Hell is other people… scaremongering gits who are already parents. 7, June 2008
Posted by babychaos in Adult Content, Art, General Wittering, Grumpy Old Bag, Life and living, Pregnancy Issues, whinging, winging.Tags: inducing birth, induction, labour, labour and pregnancy, labour nerves, laid back and pregnant, people and pregnancy, pre birth nerves, pregnancy, pregnancy and birth, Pregnancy Issues, reactions to labour, reactions to pregnancy
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Today I am in good cheer on the whole but a conversation I had last night is beginning to really get to me. So much so that I thought that if anyone else out there has had this kind of experience I should put it here. At least that way it it might help someone in the same boat to know they’re not alone!
If they want to leave a comment on this post it’ll help me to know they’re out there and all – although I’ve posted it on a forum, too, which should cover that side of things.
Ok, as ya’all know this is my first pregnancy and I’m on the cusp of week 42, with an induction booked for Wednesday and yeh, I’m nervous. I’ve never done this before and now it looks like I may have to do something which is already difficult in what is, reputedly, a fairly grim manner. Although the jury’s out on that, I like the sound of labouring fast, even if harder is a slightly scary verb!
Anyway, the way I see it, there’s no point my crying or railing or struggling because that’s a waste of energy, energy I’m going to need. My little one is going to arrive soon. Labour varies from woman to woman but the odds are, it is going to smart a tad and furthermore, in the days and weeks afterwards my world is going to turn upside down – in a hard way, yes but also in a good way.
If he doesn’t engage and arrive before Wednesday, being induced may well hurt more than ordinary labour. The only good thing is, this being my first, at least I won’t really know… and at the end I’ll get most of my body back and I’ll finally get to meet the little blighter!
Well, when people ask me how I feel and I tell them that, I could really do with just being jollied along or reassured – honesty is not a problem, telling me yes it hurt like hell but all things must pass is ok – and most people do just that, or say nothing.
However, there’s another element, among my friends who already have children, who seem to think that making me as frightened as they can is a helpful and constructive thing to do.
Why? Explain please?
We all know that one of the secrets to a good labour is to be as calm and relaxed as possible. These people are supposed to like and respect me so how do they believe putting me into a blue funk is likely to improve the experience?
When I tell them I’m just going to do the best I can they ask me if I fully appreciate how difficult it’s going to be or how much agony I will be in, whether I realise how important it is that I somehow force the baby to come before the hospital steps in.
When I say Mr BC and I will muddle through they ask me if I understand just what I’ve done to my life and my marriage?
Hmm… well, what do they think I am? Stupid? I’m a first time mum after 12 years of marriage at almost 40, do they really think we haven’t had time to think this through?
I know when you’re pregnant everyone thinks they own you, I appreciate you are far less likely to be treated with courtesy by people you don’t know, to be offered a seat on a bus or served first in a shop than if you are say, on crutches (I have done both). Those are strangers, though. These are my friends.
Is it me? Am I too naive or too laid back? Or is it them?
What the fuck is going on?
The worst thing is, it’s quite hurtful and it’s getting to me a bit… and I really don’t need that kind of thing right now, I have enough to concentrate on. So… I wonder, has anyone else had to put up with any of this kind of shadenfreude? It’s like they think they had a crap time and now they want to make sure I do.
Sighs. There we go. Rant over.
Fucking annoying bastards!
Oh well, on the upside, an old friend, who was given one of my names for each of her little ones, has been made a godmother and has contacted me to commission a framed name, along with three sets of flashcards!
Boo yacka!
It’ll also be something to keep my mind off the going or not going into labour conundrum next week and for the purposes of my maternity allowance my first “keeping in touch” day – I’m allowed 10.
Inducements… 6, June 2008
Posted by babychaos in Adult Content, General Wittering, Grumpy Old Bag, Life and living, not while you're eating, Pregnancy Issues, whinging, winging.Tags: birth, fed up, hormonal, induction, labour, overdue, overdue pregnancy, pregnancy, Pregnancy Issues, pregnancy the end, pregnant, pregnant and jaded, pregnant week 41, whinging
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Inducement booked for next Wednesday, 11th June. Difficult to explain how delighted I am that there is now a finite finish to this – it’ll be busy and I may not get in on 11th or 12th but I reckon I have to have managed it by Friday 13th.
So… though I’m glad it will finish by then, at the same time I’m not at all looking forward to the concept of being induced which has been given a pretty universal thumbs down – barring one, possibly the rule-proving, exception – from everyone who’s experienced it.
