Why no matter what the hell else fucks up in my life, I am the luckiest woman on the planet.
Aaannnddd shit. Hope that didn’t break my layout.
So, you all know I’ve been gone awhile, deep in the middle of my obsessive writing of a Twilight Fan Fiction. I can almost type that without grimacing, almost, not quite. I cannot say it in person without grimacing, only because for those who aren’t in the know, it just sounds so, what? You’re doing what? Writing what? Twilight? Don’t you know that book sucks ass? Well, yes. Yes, I do and I don’t know that. I’m not going to talk about Twilight here. Not. Going. To. Talk. About Twilight.
Hey! It’s my eight year anniversary with Alex! (aka Mr. Myg!). And you know what? He’s really hot, right? He’s even cuter in person. He’s so going to give me shit for posting a picture of him and calling him cute on the internet. Not that much shit.
That was a shot of him just this morning, after he’d had only 4 and a half hours of sleep, he was hanging out with the myglets, Doot (on the right) and Bing (on the left) and I snapped this photo and thought, hot damn. You know, 18 months after the boys were born I’m still a good 20lbs overweight, I just lost my job this week, our finances are really, oh GOD when I think about it, I get palpitations, no shit, they are so bad right now. Like, should we pay the mortgage or buy groceries, kind of bad.
So I’m writing this right from the center of my panic attack. Sometimes I think I could let all of the fear just eat me alive, you know? Like, what in the fucking fuck are we going to do now?
But then I look at that picture there, and I think, Christ. I’m lucky. I swear to you, I am lucky. Because money? It comes and goes. It doesn’t matter. Okay, that’s bullshit. But it doesn’t matter that much, is what I’m telling you.
Alex and the boys matter. We are all here. We are all okay.
This is likely my last pregnancy entry, as I’m going to be induced in a couple of hours.
I am feeling quite an eclectic mix of things right now. Scared, yeah. Excited too. Like I’m about to walk off a cliff, too.
I’m not focused on the pain as much as the unknowns. I know it will hurt. I have no idea how much or how I’ll tolerate it. Hopefully I’ll tolerate it just fine with a few pharmaceuticals.
My biggest fear is how the boys are doing and how’ they’ll do during the process. I pray that they tolerate it well and that their bodies are developed enough to have a good start to life.
I am very excited hold them in my arms.
I am a little sad that this very, very sacred time of carrying life inside me is coming to a close now.
And then the next thing you know, WOOSH. They’re graduating from college and you’re out your retirement fund.
I should really be calling this post a placeholder. It’s holding the place for a lot of things I need to tell you about. Like, the fact that the boys turned 9 months old. And then, about 15 minutes after we ordered their 9 month old commemorative plates and matching cup set, they turned 10 months old. And then they had their first Thanksgiving and their first bath in the big bath tub together. And then I cried because they are too adorable and too sweet to believe and I’m still not home with them every day like I should be and I know, and you know, kindergarten is right around the corner and what then? What THEN?
I know there are women out there who are okay with being working mothers. I salute them. I’m just not one of them. Meaning, I am a working mother. In fact, I am the sole provider working mother right now. But I’m not okay with it, other than the fact that it is what is and I have to be okay, in the most general of terms.
I also have to tell you about the band. Oh lord, the band. That’d be my band, whose name shall not be mentioned here because I’m having interweb crossover identity issues. I went back into private practice a few months ago (I’m an LCSW therapist type for kids, yo) and I just do not want people I work with finding this blog. We’re playing in 26 days (crap pants here) and this is the first time we’ve played in 8 years, almost to the day.
Before I became a mom, and before I became a therapist, I was a musician. I was very serious about it. I never had the kind of financial or commercial success I’d hoped for, but I did make all kinds of music with all sorts of fantastic people and it made my life better. And now I’m doing it again and it feels so strange and familiar and like I’m traveling back in time but yet not. Like straddling two decades when your straddler is a little out of alignment.
And that’s just the good stuff, but that’s what I’m trying to fill my head with these days. And yours too.
This is a blog with a mission, being, to take some of the GAHfuckdamnohnoisthisokay? out of becoming a mom when you’re over 35, or in my case now, over 40. I had infertility issues that kept me from getting pregnant when I was younger, and I was one of those hand wringers who would Google “pregnant over 35″ and just be dejected with the search results. Hardly anyone has anything good to say on the matter, or encouraging, or even maybe celebrating women who start their families later. It was all risk and warnings and that shit is just depressing.
