Pain Doesn’t Break Me & Other 2nd Trimester Truths

I’m sad about how little I’ve been blogging during this pregnancy.  I think of plenty of topics/ideas/requests for help but don’t write.  Work has been a non-stop meetingpalooza for too many weeks now.  I walk in the door and start attending meeting after meeting until I limp sadly out the door at 5.  I don’t even have time to get to my most urgent work lately which means really, really no time for blogging/reading blogs and such.  But I’m tired of the excuses and so I’m just going for it, bullet style.

• Pain Spiral: I’m now 25 weeks pregnant.  I started to get lower back pain – sharp, horrible pain that felt like something had just popped out of something else back there – about six weeks ago.  The pain comes and goes and is definitely made much, much worse by picking up my child/spending lots of solo time with her, vacuuming/house work, and not exercising.  I was getting flair ups every weekend and started seeing  a chiropractor which sort of helped.  Then I started getting terrible side aches.  I haven’t heard of this happening to anyone else.  Basically my sides just ache when I have to hold myself up too much or use my arms: extended standing, washing dishes, driving, sitting in my work chair and, yes, picking up/holding Goldie.  Also throw in the mix some round ligament pain and general stomach pain (muscle tearing is my theory), a weird nerve thing that leaves a huge patch at the top of my stomach completely numb, occasional searing heartburn and I am in pain of some kind a lot of time.  About two weeks ago I started to get really depressed and panicked about the pain.  My back (which is the most serious and debilitating when it’s flaring up) was really bothering me, despite chiropractor and yoga, and my side pain transitioned from occasional to daily.  I couldn’t imagine that my body was going to hold out long enough to be able to go to term and give birth.  I couldn’t imagine laboring when I could barely keep it together at 23 weeks.  I felt betrayed by my body in a way I never had before.  I felt like I was failing at pregnancy.
• Pain doesn’t break me: By the time we saw our midwife at almost 24 weeks I was really low and having occasional panicked moments.  I couldn’t pick up the baby, I couldn’t clean up around the house and I couldn’t see a way out.  At the end of the appointment Fern basically asked the midwife for a pep talk and ways to help the anxiety.  She said a lot of helpful things and was really sweet.  What stuck with me most is that the pain is just pain.  I’m going to have more pain (like in labor, for example), but I’m stronger than it.  I guess I half expected her to tell me to sign up for a c-section because I was clearly too weak to handle labor but she didn’t.  In fact, she said I was strong and would get through.  So after a little more self-pity (like when I went to my first pre-natal massage appointment that afternoon and found I had scheduled it for the wrong week – I had to cry that one out) I snapped out of it.  I decided that I can’t feel trapped by the pain anymore.  The pain won’t break me.  The pain does not mean I’m going to fall apart.  I think my fear is very related to labor and the fear that I just won’t be able to do it – that my body was made wrong and I am not capable of pushing a baby out.  So I’m still in pain (though I switched chiropractors and I’ve been having more good lower back days than before) but I’m also still whole.
• The other worries: I can’t pretend that I don’t worry still.  Top of my list of worries is that I have not felt the baby move yet.  I was seriously SO chill about this for so long.  I laughed at babycenter when it told me I might feel the baby at 16 weeks.  When I found out I have an anterior placenta I really didn’t fret as the weeks progressed with no movement.  But for the last week or two I’ve been feeling like it would be really nice to just feel Clover bopping around in there.  And I have waves of fear, feeling like something terrible has happened.  Our midwife gave us until 26 weeks before we should be concerned.  We saw Clove dancing around on the ultrasound a month ago and heard a nice, strong heartbeat a week and a half ago.  But still…it would just be reassuring and exciting if I could feel him.
• Bras: There isn’t a single bra in the whole world that fits me comfortably.  I’m sure of this.
• NGP: I think I need to write a full post about being the second one pregnant.  In short, it’s a difficult identity adjustment.  I go to weekly yoga and frequently find myself getting way defensive or preemptively protective around my role as a mama.  Some people have said some really stupid/insensitive things (like, “you consider yourself a mom, right?”).  I object to a lot of the language in the birth/new mother community about motherhood/becoming a mother and now that I’m in the inner circle, so to speak, I am having a hard time having a lot of these sentiments applied to me.  I didn’t even know what to say when one of the midwives we interviewed (who we otherwise liked quite a lot) said that she thinks the process of giving birth is so amazing and powerful because that’s how a woman becomes a mother.  Or when a woman in prenatal yoga said that last time she literally forgot her husband was there after the birth.  She was so intimate with her newborn and that time is so unique for mothers, that she literally didn’t know he was on the other side of the bed.  Before i got pregnant I was plenty aware that lots of people don’t value the NGPs (women and men alike) but I feel it on a whole new level now that I’m pregnant.  It feels more prevalent now.  I think people say things to me that they wouldn’t have said before.  I think being in these “safe” sharing spaces allows people to share more than I want to hear.
• The sweet: Tonight I was rocking a peppy Goldie to sleep in the rocking chair in her room.  She switched from the baby cradle position in my arms to a more upright position.  Her ear rested on my heart and her head was in perfect kissing distance from my face.  As we rocked, her little hands wrapped around my sides, her body rested against my big belly and her legs fell on either side of my left leg.  As she tried to fall asleep her little hands and feet rubbed against me.  I loved every second even though it was late and I was tired myself.  I love having my big girl resting on her tiny 1.5 pound brother.  The two of them were so close.

