A festive freak-out

It’s Christmas – the one day of the year everyone eats so much that we all look 31 weeks’ pregnant. Hooray!

A good week, winding down to a fortnight off from work – fantastic! It suddenly dawned on me that I will be coming back to work for a little less than a month, and that will be quite tricky I imagine.

Only because I am now starting to feel the weight of, not the world on my shoulders, but this baby girl on my girth.

Good Lord, it’s difficult getting around and the sudden effort required to do so catches you quite by surprise.

Want to vacuum the house? Awesome, not a problem. Until you get half-way through and need to sit down and get your breath back, while saying to yourself that you’ll finish the other half after you’ve had a nap.

Want to drive to work? Easy. Do it most days a week. Until you try and get the seatbelt in a comfortable position below your enormous belly, all the while wondering what the hell might go wrong if you were in an accident and that belt snapped across your abdomen.

And getting out of the car? Just give me 10 minutes to pry myself loose from the driver’s seat. Brace against steering wheel, swivel, swing legs onto ground, grunt, push upwards, grunt louder, stand upright, grimace. I feel 108.

Then my lower back twinges, or my hips go numb, and I feel 208.

I am also starting to get some practical things done, like getting the car seat fitted, packing a bag for hospital (waa!) and finally organising maternity leave through Centrelink.

Doing these things, apart from making it all so bloody real, also reinforces how momentous the change will be for our family in 2012.

Soon and within the space of about six weeks, J leaves day care after four years, starts kindy and we welcome his new baby sister into the world.

I stop work for an extended period for the first time in my life and I become the main carer of a tiny baby girl.

I discard a comfortable routine that involved supreme organisation, accomplishing a stimulating variety of duties at work, multi-tasking and basically having control over every aspect of my life for what is likely to be a chaotic mess of sleeplessness, a crying baby I fear I won’t be able to understand and patronising piles of washing.

Oh. My. God.

The real and the realest

So this is getting realer.

I think hitting 30 weeks makes it so.

That is, like, 10 weeks until go time. When it all happens. The really real part.

Say 10 weeks, and my mind is instantly hurtling on the express train to Freak Out Town.

Say two and a half months, and it sounds so far in the distance, I can’t even begin to think about hospital bags or birth plans.

And it might not even be 10 weeks, it could be eight. It could be four. It could be...NOW!

Breathe.

We started our five-week course of ante-natal classes this week.

There are eight couples in our group. As always, it’s the usual completely random group of people who wouldn’t normally ever end up in the same room as each other, but who have been thrown together by some miraculous clash of family planning.

And as always, the first week is a true study in the awkwardness of human social interaction.

“So, we’re going to start by going around the room and introducing ourselves,” the midwife announces in the beginning.

The groan is only slightly muffled by a general waftage of frightened politness settling over everyone in the room.

The women in each couple do the talking, telling us how many weeks they are, who their OB/GYN is and why they chose that doctor.

I am among the smaller bumps in the room and instantly find myself doing that terrible thing that is rife among parents: comparing. As much as you rail against it, you just cannot help casting a furtive glance down at your average-sized 30-week-old bump when the lady across the room from you says she is 26 weeks and is clearly ENORMOUS compared to you.

We talk about when to ring the hospital, what to pack in your bag (shit, better do that soon), what complications can happen and we watch two videos which both carry misleading soundtracks (soothing massage music, not blood-curdling screams), a misleading cast (disturbingly hairy-down-there German women in baggy jumpers) and misleading lengths (evil editing making them run for less than seven minutes: yes please!).

Can someone PLEASE produce a birthing video that is newer than 1987, can someone please NOT overlay a ridiculous audio track composed by Swami Shanda and his wailing whale orchestra and can someone please in god’s name shave these women before filming them!

And apart from an emotional weekend where I felt quite sorry for myself and longed for: silence, sleep, massages on the hour, a new spine, exquisite food, a quiet house minus a four-year-old and more sleep – all in equal measure, preferably at once, not much else of note to report this week.