But that’s not to say it isn’t real. Indeed, pregnancy for me was nearly every bit as hard and scary as they say it can be for women my age, especially bearing twins. I had pre-term contractions, pre-eclampsia, borderline anemia, a very tough delivery (which had nothing to do with my age, ahem). What they don’t tell you is, so fucking what?
See, I’m trying to cultivate a new and improved attitude about risk. Now that I’ve taken certain risks and have gotten a certain unbelievably awesome payoff, I’m here to say that if your heart truly longs for a baby and you’re over 35, go on and get pregnant. DO IT. I could have had a worse result, yes. But you know what? I didn’t, and most women my age having babies don’t either. And look what I got to show for it:
Two beautiful kids, born totally healthy.
So here’s the whole truth about my over 39 year old twin-pregnancy experience. First, the bad.
My pregnancy was great until the third trimester, when my back started to hurt so bad I could hardly walk from my car to the house without pain, and when pre-term contractions and then pre-eclampsia kicked in. That period of time involved total bedrest, three hospitalizations and a lot of unfortunate Google searches.
Being pregnant with twins caused more of that than my age. That said, women over 35 have a greater chance of multiple pregnancy. That’s not a bad thing, but it is harder.
I delivered five weeks early, due to pre-eclampsia. My delivery was tough, tough, tough. I delivered Doot vaginally and had to have an emergency C-Section for Bing. That had nothing to do with my age, or the pre-eclampsia. He had cord pro-lapse, which can be catastrophic. We were thankfully in good hands. If you’re a high-risk pregnancy, make sure you are too.
Speaking of high-risk pregnancy, if you get labeled this know it’s a blessing. You get much better prenatal care.
My recovery from delivery took awhile, and to be honest I thought I’d never feel right again. I was wrong, and knew it within about four weeks. Two weeks after giving birth I was much, much better. By a month, I was back to normal except for my weight and my tendonitis.
Oh, by the way, did you know you can get mindbendingly painful tendonitis in both wrists while pregnant, just from your hormones? I didn’t, and believe me, this was the most painful and inconvenient part of being pregnant and a new mother – worse than the sleep deprivation. No, there’s not much you can do for it but wait it out. It’s much better now at the five month mark, but it’s not gone.
Not a day goes by where I don’t do the math. When they’re 18 I’ll be 58. When they’re 25 I’ll be 65. When they’re 30 I’ll be 70. And so on. Every day I worry about being too old. Not now, of course. I feel young now. I daresay I look young, even younger than I am. But I don’t take terribly great care of myself and that has to change so I can age well and enjoy my kids well into their adult years. I don’t want them to have the worries of caring for older parents, well, ever. But then, I don’t want to die on them when they’re too young. And then, what’s too young? I’ll never, ever, ever be ready to let my parents go. In any case, I don’t get to decide any of these things, and so they are not worth the worry. But I must tell you, I worry anyway.
Now for the good stuff that waiting got me, and may get you too.
Some things that would have really rattled my 30 year old self really don’t rattle me now. I have been called a very calm, confident parent, and I have to admit that I am.
I don’t ever wish I was out doing something else that I can’t do now because I have small kids. At my age, I’ve really spent a lot of time doing exactly what I wanted. I’m not worried about my career because it’s so well established I can pretty much write my ticket now.
Even though the economy is bad and money is tough, I know I can always make money if need be (see above).
My kids live in a nice home, in a great neighborhood with an excellent school district.
In my neighborhood, many, if not most of my friends are mothers and fathers who started their families after the age of 35 or at least continue to have kids over the age of 35.
I savor every moment I have with them, even at 3am, because at 40 I really know how fast it’s all going to go. I just didn’t have that perspective yet when I was 30.
In every other way except trying to lose weight, being 40 pretty much kicks ass. My head is clear. I feel powerful. I don’t take shit from anyone. I know what’s important. I thoroughly enjoy everything I have. So really, in that sense, it’s the perfect time in my life to bring my kids into the world.
Not because of the economy or the war or the environment or any external thing. It’s a good time because it’s the time it was possible, and really, it’s as good as any and better than some.
The author, born in 1969, but shown here somewhere around late 1970.
For those of you who don’t know, I am trained as a psychotherapist. And I appreciate dreams – even bad ones – because there’s little that’s going to tell you as much about yourself.
I haven’t spent a whole lot of time analyzing these yet, but I do believe lack of sleep is the major culprit. Persistent sleep deprivation has slowly turned my mood to shit. I think what you’ll read below will support that thesis.
If you’re into analyzing dreams, please leave a comment or drop a note and let me know what you think. I’d love to hear it.
