14 Weeks

I think this family of yours is starting to miss my days of sick.
Mama is a'whip crackin' right now!
There's much to be done and I really can't believe I literally took TWO MONTHS off, laying around, snoozin' and pukin' with you.

Ah, good times, huh?
(Nope.)

I feel absolutely normal now! I wouldn't even know I was pregnant if I didn't happen to pass by a mirror every now and again.

Well, that's not exactly true.
There are a few indications.
One is that I need a new bra.
Yowzers.
I had stuck a few nursing (maternity) bras in my drawer awhile back but they just looked enormous to me then.
Those bras have the "we mean business" look to them.
Lying next to my fun, little, dainty numbers I normally wear, it's sort of scary-looking. Like it's a Bully Bra.

Clothing-wise I'm still hanging on.
Certainly I haven't worn skinny girl pants since I peed on your stick, but I'm able to still comfortably wear all of my regular shirts and actually prefer these to any of the maternity stuff. My belly just isn't big enough to really fill out those shirts and they leave me feeling...inadequate.
As if I failed the shirt or something.
Plus, roomy isn't my thing.

I'm no longer able to sleep on my back (too uncomfortable, plus it's bad for you) or my stomach so I switch from side to side all night long. I'm not sleeping well either, I wake after several hours and then can't fall back asleep. This wouldn't be so bad but I end up spending the time awake wondering, "if the lava lamp in Rhyse's room over-heats, how I will get all of my babies out of the house?"
Seriously.
I make escape plans as I lay in the dark, literally whispering to myself and diagramming with my finger in the air, pointing directions here and there.

I'm sort of joking around with that but really, I have middle of the night anxiety and it usually stems around something catastrophic happening with your siblings while we're sleeping. Like what if our house were broken into? What if a child were snatched from bed? What if, truly, something caught on fire? (This leads to a, "Are the smoke detectors working?" conversation at the first light of dawn.) I always have worries like this when pregnant and I suppose it's just a manifestation of my own unacknowledged anxiety about how in the hell I will properly care for five children. So long as everyone survives, I think we're good but my dreams would indicate otherwise.

I can feel my body coming to terms with my new, frontal load. (That would be you.) I notice that I shift my weight around differently, spending more time sort of rocked back on my heels. No waddling yet (whew!) but I'm hitting the point where I probably shouldn't be lifting Greer and Creux so much because it doesn't feel great. That's hard though because, especially with him, he's still just a baby, really. A 33-pound baby who thinks that I'm his own private roller coaster ride.

Oh! Here's a new development compliments of you! (The 33-pound Creux thing triggered my memory.) We finally, for the first time ever, bought a scale! And last night, we all rallied around it, stepping on and off and ooohing and ahhhing over the lights and the numbers.
Chas called us "simpletons" which I thought was funny.

Really, I can't explain why we have always been scale-less (and I've gained and lost...about 140 or so pounds in all these pregnancies which is over a whole ME so you'd think I'd have been interested a time or two but I haven't) except that we're just not a weight-number-minded family. We eat healthy and we're active and that's always been enough for me. I've just never wanted to be wrapped up in the digit part of it because I know my body and I know what weight feels good to me and I think it would be easy to obsess unnecessarily. That whole up-a-pound, down-a-pound thing. Bad, bad, bad to a control freak like moi :)

I've gained nine pounds in these 14 weeks and this weight still feels good to me. Later, it won't. But right now, I'm good. We're healthy. And that's is a normal gain for me, just passing my first trimester.

We saw our midwives yesterday! We had another great appointment and were able to hear your heartbeat again. Yesterday you clocked in at 148, to which the midwife said, "Now some people would say that's a girl..." But then we agreed that neither of us believe the heartbeat stuff. My boys have had racing hearts, far higher than that, and it's never meant anything...but a racing heart.

A super cool thing about hearing your heartbeat yesterday was that I was, for the first time ever, able to hear my own at the same time! Abby pointed it out to me, "Do you hear the baby, that fast whomp-whomp-whomp? And can you hear the slower one? That's you. That's your heart." I'd never before heard TWO hearts beating in my body at the same time and it was a little bit wild! As always, stuff like that just completely astounds me, to really realize what my body is capable of doing. The mere fact that I can sustain us both is a miracle. But it was truly special to hear those two hearts combined, both working hard, independently but not alone.

There are no examination tables at CHOICE so I sprawled out on a comfy couch to get you measured. Abby tried to help me find my uterus, I kept feeling for it but I wasn't really able to determine where it was quite yet. We measured great, right on for our due date, and she showed me how to check for fluid retention. (I push hard on the side of my shin and count how long it takes for the indentation to leave--I had no indentation which means I am not retaining any water. Yet :)) I also checked my own urine for protein (none) AND weighed myself! Most of the time all of this stuff is done by the nursing staff but the midwives hand me the reins.
I own this pregnancy!
And I love it!! :)
It's so empowering to not be a passive participant here like I normally am. Usually, I show up for my monthly visits and I'm a PATIENT. Here, I am taught how to manage myself. They are constantly teaching me, talking to me every step of the way, explaining every bit of what's going on, encouraging me to step forward and participate.

Most of this visit centered around my sharing my medical history and it was scheduled for two hours but we went over the time and only made it through two of my four births.
I suppose there's a bit of a "maybe issue" on the table, one that does cause me a bit of concern but only, really, for pain management purposes.