There’s so much more to say and I should probably also edit this, but instead I’m going to post and go to bed!

Test results are in

We heard back about the Verifi test (I was spelling it wrong before) and everything looks good.  They said based on the results I have a better than 99.9% chance of having a child without Downs.  Actually, of having a boy without Downs.  The X and Y were both there!  We are very happy to know the news.  While it’s not diagnostic or 100%, it’s more than enough assurance for me and I am so happy to be done with prenatal testing (I hope, I hope).

Verify

Thank you for your helpful comments on the ultrasound post with your opinions on the Verify blood test.  After much debate and back and forth we’ve decided to go for it.  I have an appointment tomorrow and the results take about 2 weeks.  The test sounds so cool.  It looks for trace amounts of the baby’s placenta in my blood and then pieces together a DNA profile, looking for abnormalities in 13, 18 and 21 (Downs).  For 21 there is a 99% detection rate.  There’s a 97% rate for 18 and an 87% rate for 13.  So basically if I test negative on this blood test the odds of this baby having Downs would go from 1 in 295 (what she estimated last week) to 1 in 10,000.  So even though it’s not diagnostic, it’s far more accurate than ultrasound or other screens.  I’m excited.

Our midwife said the white spot is very common and she wasn’t concerned about it.  Fern is also not concerned (she thinks it’s almost weird how little she’s worried).  But we decided that if it was going to be stressful or concerning for me then we should go ahead and test.  I do think I’d worry if we didn’t check it out.  My concern about testing is that we’ll end up with some ambiguity or inconclusive information and we’ll end up in the test spiral that can happen so easily with prenatal western medicine.  But we’re just hoping for the best.  My mom was really concerned about the ultrasound and has very generously offered to help us pay for it (she even did some fundraising and got my brother to chip in as well!).  So that does make it easier.  Actually, it makes it a little bit harder in some ways because I feel self conscious about using their money unnecessarily.  But the financial support is nice especially since we just handed over our tax return to the midwife.

As for the previa, our midwife said that this resolves in 94% of cases and she suspects my 34 week ultrasound will show an all clear.  I guess we can only wait and see.

My Child

During Goldie’s babyhood and early toddlerhood so far we have been intimately close, often physically intertwined.  G has been a loud, constant advocate for her needs and I have spent more time holding her or physically touching her than I would have imagined 18 months ago.  This is true for many parents, I’m sure.  I used to keep her wrapped closely to me and now she prefers a more constant up/down.  Some days her affection borders on mama abuse as she pinches and grabs our faces in a quest to get closer, closer and learn boundaries.  But most of the time she’s content to hang on my hip, snuggle on my lap or climb up my leg lovingly, if forcefully.