Dream 1 – 5/19/09
I am stuck in traffic and my baby boys are in the back seat. We were in some weird dream car that only had primer for paint and was sort of like an enormous El Camino (which I don’t even think have back seats, but whatever). I made a wrong turn in trying to get around the traffic and found myself stuck on a road, going the wrong way, unable to turn around and having pissed off a few drivers in the process. Next thing I know, I’m in the passenger’s seat and there’s a 400 pound man driving my car. He manages to get the car turned around, going back in the right direction. However, while we’re stopped at a traffic light, I politely tell him that we’ll be getting out of the car now, and he grabs my wrist tight and says, “Oh no you won’t.” And that’s when I realize he intends to rape me, right there in front of the kids. I stay cool and begin looking for a way to escape with the kids and then realize I can’t escape with the kids unless I kill this guy. I start looking for something in the car to stab or bludgeon him with and realize that I might be convicted of manslaughter and have my kids taken away if I kill him before he rapes me. Just as I begin to panic, I wake up.
Discuss.
Dream 2 – 5/20/09
I am supposed to be doing something at work, but I can’t remember what it was. Instead of doing it, I am browsing garage sales for pocketbooks with a coworker. My boss shows up and I am wracked with guilt, so I sneak off to my car (this time my real car), hoping she won’t see me. I start to drive but the road disappears and instead my car is picking its way down a precarious mountainside like a seasoned trail horse. Then my car loses its footing and I start to fall, car and all, endlessly. I scream and scream and then suddenly I am out of the car, in the shadows of the neighborhood where I last saw my boss. They are looking for me. A whole group of them, my boss included. And that’s when it hits me – I’ve died and come back a demon. I am momentarily saddened by this, but then I start to run because they are coming for me. I run in the darkness but the light of the dawn is encroaching on my oasis of shadow and I start to ROAR like a demon, for my very demonic survival. My roaring wakes me up.
(For the record, according to Facebook’s “Which badass thing are you?” quiz, I am a “Fucking Wizard” and not a demon.)
Discuss.
I’d like to take this moment to thank all of you who commented on my last post, and indicated that yes, I can still say the word “fuck.” With all the sleep deprivation around here, I’m going to need it.
Ah, this post is hard to write as it’s making me all emotional. But mother’s day is coming and I want you to know something about my own mom.
(That’s me and my mom, in a friend’s wedding, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1974.)
I want you to know that she is, in all seriousness, the bravest woman I know. No exaggeration.
You see, everything we fear as mothers, my mom has faced. My brother, her firstborn, was born completely healthy but at 6 months got an infection that, due to medical negligence, turned into a catastrophic disease that left him severely brain damaged. For the rest of his life he was unable to do even little things like roll over or smile.
His care was so intensive that when she found out she was pregnant with me, a mere six months after my brother’s problems began, people worried. Who could deal with both a newborn baby and a very sick 18 month old? Her friends, and some family thought there was no way she could handle it.
Clearly, they didn’t know my mother.
Over the years I have tried to understand how my brother’s disability may have affected my mom. Now that I am a new mom, I can just begin to understand her nightmare.
I look at my 15 week old boys and see them healthy, growing, developing normally. Every small advance they make I celebrate like a Princeton Ph.D. Sometimes I do catch myself pondering all the many things that can go wrong along the way, but I can’t let myself think of it. The reality – that very bad things happen to very good babies - is too real for me. And if you’re already paying attention, then worrying won’t do a damned thing about it.
So when I need an extra dose of courage, (which is daily, no wait, several times a day) I look to Mom. She faced the worst and lived to tell about it. And beyond that, when she was in the thick of her nightmare, she opened herself up to the possibility of facing more fear and heartache by having me. But I guess she also opened up something else.
Like the possibility of being a kickass grandmother to two beautiful boys.
Accomplishment #2: Points for individuality, since despite being twins, you both came into the world quite differently. Doot, my brave little astronaut, you ventured out first, taking the more traditional route. “PUSH!!!!! LIKE YOU’RE TAKING THE BIGGEST CRAP OF YOUR LIFE!” the doctor, no kidding, screamed at me moments before you made your entrance. I did, and felt that otherworldly POP and then the most enormous relief I’ve ever known. Your head – who knew it was so pliable? Good thing, too because the few stitches I did need, well, the memory of them still makes me itch sometimes.