No matter. The one positive comment came from somebody whose first child was induced. This is my first child, it’s not as if I’m going to know if I have a horrific labour. I mean, I am in that it’s going to fucking smart but since I’ll have nothing to compare it to, I will only really know if I have another and the labour goes swimmingly. Yes. Perhaps, in this case, ignorance truly is bliss.
Had my hormones “done” by the reflexology lady today. This should help the braxton hicks and other things that will cause the little blighter to lock and load, at the least. It’s not going to do any harm, anyway, which is the important thing. She suggested I have a sleep afterwards which I did… for three hours! I have woken a human dynamo!
Ah let’s hope they work and he locks, loads and arrives naturally before I get induced.
On a lighter note. Here are some of the things I am looking forward to after the baby is born.
1. Being able to sleep (this afternoon excepted) for more than 40 minutes at a pop.
2. Being able to see my feet.
3. Having ankles.
4. Being able to wear my engagement ring.
5. Being able to climb the stairs without gasping for breath and going blue.
6. Only my boobs aching.
7. Being able to bend down and pick things up.
8. Meeting my little one at long last.
9. Gradually, over time, being able to wear a variety of clothes rather than the ever dwindling number of outfits I can currently cram myself into – at present; a pair of winter cords for cold days and a pair of cotton capri-pants for hot days neither of which stays up.
10. Cutting my toe nails for the first time.
11. Doing one firm stool per day.
12. Riding a bicycle.
13. Being able to run.
14. Being able to wear more than one pair of shoes.
15. Being able to wipe my arse in ease and comfort!
16. Being able to sleep on my back – possibly even my front.
17. Not weeing like it’s a national sport.
18. Being able to dry my feet without pain and breathlessness to the point of almost losing consciousness.
19. Not having reflux.
20. Not having sinus.
21. Being able to stand up long enough to have a shower or blow dry my hair without getting so tired I want to go back to bed again.
22. An end in sight to the SPD exercises!
In short. Not being pregnant!
Random trivia, a surprise day out, general wittering and some more things you never knew (or wanted to) about being pregnant… 21, May 2008
Posted by babychaos in Adult Content, General Wittering, Light Fluff, not while you're eating, Play, Pregnancy Issues.Tags: feeding bras, handy hints, home truths about pregnancy, household hints, little known facts, pregnancy, Pregnancy Issues, pregnancy truths, things you never knew, trivia
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NB today’s post contains swearing and far too much information. The “not while you’re eating” and “adult content” tags are switched on.
This morning, pretty much on a whim, I went into town to get fitted for sleep and feeding bras at John Lewis. While I was there, I also managed to meet up with a friend I haven’t seen for ages and have lunch.
Good plan because it was the only day I could do in the next two weeks and after that we are getting into the don’t go anywhere where your waters breaking would be embarrassing zone. Ie, not into Cambridge by train. So a bonanza result all round.
John Lewis first, very kind helpful lady who did the calculations, based on my current 38G girth and it turns out that you should always buy a feeding bra one or two cup sizes larger then the one which fits you in week 38. We found a cup that fitted but it turns out you also go down a size round the chest, which makes the one cup size up into two, as cup sizes go up as your chest size goes down so the cups on a 34C, 36B and 38A are all the same size, and so on. In my case, as somebody who will drop to a 36 it means I will need… wait for it people… a 36K bra.
Yes.
A K cup. The biggest you can get before you have to go up to the next back size and just… well… take a dart in it or something… or have them specially made.
Yikes.
She ordered both and said if they don’t fit when they arrive I’m to bring them back – no 28 day rule for new mums, she told me, they give us a lot of slack. Bless their hearts.
Well, bras ordered I had a thoroughly enjoyable lunch, people watching and chatting with with my friend and then we went our separate ways, I to M&S to buy some new, pleasant post pregnancy pants… he back to work.
My M&S mission complete I decided I wasn’t sure I believed the woman in John Lewis about the K cups but since I’d let her order one anyway I headed off to the Huge Breasted Lady Shop (or Bravissimo, as it is sometimes called) to see if they had one I could actually try on.
They did.
The assistant came out of the back room with something so huge you could use it to kite surf. It was like some kind of double spinnaker, you know, for a really BIG ship. You could put a large savoy cabbage into each cup. You could pack it for a round the world trip. It’s so huge that when I was in the cubicle trying it on I got the giggles… They must have thought I was completely mad as I was practically crying with laughter by the time I came out of there and I was ON MY OWN!
The scariest thing of all though is, it fits exactly the way it should, ie with a little room for expansion and a pair of breast pads.
