Archive for July, 2009
July 30, 2009 at 15:06 · Filed under pregnancy
So I’m now in the second trimester. I’m supposed to be glowing. R says she can see it, but I just don’t. The only thing I can see glowing is my sebaceous glands. Of course this just means that I don’t stop breaking out.
I’ve had three scans now. The first only told us that the baby was doing ok. The second gave us a due date of 20 January but it was the third that was the best.
As you can see, the view on the second scan was none too great. There was none of the egg yolk stuff, but it was still quite difficult to make out what was what (aside from a bloody great big head – must take after its father!).
The second one gave us a much better view. So much better that I can already determine the kid has it’s father’s nose and pouty lips. A bit like the boy did on his scans. The baby also wanted to make me cry because it kept on waving at us. That little hand just wouldn’t stop moving. It made quite a difference from the boy’s scans where he was content to lie there and be photographed.
The results of the scanning left us happy. The chances of down syndrome are at a level not even worth taking note of, and all seems to be well.
On Friday we booked in with the midwife, a lovely lady called J. The team I’ve been assigned to seems quite small, so there’s a chance I’ll get to meet at least some of them before I pop the kid out. We did the boring bits like going over medical history which, with our families, can tend to be a bit lengthy. I got information on nutrition and home birth and how they run the team.
And we went over the boy’s birth. It was the first time anyone in a professional capacity had referred to the experience as a trauma. Looking back now, it’s hard to tell whether I think J is right. I’ve lived with what happened for so long now that it just is what it is. Because of this, J hooked me up with parentcraft classes (particularly for the classes that cover the birthing process) on the proviso that we tell no-one that this is our second child.
I also mentioned the problems I’m having with backache and was recommended to try out the ante-natal physiotherapy classes. Seeing as an osteopath changing my desk set-up hasn’t made a difference, I’m willing to give it a try.
Then I was back at the hospital again on Monday evening. I worried that I hadn’t left enough time to get there from work. Normally I leave two hours early so I have a chance to pick up the car from home and drive over with the husband. As I’d told him not to bother this time round, I only left an hour and a half to get there. Sod’s law that I turned up with 40 minutes to wait. At least by that time the waiting room was relatively quiet and I’d got a good book with me.
I got to pee in a cup (oh joy!) and have my arm squeezed into oblivion by a blood pressure cuff because J hadn’t got the equipment with her the previous Friday. All was well.
We also talked about due dates. At both the second and third scans, the boy was measuring more than two weeks smaller than the dates suggested. We were prepared for him to be late. Very late. Of course it stands to reason that he came out 11 days before that due date. I asked about the chances of this happening again, but unfortunately didn’t really receive an answer other than a baby is typically due between the 37th and 42nd weeks. This of course leaves a due date of anywhere between 12 December and 16 January. But, J was quick to remind me that these days (I guess it was a medical age ago that the boy was born) they go by the date from the scan. That means anywhere between 27 December and 31 January. My theory is that seeing as the baby gained an extra day’s worth of length for each of the weeks between the two scans and could quite possibly carry on doing so, my actual due date should be 21 December.
Anyone betting on right about Christmas dinner?
July 23, 2009 at 11:26 · Filed under Daily Life
Remember the lego that we took away? The boxes that we took away because the boy wouldn’t tidy up? Well he hasn’t tidied up and he hasn’t asked me for it back. The husband says he’s been asked, but either he’s too lazy to get it out of the cupboard or he has more willpower than I thought.
On Monday I received a text from our landlord: could he come and take a look at the house on Tuesday evening. Oh hell no! As you can tell, we’re not the tidiest of families. There was no way we could get the house in a presentable state for a landlord visit by the next day. In fact, we’ve got a visitor arriving on the weekend, and we’re pushing it to get the place nice enough for then. A compromise; seeing as we’re both working on Friday evening perhaps Thursday would be ok. Surely we could tidy up enough by then.
Monday night was a bit of a no show. I slumped when I got in and didn’t really get moving until the husband and boy returned just before 9. Tuesday we got a fair bit done but were hampered by the boy’s lack of interest (and movement) and the fact that when I stand for long (and often relatively short) periods, I start getting back pain. Oh the joy of this pregnancy!
Last night I stopped in at the supermarket on the way home and grabbed a large box. I picked the boys up and we made a stop to buy some paint for the hub. The husband went back to start some of the painting and I took the boy home. I warned the boy that any toys that were left out once he went to bed would be put in the box and thrown in the bin. I tried to convince him to start tidying but he wanted dinner instead.
He decided on scrambled egg and I left him with a bowl whilst I went to sort the clean laundry that was threatening to overtake the conservatory. The next thing I know he’s telling me he wants to eat like a dog because it’s quicker. There’s scrambled egg all over the floor and his face is buried in a pile of the stuff on the table. Needless to say, I was not amused. (Well, I was. It was highly amusing, not that I’d let him know I thought that.)