Bing, my clever little man, it was though you saw what your brother endured on his trip into the world and said, “Screw it. I am NOT squeezing my shit through there!” They cut a quick slice in my belly to get to you before, well let’s just say before the unimaginable because I don’t even want to imagine, not for a second, what could have happened had we not been in totally competent hands in the OR. But once the decision for the C-Section was made, you arrived quickly, safely and you were perfect from head to toe. No elongated head for you, no sir! I can see years ahead of you finding your own path in this world. Let’s hope most of them don’t lead to emergency surgery.
Accomplishment #3: Steady hearts, steady breaths. No NICU time. Not even for a few hours of observation. You were both under 5 lbs, but breathing and sucking superbly right away. When they said you could go to the regular nursery it was about the thousandth time that day your father and I counted ourselves among the very, very lucky.
Accomplishment #4: How about the adorable factor? Both of you, either separately or snuggled together exude enough cuteness to shame the entire baby animal kingdom. No kittens, puppies, baby seals, infant capybaras or what have you can touch the “AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWesomeness” that you two have going on. I thought maybe I was biased in my judgment of your attractiveness, but NO, definitely not. I am totally unbiased and you two are without doubt the most adorable creatures that have ever been or will ever be born. (*The author reserves the right to revoke this statement on the occasion of grandchildren. AND during the years 13-17.)
Accomplishment #5: You came home the same day I did. I began to understand how amazing this was when everywhere we went, or I went, people said, “Oh twins! How long did they have to stay in the hospital for?” But you didn’t have to stay in the hospital any longer than I did. And by nearly every measure, one could argue you were in better shape than I was when we got home.
Accomplishment #6: You grew. And grew. And grew. I have one photo, which I promise to never post, in which I am tandem breastfeeding you. And I swear your heads are not even half the size of my boobs. Now, your heads are much larger than my boobs, sadly, and I can say largely due to the service said body parts have done you. Well done, all of us.
Accomplishment #7: You taught me the very meaning of FEAR. I was never truly afraid until I had children. This coming from someone who’s had remnants of an anxiety disorder since the 1980′s. Yet my anxiety since you’ve arrived has crested peaks I’d never dare imagine.
When I first got you two home, every little tiny new thing scared the pants off me, when I bothered to put any on. Bing had a marble sized lump in his left breast. WTF was that? (Turned out to be a common nothing thing that went away on its own). Doot had an umbilical hernia. Oh, and yes, I had a massive herpes outbreak (on my mouth – fever blisters), which manifested itself two days after you were born, and hours after I dared to bestow my first kiss to you Doot. I was TERRIFIED I would give you the Herpes 1 virus, which is quite dangerous in infants. I didn’t, THANK GOD. But I cried and cried and cried and obsessed over it, and many other things in those first weeks.
I did realize the absolute need to get over it, all that fear. So while I’ve still got plenty of it I’ve been dealing with it better, yes. Because I either get over it or I am miserable and if I’m miserable, how can I bask in your awesomeness (see #4 above)?
Accomplishment #8: Smiles. Oh Godddddd, the smiles. Your father and I fall apart whenever you smile at us.
The other day, Graham, Dad heard you laugh in your sleep! He was so excited he called me at work, and after I teared and snuffled a few times, we congratulated ourselves, thinking we must be doing a great job as parents for you to have such funny dreams. And by the way guys, I’m sure this trend of us taking credit for your accomplishments is something you’ll need to discuss with your therapist sometime in your early adulthood, if not sooner.
And Liam, holy cow, you are the smiliest baby I’ve ever known. You wake up smiling. You smile at anyone you meet. You smile at the dog. You smile at the wall. You screech, squeal, coo, belch, spit up 300 oz and then smile at the pool of spit up. You really crack us up.
Accomplishment a gabazillion: I just realized the futility of numbering your accomplishments in this way. It’s not that there are too many to list. It’s that your birth and your lives so far are so enormous a factor in my universe that breaking out the individual things like this does not come close to conveying the complete transformation of our lives.
I want you to know, I was happy before you were born. I really was. I had a sense of purpose, a creative mission, a sense of the meaning of it all. Granted, I was not so happy when I wanted to have you and couldn’t, but I knew deep in my heart that if I could never have you, I would grieve and then find a way to move on in my life and make peace with it. So when I tell you, I’ve never known happiness like this, I’m not saying this from the point of an unhappy, unfulfilled person. I’m saying that you have brought to my life a depth, a sense of purpose – the perfect mission. The reason to live at all, and the way forward.
You changed everything. Everything. Every thought I have, every hope for the future, the very meaning of life itself. My world, my body, my concept of family and my notion of priorities. All different now. I have to tell you though, your father and I were counting on that.