Hmm… It’s all very strange. They don’t really feel or look that much bigger than they were before, except at aqua natal when they bob to the surface and look alarmingly football like. But then I suppose the huge stomach ameliorates the impact. I should have realised I guess.
Needless to say I had to find a disabled loo after lunch and do another enormous pooh! Oh how I long for the day when I merely face the prospect of doing a normal sized pooh once or perhaps twice instead of producing a seemingly inexhaustible supply of giant cow pats every couple of hours, often into double figures…
I can’t understand where it all comes from. It’s not like I’m eating that much more… and… I know I probably shouldn’t go there but… what the heck, I’m going to… it’s not like normal pooh. When I come to wipe my bottom is like a giant brown felt tip which won’t run out. It’s like I’m never going to finish. If there’s only half a roll of bog paper I start to panic.
I never realised just how great a contribution the humble bidet was to the well being of mankind… or at least pregnant womankind. Since getting up the duff I’ve come to see it on a par with fire and the wheel.
Oh well, thank heavens for small mercies. I’ve only done three today so far *. Yesterday at my breastfeeding class it was very embarrassing as my stomach was growling like the MGM lion and I was the last person back from the 10 minute break and they were all waiting for me and all I’d been doing was sitting in the disabled loo poohing! For 10 minutes! Geez!
I walked the one and a half miles from the station into town and it was only when I had to go back to the station that I realised that the bespoke station shuttle buses no longer ran. Instead buses on other routes served the station every few minutes. Which routes though… Mmm… good question.
20 minutes later, I gave up trying to suss it out, the fact they were digging up the bus station so none of the usual departures were leaving from the usual stops didn’t help.
I wasn’t really set up to do the walk both ways… In fact I’ve never been so fucking footsore and knackered in all my life! I so envied those bastards who could fit on bikes… or into their cars…
Unlike me.
Wank!
On a different note, here’s some light trivia for you.
Did you know that the Norse god of love was called Frig. Yes Frigging in the Rigging is far more erudite and learned a song than we ever knew.
Mmm.
And there’s more…
Check out this little gem, below, which explains how the Dutch keep the urinals at Schipol Airport clean… Thank you to an anonymous somebody on stumble upon who put this up…
No home should be without one.
* Stop Press: It was FIVE by the time I went to bed though.
More Chaos Fairies… A week in the day of… 9, May 2008
Posted by babychaos in General Wittering.Tags: c section, ceasarian births, complications in labour, epistomy, fear of labour, fear of tearing and other joys in labour, labour, ow that smarts, pain, painful labour, pregnancy, pregnancy complications, Pregnancy Issues, tearing and other joys in labour
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Bugger… the chaos fairies are at it again.
Tuesday:
I collected the new pushchair from my parents, the traffic gods smiled on me, two and a half hours each way… smashing! Going down the accidents were anti-clockwise and coming back, clockwise. Even at 4.30 at the tunnel there was no queue. I sat in the garden with them, we had lunch and there was nothing I had to do… unlike here at home where I start to think about all the things I haven’t done an need to do.
A small disaster strikes. The parents have a hedge either side of the drive and it’s getting bigger and bigger, like cars… They don’t trim it back as much as they used to and I got the angle wrong, trying to avoid the soft leaved yellow bushes one side because they hide a flint wall and instead recreating the sounds of fingernails down blackboard with the razor sharp holly twigs and the side of Mr BC’s car on the other. Oops.
Get home.
It’s scratched.
Confess.
Luckily at the nth hour remember the industrial car polishes and cleaning kit I happen to have in my car. The scratches polish out and peace and happiness is restored. Mr BC is pleased in a kind of reverse way because of the effort I have put into repairing the damage… oh yes and the fact I succeeded has helped too.
Just for good measure I remove the three huge bird poohs on the bonnet. It takes fifteen minutes. Clearly whatever pigeons produce is one of the chief components in the glue used to fix the wings on aeroplanes. Blimey!
Wednesday:
I am paying the price for being completely hyper and full of beans yesterday, I suspect.
Not a good night’s sleep, I took the truss off to drive down there and forgot to put it on. One whole day with no truss doth not a happy, pain free BC make.
Arse.
Slept badly and by 8.30 Wednesday morning I was in the bath. It helped but I was somnambulant all day. I know it’s just because I was full of beans on Tuesday. Doing my homework for antinatal on Thursday Mr Cat decides that although it is absolutely boiling hot there is only one place he should be, on my lap.
He jumps onto the table and makes a beeline for my water glass I grab it just as he steps onto my laptop which is between my lap and him. It flips up and I manage to catch it, pouring the water over the keyboard in the process. The dash, five, six and control keys promptly cease to function… along with, just now, the delete button.