Once the egg was cleared up and I was stuck in the laundry again, the boy came out to the conservatory where he’d been instructed to tidy up the toys he’d strewn across the floor the night before. He picked a few things up and dumped them in the wrong box (at least it was a box and not the floor) but found it much more amusing to pick his pants up from one of the piles and start throwing them around the room.
As I was carting the folded laundry upstairs the boy followed me. “Do you even care?” he asked. “No.” I replied. “I really don’t.” We returned downstairs and once again I asked him to start tidying his toys. His response was to kick over the box of toys he’d already managed to tidy. It would’ve made more sense to me to kick over an empty box but hey.
He was calmly shepherded up to bed and whilst he was getting changed he asked “does this mean no more XBox for the rest of the week?” He knows his punishments so well. “That means no more Xbox for the rest of this week.” He cried, but he knows the rules. I’m just glad we’re relatively busy over the weekend and that I’m not the one at home now it’s the holidays.
And that night, as we finished tidying, we put the toys that hadn’t been cleared away in that box. Two boxes actually. Sure, the husband’s got some finishing off to do before the landlord arrives this evening, but everything at least looks under control now.
This morning, while the husband was still in bed (the downside of me not covering summer holidays) the boy came downstairs. He looked around and said “but I was going to do my tidying this morning.” There were a few small toys that we’d missed, and I told him that if he tidied them all up, we could see about getting some of his toys out of the bin. He sat down and starting picking things up but immediately lost interest in clearing up and started playing with them. I guess those toys won’t be coming out of the cupboard after all.
Then when I was leaving for work I nearly fell over those two boxes of toys sitting in the hallway. It seems the person who does all the heavy lifting in our house may have forgotten his duties as bin man. He better hope the boy doesn’t find them.
July 21, 2009 at 10:31 · Filed under Daily Life, pregnancy
After the initial excitement of swine flu hitting our office, everything calmed down pretty quickly. While I’m sure that there have continued to be new cases emerging on other floors, ours has remained clear. For now.
Of course the spread of the flu hasn’t stopped. Personally, I don’t think it’s spreading out in the community, but instead is being transmitted via twitter. One by one my twitter buddies seem to be going down with it and even if they haven’t got it, they worry about having what might be the starting symptoms. Very few of us have escaped.
Being pregnant, it’s nice to have so much concern from friends about dealing with the latest Department of Health advice to pregnant women. Of course that’s not the case in the office. The Wicked Witch of the West team leader hasn’t mentioned one thing about swine flu to me, not asked if I’m worried nor enquired as to whether I’d like to alter my hours to avoid the worst of the crowds on the tube. No, she’s walking around like both the pregnancy and the swine flu risk don’t exist.
I considered it. I wondered if it would really make a difference if I didn’t take the tube to work. At the moment my journey takes around an hour on a relatively crowded tube. If I were to go another way it would take around two and a half hours on a relatively crowded tube and an extremely crowded bus. Weighing the two options up, I’d take the tube any day. I could go in and leave later. The tube would still be crowded (although not as much so) but I’d bet the risk would still be there. According to the NHS, the swine flu virus can live on a hard surface for up to 24 hours (20 minutes on a soft surface). Bearing this in mind, there’s a good chance that travelling an hour later each day wouldn’t make a difference. It only takes one infected person to cough into their hand and hold on to that same handrail you grab an hour later…
For the moment I’m keeping my fingers crossed. It’s the best I can do. That and hope that my family and I don’t get the virus.
July 12, 2009 at 11:39 · Filed under Daily Life
“There was something about him, something that drew me in.” She should have stumbled over her words but they were clear and true. “It was like from the moment I saw him I knew I would follow him forever, no matter where he went.”
Alia would’ve liked to believe that her words were the truth, she desperately wanted to believe it, but she knew her memories were tainted by a love that had outlasted centuries.
She remembered the revulsion she felt when he had handed her that first goblet of wine, the anger she felt as she caught the scent of the blood mixed in and the fear that lodged in her heart, the one that warned her of what they wanted her to become. It was easy to push the memories aside now. Now that love had taken over.
Today Alia had a different goblet in her hand and this time it’s contents were pure. The goblet was merely a courtesy to her hosts, allowing her to drink alongside them without forcing them to watch the realities of her new nature.
She was once one of them before love had taken over and now she was part of the other side too. She had brokered the peace between her two peoples; the one she belonged to from birth and the one she chose. Now she was helping them to overcome their aversion to one and other the only way she knew how. With love.
Written as an entry for the In Vino Veritas flash fiction contest over at The Clarity of Night.
July 10, 2009 at 12:46 · Filed under pregnancy
It started when Lisapopped out Isla on Wednesday, then T popped out CJ this morning, and KP is due any day now, in fact she should’ve popped one out last Friday. Then there’s C and M next month, and Hannah and TrannyHead who’ll both get in there before Christmas. Oh! And me.
See what I mean? Everyone’s popping out babies.