Ed.’s Warning: This post is epic and contains varying amounts of bitching, moaning and gratuitous hospital footage.
Me, Bing, Doot, circa 23 weeks
Included in this extra special week was one historic election and one trip to the emergency room. On the same day, even.
Last Saturday I was suddenly feeling much worse. I’d been trying to get a grip on some debilitating back pain for weeks and had restricted a lot of my activities to reduce pain. Remember, no pain meds allowed and Tylenol, I’m sorry, doesn’t do it for me. Not that I mind being a couch spore. My remedy for back pain has meant spending most of my time between my bed, the dog’s couch, and the kitchen table. I’ve become furniture for the cats, basically.
On Saturday I became incredibly out of breath and was having heart palpitations over even the smallest activity – like walking up six stairs to go to the bathroom or taking a shower. Sunday night I woke up in the middle of the night, went to the bathroom and when I came back to bed my heart was thumping in my chest like I had a 12 pound freshly caught Tilapia flipping around in there. It was kind of, you know, scary.
I called the Doc’s office on Monday. They didn’t seem terribly concerned about it, but they did push my regular appointment up to Tuesday morning. That would be…
Election Day.
Coolest f'in president ever, k?
Now, I have been wringing my hands, biting my nails, on the edge of my seat, anxiously pouring over every bit of political text I can find for months and months. I did some canvassing for Obama in PA during the primary, but given my physical circumstances I wasn’t inclined to do much more than give a lot of money I didn’t have and argue with people in my family. (That arguing politics with family while pregnant thing – not recommended, really.)
Suffice to say, I’d waited a long damn time for election day.
With early reports of lines in NYC being as long as 2 hours, I worried about how I was going to handle a long wait to vote as right now, it’s too painful for me to stand in line for 10 minutes at the grocery store. But I’d worried for no reason because in my very liberal little town, the polling place at 8am had no lines – just a bunch of happy voters, smiling and milling about. We voted, grabbed a couple of coffee rolls to celebrate, and went home to sweat it out as we waited for the results.
At 10:45 am we had the distraction of my doctor’s appointment, and the walk from the parking deck to the OB/GYN’s office just sucked. I felt like I was sprinting the whole way. “Can this be normal?” I reported everything to my doctor. She checked the heartbeats of Bing and Doot and they were fine. Mine? A little off.
“Your heart’s skipping around, jumping all over the place.” She decided to send me to the ER. “You’re carrying twins, so this probably isn’t the last time you’ll be over there.” Words of comfort, to be sure.
When I got there they bumped me to the front of a long line of assorted disheveled, pissed off sick folks. Hooked up to the pulse monitor I could hear my heart jumping all over the place. Man did that suck. You really count on certain things in your life to be steady and predictable. The beating of your own heart would rank about #1 on that list, even if you don’t consciously think of it. When it’s as erratic as a McCain campaign stunt, the whole world starts to feel a little shaky.
They put me on a stretcher in the back, popped an IV into me, took oh about 17 quarts of blood, stuck a heart monitor on me. I couldn’t look at it though. I got an EKG and the doctor came back and explained I had some extra hearbeats – PVCs he said. Premature Ventricular Contractions.
Well thank heavens I had the presence of mind to bring my new little camcorder – the Flip. I love this thing with all my heart and I’ll blog it another time. But in any case, it’s the size of an iPod and here’s what you can do with it:
Not the most flattering video of me, but hey, it’s totally real!
So anyway, were the PVCs anything serious? In and of themselves, no. But could they be a sign of something really bad? Combined with the shortness of breath and fatigue, yeah. So the testing commenced. An ultrasound of my legs showed no blood clots or anything, which was good. But now, here’s where I get upset.
I had to get a chest x-ray and a CT-scan of my lungs. No direct radiation to my boys but there could be a little “scatter” and SHIT FUCK DAMN YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO GET ANY RADIATION WHEN YOU ARE PREGNANT!
So, why did I agree to do it?
The doctors were concerned I might have had a pulmonary embolism. You know, that blood clot thing in your lungs that can kill you.
Here’s where I invoke my right to smack the shit out of the resident assigned that day. My hospital is a teaching hospital, affiliated with the medical university that I’ve worked for since 1999. I’ve helped train my share of residents when I was clinical staff on the psych unit. So guess what? I have a right to SMACK THE SHIT out of the residents when they annoy me.
What was annoying me? I asked, calmly – logically, responsibly – “Can you tell me the risks this test poses to my unborn children?” And you know what I got in response?