I got a bit teary and snappy over the weekend, which I find is unfortunately a regular-ish occurrence as the lack of sleep catches up. In a big yucky wave.

Something tells me I better get used to that feeling...

Dog bites neurotic woman

At last, an eventful week!


Maybe it’s the journo in me, but I have felt quite bad for the two people who read this blog that I have not provided anything very exciting – or newsworthy – in this little nano-millimetre of information superhighway asphalt.


Well how does a sudden decrease in foetal movement scare and dog bite grab you? Huh?

I reckon the News of the World or any other quality News Ltd tabloid would just eat that stuff up for breakfast.


The baby has been moving like crazy every day for about three or four weeks now.

Most nights, during bouts of insomnia, I will feel her bump and bubble around under my skin.

Every day without fail after I have my mid-morning cup of tea, she will move; and if I have a particularly big lunch, or anything cold, she will continue her featherweight boxing training inside my abdomen.

They aren’t flutters or little wispy movements, they are normally pretty intense whacks that are often visible from the outside.

One day last week, it got to midday and none of this had happened.

It got to 2pm and I rang T to ask what I should do.

I had felt one, maybe two, tiny flutters down really low, but nowhere near as much movement as
she had displayed every day for the past month.

I was worried. And my mind wasn’t helping.

I rang our hospital. The midwife told me to see how I went for the next few hours and come in after work.

At 2.10pm I realised I couldn’t concentrate on work, thinking the worst about what was, or what was not, going on inside my uterus.

I left work and drove the 25 minutes up to the hospital, through torrential rain, I might add.

It was a terrible drive. I was sobbing, desperate at the anxiety of it all. Convinced there would be no heartbeat to find.

I had gathered myself by the time I arrived and thankfully found the last park in the parking lot.

I had also seen six garbage trucks on the highway on the drive up, which I was madly trying to tell myself was a good omen, as our four-year-old son is quite the garbage truck fanatic.

The same midwife I spoke to was at the desk. She efficiently put her paperwork down and immediately took me into a room before hooking me up to two transponder things, one to measure the heartbeat and the other to measure kicks.

She got another ultra-sound wand thing to locate the heartbeat.

“It might take me a while to find,” she said, fully aware of the tension in the room.

I held my breath.

There it was. A heartbeat.

And, seven seconds later, what was that?

A kick.

I was now lying down – for the first time that day – and she kicked.

Why didn’t I bloody lie down at work and save myself all this worry!

They hook you up for at least 20 minutes to chart movement and heart rates and I am pretty sure she had kicked no less than 25 times in the first three minutes.

Great.

I look like a neurotic who is plainly having a very naughty, troublesome child!

The midwife was really good and while I was certainly looking for it, was not patronising at all.

They must see that sort of stuff a lot, right?

And we both agreed, we would rather it was confirmed, one way or the other, instead of wondering, all the while consumed with rising panic.

“So what do I do next time, to save me coming up here every week freaking out (in case it happens again),” I asked, thinking that actually it would be kind of nice to have an informal weekly appointment with the heartbeat monitor. Are they available to purchase for home use??

The midwife just told me to watch for an entire day and if there was no movement into the night, definitely call again and come on up. Good lord, what a fright.

Of course, in context of losing a baby last year, this sort of thing is reasonable and to be expected. But bloody hell it frightens the life right out of you at the time.

As for the damn dog bite, and ensuing tetanus shot... we have had a certain breed of dog my entire life. Growing up, we had three Miniature Schnauzers, adorable things.



We plan on getting one - look at that face: wouldn't you? -when the baby is about one and not on the floor crawling. I happened to drive past an old man walking a beautiful one on my way home from work one evening.

I pulled into a side street and walked back to him to ask if he got the dog locally.

