Revelation day
I revealed to work that I’m pregnant - ahead of the 12-week mark, so I will immediately miscarrying (oh wait, Nothing Bad Has Happened Yet). It was time, both in belly-size and because my boss was in town.
I also have started a new blog. I’ve been facing a few online identity issues for a while now: Clearly I don’t want this blog, nor the Diary-X archives I have never successfully imported due to their insane size, to be proof that I have blogged, if sort of quietly in my own corner. And yet if I have to sit through one more “seminar” on “developing your unique voice on a blog” I am going to puke. I freely admit that I often run this more like a diary than a blog, but I do learn.
Also a few of you may have noticed, if you comment in communities I frequent, that I keep alternating my real/pro identity with mine here and hey! Adding a third option is a great way to keep everything confused!
And my true pro blog is not always mine to control or play with in a way I would like, not to mention I am only allowed to put two hours of maintenance of it a week on my timesheet. And I kind of wanted a more topic-focused blog in some ways - ok, an actual mommy-blog.
The true kicker too was finding Viking Dad and it looked like fun. So I’ve started a weird blog over here as WarriorQueenMom and a Twitter account and I’m going to play there, and you are all most welcome to join me there, or not, whatever you like. I’ll still be posting here. And I’m still “developing my unique voice” there (not yet as playful as I’d like, but then I’m not always as playful as I like) and it may not be successful. But, you know, I wanted you all to know.
Plus, I’m getting an absolutely irrational amount of joy and fun out of continually logging into WarriorQueenMom. It’s my own little multiple thing! Cleverly disguised as moderately clever! *cough* (You have to be me I think.)
And no, it’s not a money-making venture. It is a bit of a branding venture in that I plan to eventually use it as social media cred if I need to.
If you think these two topics are related, they kind of are, because I fear my work will restructure my position while I’m gone and I’ll need to be on the market.
BTW I am pitching a story about ‘net evolution and the Facebook thing if anyone wants to share their identity online woes with me.
Threats of violence I can get into
“I know I have to work all day today, but I checked the weather and I can mow the lawn tomorrow. If you mow it, I will shake you.”
(He wouldn’t, but hey. It’s true; I was eyeing the lawn but it is HOT and I am TIRED. Plus we have a lot of cleaning to do inside where it’s cooler anyway.)
Me = boring
I covered a nightclub event last night for work, which was sort of an energy stretch. (See doctor, get blood test, have early dinner to avoid the nightime “morning” sickness, go ROCK THE CLUBS. Sober.)
Anyways I discovered I am officially extremely boring. (Not that it was about me.)
I had fun going around interviewing people and because it was a *cough* specialized event most of the music was precisely out of my era or a little older, so I even enjoyed it and I danced some because no one can interview people for 5 hours straight in a nightclub and not end up on the floor at some point. (That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.) I learned that I have actually gotten pushy enough to walk up to people and interview them. It helped that media outnumbered guests for the first two hours, because my competitive streak propelled me to do what everyone else is doing. Or rather my boring fit-in streak.
But I discovered I’ve become really boring. Part of my interviews were with hot young guys (< 30) and some of them devolved into “true confessions of young guys” and a few asked me questions like how did I meet my husband and what do I like to do normally, if I cannot be met on the dance floor at a club. On the Internet and generally I can be found at home writing, messing around on the Internet, cooking, or sleeping.
I also discovered that although theoretically I find 28-year-old buff guys (and there were plenty) hot, whether it’s the hormones or some sea change in my personality, when any of them hit on me (and a good dozen did which was disconcerting, although given the nature of the event and the dearth of non-press women at it somewhat understandable; also, I need a hat with a “press” card in it) my first reaction was not: mnnn but OH MY GOD SPARE MY SON THIS HUMILIATION 22 YEARS INTO THE FUTURE. May he find a lovely girl his own age and not be at specialized events named for predatorial large cats seeking out the attentions of older women.
Not that it was really humiliating I guess. But seriously, I have a first trimester pooch, I was dressed sort of intentionally to ward off advances with granny shoes on, and I’m an old married woman.
I suppose I grew up in a still sexist enough society, or perhaps it was my own geeky dating adventures, but I pretty much have in my mind that the guys are more in control of their dating lives. But after last night, what I feel I learned is that there are a lot of lonely guys out there - with nothing initially/visibly wrong with them: nicely dressed, nice bods, jobs and degrees. And they are brave enough to go out of their comfort zone for a lark on a Friday night to suck up to older women.
So what the hell, young women of Toronto?
Independence Day
Well it wasn’t precisely on the 4th but Noah did spend the entire night in his own bed tonight - for the first time since he had appendicitis. Go him! Although one of us (*cough*) kept waking up after 2 am wondering if he was okay, since that’s when he would normally decamp for the big bed.
Also I did have my first baby dream. In it I had delivered the baby and then been sent home to rest as a new study showed that was best practice (with the baby still in hospital). In my dream I got home, realized the policy was idiotic, and stormed back into the hospital demanding that they turn over my baby to me right now.
Carl and I have been sort of not-talking yet communicating about what extraordinary measures we would or would not take in the 10% chance that this baby gets this blood thing. I suspect my subconscious just determined my position for me, which is, probably unsurprisingly, pugilistic in favour of the baby.
No antibodies - sigh
My blood test from last week finally came back - and at that time I had no antibodies. This means that so far, I didn’t get Fifth from Noah. But it also means I could have (none of those nice lifelong antibodies), and I will be retested tomorrow, and if the short-term antibodies do not appear, I’ll be tested again. They are most likely to appear in this next test if I did get it.