“The risk of this test is to them is a lot smaller than the risk to you if we don’t do this test, trust me.”
Hello? Is that what I asked you, bitch? NO. I asked “WHAT is the risk to MY UNBORN.” Not, “What’s the bigger risk?” or “Should I really have this test done?” I was quite the perturbed.
With more reasonable prompting, he did go over some of the risks, which include really great things like an increase in childhood cancer rates from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 7,000. Is that risk still relatively small? Yes. Is it smaller than the risk of pulmonary embolism? Yeah, of course. Did it make sense to have the testing if the doctors were really concerned? Of course it did.
But I still felt god awful for having exposed my kids to even that much risk. Really god damned awful.
Guess what? I didn’t have a pulmonary embolism. Thank God. Seriously, thank God. All of my labs were normal. I was fine, other than my heart jumping all over the place. Verdict? Gosh we dunno. Plan? Outpatient follow-up with cardiology for more thorough evaluation. Go home now. It was 7:30pm.
I went home to begin watching the election results, though I almost couldn’t do it as the day had been so emotional. But I did anyway, because, seriously, how could I not watch one of the greatest moments in the history of the modern world?
I was glad I did. At 11pm when Keith Olberman announced Obama was our new president-elect, I cried. Man, did I cry. Then during Obama’s speech I cried. Hard.
But I felt good. And you know what? My heart felt good. Because I knew then that I’d be bringing my boys into a world where we have a chance of making the world a better place. And as I gradually start to move into my new role as a mother, I realize there’s nothing I care more about than that.
So how are Doot and Bing doing in week 23? They are:
Kicking, kicking, kicking. In fact, last night I had my first experience of actually seeing a well placed kick by Doot lift a paperback off my belly. Whoa! Sometimes it’s adorable. Sometimes, not so much. Like that kick to the bladder this morning.
Able to hear me and Alex, for sure. Do they think it’s weird how much we talk to and/or about the dog? Do they like that Kings of Leon song I keep blasting over and over? How do they like the Rachel Maddow show? The things you wonder about.
Developing their lungs and the blood vessels to the lungs, which is all kinds of important right now. Statistically speaking, when they get to 24 weeks old they’ve got a 50/50 chance at viability outside of me if their lungs grow enough. But…here’s to praying there’s no need for that.
And as for me? Well, if the long entry above the bullets wasn’t enough for you, let me recap:
I’ve got some physical stuff going on right now that’s not exactly what I’d hoped and dreamed my long wished for pregnancy would be. But you know what? So far it’s nothing so dreadful that I can’t sleep at night worrying. I can deal with it.
I am always, always, always worried about money. I don’t know if this will ever stop now that I’m about to be a mom, but God I hope so. My strategy so far is to try not to think about it. Good plan, eh?
I’m trying to figure out how to salvage the rest of my work responsibilities from now until D-Day given the stuff going on. But for some reason, I don’t care all that much. Changing priorities, anyone?
I have a history of back/neck injuries sustained from two totally excellent places:
Flipping over the handlebars of my Sears Freedom bike when I was 7 years old. It was real bad. So bad, I cracked my brand new adult front tooth in half, landed on my head in the middle of the street and was knocked unconscious. Hospital time!
Rock and Roll. I played guitar and sang in an indie rock band from the time I was 19 until…well I last played a show in December of 2001. I was 32 then. (Ugh. That long ago?) Anyway, I had some terribly shitty posture and managed to herniate two discs in my neck, which became very problematic for me in 1999. With treatment (physical therapy, chiropractic adjustments, drugs) I fully recovered. Or, did I? Herniated discs are like that.
I haven’t had a lot of complaints about these issues in the last few years. I’ve been lucky. Every once in awhile if I was feeling achy I’d make a trip to the doctor and get an adjustment, then be fine. I maybe saw him a couple of times a year. Then came pregnancy. With twins.
The pain I now have in my back is different. It hovers somewhere in the middle, (“Really? Not your lower back?” most formerly pregnant women, aka mothers, ask me. Now, I may know absolutely fucking nothing about being pregnant, but I can tell you exactly where it hurts, damn it.) The pain was particularly vicious on the left side, right under my ribs, every night at around 8:30pm until I went to bed, when it would wrap itself around to my abdomen, making me ponder whether or not I was getting an ulcer. Then magically tonight it appeared on the right side, and behaved in much the same way. I was relieved for the change in scenery, as it were.
