Pregnancy
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Fourteen weeks pregnant: VBAC vs caesarean section
Thursday, September 20th, 2007Today I have my first appointment at the hospital with the consultant (or, less reassuringly, A Member of her Team). I think I recognise her name as being the same consultant that delivered Ben so I will endeavour not to think about how I pooped when she told me to push (I mean how inconsiderate is that, she’s just trying to do her job and save my son’s life and I reward her with THAT) and I will instead try to focus on the inevitable discussion about whether they will allow me to have a VBAC or instead will be pushing for me to have a c-section after the trouble all three of my children gave me when they eventually decided to come out.
I was desperate to have a VBAC last time because it is less risky than major surgery and because I knew I wanted more children and a c-section can make conceiving again more tricky. But when I consider the fact that the best birth experience (least painful, least frightening) I have had was the emergency c-section, the fact that I deliver large babies and there is always a danger of them getting stuck (despite my huge childbearing hips), the fact that my previous scar could rupture (even if unlikely) and the fact that there is NO WAY I’M HAVING ANY MORE CHILDREN, NOT EVER, I am more than likely to willingly submit to the idea of a c-section if the consultant suggests that it would be a better option for me and this baby.
In fact when I think about the enforced five days of recovery in hospital in a private room (wards are the norm after a normal delivery in this country) with someone bringing me food and cups of tea and someone else at home looking after the three that are such hard work every day, I’m almost hoping she insists on it.
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Why I need to feel better: hyperemesis gravidarum (or severe morning sickness to you and me)
Monday, September 17th, 2007One of the hardest things about hyperemesis gravidarum or severe morning sickness is having to cook. I have survived on the most nutritionally deficient food I can think of because a) I can’t face cooking anything and b) I can’t eat anything I have cooked anyway. However the boys still need feeding and every day I have to prepare meals that makes my stomach heave with displeasure.
So on Friday I made egg fried rice with left-over sausages and bacon. Those three ingredients alone are enough to make me throw up even writing about them. But the children need feeding so I persevere.
The smell from the frying pan is terrible. I cook the rice but when I stir it I notice a piece of black rice. I fish it out and look at it in horror realising it is not black rice but a fly. Unable to believe a fly has got into the rice pan - which has a lid on it - I look again.
I feel so unwell, I can’t start cooking it again, I think in desperation. I know any minute I am going to be sick again.
I look at it, willing it to be a piece of black rice. But it is definitely a fly.
Well, the fly’s out now and the rice will have boiled away any germs.
I can’t avoid throwing up so I disappear to the bathroom for a few minutes. When I get back I don’t feel any better.
I look again at the fly.
Shit, a wing’s missing. That means it must still be in the rice.
My legs are shaking with nausea. I want to get supper on the table and the whole cooking process over with. My type-A personality, which would have thrown out the rice and possibly the pan in disgust on any normal day, deserted me when the morning sickness started.
I review the situation. A wing is in the rice. But the rice has boiled for a long time and any germs will be dead, I reason.
So I serve it up * **.
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*I’m not proud of myself.
** The boys are still alive.
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Thirteen weeks pregnant: birth stories
Thursday, September 13th, 2007I’m all ‘booked in’, the phrase used by the midwives here to get you into the system and under the care of the midwife team. An hour long visit by the midwife covered all my medical history and the pregnancies and births so far.
‘Harry was forceps, William was an emergency C-section and although Ben’s was the most frightening because it was all going wrong, I was in theatre with the surgical team standing leaning against the walls and he was born not breathing, his was the only delivery that counts as normal because there was no assistance, apart from the consultant turning his head manually in the canal,’ I explain breezily to the midwife.
I stop. Was that right? Was there a ventouse? Or forceps? I think carefully. I can remember the moments in theatre like yesterday but I can’t remember the actual delivery.
What’s the matter with me? This was my baby, for God’s sake! How can I not remember?
I think for several minutes. They were in a hurry because of all the problems but I’m certain there was no assisted delivery. I sit back.
‘Are you sure?’ asks Sarah, ‘because if there was a problem it could affect how the consultant feels about attempting a normal delivery this time.’
So I spend several minutes searching the study until I find Ben’s red (medical) book. There it is: Delivery - forceps.
I don’t know which is more worrying. The fact that I have no brain left. Or that I am clearly a crap mother.
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Twelve weeks pregnant
Saturday, September 8th, 2007It’s been a long, hard week. I have been very sick, unable to eat anything much except toast and am now feeling constantly dizzy - most likely because my blood pressure has dropped. This is not unusual for me as in previous pregnancies I was regularly down to 80/40, but it leaves me at risk of fainting unexpectedly which could be a bit of a concern if carrying a toddler, driving a car or generally trying to be in charge of three small, wayward children. These days I am not allowed to hold a glass of wine so there is no danger of spilling that at least.
I have also resumed short periods of homeschooling with Harry, mostly because I feel guilty that he may fall behind since his friends went back to school last week. So I struggle to do the preschool run then homeschooling whilst entertaining the toddler only to collapse in a malnourished, dehydrated heap once Ben goes down for a nap. When he’s up again I struggle to get through the afternoon, make the boys’ supper and get them all into bed without making their lives too miserable because I am . Every day is a struggle.
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The results from my nuchal scan showed an active, dancing baby so I am definitely pregnant (not that I had a lot of doubt what with all the sickness and everything). The results gave me a similar risk of having a Down’s baby as that of a 24 year old so Matthew and I have decided that we will not have any further tests (like an amniocentesis) because of the risk of miscarriage. I’m a little more pregnant than I thought and my first thought when she told me that was thank God, hopefully the sickness will end sooner then followed by perhaps that increases the chances of it being a girl. Unlike my last pregnancy there was no indication of the gender of the baby. More importantly, it is definitely not twins.
Which, on the downside, means that stomach I’ve got is all fat.
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Eleven weeks pregnant
Monday, September 3rd, 2007I’m lying on the sofa, nauseous, eating, eating, eating - even though the nausea tells me food is wrong - when I feel it. Small flutters, which if I were pregnant for the first time I would say were wind, but remembering Ben kicking from eleven weeks I know are the beginning of months of the only thing about pregnancy I enjoy. Over the next few days I feel it more clearly, the fluttering, kicking, reminding me not only is there something worthwhile resulting from all this sickness but also that I have the most lax stomach muscles of any pregnant woman anywhere.
But I figure I have the rest of my life to re-tone those muscles but only a few precious months to enjoy the signs that my baby is growing inside me and that there will - eventually - be another child in our family. I will be a mother of four. And I can’t help but feel a tiny bit thrilled. And maybe also just a bit terrified.
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