This does not make me happy. If the short-term antibodies appear (followed by the long-term ones) we will be on a sort of death/damage watch for the rest of the pregnancy.
Emotionally I’ve just stepped back from the baby idea. I’ll take my prenatals, avoid all the stuff you have to avoid, and just wait to see what the next few tests show.
Labour
This started as an answer to J’s (love you J!) comment but it got long. I imagine there will be a labour channel on for the next 7 months. In fact I’ll add a tag.
I went into the OB when pregnant with Noah dead. set. on a c-section, for obvious reasons. My OB was a crusty old white guy who also happens to be a top teaching OB (I didn’t know this for a while, until a friend-of-a-friend who is Harvard educated clued me in). He listened to me and assured me that a scheduled c-section would be entirely possible. But he also asked me to consider what it would take to make me comfortable with a vaginal delivery.
Since I had spent Emily’s pregnancy hearing about the Evil OBs Who Make You Have C-Sections I was a bit surprised at this deviation from the script. But we agreed to set an appointment around the 26-week mark to think about it, and I got him the chart from Emily’s labour so he could see what I meant.
(Aside: No one at Mt. Sinai ever believed me about Emily’s labour the first time. My nurse apologized after reading the chart. But at Mt. Sinai they assumed I had misunderstood something because it was simply impossible for so many points of failure to occur.)
Anyways, by 26 weeks I had developed relationships with him and with the nurse. And I had come to understand a few things - one, that this OB is pretty into vaginal deliveries (I once waited for him while he finished up a discussion on turning breech babies). But second, that he had reasons for whatever he asked me to do. So I listened. And he very slowly and calmly, giving me his time and attention, went over research and his experience.
He did not sugar coat things. He said that while cord accidents are rare, they are badly understood. And no one knows why, but women who have had them do have a slightly higher risk of having them again. And that monitoring is generally pretty good despite the failure of it at Emily’s labour and what they would do about that for me (belly monitor, scalp monitor as soon as possible, manual checks with a stethoscope). He explained the difference between “okay” decels and “bad” decels.
Then he went over risks of vaginal delivery and risks of c-sections. He was really really clear. A c-section is major abdominal surgery and has risks - in the same statistical realm as cord deaths, some of them. He was perfectly happy to order and perform one, but only if I understood the list of risks.
And then we discussed comfort. He agreed that he would write orders that if Noah had two - two - decels of any kind that we would proceed to a c-section. Or if I asked. He also set it up so that I would have an appointment with every OB in the practice so that I would have met everyone (except one - the one I got - but that was a fluke). And then he encouraged me to try it. It took me a few weeks to come around to it but I did.
When we got into L&D triage the night Noah was born (early) for my miniscule ‘regular Braxton-Hicks’ contractions that had managed to get me pretty dilated (oy - I didn’t even really think I was in labour) everyone looked cross-eyed at his orders. The nurse said I’d better get an epidural so I could be awake for the c-section that was surely coming.
It was during the epidural placement that I had my one and only ‘real’ contraction with Noah, which made me throw up. And Noah’s heart deceled, because he was coming down the canal and also (I’m convinced) because I was sort of sitting on him. The labour team was in grand annoyance, because labour was going so well and yet they were bound to move to a c-section at the next decel.
So the one OB I hadn’t met asked me why I was freaking out (I was freaking out) and I stammered out something like that I was afraid the baby would get stuck and die. And she of the hadn’t-seen-Emily’s-chart looked at me with complete confusion and said “well that won’t happen!” (I think she was a little offended that I had so little faith in her powers.) And then who knows how many decels Noah had because as soon as they let me back onto my back he was born - two pushes. No time for a scalp monitor either. The epidural never got turned on. Carl says he thinks he had three, but the third was just as his head was coming out. We don’t really remember though, but I suspect the orders were abandoned - for good reason.
I think what I learned from that is that fear can be addressed in a lot of ways. I really did feel throughout my pregnancy that my OB and my nurse were completely committed to me as a patient. But they also were not really into unnecessary interventions if there was a more — dare I say it — holistic way of supporting me.
I found that really mind bending, because this was the high-tech group and all the natural childbirth literature would have you believe hospitals and OBs are all pushing c-sections on you like mad. And here I hadn’t had one when I needed one, and I’d been talked out of one when I didn’t.
Whatever it is, I was glad for being able to go vaginal with Noah. The first 6 weeks were hard enough without having to recover from surgery. Plus, it was healing for my relationship with my body.
But his labour was really unusually pain and fuss-free; he was also a small baby (although not for being so early). It would be nice if there were a guarantee that this one would be the same (much faster and it would probably be a roadside delivery).
And it’s not like the good labour overwrites the bad labour; 2 minutes of pushing vs. 4 hours does not train one’s body out of the bad body-memories. It’s more fraught than I thought in a way; in theory, I assumed that I would feel better if I got to this point, having had Noah just fine. But I am discovering that no, it’s Emily’s labour that comes to mind over and over. It makes sense; I’d just not given myself that much room.
So I will discuss a c-section, especially if the pregnancy goes to term. (None of mine have, yet.) I think I would like to go for vaginal as a first wish. But I know it will all be difficult. The nice thing is that this will almost certainly be the last one.
And yes, I’m trying to get back in with the same OB but he’s pretty booked. Plus I’m waiting for this blood test to see if I’m getting transferred to an OB who specializes in blood disorders anyway (sigh).