This pain started gradually. I first noticed that if I spent much time on my feet, I’d be screwed for days. I learned, hey, don’t spend so much time on your feet. Now it’s to the point where I can’t spend too much time sitting upright, either. I need to spend a significant part of the day laying down. Which sounds a lot nicer than it is – especially when you still sorta have a job, like I do.
Know what’s really killing me? I had to stop walking the dog. Couldn’t make it down my street to the corner without my mid back feeling like it was being ripped apart. I feel so, so bad about not being able to do things with my dog! Soon enough he’s going to be relegated around here to actual, you know, dog status. I was hoping for a little more time I could really dote on him. Poor guy – he’s just 19 months old – still a puppy for labs. [Insert gratuitous adorable dog pic here:]
Man, he still does that head cocked to the side thing when you talk to him too. He’s too much.
To alleviate the pain, I had a full on therapeutic massage last weekend. It was nice, but it didn’t fix shit. On Monday I begged my doctor to squeeze me in and got an adjustment. I think that helped – some. My pain is more localized now. But it still hurts. A lot. And for a lot of the day.
The OB/GYN told me to order the “prenatal cradle.” It’s a crazy borderline S&M looking contraption that will support my back in holding up my belly.
Wear it UNDER your clothes, dummy!
With that shoulder support, it should alleviate some of my mid back woes. If you need one, google it, but don’t order it from the maker, Prenatal Cradle, or you’ll pay about $20 extra for one with shipping. I ordered mine from Target for around $60, shipping was free. I’ll let you know when it gets here if it works. I really pray it does because if all goes well, I’m looking at another 15 weeks of this shit!
So that was my week.
Oh, the kids? Here’s what Bing and Doot have been up to:
They’re growing. How do I know? Well, I don’t exactly, other than the fact that I have been growing. And they seem to be crowding my internals a bit more. Conventional Wisdom says they should be about a pound each and a foot long a piece. That makes me crave a Nathan’s. Or two.
They are now producing their own hormones. Great – just what we need around here. More hormones!
Moving around. I still worry about whether or not I feel them moving enough. But I do feel tap, tap, tap every now and then. First this side, then that. Every once in awhile in the middle of the night, somebody kicks me hard enough to cause pain in a vital organ. It’s reassuring.
Other than getting bigger, I’m not sure what’s left for these guys between now and showtime.
And as for me, the pain thing is really tantamount. If you’ve ever experienced chronic pain, you know of what I speak. It just flavors everything in your day. So since I devoted so much of this post with that, I’ll skip it in the bulleted recap of the state of me:
Getting clutzy and moving in the vertical plane is more complicated. Unplug something? Pick that sock up off the floor? Okay, I’ll do it, but it had better be REAL important to you.
Worrying. Like up at 3am thinking about every single thing that isn’t done. From the hall closet being a wreck to the nursery to work related things to my wedding photo album (yeah, I got married 6 years ago, but still.)
I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT I’M DOING HERE! SHUT UP! GO AWAY! DON’T LEAVE ME!
Denial. Sometimes I just don’t believe they are really, truly in there. Just as I was typing this, I received a message in the form of a swift kick from Doot in the liver. Thanks, buddy.
I’ve got a lot more internal state of mind stuff to spew at you, but it’s late and I’m tired and oh, jeez, did I mention my back hurts? Makes even blogging a bitch.
You may be wondering, as I have, given my complaints above, do I still think pregnancy over 35 = AWESOME? Well, yes. I do. But I will qualify this with the fact that awesome doesn’t mean easy. It doesn’t even always mean good. The big bang was awesome, wasn’t it? Mother nature must have gotten a serious damned back ache from that, right?
As I write this, one of my favorite bloggers, Amy over at Amalah, is now sporting her Week 38 belly. I wonder if I shouldn’t read ahead so much. She’s 20 weeks into my future, sort of. This week she’s talking about false labor and, crap, does that sound like a drag. The kind of thing I suppose I should be aware of but really, I don’t want to be. Not yet. If it happens to me I’ll eat that sentence.
Once again I’m writing about Week 18 in the middle at the end of Week 19. I know I say the same thing every week but damn if it ain’t true. This pregnancy thing is just flying by. I know, I know. When I’m past the 34 week mark it won’t go fast enough.
