The Pregnancy

I choose to go to the Catholic hospital for my care- they had a midwife group. I loved them. Things didn't go quite the way I wanted right from the very beginning.

I was sick. Horribly ill. Morning sickness- it was a lie. I vomited after every meal, and at all times in between. Sometimes even in the middle of the night. It never seemed to let up.
I gained weight like being fat was going out of style. I went from 120 to 135 in the first 8 weeks. By the time I delivered, I was 198. And all while still being sick.

I had a dream in my early pregnancy, I can't remember exactly when, and in that dream, I met TJ for the first time. He was a beautiful child, about 5 years old, and we were playing on one of those merry-go-round things. I'm not sure if they exist anymore. They're probably "too dangerous". But there he was, my son. Blonde hair and eyes the same shade of hazel as my father's. He looked a bit like me. I was incredibly happy to have the privilage of "meeting" him before his arrival.*

I started bleeding at about 16 weeks. I was terrified. I had an ultrasound to check if there was still a viable life form growing inside me. There was. The US tech asked me if I wanted to know the sex of the baby. I told her I already knew it was a boy. She was surprised. I was right. It turned out that I had a type of bactierial vaginosis that caused the blood vessels on the outside of my cervix to rupture. I was put on antibiotics to clear up the infection, and put on "pelvic rest" for 6 weeks. This was how I found out that I allergic to Cipro. After only 2 doses, I was throwing up what felt like every 5 seconds, as opposed to every two hours. They gave me a cream to stuff up there, and everything became all right.

I became severely anemic in a very short time, and was put on iron supplements, and told to take children's chewable vitamins instead of my regular prenatal pills. The ginormous horse pills never seemed to stay down for more than 5 minutes, and boy, are those rough coming back up.
When I had my glucose tolerance test, I failed it miserably. I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. My midwives were unhappy with this- I had become a high-risk patient, due to the GD and severe anemia, and they had to discontinue my care. I begged. I pleaded. I cried. They relented. I got to stay with them.

At about 34 or 35 weeks, I I knew there was something really not right about TJ's position. He was breech. I knew for sure that his head was on (and sometimes under) my ribs, on my right side. My aunt K had given birth to 2 breech babies vaginally, so I really didn't think about the possiblility of a c-section. I told my midwives. They said "Well, it's probably his butt." I insisted. I got another U/S, and sure enough, he was heads up. One of the midwives in the practice (there were 3) had delivered breech babies before, and she was comfortable with letting me have a natural birth. For the purposes of this blog, I'll call her Suzie.

Suzie gave me the most thurogh pelvic exam I'd ever had to date. She told me there was plenty of room in my pelvis, and I'd have no problem, provided he was in a Frank or classical breech position. But she would still like to attempt a version, just to see if he would flip. I was given a sheet of excercises to do that are supposed to help turn a breech baby. Nothing worked, so at 36 weeks and 5 days, I went to the hospital, and they tried to manually flip him. This was my first meeting with Beth, the OB/GYN who would eventually do my C/S (but none of us knew that at the time). They'd forgotten to give me the muscle relaxant prior to the version, so when I arrived at the hospital, I had to wait an hour for it to take effect. This was how I found out that my body freaks out when given a muscle relaxant, and does the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do. I was incredibly tense, and the version hurt like hell. Not only did it hurt like hell, it was unsuccessful. Beth could not get him to turn no matter what we tried. After about an hour, she gave up, and I was in tears from the pain. Her quote, which I'll remember until I die, was: "Sometimes, babies have a reason they don't turn."


*I often have dreams that could be considered prophethetic, and I know the difference between a dream, and Dreaming. My sister has this ability as well, it's been passed on through the females in my family from as far back as we know. Usually, there's only one at a time, but somehow, both my sister and I got it. And sometimes, we dream together. As in, we'll have the same exact dream, but from our own perspectives. These are generally really intense, emotionally charged experiences.