Sunday, April 19, 2009

Update from L'Hopital

Well, when one is not on bedrest, one might imagine it's fun. And honestly, it's better than a smack in the head. But it's not nearly as pleasant as one would think in the middle of the busy, hellish part of the semester.

So everything continues to look good. I'm at the very end of spotting and it's not "fresh blood," if you know what I mean. The doc-of-the-day thinks I should be out of here tomorrow, but she also said they want me to not be spotting at all. I think there's a real shot of that. I'm also having about one contraction a day, which is fantastic. My body continues to be happy about having the babies in here, and I think we have a good chance of going 36 weeks plus.

I've also been really lucky and had some really good friends stop by and visit. It really says a lot about my friends who take time out of their busy lives to stop by and chat and catch up. It's a big reminder to me to make that extra effort to stop by and see friends when they are laid up, too. (You should do so, too. But you probably already do and I'm a lesser friend than you all are)

But otherwise, bedrest is quite literally a pain in the butt. I have to find out tomorrow if I can sit up in regular chair at a table when I go home. The good news is that I don't have to be flat on my back, which would suck in a horrible shit-ass way. So reclining is better than that. But my tailbone is sore. Sitting up at a table just sounds so nice right now.

And thank god(dess), I'm not a picky eater. They are really trying hard around here to make sure there is enough food that I like for me to eat. That may have come from the first morning I was hear when I used the words "starving" and pointed out that if I hadn't just had a bowl of cornflakes, I would have "knocked the nursing assistant down and gnawed on her arm." Since then, they've been brining me tons of high protein snacks, lots of fruit, and other assorted snacks. My room fridge is actually full!

I had planned on blogging sometime in the future about following the Hypnobabies natural birthing program. I was actually about 3 weeks into the 5 week program and had just bought a Sansa Fuze MP3 player (LOVE IT! and $50 cheaper if you buy the black one instead of the white one) to practice my lessons without hypnotizing the whole house into a easy, painfree birthing process. In any case, I've been telling all docs how much I want a vaginal birth, and I was going to start pushing the unmedicated part at my next visit.

Before I get to the point of this whole story (yes, there is one!), I have say the self-hypnosis part is really cool. You get to a point of deep relaxation and she has you test whether you can move certain body parts, and you can't. And then ironically, 5 minutes later, she tells you to move them and you totally do without effort. Weird. Except, of course, there is the time that Dave came in and I had fallen asleep during my practice and as the instructor kept saying "Open you eyes, open your eyes" and drooling, with my mouth open, I continued to snore. Ehhh. Whatever.

So the point: I've been very focused on a vaginal birth and I was really going to push non-medicated. And the moment they said placent previa, I knew we were doing a c-section, and I didn't get upset or mourn the difference for a millisecond. It was not at all that I "secretly wanted" a c-section. I still don't want one. But my understanding is that if this had happened 100 years ago, when doctors really didn't do c-sections, the probably of both Baby A and I bleeding out and dying was pretty damn high. Now, the maternal death rate is really low at about .03%. Hooray at how low that is, but it's the only pregnancy complication, I've ever seen with an actual estimate.

The doctors and nurses were very wary of telling me about the c-section despite the fact that I'd already figured out. But I'm not going to wail and cry if I open a door and find a brick wall behind it. What the hell use is that? The most important thing is that the babies and I all three live and are healthy. A vaginal birth is completely off the table. Now, my goals are to go at least 36 weeks and to deliver the fattest, most mature babies that I can.

And I think it's going to happen. I bought the hypnobabies track for stopping premature labor. I'm not in premature labor, but the twins make it more likely my ute is going to be irritated and have contractions and we don't want any contractions with the previa. So, we'll hyp-no-tize my ute into being calm and keeping those babies healthy.

You'd be surprised how powerful the hypnosis visualizations can be.

2 comments:

Our Horse Curly said...

I have a friend who used self-hypno during her labor. Worked great - and then she continued to use it for other painful things in her life (like migraines). She sold me on it - too bad I was already done having babies to really put it into practice!

Carroll said...

Excellent outlook, excellent attitude, and excellent prognosis, Anita. Happy to hear you sounding so chipper. And you're right -- reclining is wayyy better than flat-out flat, but here's hoping you get the pass for sitting up at home. The aforementioned DIL's sister was not allowed that luxury in her situation and yea verily it did suck! Like you, however, her attitude was "whatever it takes is fine by me", and like her, I feel sure you will have a positive outcome from all this good medical attention you've been getting.

Thanks for the update!!

:-)