (for the most part) and it knew how to grow this little body and expand to accommodate it and soon, it is going to know how to release it into our arms and the world.  It may sound crazy but I am totally convinced that it is magic.  So, yeah, I stripped and got cozy on the dock in my belly and undies.  The photographer kept saying "You're so bold!  I love it!"  I can't wait to see the pictures.  I am sure I will have criticism for my chunky thighs or my extra padded arms but so what?  These pictures will forever, remind me that I once grew a person and I looked like a total Amazon doing it.  So, the lesson today is, anyone thinking of doing that wild "more naked than not" maternity shoot should go for it.  You will feel amazing even before you see the photos.  You will feel like you did yourself justice because, after all you ARE magic.

**Photos to follow when available** :)

The Body Unknown

As someone who has struggled with body image pretty much as long as I can remember being self aware, I must admit that I am really curious?/worried?/uncertain....yes, uncertain, about what my body will be like after this baby arrives.  I have stretch marks climbing up from my pelvis and it makes me sad.  I am fearful that I will look like a deflated balloon from the midsection down.  I love how round and healthy and "full" I look right now and I am afraid I won't like my body once I am alone in here.  I know it takes time and I have friends who are celebrating first birthdays of their tiny ones, who look great and are below their pre-baby weight.  I just worry....  It seems cruel that just when you are your most tired, freaked out and physically vulnerable you are also your most physically dynamic and in transition.  It seems that I will be embracing a great deal of groundlessness this next 3 months....I should probably go meditate right now while the spark is hot.  More on this later....

The first 3 days of leave

Holy SHIT!  I am exhausted!  I worked my last day on Thursday and my mother in law came to town that night.  Friday commenced "CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!" She brought supplies and energy and that maternal "just keep working until its all done" drive.  We stripped all the curtains down and washed them, she scrubbed every inch of my kitchen.  She washed all of the windowsills and vacuumed above and below.  She had the hubbs move furniture in the living room and guest room and she vacuumed all of those as well.  I went top to bottom on our office and then spent several hours scrubbing every inch of the bathroom on hands and knees.  Things look CLEAN even if we ran out of spray starch the morning she was heading back to Eugene and there are still curtains on the table (for now) and a few other things awaiting the completion of the upstairs paint job before they can be put away.

Oh yeah, so we are painting our bedroom too.  Since G sort of had to pull all the furniture away from the wall to rewire the upstairs (back when I was in my fever coma last week) we decided that there is no way in hell we will paint the bedroom in the next two years if we don't do it now so here we go!  Infact, I am stalling getting dressed and starting the prep process RIGHT NOW.  :)

The baby shower was on Sunday and let me tell you a thing or two...I have the most creative, generous group of friends and community.  We were given some really wonderful things.  Even more precious, I was surrounded by 20+ of the coolest women I know for several hours chatting, laughing, getting (welcomed) belly rubs.  I felt very special and very loved.  There was only minimal talk about my being insane for having a home birth.  **I like to say "planning for" instead of "having" a home birth because I know things can happen and I want to let the universe know I am open to whatever ends up being necessary but if I have any control over it and as long as baby and I are safe, it will be at home.  It just feels jinxy to say "I'm having a home birth" like the universe will say "oh yeah?  Well no you're not".  Neurotic I know.  Remember how I felt about wedding "vows"?**  Anyway, there were veggies and fruit salad and wonderful cupcakes.  It was a beautiful spread.  My three sweetest friends worked very hard to pull it all together staying up late baking starfish cookies and cleaning.  I am a bit at a loss of how to thank them.

My quilt was completed and washed and soft and BEAUTIFUL!  My dear friend Jessie put hours and hours of love into it and I can't wait to wrap the sweetness of that quilt around this little creature when he/she arrives.  We got wooden toys (baby's first ambulance), diaper service, clothes (tiny dinosaur suit), hand made quilts (My friend Liz made a perfect travel quilt), hand made stuffed animals like platypus, starfish and turtles.  We got learning toys (food chain friend), a home brewing book (thanks Gabe!), a mobile and some much appreciated gift cards...the list goes ON and ON.  The generosity was overwhelming.  We aren't going to need to buy much at ALL.

