which way to go

I'm having a difficult time here, friends.  I do not want another c-section, I really don't.  It is not as if I have anything against them I just really wanted this shot at having a conventional labor and delivery. I have this vision in my mind of her being born and getting her plopped on my chest all pink and screaming, Leif by my side as amazed as I am.  You know, the exact opposite of our experience with George.  The closer we get to August 16th the less likely it seems like that is going to happen for us. Aside from some erratic contractions each morning that seem to fade away after an hour or so, I don't feel as if we've made any progress.  She is still sitting super high, just under my ribs, and I am wondering if she will ever drop.  Until she does it seems unlikely that I can dilate that much without the pressure of her head to move the process along.  No dilation means no induction.

Of course, then there is the added pressure of knowing that if I have another c-section it pretty much locks me into one for the next pregnancy, should there be one.  That really sucks too.

The thing is that it isn't as if I have to get a c-section at this point. It would not be an issue for me at all if I had to have one but right now I don't.  I don't have a breech baby.  She isn't in any apparent distress. I'm a good candidate for a successful VBAC and my doctor feels comfortable waiting to see how things go on their own as long as I start getting non-stress tests twice a week.  But I am terrified of waiting.  So, so scared that something bad will happen.  Being part of a community of people who have had their babies die you begin to see all the ways in which tragedy occurs.

I keep thinking, what if I decide to wait for things to go on their own and there is a cord accident?  What then?  Or what if something happens during delivery?  These things happen, sadly.  Most of us know this from personal experience.

So I guess I'm looking for your opinions.  If you have lost a baby late in pregnancy and were term with a subsequent pregnancy, how long would you wait after forty weeks before inducing (if that was possible) or doing a c-section?  A week?  Two weeks?  Would you even wait until forty weeks or try to get the baby out earlier?

We just want her to get here alive and healthy and maybe I am tempting fate by putting too much emphasis on the method in which that happens.  I wish I had some sort of guarantee about how this is all going to turn out...

being sick sucks

Getting sick when you're 38 weeks and 6 days pregnant is no joke.  In fact, it lands you in Labor and Delivery getting IV rehydration while watching cable television.

I'll spare you all the gory details but let me just say that I started feeling sick early yesterday morning and it quickly progressed into a full blown stomach bug by mid-morning.  By mid-afternoon I was on the phone with my OB and she was telling me to go to the hospital for fluids, since I was completely unable to even keep water down, and for monitoring since I hadn't felt the baby moving quite as much as normal.  By the time I got to the hospital it had only been twelve hours since I started feeling sick but because I was so dehydrated already they had an incredibly difficult time finding a usable vein to start the IV.  First the nurse gave it a try, then the nurse anesthetist tried, and finally they had to call in the anesthesiologist to get it going.

Of course, we ended up being placed in a room two doors down from the room where we held George after he died.  The rooms all look identical and before we were even inside I was crying, remembering that short amount of time we had with him.  I don't mean to sound dramatic but it was pretty horrible.  Possibly if I was there under different circumstances it would have been less traumatizing but as it was, being there sick and somewhat concerned about this baby, I had a difficult time for the first hour or so. It was impossible not to allow myself to go back to the afternoon of March 31st, 2010 and visualize everything that happened.

We did not have to stay long, only about five hours or so.  At first the baby's heart rate was on the higher end of normal but as soon as they got the fluids flowing her rate fell back to her normal and stayed that way. At one point I was having pretty consistent mild contractions three minutes apart but, again, as I started getting rehydrated they tapered off.  In some ways it would have been nice to just be admitted and get this party started but really I am glad to have the time to come home and recoup my energy.

At my appointment with my OB this morning she said that because I had an elevated white blood count she thinks that I most likely picked up a virus, either through food or someone else, although no one else I've been around has been sick.  I'm just that lucky, I guess.  At this point I am feeling better but I still have some of the same, albeit milder, symptoms I was having yesterday.  Mostly I've been sleeping and trying to drink as much water as possible.  Oh, and eating dry Cheerios, that seems to be working fairly well for me.