Twice, I've had a "retained placenta" which basically means that it just doesn't come out like it's supposed to and someone's got to go in after it.
It's truly as unpleasant as it sounds and I'm completely sugar-coating that statement.
Because it's happened twice, we're picking apart my previous deliveries and trying to establish why it's occurred and a lot of interesting things have come up in discussion.

The problem with this situation is that it's extremely, and I mean extremely, painful for me when it occurs and could be somewhat dangerous. The first time it happened with Chas, it was severe. I'd had an epidural and felt nothing at all during the delivery and was coo'ing over my brand-new baby when my doctor mentioned something about the placenta and then literally starting pulling my insides out. Though I'd never felt a thing during the birth, I was screaming from the pain, they ended up ripping Chas from my arms, (I can still hear someone saying, "Take the baby!") and I honestly felt like I was going to die. My doctor had her arm, all the way to her elbow, inside me, trying to pull the placenta from the wall of my uterus. The energy shift in the room was pure terror to experience, where one minute everyone was calm and things were fine and the next people were yelling and kicking stools out of the way and racing around, trying to do what they could to help out.

To this day, it's the absolute worst thing I've ever gone through, positively the scariest moment of my life.
(And maybe it's even a bit worse for Daddy because he can't react or I'll absolutely go wild. I'd never seen him truly frightened before that situation during Chas' birth and I remember looking at him and seeing that he was panicked and I felt my own fear rachet up a million fold.
I said to him later, "You can never, ever do that to me again. Whatever happens, you can't freak out because I'll see it and it will scare me more than anything else.")

Though I had anxiety about it occurring again with Rhyse, it didn't.
But with Greer, it struck again, though no where near as bad as it had been with Chas. It still hurt but it wasn't stitched as tight to my uterine wall so the pain was manageable. (And though I'd technically had an epidural, it was too late for any numbing through the birth, she came so fast, but by the time we got to this point, I think it had kicked in and helped a bit.)

So...the problem is that if this occurs at home, I will not have access to any anesthesia. And it, quote, "is one of the most painful things that we eever have to do a patient". So say the midwives and it's only happened four times in their collective experiences. But this sends chills right down my spine because though I forget many things in my life, I've never forgotten the pain from that MEDICATED situation with Chas. I simply can't imagine going through that without anything. I don't know how I would make it, honestly. (I did ask them if they could knock me out, like physically, but I think they thought I was joking. I totally wasn't.)

But then I was also just kind of thinking...well, if it doesn't come out, can't we just pop into the car and head to the ER, get me a little numby somethin' somethin' and deal with it there?
Ah, but I forgot about the little "bleeding" issue.
If the uterus can't clamp down, which it can't with a placenta intact, then I'll be bleeding until that's resolved and THAT won't be a good situation for me.
So they'll have to remove it if it comes to that and I'll have to survive it.
Gulp. That's scuurry.

It's scary but it's not got me flipping tracks. I suppose that it the deepest part of me, I've resigned myself to this process and all that it includes. Honestly, your birth is only slightly freaky to me because I typically do most of the work on my own anyway, I know I can get to eight cm without dying, and I know what that whole pushing, burning, wildness feels like at the end when you babies emerge because I felt it (albeit somewhat with the edge off) with Greer. The placenta thing...will absolutely cause me to lose nights of sleep leading up to the big day and you can bet that while I'm holding you and counting your fingers, I'm going to be completely aware of what's going on with my body at the same time. They are confident that, given enough time and not rushing (which may have been the problem in the past--just not enough time given to my body to complete the process. Maybe I'm just a slow finisher :)) it will come out on its own.
And if not, I'm going to have to get through it. I will just have to be mentally prepared, as well as I can be, for that reality. (Am screaming inside my head right now just imagining!)

They've asked if I would be willing to have an ultrasound done at 28 weeks to pin down where and how my placenta is growing.
I couldn't have said "yes!" faster.
Oh, to see you again?
Are they kidding???
We'll be heading back in around 20 weeks to peek at you again but I guess that won't be our last Baby spotting! I've never had an ultrasound that late, at 28 weeks, so I'm curious to see what you'll look like all squished up in there. At 20 weeks, you'll be doing fabulous acrobatics, fully loving your roomy (I said I didn't DO roomy but I didn't say that I WASN'T roomy) pad. By 28, I think it's much less fun for you, what with having your knees curled up to your chest 22 hours of the day.

So there's the skinny on our latest news. All in all, I still feel really good about this home birth and I absolutely want to proceed. I might REALLY hate the decision for an excruciating little while but I still think it'll be worth whatever I end up going through. I never thought any of it would be a walk in the park, anyway. I'm a massive baby myself, I don't handle pain well at all, so I know I'm going to have to dig deep in general. Now I'll just dig a little deeper and cross my fingers and make a few deals with Mother Nature (what could I offer her for my placenta???) and hope for the best.

Loving you already,
Mama

PS...I think I felt you last night but I can't really say. Nothing definite since SUNDAY. Am due for a decent whack, wouldn't you say? (Please? Pretty please? I'll get you a milkshake...)

Hmmm. As I'm proof-reading, I think I feel you again. But for a milkshake, you're going to have to whack a bit harder. I need to KNOW it's you, not think it's you. I've got a scale now and that makes the milkshake count. How bad do you want it, Baby???