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06/23/2008
Process of elimination
Contrary to what I've been led to expect, I find I'm enjoying late pregnancy. I am large but not yet uncomfortable, and although I am mildly anxious it is more a feeling that we are not ready — is anyone ever? — than any unpleasant foreboding. I am feeling the urge to nest, which in some women takes the form of, I don't know, alphabetizing a drawerful of onesies, but which makes me want to go out and pour a concrete slab for some unspecified outbuilding we surely must need, and now. I am excited. I am happy.
But I am noticing one unpleasant development. Lately it's hard to get out of bed in the mornings. I don't mean that I'm feeling the effects of interrupted sleep, although I am; I mean that it's difficult to move from horizontal to vertical without several intermediate steps. Most people can easily go from lying down to sitting up. With the recent changes to my body, I find I'm like a turtle on its back. A most righteously pissed-off turtle, ineffectually flailing its scaly limbs, thinking, "Intelligent design, my immobilized shell-clad aaaaass."
I have been trying to work around this limitation. My latest idea was that I would just...roll. That I'd move seamlessly from supine-under-covers to feet-on-the-floor, kind of like a break dancer might. But if you are reading this shaking your head, doubting my funky freshness, well, you are right to do so. Word to your lovely mother. Because it didn't work. The body pillow I sleep with — the one I cling to, if you must know, as a corn dog hugs its stick — served quite effectively as a speed bump, only in reverse. I tried to roll over it in cautious slow motion, and found I could not even crest its ridge. I backed up, trying it a little faster, ignoring my niggling worry that I was about to break an axle. No joy. Finally I committed, Knievel-style, hurling my unwieldy body over the hump of the pillow, Startled Housecat Canyon, and thirteen Greyhound buses. Scenicruisers, in fact. Jam-packed full of very old nuns.
And it worked, after a fashion. Sure, the pillow slipped at the very last moment, introducing an unforeseen element of surprise and mortal danger. Sure, I misjudged the aerodynamics of the pregnant human form, forgetting everything I'd ever learned about Newton's immutable laws. (Danke schoen for nothin', brother.) And sure, I landed heavily on the floor, taking the brunt of the impact on the hip that had been aching for days from sciatica. (Varicose veins, sciatica — Jesus, I feel old. What's next, lumbago? Dropsy? Quinsy? Gout? Scrimshaw?) But at least I was out of bed.
And what did I do once I was out of bed? Peed all over my hand, of course. Isn't that how you begin your day?
Despite the many opportunities to do so as the parent of a small child, I do not talk much here about matters scatological, in large part because I was brought up to believe that it's rude to dwell on what comes out of our bodies. In my adult life I have apparently overcome any missish reservations that might fall under "vagina, issue therefrom," but I insist even I have limits.
For example, I have not documented Charlie's toileting, and I will not do so now except to say that he does so successfully. One day it simply clicked, and he has been comfortably underpanted since. (Favorites: "Stingrays...with legs.") Oh, he's not dry overnight, nor do I particularly care; plenty of time for that when he's confronted with that question on his college applications. I don't know what finally did the trick, but I think it was nothing more than time and experience. It certainly wasn't that Godforsaken Elmo video; he can't have seen it more than thrice because I couldn't bear it myself. Think you're a better man than I? Hey, well, knock yourself out [YouTube]. But before you congratulate yourself, consider this damning detail: Baby Bear calls excrement woo woo.
Can you see why I don't like to discuss this?
But I was going to talk about my effluvia, specifically my urine. If you've experienced infertility, you are probably accustomed to handling your own pee. You've baptized stick after stick, OPK and HPT. You've probably carefully dismantled same to examine the urine-soaked strip up close. And if you're lucky, you've amassed a phalanx of positive tests, which you keep for months, stale pee reek notwithstanding. Infertility is not for the squeamish.
A high-risk pregnancy introduces a whole new level of urinary exposure. At twice-weekly non-stress tests, I am asked to submit to a proteinuria dip. At once-weekly doctor's appointments, ditto. And once a day, because I am a nervous freak, I do it at home, too, admiring the pretty mosaic of peed-on reagent pads as I chant the count of seconds. All of these maneuvers involve peeing in a cup, an operation that seems simple enough, but which is, in late pregnancy, fraught with any number of dangers.
Okay, it's fraught with only one danger: peeing all over your hand. This was a surprise to me, so I will tell you this in the hope of saving you from a similar shock one day. By the time you're in your third trimester, nothing down there is where you think you left it. You can hold the cup where you think it should go. But you will be wrong. You will be performing the urinary equivalent of those infuriating games at the fair, where you try to shoot the clown in the mouth with a watergun, in hope of making his balloon-head swell and explode. (Violent? Sure. But you name me a clown who doesn't deserve to get shot in the mouth.)
Despite my ever-so-ladylike reluctance to talk about such things, I find I'm not especially fazed by being caught wet-handed. I swear a little, mostly pro forma, I wash my hands, I move on. It is no greater indignity than any other, and a small price to pay for the reassurance it offers. I certainly cringe less than I did upon watching Grover clutch his blue-furred crotch and break for the nearest benjo.