So, today, I am washing walls, taping and doing the edging hopefully before G gets home from his meetings.  We WILL paint this room today.  As exhausted as I am I am energized with the "nesting" fever I was sure I would never feel.  I want things to be perfectly comfortable and as clean as possible before this little one arrives.  I know I have almost 2 months left but the need to get the super heavy duty stuff done now while I am still able and have help is overwhelming.  So, I am downloading an audio book, putting on my work stretch pants and getting going.  Even as the dogs snore and the snow flurries fly outside my window I can feel the spring fast approaching and with it the opening of the leaves on the trees and the mud in the yard and this new person into our lives.

So today was my last day at work.  It started out lovely enough.  We were posted to one of my favorite spots (it has a bathroom and a sofa).  I slept on the sofa for about 90min before we were moved to another part of the county.  It was C-O-L-D for Oregon standards this morning.  It was 33 when I arrived at work.  Brrrrrr.  Its not the dry cold of New England either, it is a damp and windy cold that makes you shiver to your bones.  Anyway, yeah, it was a cozy peaceful morning and I was looking forward to basically "phoning it in" today.  I assumed it would be another day like the rest of my week and month really, people 75% full of crap who really don't need an ambulance but need a shower, a social worker or more hugs from their parents as children.  I didn't think today was going to be anything special and I HOPED today would be slow and easy.

At 0700 we were toned out on an auto vs pedestrian. We get a lot of these and they almost ALWAYS turn out to be nothing.  A scratch or a bruise maybe a head laceration that warrants some stiches.  Most often it is people seeking to make someone else pay for their pain and suffering and thus we take them to the hospital where they can have some narcotics and get some medical documentation to warant a renewed medical mary jane card or a trip to the methadone clinic for their "back pain".  It is not usually a true 911 emergency.  As we drove up on this scene, however, it started to become apparent that this was a bit different.  PD had not yet arrived, nor had fire.  We parked in the middle of the street and I got out into the freezing cold air.  I could see a car with its flashers on and I could see a lump in the road up ahead.  I could see two people on the sidewalk talking on cell phones....What the?   It became clear very quickly that the lump was my pt.  "Oh shit, this is going to be bad isn't it?" I said to my partner.  "Hmmm, could be."  He said.  The two people on the side of the road continued to talk on their cell phones.  "Ok, I need you both to hang up and tell me what happened."  Nothing.  "Hey!  You two, get off the phones and come over here.  I need you to tell me what happened."  One woman tried to talk to me and the person on the phone at the same time.  "I said, hang up.  You can call them back.  I need to know what happened NOW!"  She hung up and told me she had been on her bike and saw the woman just after she had been hit.  The woman was 25-30' from the crosswalk face down on the street, not moving.  "Are you the driver?"  I asked the other witness.  "Yes".  "What happened?"  I asked.  "I don't know where she came from and then I hit her and I don't know what happened or where she came from".  He was visibly upset. I couldn't blame him.  She still wasn't moving.  I stabilized her neck and continued to ask questions.  My partner pulled up along side me with a backboard, the stretcher and all the necissary equipment to immobilize this pt.  All I needed now was fire.

After what seemed like an eternity, fire arrived and just as my partner and I were finishing cutting off her 4 layers of clothes we were able to safely roll her over while still protecting her spine, on to the long board.  At this point she was breathing on her own but not all that well and we could see she had skinned her face pretty well and had the distal part of her femur sticking out just above her knee.  "Oh, shit!"  I said, "On my last fucking day?  Really?"