I should have seen the crazy glint in that dog’s eye from the beginning. She startled as soon as I came into view and looked on edge immediately. But she was on a lead and he held onto her while we chatted for about 10 minutes about the breed, where he got her and previous Schnauzers we had both had.

Clearly, I was no threat to her master. So I asked if I could pat her. Stupidly, I did not wait for the answer and just bent down to offer the back of my hand for her to sniff.



That movement coincided with him saying “Ah well now, I would be a bit careful about doing that” and BANG! She sniffed and then immediately nipped at my knuckles, prompting a small circular bruise and three puncture marks to show up on the skin at once.



Yep, puncture marks. No blood, but puncture marks. Great. This was going to mean tetanus.

I scurried off after the old man offered a belated and half-hearted apology and called a health advice info line when I got home. The RN on the line advised me to go to emergency within four hours and that tetanus was a Category A drug, and therefore completely safe in pregnancy.

So, with no real time to Google – and I am thankful now for that blessing – T and I took ourselves off to the local hospital. We went in at 7pm and came out at 7.25pm, which must be a new record for an emergency department. Me with a makeshift bandaid covering the day’s fourth puncture mark, this one from a tetanus needle and T with the car keys to drive the patient home.

I asked the doctor, who was American and looked to be about 11, four times if tetanus was safe. On each occasion he said yes. It was only a really minor bite, but we all thought it would be better to be safe than sorry.

Mum asked later if the baby was now immunised and I have no idea. Is she?

It's the same old song...

Well, groovers, we are going to go way back to 1965 for the soundtrack to this blog post and hit you with one of that era’s classics.

Here is The Four Tops singing It’s The Same Old Song.

Ok so upon reading the actual lyrics of that song, I see that it is actually about a girl leaving a guy and leaving him with nothing but their favourite song. At least it wasn’t a medical condition that required topical cream and a course of antibiotics.

The song doesn’t, in fact, have that much to do with an Australian woman who is seven months pregnant, trying in vain to come up with new topics for her weekly blog and being quite surprised that she is feeling so consistently well...hence the sameness of the song she is merrily singing in her head.

Not that there is a song about pregnancy that I am singing per se, and no one wants to hear me sing, but...oh, Nirvana’s second studio album.

Oh, how I wish I could complain and make these posts interesting! Haha.

I feel freaking fantastic and even moreso with lots of people telling me that. Such reinforcement.

I feel like Nigella Lawson. I am huge, but people are loving it and flattering my fattening left, right and centre!

Sure I am tired, almost like the first trimester, and sure I have a sore back...but who cares when people are paying you compliments?

I saw the midwife today – I am seeing my doc, a midwife or hospital nurse every fortnight from here on in.

The heartbeat was 146, the lowest so far, but perfectly fine; and my blood pressure was 110 over 70 (just in case you were thinking of asking).

She said the tightening I had been feeling may be Braxton Hicks (what?), and I just thought they were the baby pushing her little body out against my belly.

I had three things to ask her. The first was my quite irrational fear of the bay being choked by the umbilical cord.

She moves a lot and for the first 10 seconds, I smile. I love it. Then that bloody annoying receptor in my brain goes haywire: she’s moving a lot, therefore the chances of her getting tangled are greater. Quick, worry, panic!

The midwife, of course, could not completely reassure me. Yes it happens, no she hasn’t seen it happen, unless in actual labour, at which point monitoring would pick it up.

Clearly, I just have to deal with that and try not to waste so much time worrying about it.

Secondly I asked about whooping cough. Apparently where I live in Queensland, whooping cough is “rife”, she said. Weirdly enough, it is also a region with one of the lowest rates of whooping cough immunisation.

T and I have been talking about quarantining our baby for the first six weeks. We are asking family who will be visiting to get immunised and now trying to deal with what we will do if neighbours or others randomly pop in during those first six weeks.

Clearly, after today, I am not taking any chances. You want to see the baby and you aren’t immunised? I will hold her up at the front window. Otherwise, it’s not long to wait.

