Not Good
Today was not a good day. Andrew, Lucia, and Mom came to visit, which was both great and awful, because seeing Lucia just makes me frantically want to go home. I was so miserable after her departure that my pulse went up enough to alarm the nurse, who advised me that getting so upset was not beneficial to me or the baby. Not good.
Then, on a day when Andrew brought breakfast but I had no outside (edible) food coming to me for either lunch or dinner, the selections were the following: a hamburger for lunch (completely inedible, so unappetizing I had to cover it up on the dish) and a chicken breast dry enough to be a scouring sponge for dinner (75% inedible—I had to eat something). Not good.
I was weighed this morning, and I’m teetering on the edge of a New Frontier: 149 pounds. Not good. (Actually, in truth, this is neither good nor bad, since that’s only 29 pounds total so far. It just shocked me.)
Then, this afternoon, I had an eensy bit of spotting; however, on a floor where bedbound pregnant girls routinely have gushing bleeds, it didn’t even raise an eyebrow from the nurses. Still, not good.
And it is clear now that I will be staying until the birth. My doctor is back in town and came to talk early this morning. Though she clearly does not want to keep me, she can’t let me go back to Park Slope; she, like everyone else, painted a nightmare scenario of the next bleed being the big one, of trying to get to the hospital, losing a lot of blood, and having something terrible happen to the baby. She said I could move to a private room on a different floor ($400/night), or find a place to stay in the neighborhood, but I could not go home. Andrew and I are half-heartedly discussing the second option, but much as I would like to not be in a hospital, I also don’t want to suddenly move Lucia to an unfamiliar place where her entire world will be turned upside down. The nurse who talked to me afterward was also pretty adamant that the best place for me to be was right here. All of it: not surprising, but not good.
I’ll be 35 weeks on Thursday, which is a good threshold to get past. But there are still two weeks after that to get through. Not good. But in a way it will be good to get through them, because then the baby will be born at full term (more or less; 37 is the magic number with complete previa). Surrounded as I am by marginal previas and complete previas and high-risk twins and low amniotic fluid sacs and exclusive talk of c-sections, on a floor where women basically sit and wait for something bad to happen, it is easy to forget that pregnancy isn’t supposed to be this way—and wasn’t, my first time around. Not good. Not good at all.
I’ll end on a bright(ish) note of It Could Be Worse: I could be stuck in a hospital in an unfamiliar city for a month, as my current roommate was when her previa was discovered in a sudden, horrendous bleed while she was on vacation. Or, as the nurse told me today, I could have been in the hospital two years ago, when, because of swine flu, NY State prohibited all visitors under twelve years old—so there were high-risk pregnant women who didn’t see their other children for weeks or months. The nurse said they tried to bring the women to the lobby for ten-minute visits, but even this wasn’t always possible.
Not good. But at least those are two things I can leave off the roster of my own depressing day.
Then, on a day when Andrew brought breakfast but I had no outside (edible) food coming to me for either lunch or dinner, the selections were the following: a hamburger for lunch (completely inedible, so unappetizing I had to cover it up on the dish) and a chicken breast dry enough to be a scouring sponge for dinner (75% inedible—I had to eat something). Not good.
I was weighed this morning, and I’m teetering on the edge of a New Frontier: 149 pounds. Not good. (Actually, in truth, this is neither good nor bad, since that’s only 29 pounds total so far. It just shocked me.)
Then, this afternoon, I had an eensy bit of spotting; however, on a floor where bedbound pregnant girls routinely have gushing bleeds, it didn’t even raise an eyebrow from the nurses. Still, not good.
And it is clear now that I will be staying until the birth. My doctor is back in town and came to talk early this morning. Though she clearly does not want to keep me, she can’t let me go back to Park Slope; she, like everyone else, painted a nightmare scenario of the next bleed being the big one, of trying to get to the hospital, losing a lot of blood, and having something terrible happen to the baby. She said I could move to a private room on a different floor ($400/night), or find a place to stay in the neighborhood, but I could not go home. Andrew and I are half-heartedly discussing the second option, but much as I would like to not be in a hospital, I also don’t want to suddenly move Lucia to an unfamiliar place where her entire world will be turned upside down. The nurse who talked to me afterward was also pretty adamant that the best place for me to be was right here. All of it: not surprising, but not good.
I’ll be 35 weeks on Thursday, which is a good threshold to get past. But there are still two weeks after that to get through. Not good. But in a way it will be good to get through them, because then the baby will be born at full term (more or less; 37 is the magic number with complete previa). Surrounded as I am by marginal previas and complete previas and high-risk twins and low amniotic fluid sacs and exclusive talk of c-sections, on a floor where women basically sit and wait for something bad to happen, it is easy to forget that pregnancy isn’t supposed to be this way—and wasn’t, my first time around. Not good. Not good at all.
I’ll end on a bright(ish) note of It Could Be Worse: I could be stuck in a hospital in an unfamiliar city for a month, as my current roommate was when her previa was discovered in a sudden, horrendous bleed while she was on vacation. Or, as the nurse told me today, I could have been in the hospital two years ago, when, because of swine flu, NY State prohibited all visitors under twelve years old—so there were high-risk pregnant women who didn’t see their other children for weeks or months. The nurse said they tried to bring the women to the lobby for ten-minute visits, but even this wasn’t always possible.
Not good. But at least those are two things I can leave off the roster of my own depressing day.
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