Fire helped us get her packaged up and we hustled her into the back of the car where my partner was busiily setting up the medications to perform a rapid sequence intubation.  The plan was to paralize and sedate her, place a tube in her airway and breathe for her in order to protect her airway from vomit mainly.  Head injuries have a way of making people puke and puke in your lungs is not good.  The savingest of graces was the fire crew.  I had been pissed at them in my head for taking so long and then not "putting a husle on it" when they finally DID arrive.  Once in the ambulance however, it was all business and it was good.  I realized I had two of the most sr medics from a VERY medic oriented system.  They were people I knew to be good, "old" and they were being very proactive.  One was meticulously writing down everything as it unfolded and the other was cranking away to get an iv while I got my act together, placed the pt on oxygen, got her on the monitor and set up the best I could for airway management.  My partner was double checking his drugs and getting ready for the flash/bang of RSI.  It was a clustered up mess but it was pretty typical of how this sort of thing works.

In my head I was flipped out.  "F! F! F! F! I do NOT want to do this!"  Kept ringing in my ears.  I wanted to pass the buck onto anyone else.  I was spinning and anxious and fumbling.  Then I remembered the words of one of my old partners.  He had given me a several hour lecture about how you won't ever be successful at an intubation if you go into it thinking you're screwed.  With this lady...I WAS screwed.  She had everything wrong with her except facial trauma, to make this a very difficlt tube.  Short, fat neck.  Anterior structures, VERY small mouth, VERY large tongue.  To top it all off she was in a C-collar to protect her neck.  Damnit all to HELL!  I was just about to find some way to flake out when I felt a calm come over me.  "You are going to get this tube.  You are going to protect this woman's airway.  Everything is going to be allright" drifted through my head and I believed it.  I felt peaceful and clear and started to think about all of the times (All whopping 5 times mind you) in the last 2 years that I had tubed someone and what I had screwed up and what I wanted to do differently in hindsight.  I grabbed my tools and positioned the pt.  I even insisted that she be given more medicine since her jaw was clenched and that was going to make it impossible.  When I was ready and she was loose I went in with a plastic stylet and shot in the dark.  The fire medic told me she could feel the stylet and after advancing it just a bit more to be sure I was in we slid the tube over it and made an attempt to ventilate her.  IT WORKED!  WE DID IT!  She was being ventilated and her numbers looked good.  We were headed down the highway by now.  "Ahhh"  I could breathe.  I reminded myself to breathe every time I squeezed the bad pushing air into her lungs.

We delivered her to the hospital in better shape than we found her and the MD (a doc who has LONG intimidated me with his brilliance and ability to take medics to a new level of respect or to take them apart) told me "nice work"  NOT something he says often or lightly.  I felt like I had done a good job.

The rest of the day was full of less acute but similarly labor intensive people.  We ran our next call on a diabetic person who had not been eating but had been taking inulin and was found on the floor of their friends house having a sz.  Old IV drug abuser, no IV access AT ALL and lower than 'lo' reading on our blood glucose monitor.  "Shit"...again.  This was my partner's patient and thank god!  This pt was a totall and utter mess.  Bad heart, no veins, and seizing...awesome.  By the time we finished with this pt we were out of sedative drugs and the car was TRASHED.  We had to go back to the base and get more drugs.  We were starving so I bought us lunch in the cafeteria while my partner wrote his chart.  An hour and a half later we were back in business.

Next up?  Pneumonia with a bad fever in an elderly person in a care facility....Uggh!  This pt was SICK.  They needed a ride to the hospital for SURE.  By the time we arrived at the hospital I had been having braxton hicks contractions for hours.  This day was very physically demanding.  lifting, stairs, anxiety, climbing....It was time to be done and my body was telling me better than anything.

So, now, I am sitting in bed willing myself to stay up just a bit longer so I can time the contractions I am having..... Boo.

I am now 33 weeks and holy shit that is crazy!  The house is a disaster and G and I are overwhelmed but optimistic.  I just hope to hell this baby doesn't come early.  I am SO not ready.  The baby shower is this weekend and I am very excited about that.  In the mean time I need to pound some water and go to sleep. I need these contractions to stop.  They are painful and tooo early.

I will write more about them in the moring.  For now just know that my last day was full of learning, over doing and doing right.  I am glad I had such a bananas day.  It is good to be reminded of everything you 'do'.  And keeping skills sharp is important as well.  I am sure I will be one oatmeal brained fool by the time I get back.  Poor partner.....