Since I’m always now running behind on these things, I decided to cheat and put weeks 18 & 19 together. To be honest, I haven’t felt a ton of difference in between the two weeks, other than that gross armpit lump thing was really painful last week, but not so much this week. As an aside, I had a check-up with my OB/GYN today, and they haven’t gotten the report back from the radiologist on that. That’s annoying. I told her what they told me, and she checked the lump herself, which is a lot less swollen today. Her belief is that the tissue is indeed breast tissue because it reacts in a cyclical way and to hormones, but she is sending me on to a breast specialist just to be doubly sure. As she put it,
“With anything that has to do with the breast, I just prefer to go all the way with making sure it’s fine. I know they’ll send you back here wondering why I wasted their time, but let’s get it checked out anyway.”
I like this doctor and that attitude is exactly why.
I’m writing this today with wonder dog Mason laying on top of my feet. I wonder if he has any idea what’s coming. Somehow I think he must. Okay, now that I’m talking about him, I must include another gratuitous cute puppeh pic:
That’s him as a 13 week old pup, but I swear to you, even at 18 months he is still this cute. And he’s kind of laying like this right now, on top of my feet. I love the feel of puppy face on my toes.
And about those other little pups, the ones growing in my belly, conventional wisdom tells me that over the past two weeks:
They’ve got skins. Not just that, but these skins are covered in some sort of waxy goo called vernix caseosa. That makes them all greased pig like, which will come in handy as they slip through the tunnel of motherly love.
They’re about 6 inches, 7 oz. a piece by now. Seems like only yesterday they were one sip shy of a latte.
They look like – wait for it – babies! They supposedly have lost their alien resemblances, other than their family ones I mean. Now they just have to grow, grow grow. And I along with them.
As for moi, the last two weeks I have been:
Tired. On the days I don’t have to be anywhere, I will still take a 2 hour nap. The weird thing is I actually feel a little worse when I wake up, too. But I can’t seem to stop myself from taking them.
Speaking of sleep, I am now waking up every couple of hours just to roll over, because my body is awkward enough now that I can’t do it while asleep. Thus, I’m not getting enough uninterrupted sleep at night. See bullet above for relevant consequence. Did I mention that I really love to sleep? I can, no lie, under normal circumstances sleep 9 hours straight in a night. Now it’s more like 2. I think that’s taking a toll. Maybe it’s good practice for what’s ahead.
Ambivalent. Can I say this? Overall, in a grand scheme big picture way, I am ecstatic to be a mom and to have these little two space monkeys here in a few months. But at age 39 it is so god darned difficult to fathom what kind of life change I’m really in for here. I look at my friends’ families, which are all swell, but I have a hard time picturing myself in them. What is this going to be like? I want to get psyched up, but I find myself teetering between psyched up and psyched out a lot.
Worried about post-partum depression. I’m a licensed mental health professional, so I have a license to worry about my own mental health.
Worried and frustrated about money. My job situation is precarious right now because of budget cuts. My hours have been cut and we’re losing a lot of our income and will need to pay for our health insurance come January on top of a shrinking income. Thank the lord for progesterone, the stress killing hormone, because without it I think I’d be quite hard to live with right about now.
I also had an AFP test, which came back normal, which is good. What’s that? From About.com:
The AFP test, sometimes called the MSAFP or maternal serum AFP, is where a blood sample is drawn from the mother to check the levels of AFP. AFP is a protein secreted by the fetal liver and excreted in the mother’s blood. It is generally used for detecting neural tube defects, but it can also indicate: abdominal wall defects esophageal and duodenal atresia, some renal and urinary tract anomalies turner syndrome, some low birth weight fetuses, and placental complications. A low level of AFP could also indicate Down Syndrome.
I knew Down’s wasn’t an issue, but it’s good to know all that other stuff appears to be normal too. As I am now exhausted from writing this, I’ll sign off for now.
I am stuck in traffic and my baby boys are in the back seat. We were in some weird dream car that only had primer for paint and was sort of like an enormous El Camino (which I don’t even think have back seats, but whatever). I made a wrong turn in trying to get around the traffic and found myself stuck on a road, going the wrong way, unable to turn around and having pissed off a few drivers in the process. Next thing I know, I’m in the passenger’s seat and there’s a 400 pound man driving my car. He manages to get the car turned around, going back in the right direction. However, while we’re stopped at a traffic light, I politely tell him that we’ll be getting out of the car now, and he grabs my wrist tight and says, “Oh no you won’t.” And that’s when I realize he intends to rape me, right there in front of the kids. I stay cool and begin looking for a way to escape with the kids and then realize I can’t escape with the kids unless I kill this guy. I start looking for something in the car to stab or bludgeon him with and realize that I might be convicted of manslaughter and have my kids taken away if I kill him before he rapes me. Just as I begin to panic, I wake up.
