One Recumbent Mommy: A Humorous Encounter with Bedrest

Prologue

My second pregnancy, confirmed in July 2008, started out just like any other- the confirmatory blood test, the obligatory post-dinner purge in the toilet bowl, the necessary and all-important 3 hour nap from 4:30 pm-7:30 pm right before retiring to bed for the night at 8 pm.  You know, the usual. My routine of popping a mint Tic-Tac to stave off nausea first thing in the morning, and my bizarre only when I’m pregnant love affair with white bread was also familiar. All in all it was a typical first trimester for me.  We were excited that Seth, nearly two, was going to have a little brother or sister and we hoped he or she would be healthy.

When I headed for my 20 week ultrasound on November 11, 2008, that’s when things started to go awry.  During the routine ultrasound to check the baby’s anatomy, the technician determined that my cervix had been funneling.  That meant that the top of my cervix, the part closest to my uterus and the baby, was beginning to open and only the bottom was still holding tight.  Unusual because this is not normally how one finds out she has what is called incompetent cervix. Usually, you end up losing your baby before receiving this type of diagnosis.  I’d had a normal pregnancy with Seth.  If I had incompetent cervix, why weren’t there any noticeable problems then?  Were we just really lucky?  Lots of questions, but seemingly no answers.  As I tried to process this information, I called my husband Philip who was at work at the time, and told him there might be a slight problem.    Little did we know then how much of a roller coaster this would actually be.

Did the issue have to do with the 11 (yes, eleven) bags of raked leaves I’d lugged to the curb that Tuesday morning?  Or maybe it was the 20 pound play garage I had dragged around Costco a couple days earlier, a gift for Seth’s upcoming second birthday.  Since it was so close to Christmas, carts were at a premium and it was every man for himself. Eat or be eaten!  I was assured repeatedly that none of the heavy lifting had had any bearing on my new diagnosis.

After it was confirmed that I’d be spending more time in the hospital than we had originally anticipated, Philip decided it would be a good idea to get me a laptop so that I’d be able to communicate with the outside world while recumbent.  At first, I used the laptop to check my personal email account and to periodically check in at my work account, too.  Being a teacher, I couldn’t exactly work from home with any degree of success, so my position was filled by a long-term substitute.  After a couple of weeks had passed and my prognosis became more stable, Philip came up with the great idea that I should begin blogging to help keep our friends and family in the loop and up to date on how things were going with the pregnancy.  Philip had dabbled in some blogging and found that it was a good way to spend his time playing around while he was supposed to be working, so he figured I should give it a try, too. I had never really thought of myself as a writer, but the more I wrote, the more I enjoyed writing and found that it really helped me pass the time and stay sane during my hospital stay.  Having readers comment on each post also boosted my desire to keep writing because I was getting immediate feedback.  It didn’t hurt that the blog was private, so only people I knew got invites and they had to be nice because I knew where they lived!

Now you, dear reader, can share in the privilege of reading about all of the personal, psychological, and yes, anatomical issues as I experienced them at the time. What follows is an edited version of the blog that I wrote while I was one recumbent Mommy.

One Recumbent

Mommy

A humorous, and at times poignant, look at the ups and downs of long-term hospital bed rest during pregnancy

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2008

Some things to know about my writing before we get started:

I don’t follow grammar rules, mechanics rules, or really any other rule related to writing. I am, however, a pretty good speller.

I’m, a, huge, fan, of, commas, and (parentheses). I love a good run-on sentence, too!

I also tend to write one long paragraph, because I’ve never quite been sure where one of my thoughts ends and another begins. Therefore, you’ll need to bear with me if I fail to break up my thoughts or if I just randomly put in paragraph breaks.

In addition, I have a pretty good sense of humor, which is an excellent asset to have if you ever need to be on bed rest—ESPECIALLY if you have the pleasure of using a bedpan or a bedside commode (so formal!). My favorite part of the bedpan is feeling it move as my electric air mattress inflates and deflates to periodically redistribute my weight. Picture a giant suctioned to a kiddie pool during an earthquake, with the pool waves lapping up against his behind. That’s a rough estimate of using the bedpan while your bed is desperately trying to overturn your prized waste receptacle.

The baby (boy/girl—your guess is as good as mine) I am currently trying to keep under lock and key is lovingly referred to by me and my husband Philip as The Resident. Because we didn’t want to know the gender, we needed to decide on a preliminary name to call the baby. We did the same thing with our son, Seth, although he was The Occupant.

Most of the entries are in order, but some may be out of order due to my writing three weeks’ worth of entries in just three days.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2008

Admission

Not a confession, mind you, an admission. Me. How this whole thing got started in the first place. The middle of my 20th week happened to coincide with a day off from school for Veteran’s Day, so I decided to make my 20-week ultrasound appointment and my 20-week OB appointment back to back for that morning. The radiology place and my OB’s office are literally a block away from one another, so I decided to make the ultrasound appointment first (9 AM) and follow it up with the OB (10:15 AM). That way, *IF* anything was found to be out of the ordinary during the ultrasound, at least I’d be going directly to my doctor afterwards. Little did I know at that point that I needn’t have even made the appointment, since I never even saw my doctor that day (she literally wrote up the order for me to be admitted to the hospital, and off I went).