Also, in other unfortunate news, my cervix is still closed.  I was really bummed about that because I had hoped that the contractions last night had at least caused some movement in the right direction towards getting labor underway.  Not so much.  Sometime this week my OB will be calling us to schedule our appointment for the c-section for next week.  I had my heart set on trying for a VBAC but Leif and I are terrified of waiting until after her due date for too long and if my cervix remains closed they cannot induce me because of my previous c-section scar.  As each day crawls by my anxiety about a cord accident and/or a failing placenta climbs.  We could continue to wait, getting NSTs and ultrasounds twice a week after 40 weeks but I'm not sure that my (or Leif's) anxiety can handle that.

As for now we wait and hope that my body starts to make a move on its own sometime this week.

Please body, get a move on, please, please, please.

wakefulness

Hello 3:30 AM, nice to see you again.  It used to be that we only briefly saw each other in passing on my way to the bathroom and on your way to being 3:31 AM but not so anymore.  We've become much more intimately acquainted than I had ever hoped to be, although you certainly have your charms.  You're quiet; no incessantly yapping dogs outside.  You're cool; I'm not sweating profusely just sitting in your company.  You're peaceful; there isn't much to do besides be with my thoughts.   So you certainly have your charms but still, I'd rather be sleeping next to my husband right now instead of sitting on the couch writing about a time of day as if it was something animate.

I know I am beating a dead horse with this whole insomnia topic.  You get it world wide web (and I mean all twenty-something of you out there who read this on a regular basis), I am having trouble sleeping.  It isn't like I'm the first person in the world to suffer from this condition.  If you Google "Famous Insomniacs" you come up with quite an interesting list of people and an even more interesting list of home remedies.  Most remedies included the use of some "medicinal" aid such as sleeping pills (modern version and method of choice for most celebrity insomniacs) or a camphor-soaked pillow, as was the case with Vincent Van Gogh.   Poor Vince.  But my favorite remedy by far was the one purportedly employed by early 20th century actress Tallulah Blankhead (Never heard of her?  Me neither, had to look her up on Wikipedia.  Good ol' Wikipedia, has the answers to most questions in life.  Surprisingly enough though, no answer on how to keep me personally from having insomnia).  She hired "gay caddies" to sit with her and hold her hand until she fell asleep.  Personally, I love this novel approach but I'm not sure that it would work for me as I am too much of a hostess at heart.  I'd be asking my caddy every five minutes if I could get him/her a cold beverage. Besides our bed is too small for this kind of method.  We only have a queen size.  Maybe when we have a bedroom large enough to accommodate a King size this method will be one to revisit.  However, I can only hope by that time in the future I will have whipped this current state of sleeplessness.

I am not really the type to be super productive either during these stretches of sleeplessness, which if I were it would probably make this insomnia easier to bear.  I use the excuse that Leif is sleeping in the next room over but honestly, he's a pretty heavy sleeper and I could probably make a fair amount of noise before he would wake up.  Instead I like to lay awake, staring into the darkness of our bedroom until I can't take the boredom anymore, or the increasing sense of nausea from low blood sugar.  Then I relocate to the couch where I inevitably open up a new post for this blog, write for about an hour, save as draft (usually never to be published), and then walk myself back to the bedroom (with one stop at the bathroom for good measure) where I, again, lay awake for a significant amount of time thinking about God Knows What.

When I ask my patients, most of whom are over the age of seventy, how they are sleeping I would say the majority of them have some degree of insomnia, which for most human beings is an inevitable result of the aging process.  The older we get and the less energy we expend during the day, the less sleep we require at night.  But more so than the physiological aspect of insomnia I think its cause stems from the simple fact that the older we get the less simple our lives become.  Family issues, financial woes, work stresses...The space in the brain they occupy slowly spreads out and makes it more difficult to find a tiny corner of the mind to occupy at night in order to fall asleep that isn't also occupied by some of these stressors.