I am guessing those six weeks will be a complete and utter blur anyway, so I am not going to be desperate to take her shopping on day five anyway.

And the third question was about the Vitamin K and Hepatitis B vaccines they ask parents for permission to give newborns in hospital. I am pretty sure J had Vitamin K, but the Hep B was a new one.

Part of me does worry about putting these things in a pure, new body, but a greater part of me worries more about the alternative of not doing it.

So we have agreed to tick yes to both.

Third trimester, here I am

Welcome to the third trimester. 27 weeks. Eeek.

Feeling really well still, although alarmingly like I have been pregnant for about 15 years.

I think it’s just the anticipation of meeting our baby.

Now that my family and I are feeling her kick (a lot), there is a renewed sense of impatience at seeing what this little thing causing such comedic belly protuberances actually looks like.

It’s human nature, isn’t it? You hear a noise, you feel something brushing against you – your need to know needs to be satiated, your curiosity must be satisfied, no matter the cat-killing consequences! And besides, I've always been a dog person anyway.

To that end, we are psyched to have a 3D scan done at 30 weeks. The last time we saw our baby in 3D was at the 18-week morphology scan and, frankly, she looked like an embryonic kangaroo.

Mama, can you hear me?

So, personally, I would like these new, updated images for a teeny bit of peace of mind and some assurance that I am not, in fact, giving birth to a hopping marsupial. Although I am sure I will be able to provide it a roomy pouch, given the frightening stretch of my stomach skin right now.

We often say how J looks so like his 3D images even today, when we might sneak a stare at him while he’s sleeping or watching TV.

So it would be nice to recreate that with our daughter.

I am not feeling uncomfortable really at all – even while camping in some pretty stinky humidity and near-summer yuckness over the weekend. It was camping with benefits (ensuite, swimming pools, convenience store 40 seconds away etc) but camping nonetheless.

My head almost exploded while helping to put the tent up and I was worried that I hadn’t felt the baby move much that day, but as T reminded me: think of the pregnant women in Africa hauling clay pots of water or rocks or whatever they do at sun-up and sundown, while sweeping their huts out with stick-brooms so short they are forced to bend at an inhumane waisty angle while picking cotton or delivering blocks of salt up 25 flights of stairs or...actually she didn’t say that, but I got her point.

A few minutes’ exertion hammering in three tent pegs in the midday sun was not going to harm my baby.

I am experiencing a bit of heartburn but it’s probably a good reminder to ix-nay on the alarming quantities of Milo I am consuming.

Straight. Neat. Out of the can. I cannot get enough of it.

I am seeing a physio every few weeks, who is giving me new stretches to do each time I visit.

I am really forcing myself to take some time, even if it’s 10 minutes a day, to do these exercises strengthening my pelvic floor, transverse abdominal, back and leg muscles.

I squat, I pull my legs up and out in very unattractive hip-widening positions, I do yoga’s child, happy baby and cat and I sit on the fit ball while doing bicep curls with hand weights (must do that tonight) because I am convinced that it will make some sort of difference when it comes time for the labour.

And it is certainly making a difference in terms of managing my back pain in the meantime, so I think it’s a good thing. I probably should be doing more, but it’s better than nothing.

Plus I am wearing an SI belt, which stands for the fascinating term “sacroiliac”, a joint in the pelvis that supports the spine. I wear it all day at work and when I exercise after work. Sure it looks kinda funny under some clothes, but I reckon you can get away with a hell of a lot when you are pregnant – and I don’t much care that I have this thick beige elastic band sitting low around my hips: it has helped support that dodgy left pelvic bone.

Otherwise, there is enormous relief at reaching this point of the pregnancy. The point where, if something disastrous happened, our baby would have a very good chance of survival outside the womb.

But, of course, anything can happen.

I can never have 100% faith that all will be well, certainly not after what happened to us last year.

But every day that passes in this pregnancy makes that uncertainty a little less intense. And that is truly wonderful.