And it’s making me think about exactly how I want to pop mine out.
You see, giving birth and staying in hospital last time wasn’t exactly the most pleasant experience. I’m not talking about the pain of labour, but more the treatment of the whole event.
You see, I didn’t have access to pain relief, although not through choice. Looking back now, it makes me quite proud that I managed to pop a kid out without even a paracetamol. But it wouldn’t have been my choice. I guess you could say that I’d been quite disorganised in finding out how things were going to go. In the weeks before the boy was born I found out that I wouldn’t be able to take the husband into hospital with me. I cried, I screamed, I shouted and I begged for him to get us on the first flight home. The only consolation was that as his Aunt A was a doctor, they would let her in with me.
Then there was the pain relief issue. At one of those same appointments I asked about pain relief. Only to be told I wouldn’t have to worry about all that. I wouldn’t be getting any. And if there was anything that made me want to go home even more, it was that.
But I didn’t have too much time to worry about any of it because aside from a buggy, car seat and cot, we had nothing for the baby and he decided to pop out a week and a half early.
When it came to the hospital, Y2 got to hold my hand at first, being the only girl present and able to translate for me. That lasted long enough for one quick examination with a doctor who turned out to speak English and she was gone too. A, of course, still hadn’t arrived.
Then there was the drip. As I’ve already mentioned, I don’t do well with needles, and before I knew it, there was one being driven into my hand. At an angle that made it impossible to move my hand without digging that needle in even further. I asked what it was only to be told that it would make things happen faster.
They’d offered me a wheelchair after that first examination but I refused. There was no way I was sitting down. I’d figured a few hours ago that it only made things hurt, just like lying down did. Of course once I’d gotten into the labour ward I’d been laid down. Now the drip was in I wanted to get up, but there was no way they were going to let me. Once again, I had no choice in the matter.
Just like with them breaking my waters. Yes, I was very far gone by that point, and yes, it made sense. But did I have a choice in the matter? No. They’d practically got that crochet hook up there before I’d had a chance to argue.
And then we were good to go. At least at that point the scary doctor disappeared, leaving only the nicer one who’d first examined me. But, still no A. There was some pushing. And some noise on my part. I was told to keep quiet. Maybe I was upsetting the other women in the ward who were still earlier on in their labour. The ones stuck in that other room and the corridor, all connected to drips, lying down with those vacant expressions in their eyes. And another needle. Local anesthetic. What for? I asked. Because we’re going to make a little cut she said brandishing the scissors. By that point I gave up. I didn’t have the energy anymore, and they wouldn’t listen to me anyway, so I let them get on with it. I’m sure it all would’ve been fine if I hadn’t ripped the stitches only a few days later.
Then there was the ward. A room with two other women, a bed that was little more than a wooden plank with a slice of foam on top. As you laid on that bed your bones sunk through to the wood, the foam doing little to protect you from its harshness. I was lucky once visiting hours were over. They let someone sit with me. As long as it was a woman, that was ok, but only because they couldn’t speak to me otherwise. In one of the brief interludes where one friend left and A returned, a woman took the boy away. From her wild gesturing I could just about make out that there was something wrong with his nose, but what she did, or where she took him I had no idea. It worried me that she could just walk away with him like that.
Both women were recovering from C-sections. One was going home the next day. The other liked to talk. She had no visitors; her family lived two hours away and couldn’t afford to get out to see her. Both her and her baby, although born days earlier, wore hospital gowns. I got the impression she didn’t live in one of the richer parts of the city. And then she cried. Her baby died that night.
I cried too the next morning. I was miserable, tired. A had been good that night; where possible she’d let me sleep and looked after the boy herself. But I couldn’t sleep properly on that hardboard bed. All I wanted was to go home, back to Grandma’s where we were going to stay for the next week. They poked and prodded, unsure of whether I should be released. The husband argued. He knew my history; there was no way he was going to let me stay in there longer than absolutely necessary. He fought for me, and we went home that afternoon.
I know that things will be different this time around. I’d built myself up last time, reading so much about how things are done over here. It was only inevitable that things wouldn’t go to that plan. But still, I don’t want to risk it.
This time around I want to be at home. I want to avoid the hospital if at all possible. I don’t like hospitals; they bring back memories I’d rather push to one side. This time around I want to be comfortable, to be able to do what I damn well please. I’d like the husband in the vicinity, although maybe not too close by – he’d only panic and flap. I’d like a birthing pool, because it looks like fun, and while you’re pushing out a baby and trying not to think of the pain, fun can only be a good thing. I think we can fit one in our living room if we move the sofa a bit. We’ll have to get the tape measure out and give it a try. I want to be able to collapse in a comfortable bed once it’s all over, to be able to raid the kitchen cupboards for goodies instead of hospital food. I want to be able to kick the husband straight out of bed to deal with night time, because labour’s damn tiring you know.
All I know is, this time around, I want it to be very different.
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