For me it is difficult, at times*, to find the headspace that isn't occupied by thoughts of WORST CASE SCENARIO with the birth of this baby.  My sister asked me the other day when she kindly came to visit in order to show me how to use the breast pump, if I thought that being around other people (and I am assuming she meant virtually and physically) who have suffered the loss of a baby was helpful or detrimental.  Well, I assume that was what she was asking because I think she was having a hard time getting the question out as she did not want to sound judgmental (she didn't).  My answer, probably equally as indecipherable, was the equivalent of a shoulder shrug.  Yes, it is helpful to be around people who understand that it is perfectly acceptable to bring up the subject of George even if I don't broach the topic first (God, it is tiresome to feel the burden of having to always be the one who mentions him because others are afraid that if they talk about him it will send me into convulsions of sadness).  Yes, it is helpful to be around people who have more of an understanding of what this experience is like.  No, it is not always helpful to be so keenly aware of just how many ways bad things can happen to an unborn baby.  There is truth in the saying, "Ignorance is bliss."

But not every bought of insomnia I have has to do with ruminating over all the possible bad shit that can happen before, during and after this baby is born.  More often than not I think it excitement that has me up a 3:30 AM (now 4:52 AM).  I am truly excited to meet this baby in less than two weeks.  I often wonder what she looks like (hopefully just like her dad except with my nose because a Hanson nose, although very distinguished on a man, is no nose for a girl) or what her temperament will be (also, hopefully like her dad who is on the whole much more mellow than I am).  Mostly I hope that she likes me.  I really, really, really hope that she likes me.

I think as close to a remedy for insomnia as I am ever going to get (at least one that doesn't involve ambien, lunesta or "gay caddies") is to stare at this computer screen and to write.  It may never see the figurative light of day but at least it isn't taking up valuable space in my brain and hopefully that means I can curl up in the newly empty area and make a go at falling back asleep.

I think at 5:06 AM,  it is time to give this whole sleeping thing another shot.

*Just a little note of reassurance here that I do not, in fact, obsess about this pregnancy ending badly.  I generally have a pretty positive outlook on how things are going and do not fixate on the possibility of lightening striking twice.  I have hope and I wanted to make sure anyone out there reading, whether family and friends or other baby loss people contemplating having a go at a subsequent pregnancy, knows that I really, truly am hopeful.

stay cool

It has been quiet here, I know.  But I have been keeping to my previous commitment to myself to do something creative everyday.  My paints have occupied our dining room table for the last couple of days.

Mostly though, I've been hanging around in my underwear, trying to stay cool underneath the ceiling fan with a wet washcloth while watching too many episodes of Weeds.  I'm "this" close to getting a huge block of ice and placing it in front of a standing fan and hacking myself a kind of swamp cooler.  Only I won't because I once saw an episode of CSI years and years ago about a guy who electrocuted himself doing the same thing.  No one wants to be found dead in their underwear by beautiful people like Marg Helgenberger.  It is just undignified.

But I digress...

According to the well-educated fingers of the obstetrician I saw this morning my cervix is still long and closed.  I'll have to take her word for it because I'm not down with self-cervix checking.  I'll leave those shenanigans to the real zealous pregnant people on the Baby Center boards I occasionally silently stalk (By stalk I mean the boards not the zealots. Those I try to avoid).

Actually these particular well-educated fingers were not the ones that my cervix has known over the last five years as my regular OB was at the hospital delivering a baby.  For the very first time we saw one of her colleagues who, as it turned out, was the resident who assisted with George's delivery.  Leif didn't remember her but I did.  She was one of five people on this earth who saw George while he was alive, even if it was only briefly, and so her face is seared into my brain.  Upon seeing her I had the sudden desire to reach inside her mind and pull out images of George I've never seen before.  She owns footage of his life I'll never get to see.  That seems not right.

I guess long and closed means that, at least for the time being, I will have to continue to come up with novel ways to keep myself cool. Tomorrow...lunch with Leif, a free day at the Craft Museum, and an eyebrow waxing because good lordy are my brows out of control.

creative

At this very moment outside of our living room windows most of the world on the hill below us is asleep.  There are not too many windows alighted with the glow of vigilance and it is so quiet that I can hear the distant sounds of cars on the freeway.  Most nights Leif and I are tucked away in our dreams long before the majority of everyone else is around here but as I am typing this the clock icon on my computer is telling me it is Fri 1:52 AM. It is peaceful, probably one of the few times in Los Angeles it is like this.