A letter of complaint

Dear Sir/Madam,

I write to complain about the human body, female model.

I am the owner of the above product and I wish to draw the manufacturer’s attention to the fact that it is not well-equipped at all to deal with the rigours of pregnancy.

The User Manual lists pregnancy as one of the Extra Conditions the basic model can withstand perfectly well. It is right there, in black and white, alongside puberty, ageing, the entire decade from age 18 to 28 sustaining varying degrees of alcohol or ridiculous footwear-related injury, permanent stomach constriction from too much elastic belt wear in the 1980s or scalp tear from hair-teasing in the same decade.

I fully admit my particular model rolled off the production line some 35 years ago. Perhaps in some markets, this could be seen as too old to be shouldering, or wombing, the burden of a baby.

But no one, body manufacturer or not, would dare to suggest in polite, 2011 company that women should get their child-bearing duties done before the age of 25.

And actually, I doubt younger versions of your product do any better at this pregnancy game either.

The fact is the female human body is not well-designed at all when it comes to having a baby.

Even the moments before conception are fraught.

The female body is equipped with the Uterine Attack Force (my term) designed to seek and destroy sperm, making it a medical miracle that fertilisation even happens in the first place.

Fortunately I am in a same-sex relationship and conceived via IVF, so the closest I came to having live sperm in my body was sitting next to my male work colleague at the neighouring desk.

And thank goodness for that.

There are clear exterior appearance indicators, also, that the female body cannot deal with pregnancy.

Stretch marks blister otherwise-normal skin (even moreso in younger, more taut models – not me); water is retained causing unattractive bloating and an alarming inability to wear shoes, while necks thicken and the walking gait of a pregnant lady becomes a Waddlegate of presidential and scandalous proportions.

Then there’s the extra weight gained. Strangely enough, they tell you that 90% of that weight is fluid, not the actual baby. SO WHAT IS THE POINT? What the hell is that fluid for and why is there so much of it? Baby, in the real world, you want a house with a pool, you've got to WORK for it! You don't get it just like that *snap*.

Knowing the extra weight is predominantly liquid is cold comfort when you stand gingerly on the scales and see you’ve stacked on 30 kilos. Actually, not me, I have put on 10 so far, but I am eating Milo by the kilo and there’s still time!

Internally, many hormones wreak havoc with emotions and acceptable levels of the universally applied mental health Crazy Scale. Often within the space of mere seconds, pregnant women will explode with rage at being woken from a nap, before sobbing into their seventh bowl of cereal after watching a Huggies ad.

Control, support and dignity functions are ALL compromised. Surely, these are structural basics when designing a product of such importance?

The hormone relaxin is conveniently released during pregnancy. No doubt this is some male engineer’s brilliant idea. He probably thought he was doing something nice, by making the body release a hormone designed to make everything musculo-skeletal more stretchy as the body expands.

You know what, mister, that’s great for the actual birth of the baby (which we will come to later) but in the meantime: THAT FREAKIN RELAXIN HAS CAUSED MY LEFT PELVIC BONE TO DETACH FROM THE TAILBONE AND TILT FORWARD. IT'S ALSO CAUSED SWAY BACK AND KNEES AND HIPS THAT CRUNCH TOGETHER WHEN I LIE SIDEWAYS IN BED, CAUSING ME ENDLESS BACK PAIN, GRUMPINESS AND SLEEPLESS NIGHTS, OK?

Get thee to your drawing board.

Then there’s the whole watermelon and garden hose thing.

I don’t know which genius decided that a 50-centimetre round circle can fit through a “thing” roughly seven centimetres in diameter. And let me tell you, Googling “average circumference of a vagina” just now has really put me off my dinner.

Alright, it stretches during delivery. Fine. But with that amount of stretching, there are little drawbacks like PAIN and TEARING!

You remember the drawing board?

So, in closing, I would like to urgently urge the entire manufacturing team to begin designing a new model that can safely and easily accommodate pregnancy.