Could be much worse, after all. Could need another date with the hat. But there's been no hint that I do. My blood pressure is fine — tending low, in fact. No pain, no headaches, no visual disturbances (unless you count what might have been a hallucination, the vision of the normally tight-assed Prairie Dawn twirling to imitate the vortex of a flushing toilet). And although I am swollen at the end of the day, with my feet resembling nothing so much as the tumid antlers of an inflated Bullwinkle, by the next morning it has resolved, and my ankles returned to their usual veiny enviable daintiness.
All is well. 33 weeks and counting.
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Holy crap, your kid wears $9 underwear? Go Charlie! I don't even spend $9 for underwear for myself, unless there are 4 or 5 in a pack.
Can it really be that I am the first to comment? I know I should hit "post" now, since usually the self-labeled "first" commenters end up second, if not further down the line (I'm sure there's an important lesson in there somewhere).
Just glad all is well, and that I had the sense not be drinking any sugary/bubbly beverages when I got to the "Intelligent design" line. My keyboard thanks me for the foresight, and I, you for the guffaw. Oh, I remember those days...
SO thrilled you've made it to 33 weeks!
Too bad you've scheduled a c-section. Because you're going to miss the pinnacle of cup-peeing experiences: trying to do it while in active labor.
Honest to God, I thought the nurse was kidding. She wasn't.
I'm glad you're enjoying pregnancy -- can't wait for you to be enjoying that new baby boy!
Hahaha. See, I told you (er, myself) so!
And Cate, I think Charlie gets to spend on underwear what's saved on Lunchables -- right, Julie?
(I haven't scheduled a C-section!)
33 weeks?! Go, baby, go!
That Elmo video? It's the devil.
Those are my boy's favorite underwear too (briefs, or legless, I guess Charlie would call them)! In his case, more because of the hammerhead sharks, although he does appreciate the stingrays as well.
My last date with the hat was so good, I get to go back to annual hat dates (down from semiannual). I couldn't be more pleased.
33 weeks? Now you're just showing off.
33 weeks. Woo hoo!
So glad that this last stage of pregnacy is working well for you despite the wet hands!!
If it makes you feel any better, I have peed on my hand w/o being 33 weeks pregnant. Or drunk. Or pregnant and drunk. Am gifted.
SO glad you're cruising along - Keep up the good work.
Wait until after you HAVE the baby and nothing is where you left it, either.... Sigh.
And re: underwear -- STILL cheaper than diapers. And they go through the washer just fine :)
Accidents happen -- that's what they say....
Wanna see something even worse than the Elmo video? Welcome to *my* world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AzpByR3MvI
"By the time you're in your third trimester, nothing down there is where you think you left it."
A-fuckin-men, sister. I peed on my hand way more than I should have, considering I wasn't going through all the tests.
Fortunately, though, I had lots of space for my gigantuan belly - I'm 5'10", and for whatever reason, I didn't have center-of-gravity issues. Although if you ask my grandma, it was probably because it was balanced by my continually growing ass. (What she actually said was she thought I was ready to deliver because "Your butt's getting pretty wide." Nice.)
Oh God, I wish I didn't read the part of your post about Baby Bear calling excrement "woo woo." I think that is the most revolting thing I have ever heard. And now it's stuck in my memory bank forever. Thanks a lot.
Speaking of feces, my husband and I taught our son to call the solid product of elimination crap. It sounded so much better than poop, kaka, Number 2 or the hideous whining cry of, "I gotta make!"
We actually got a phone call from an assistant teacher in our son's nursery school classroom complaining about his use of the word crap. I think the humorless wizened hag would have preferred woo woo.
Hurrah for 33 weeks!!!
I learn so much from you, Julie. The links to the old timey disease terminology was outdone ONLY by the wikipedia reference to Japanese crappers. (That was for you, Jill. :D )
Mrs. Waltz beat me to it - nothing's where I thought I left it, 14 months postpartum. Oh well.
After having 5 vaginal deliveries....I pee on my hands more often then not!!! I never had trouble getting up...but then again I always said that I was pregnant with triplets....one in my belly and 2 in my ass.
Congrat on getting to 33 weeks...only seven more to go ;P
Glad to hear that things are going well. As for getting out of bed towards the end, my husband used to help me -- with a well placed foot (placed gently) in my back to get me going.
2 days before my son was was born, I got..um...stuck....on my back in the bed. )It should be noted that my son weighed a whopping 10 pounds and I am less than 5 feet tall, so it couldn't have been helped) My mother was the only person home, and despite my best efforts to avoid it, I was forced to ask for assistance. She has referred to me as "Moby" (like the whale, as in I was like a beached whale.) periodically since then.
Ah yes, trying to pee when you can't see past your belly. At the OB's office I resorted to covering the entire area with the cup snug against my skin.
At 30 weeks in the hospital, they thought I might have a UTI, so the nurse asked for a clean catch sample. Ha! I spent several minutes hovering over the stupid cup and the toilet, cursing every time I missed, and ended up with a pee-covered hand and the bottom of the cup barely covered.