Turns out that during the ultrasound they found that my cervix was open (not a good thing at 20 weeks) and they needed to close it. I agreed. So from the radiologist’s office, I went to my doctor’s office, then headed to the hospital. All the while I was thinking this was no big deal. I simply listened to what I was told and followed directions. I really didn’t think this would turn into full-fledged hospital bed rest. Get this—I even went as far as to call Philip at work and tell him, Don’t panic, but I’m on my way to the hospital right now. My cervix is open and it shouldn’t be. No, you don’t need to leave work. I’ll call you once I know more. Of course, he was there at my side before I could say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Anything to get out of work, I tell ya.

Anyway, it’s a good thing he was there because I’m a visual learner, which means I learn best by seeing or reading things or by actually doing them. I’m not so great at absorbing important information that I hear unless I also write it down. It took me a while to figure that out because I kept forgetting to write it down. Philip is an excellent auditory learner (among other things), so he was able to listen to what the doctors told us and then repeat it to others in a coherent manner, whereas I was simply just making stuff up.

After the doctor told us what the procedure would be, the nurses transferred me up to the High Risk Perinatal floor (HRP) for one night to await my cerclage (Google it if you really want to know the specifics—this is a family blog after all). I was brought to the smallest shared room on the face of the Earth for the remainder of the day and night, and I was told to call for help when I needed it—especially with my new best friend, the bedpan. I was also told that I was not allowed to eat or drink after midnight, so I made sure to have them bring me lunch and dinner.

Now, remember, it’s been three weeks since I was admitted, and this is the first time I’m writing these things down, so keep in mind I could be making stuff up right and left, and the only person that would know the truth is Philip. I’ll do my best to stick to the facts.

That night and into the next morning I was having contractions, so the doctor called off the cerclage. Going forward with the surgery with consistent contractions, he said, could lead to rupture, infection, premature labor, fetal loss, and possibly a not-so-happy ending for me if an infection spread to my bloodstream. Again, I agreed. At that point they started giving me shots to calm down the contractions, IV fluids to keep me hydrated, and took a wait-and-see approach.

A day later, when the contractions were coming three minutes apart, they pumped me with more muscle relaxant (which has a nice stinging sensation as it is being injected) and added a medley of antibiotics to my IV. My OB and the High Risk OB both came in to talk to me about options. Basically, I got the doomsday talk from one side and the lighter fare from the other side. Now my body just had to decide whose side it was on. Thankfully, it decided to cooperate with the lighter fare so that we could eventually go ahead with the surgery.

After The Great Debate between the two doctors was over, the decision was to monitor the contractions for a couple of days and then take me off everything and see how I responded. If all went well, they’d check my cervix again before deciding to definitely go ahead with the cerclage. The following Wednesday came, and during the check the doctor could see that something needed to be done (sparing some details here). He decided he needed to reduce the amount of amniotic fluid in me, so he got ready to do what’s called an amnio reduction. It’s similar to letting out most of the air in a balloon, or more precisely, draining the majority of water out of a really full water balloon. Think of it as reverse-basting a turkey. Not really my idea of a good time, but hey, you do what you have to do. Philip was there with me, and I’m VERY proud of him (although if you ask him, I’m sure he would tell you he’d have rather been at work!!).

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the procedure, but it was relatively quick, and the anticipation was far worse than the actual procedure. After the procedure (which was successful), the doctor scheduled me for my cerclage the next day (Thursday). On Thursday, I got up and pretty much waited for the nurses to come get me and take me to the O.R. They had scheduled me for 11:15 AM. Philip was working from home, so he said he’d come by after one of his conference calls, which seemed to work out well.

At 9:45 they came to prep me for surgery. Now mind you, when you go for surgery they tell you to leave everything behind in your room. Naturally, the reason for this is so you can’t blame them for sewing you up with your glasses still inside you. It stands to reason that if you don’t have your glasses, you can’t really see what in the heck is going on to begin with. Anyway, since I had stopped wearing my contacts and switched to my glasses that first night in the hospital, I left my glasses in my room until I returned from surgery.

Now, as an aside, I CAN still see clearly without my glasses as long as the thing I am looking at is no more than about a foot from my face. After that, things get a bit blurry, but I can still tell what it is (kind of like the eye chart at the eye doctor that never changes and you read every year, thus never really knowing if your eyesight is good or if you just have a really good memory—can’t they change that once in a while??).

Anyway, as soon as the guy from transport came to get me, things started to get blurry (with my eyes, not my memory). They had me shuffle on over from my bed to the stretcher thing and then rolled me down the hall and down to the OB holding pen to await my surgery prep. Because I couldn’t see, I sort of just made things up about what I MIGHT have been seeing, and who I MIGHT have been bothering by rudely staring at them without realizing it.

Then it was time for all sorts of monitoring and poking. Blood pressure, pulse, IV, and the (some might say–not me) dreaded anesthesiologist. I say not me because for the most part, I’m fine with needles as long as I don’t look at it or think about it and as long as the person providing this lovely service is somewhat competent and confident. I’ve had many allergy shots, vaccinations, flu shots, and blood draws over the years, so it usually doesn’t faze me.

So, back to the story at hand. About 24 people (none of whom I could clearly see) came in to introduce themselves at some point to let me know who they were and what part of my body they were responsible for that morning. Among them was a third-year medical student who said that she would be in surgery observing the cerclage. I said, sure, no problem. But I wonder, what would have happened if I’d said no? No matter, they give you a nice blue sheet of paper on which you basically sign your life away and agree to have the cast of Scrubs film you. No joke. Since this is a teaching hospital, you never know who might be present or who might be filming, photographing, or otherwise narrating your surgery for educational purposes. As an educator myself (albeit one who’s probably no longer getting paid), who am I to deny the children a proper education?

After signing my