Arse.
I put the glass back on the table so I can dry the keyboard and the lapping sound alerts me to the fact he has climbed onto the table and is now drinking the water out of my glass. I tell him he is a royal pain in the jacksy and he realises it too, disappearing until teatime.
Mind numbingly tired and later – we’re talking 10 am – a friend dropped by for coffee and it was all I could do to hold a conversation! As soon as she’d left I retired to bed to catch up on some more Zeds. Muffin is now full of beans but I’m still knackered. I made supper and set the timer to beep when it was time to put it in the oven… forgot.
Balls.
Still it will cook for 20 minutes or so before Mr BC gets home.
Thursday:
I have antinatal followed by dinner with two friends. Despite wondering how in the name of heaven will I stay awake I manage to do so. Perhaps it’s the large lunch I make to ensure I don’t get the bonk. That may help, or a good night’s sleep on Wednesday night perhaps.
Can’t bend down – feels like I have a log across me – can’t breathe much either… maybe Chewie knows something I don’t maybe the baby will arrive soon. I hope so although not next week as we will probably have to go to Wales again.
Friday:
Have just had a very nice relaxing foot twiddle from the reflexology woman, also finished my last anti-natal class yesterday. Do I feel in control and prepared?
No.
What I HAVE learned is that nothing will really prepare me for this, that it’s my baby and as such will be different from any other baby and that all I can really do is go with the flow and do what I feel to be right at the time… during the birth and afterwards.
So I’m going to have a water birth if I can as that way there are many more positions for labour open to me which I will be able to maintain, with the support of the water, which I won’t be able to maintain outside it relaxin ain’t great for knackered accruciate ligaments.
The water will support me and my bump and also as somebody who is very relaxed and at home in water I should have access to more endorphins etc. The pool softens the tissues around your vagina, so pool births are less likely to result in tearing and if they do the tearing will not be so bad. This is particularly pertinent for me, see below.
I will have entonox and if need be if I get to about 7 or 8 cm and it’s going too slowly I’ll get out of the sodding pool and have an epidural.
Which leads me onto this morning’s news…
Had my “36 week” appointment with the midwife (it’s week 37 naturally and my “week 38″ is also in week 39). Muffin is head down.
Hoorah.
BUT he’s also occipito-posterior or OP as in his spine to my spine.
Oops.
The worst scenario really. It means he’s presenting the largest, widest most difficult to push out area of his head to the opening.
So. A recipe for a long, drawn out, protracted, painful labour… and one with an almost given forceps – that’s when they haul it out with the salad tongs – or ventouse – when they use a suction pump – and severe perennial tearing although if they do forceps they’re likely to cut me anyway. They prepare the mother for a long labour, suck it and see. Sometimes the baby turns as the cervix dilates. Although one in three don’t and end up with a Ceasarian.
Balls.
So the way I see it, if it’s still not turned at the onset of labour I’d rather just go straight to the C section rather than getting completely knackered for 48 hours and THEN having a C section anyway.
Shit.
My arse is going to rip.
Shit.
It’s going to hurt more than normal.
Shit.
It’s going to go on longer.
Shit.
And then after hours and hours, when I’m completely exhausted, if they don’t deliver it with salad tongs it’s probably going to end up in a C section anyway.
Shit, shit, shit.
I won’t be able to lift it, I won’t be able to drive for six weeks, I will have a scar which will make the contractions of the uterus brought on by breast feeding that little bit extra special.
Eeeeesh!
Alternatively, if I manage to deliver it upside down it will cause me severe backache – that’s going to be a real laugh with the SPD – which will probably be long term and chronic after my pregnancy.
…And we’ll probably have to go to sodding Wales again next week.
Utter bollocks.
Those of you that do prayer, just pray for a bit of extra strength for me will you? I’m no stranger to pain and I can take quite a lot but the point is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to endure something that makes the severest pain available to lady kind – normal labour – into a walk in the park by comparison. I don’t want to completely destroy my reproductive equipment with the first baby…
Fucking ouch!
I guess that makes this a “let this cup pass from my lips” moment. Not the labour but the fucking painful, even for labour, with added special tearing, scenario.
It must feel a bit like this to go to the chair, you know it’s coming and you just have to bite the bullet and do it.
This isn’t anything major, or life threatening, it’s just the prospect of some increased pain, an uncomfortable little knot in the fabric of reality. I really should get a grip.
Oh well. Time to go empty the remnants of my last meal out of my bra. Ryvita tits are scritchy.
Sigh…
I’m such a pansy.