At this point in Goldie’s life we are her world and we know each other so well.  As she’s opening up and growing more, however, I can see little glimpses of her reaching past us.  And as small as those moments are, they still break my heart just a little.  When G started daycare at 10 months I could say with 100% confidence that she had never tried a mango or that she had only been rocked to sleep by three people (and one of those people only a couple of times) and I knew every single place she had ever been.  As she settled into daycare we all got to know and love her teachers and classmates.  But it was weird to me that she was having experiences throughout the day that neither Fern nor I were involved in.  We couldn’t say with certainty anymore that she had never tried a particular food or that we knew every single person who had rocked her to sleep.  Sure, the scale of her new experiences was pretty small, but it was still an adjustment for me that Goldie’s world was growing.

Recently Goldie and I were at one of Fern’s concerts.  It was a warm, early spring evening and G didn’t have the patience to sit still so we headed outside to explore.  G was feeling independent and bold and I was enjoying walking around with her.  Pretty soon a three year old and her dad came out, also finished with sitting and watching.  Goldie was absolutely fascinated with this girl and immediately started following her around as she played hide and seek and ran around at full speed.  G toddled after, never able to catch up.  G would just stand still on the sidewalk and stare in awe at this magical child.  The three year old was part annoyed at her little shadow and part flattered, I think.  But then the three year old’s big sister came out (who was maybe 9 or 10) and started paying a little more attention to G.  She told her sister to play with Goldie and the sister reluctantly allowed G into a hiding spot with her and stopped complaining as much that she was being followed.  I was standing pretty far back, watching our daughter and her new adopted family play when it happened.  G looked up at the big sister with love and trust in her eyes and reached up her arms for the girl to pick her up.  It was such a sweet, heartfelt request and I smiled at G’s boldness (until recently she has been very reluctant to let anyone unfamiliar hold her).  But the big sister just looked down and her and said, I’m not going to pick you up!  And left my baby girl standing there.  I watched helplessly as Goldie’s world expanded a little more and swallowed hard as the potential for heartbreak and hurt touched my beautiful daughter, perhaps for the first time.  I didn’t go over and G seemed to bounce back very quickly.  But, unlike when I tell her, mama can’t pick you up right now, please wait a minute, G didn’t burst into tears or protest.  This wasn’t familiar mama trying to buy some time while she unloads the dishwasher.  This was a risk met with rejection.

No matter how small and insignificant that one moment was in her life, I can’t help but feel the weight of it and what’s to come.  Pretty soon Goldie won’t want to be in my arms as much.  There will be another baby and she will be running farther from my leg, exploring more, needing less physical support from us.  She’ll go where she’s supposed to go, my child.  She’ll start to make decisions about her own experiences and she’ll have conversations I won’t ever hear and she’ll learn things and not tell me and people will hurt her and she’ll have to figure out how to react.

My child is still so tiny but she’s growing up.  And Fern and I won’t be her whole world anymore.  We won’t even get to pick the players in her world.  Parenting a baby or a toddler is exhausting.  It often feels like there is no break and little rest.  But I think parenting a child as she learns the minor and bigger hurts in life is going to be hard in a whole other way.  I can handle G’s upset over not getting more ice cream or the pain from a big fall.  I can cheer her up and fix it.  But can I guide her through a mean friend or a broken heart?  Can I handle seeing her hurt?  What if another child hurts her?  Or, more unimaginably, an adult?  When I think about all that’s coming it seems like we’re in the easy part of parenting, tired but contained and more or less in control.  Oh, my child, are we ready for what’s next?

19.5 week ultrasound

I don’t really deserve any comments on this post because I have been a terrible blogger lately.  I haven’t been writing, I’ve barely been reading.  I’m sorry!  But I’m jumping in to say that we had our big ultrasound today and found out we’re having…

A BOY!

Even though I was 99% sure it was a boy, it was still a surprisingly emotional discovery.  I’m excited and a little nervous about the unknowns.

The less thrilling news is that I have marginal previa, meaning my placenta is not only anterior but covering part of my cervix.  This isn’t necessarily going to be a problem, but it’s not great since it’s one more thing to worry about and recheck later.  If I have placenta previa I will need a c-section which is terrifying.