I've been feeling listless as of late, so I'm not sure if tonight's bought of insomnia is anxiety or boredom.  Yesterday I spent most of the afternoon, it was my first day on maternity leave, sitting on the couch wondering what to do with myself.  There were plenty of things I could have done but very few of those things actually were accomplished.  I could use the fact that I am pregnant as an excuse but the truth is I've never been much of a self-motivator, unless we are talking about academics.  My inner nerd has never been satisfied with academic mediocrity.  Hence the too many degrees, the large amount of academic debt from attending a big-name university, and ultimately a profession that I just don't like that much. But hey, at least I have job security and for a pragmatist such as myself that does count for something.

Anyway, once upon a time I used to be a creative person.  Now I am most decidedly not a creative person.  I have plenty of things tucked away in drawers to use to be creative; paints, canvases, inks, pencils, glue, pencils...You name the art supply and I have probably collected it over the years.  They were all available to me yesterday but they went unused and continued to gather dust as they have been for the last four or five years. The last thing I brought out my acrylics for was to paint George's "picture."

I simply do not often have ideas in my head that I find worthy of transforming from vapor into something tangible.  Even writing here, which has been the closest thing to a creative outlet that I have, I find that I am mostly only motivated (or inspired) when the sadness of missing George is too overwhelming to keep to myself anymore.  The best things I've written, and when I say best I use the term loosely, have all come from a place of intense loneliness and longing.  When those feelings wane so does my ability to write anything that I find all that interesting.  I write for myself but much of the time I don't write what I wish I had the ability to, speaking of both the ability talent-wise and freedom-wise.  Which is one of the reasons I've contemplated closing up shop here on numerous occasions.

The icon on my computer is now telling me it is Fri 3:05 AM and it has taken me an hour to write four paragraphs.

Forget it.
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Sat 5:14 AM

I've come to a conclusion of sorts. Until this baby comes, which could be as soon as tonight or as far away as August 16th, I am going to do my best to do something creative everyday.  I can write, I can paint, I can take photographs...whatever, but I've got to do something everyday that is not normal routine for me.

We will see how this goes but for now here is a time lapse video Leif made of the view from our living room window at night.

Time Lapse View from .daily.amos. on Vimeo.

no celebration

A little bit of advice to those who are closer to their loss than I am at this point...

There will be long stretches of time when you feel pretty good.  In fact there will be long stretches of time when you feel almost like your old self again.  You will be happy again but it won't be the happy you were before.  But also know that bad days will come and they will come with the force of a train.  You will be surprised not only by the strength of how badly your heart still aches but also by what triggers these days.

Tomorrow is my birthday.  This is my second birthday since he's been gone and I have a lifetime of them left, always without him.

I will never see him again or hold him again.  I will never know the sound of his laughter.  I will never have any more time with him than what I've already had.  I miss him so much that it physically hurts.

I have much to be grateful for in my life.  Family, friends, a daughter who is on her way to meet us, and most importantly, my amazing husband.  I know I should be celebrating, but instead I spent yesterday evening and most of today sobbing and missing my boy.  I am another year older and George is still dead...I can't find much to celebrate in that.

large

Apparently I am growing a large baby.  Current approximation at thirty-six weeks is SEVEN and a HALF pounds.  

I should have guessed this would be the case.  After all, Leif and I are not exactly petite.

I know these estimates can be off by about a pound in either direction but still I'm getting a wee bit nervous.  The bigger baby is the less likely it is that I will be able to successfully have a VBAC.  Luckily, my OB is awesome and is still supportive of us giving it a try.  If we change our minds and decide to go ahead with a c-section, she is supportive of that as well.

The radiologist who did the ultrasound this afternoon made a prediction that we would not make it to August 16th.  She said that the fluid levels were perfect and baby looked very healthy, practicing her breathing. Basically she's looking like a full-term baby already.

Still...I hope she sticks around for at least a couple of more weeks. I don't think she is ready yet.  Or maybe we are the ones who aren't ready yet.