This model should have a penis.

Sincerely,

Rebecca Marshall.

Tell me what it's going to be like

Perspective.

Don’t add hormones if you want it.

I think we have safely covered the fact previously that I am a worrier.

I analyse, I anticipate, I role play a variety of scenarios and I lay awake at night with a brain racing like a nitrous-fuelled Lamborghini at a time of day when my conscience should either be driving this Miss Daisy to sleep, or put that damn Buick in the garage for good, Earl!

I also consume large amounts of what I shall call twaffle related to anything I happen to be interested in at any given time. Twaffle is any and all manner of “information”, so questionable that it must come with its own set of inverted commas in this context.

It is most commonly derived from such respected sources as the internet, magazinary assortments of flippy book-type things often positioned near the check-out in supermarkets, the television, discussions with friends and any pop culture reference that I may notice.

Despite my sometime-intellectual logic shrouding this twaffle in wrapping paper made from many grains of salt, one other part of me also takes it as gospel to be believed unequivocally – until a new piece of twaffle comes along to dispel/replace it.

So, consequently, I am consuming many baby-related things: a documentary series on TV called One Born Every Minute, I am talking lots to women about their birth experiences (not their own, obviously, at least I don’t think that’s what we were talking about) and reading lots of baby books, magazines and – worst of all – the internet forum.

I even read a tabloid glossy story about some random Entertainment Tonight reporter in the US I had never heard of, just because she had a horrific IVF story.

It’s only human, I suppose, and perfectly natural to want to find things to relate to. Especially at a time when you are on a long-haul flight OUT of Comfort Zone, scared, vulnerable and trying vainly to set the scene in the role play in your head of your own baby’s delivery!

Blocking, we need blocking people!

There are some horrible labour stories out there. I have watched some of them on TV and heard others in person.

There are also some great ones. But they are like headlines (I am a journalist) – the worst ones sell, the worst ones stick in your memory.

And perspective is almost impossible here – damn it, just when you need it most! – because birth is such a subjective thing.

Even if you could duplicate a delivery, every woman would describe a different experience. Because every woman is different.

Pain thresholds, transition speed, dilation rates, complications, interventions, time lapsed, music, hypnobirth, water, knees, gas...every single thing is different for each woman.

So how the fuck do you prepare?? I expect it to be one of life’s most memorable flight-or-fight moments. Will I soar or punch someone in the head?

I know it probably sounds ridiculous to waste so much head space thinking about something that on the day will be beyond my control. But it’s in my nature to prepare as much as I can, even if it is mentally. Hard to do when all you can visualise is informed solely by dodgy twaffle.

I keep asking T what the pain is like, where exactly it can be felt, during a contraction. I take comfort in the fact that she says she can’t really remember, even though I suspect she is deliberately lying.

And I also cling to her words when she tells me that feeling of release and relief when the baby’s head and then its body eventually do come out is the best in the world.

I also had my glucose screen test for gestational diabetes this week. I get the results in a few days and even though I feel enormous, I don’t think I am abnormally obese with a big sugary baby, so hopefully that means I’ll be clear.

I have stopped taking Elevit daily and now only take one or two a week. It saves both money and my bowel, frankly. Iron and I aren’t so much firm friends as firm enemies, if you get my drift, and Elevit contains a whopping 60mg per tab.

I had a bit of a scare today when I hardly felt the baby move at all. Triggers for movement are normally after I eat, when I lie down or exercise. But by about lunchtime today I realised I hadn’t felt much at all. I called T and expressed some worry, hung up and then felt the baby move.

It was much lighter than before, and certainly much less than we had both felt last night when I thought I was channelling John Hurt in Alien and expected to see our baby bursting through my skin.

The “trusty” old internet forum came to my rescue, saying babies can have quiet days, but that no movement is obviously a concern after a day or more.

Actually, that was the third forum I found. You’ve got to keep Googling until you find a diagnosis you like.