The other bad news is that the fetus has a bright white spot on his heart.  This is a soft marker for Downs.  If I were 4 months younger and still 34, they wouldn’t have even mentioned the spot since lots of babies that have the spot don’t have Downs.  But combined with my Advanced Maternal Age, the spot is something they mention.  I opted out of the quad screen because we had such a terrifying time with it last pregnancy so we don’t have more data on my odds.  This is really fine because I’m not into inconclusive guesses.  There is apparently a new test (as of last summer) called Verify that is a maternal blood test and can say with 99% certainty whether the baby has Downs.  I could do that or I could do an amnio (which we have ruled out) or I could do nothing.  The blood test is very appealing, however it isn’t covered by my insurance and costs $500.  I am really on the fence.   I am pretty sure I think that there is nothing wrong and the spot is just a spot. On the other hand, I would love to have the peace of mind and know for (mostly) sure.  We would have this baby regardless, I just think there is some value in knowing ahead of time if we are going to be raising a higher needs child.

So that’s where we’re at.  It is almost impossible to believe we’re almost half way through this pregnancy.

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A Few Things

A few things pregnancy:

• Thank you so much for your support on my last post about my fears during this pregnancy.  It made a genuine difference to hear from each of you that you’d be there too or that what I was experiencing is normal.  I am so happy to report that our midwife appointment on Friday was uneventful and happy.  We heard the heartbeat the second she put the doppler on my stomach and Clover’s little heart was beating away between 150 and 160 bpm.  It was such a happy moment and it has, at least for now, given me a lot more confidence.
• Also giving me confidence is my expanding belly.  Last week I transitioned to maternity pants full time and it is heavenly.  I can still fit in a lot of my tops as long as they’re long enough.  It’s really weird to have my belly pop out of the bottom of a shirt that used to seem plenty roomy.  Most maternity tops are still too baggy on me, but it’s so nice not to have to worry about how tight my jeans are.  I’m excited for spring and summer when I can move into the rather substantial maternity dress collection that Fern accumulated during her pregnancy (and I have added to).  The clothing thing that’s bugging me is my underwear.  My stomach has gotten just big enough that the top of certain pairs of my underwear roll down after a few hours and it drives me nuts.  I ordered a few pair of maternity underwear with a xmas gift card and I’m hoping they’ll help because the problem is only going to get worse and it makes me feel so schlumpy.
• We’ve been taking belly pictures most weeks since 6 weeks and I plan to post one soon.

A few things Goldie:

• Goldie’s sleep has been going pretty well, I’m thrilled to type.  Granted, since we had our first Through The Night experience, she hasn’t had a bad cold or other illness and I wouldn’t count on such good progress during sickness (and some of her colds last weeks).  That said, she has now slept through the night at least 10 times, about 35% of the last month!  I haven’t recorded other nights, but she has had a lot of single wake up nights (usually somewhere in the 3-4:30 range) where she goes right back to sleep after a sip of water and a few minutes of singing and/or sitting with her.  Those nights practically feel like she slept through (except I’m having trouble falling back asleep myself after I get up in the night).  It’s amazing to be in this stretch.  We now put her down to bed around 8 and that goes well/quickly about 75% of the time.  And then we count on her staying asleep!  It’s very rare that she wakes up before we go to bed these days and it’s also rare that she’s up for substantial amounts of time at night.  I know this could change and we will have bad nights in the future, but I am in love with right now.
• Goldie is learning a lot more words lately and also increasing how much she can understand.  Yesterday she was asking about her baby’s whereabouts and I said, I think she’s in your room on the rocking chair.  G walked off for her room and came back a minute later with the doll.  This is so amazing to me.  She follows other simple instructions too and we’re getting the feeling that she’s getting more of the daily narrative we’ve been talking at her since she was born (like today you’re going to daycare, tonight Nana is going to play with you while we go out etc.).  I can’t believe how much she’s learning and growing each day.
• Current obsessions: baby dolls (she hoards all the dolls at daycare and plays with them all day long) and playing outside (I love when she gets really dirty!).
• I am also planning a G picture post soon – let me know if you need the password!