About 3 minutes later when she examined me, she found that I was fully dialated with bag bulging against little feet. Not a UTI, early labor. But since I walked in under my own power and rated my pain as a 4-5, no one assumed I could be in transition.
In that last month I literally had to PULL myself up out of the bed using the slats in the headboard. I kept waiting for one of them to break under the strain of my enormous form.
My big hope was that we'd get Julie triumphing over the relatively minor troubles of the third trimester. So I can say that I hope you're in for at least another month of peeing on your hand before you've got a new little baby to pee on you. If Julie complains about going past her due date, it'd be one of the sweetest sounds in the world.
As if having a medicine ball strapped in front of you doesn't make getting out of bed hard enough, add sciatica to that and it turns into a damn comedy act.
When my sciatica acts up, I can't sit up in bed unassisted even when I'm NOT pregnant. The very idea of trying to do so while pg was just purely laughable. My husband used to roll me out of bed like a beached whale toward water. I just used to pray every morning that I'd land on my feet and not crack my head open on the nightstand. Three pregnancies and no stitches in my head. Yay me! :)
I thank my lucky stars that my 4.5 year old was home with me while I was pregnant with my 2nd. I'd regularly be stranded on the couch without his assistance in bringing me to a standing position. Well... except that one time I told him he couldn't have ice cream and he wouldn't help me up.... Little smartass.
The mere mention of you being thirtyANYTHING weeks makes me smile. :)
Go 33! I could never manage to get anywhere in bed without a crane once I was firmly in the third trimester. I always thought that at least rolling from one side to the other should be easy, but I couldn't do it without bouncing so hard on the mattress that I woke my husband.
I believe we've all had the unfortunate late-pregnancy peeing experience. Hopefully, you'll have only a few more of those in your remaining weeks of pregnancy.
My sister in late pregnancy! Take a word of warning from me. Right in time for getting ready to push one out I seem to have utterly clobbered my back by trying all sorts of fancy techniques and acrobatics to hurl my weird and new body out of bed. Only just today did it occur to me that if I use my arms I put a lot less strain on my back. Now let's just hope the pinched nerves I incurred along the way get un-pinched prior to oh about two weeks from now.
Oh wow, I had to giggle a little at your 'getting out of bed story' - too funny.
:) Becky
http://www.stinkylemsky.typepad.com/
Super happy to see a post from you.
A friend of mine is pregnant with twins. The other day she told me that her junk was kind of puffy.
I wanted to be like YEP. EVERYTHING IS GOING TO MIGRATE. SAY GOODBYE TO YOUR VAGINA.
I broke our couch. Broke. the. couch. All because I was trying to get up from a sitting position while 8-million-months pregnant, and apparently the support struts on the back were not built to take that kind of abuse.
My get out of bed request for the last month of pg and definitely for after both csections was for a stripper pole next to the bed.
Great for grabbing on, won't give out on you like pulling on the sheets or your husband, and could even be handy for later...
I used to gaze longingly at the overhead subway-style loops over hospital beds on TV shows. I wanted one for home use, dammit. And then I found out that hospital beds in maternity wards don't have them. Why not? Delivery did not make me suddenly capable of gracious arising.
Laughing at the stories and happy to hear the 33-week update.
Thought I'd offer a completely unscientific anecdote about a preemie. My daughter was five weeks early (nothing, compared to Charlie, I know), and she had fully mature lungs and not a single problem other than being small for gestational age (3.5 pounds) and chilly.
Whenever your little one decides to come, I hope you have the same great outcome: healthy baby - especially one that gets to come home with you or shortly thereafter.
Like others - so glad to hear all is well during this 33rd week! Loved the pee story... I was equally graceful at my last checkup... while peeing in the cup (still could find parts), I DROPPED THE CUP IN THE TOILET. As I fished out cup in pee water, noticed the back of my shorts were soaking wet from the cup flop. Excellent. Logistically, I dont even know how I managed such a maneuver. Looked like I didn't even make it to the toilet, much less into the cup. Lovely. Graceful. Then I had the pleasure to circle the MD office, meet with a new OB, and walk along walls to my car in wet khaki shorts. Not the least bit humiliating.
wow. 33 weeks.
I was doing lots of peeing in cups last pregnancy and I loved LOVED what you said about things not being where you left them -- laughed a good long time.
and no, you can't ever be read. But go ahead, pour some concrete....
Oy, anus-washing toilets - who knew! I'm so thrilled that you're at 33 weeks.
Amanda Lynn
Wow. 33 weeks.
I would trade buckets of pee on my hands for 33 weeks. Dude. Excellent.
It's it lovely that, in late pregnancy, your lady parts are unseen long enough to be declared missing?
My midwives office always wanted the glucose/protein dip only their bathroom was like a CAVE. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face let alone anything below that.
I was pregnant, lying in bed one night, when I moved and thought "ooo, my water broke". Paged the midwives, fitted myself out with a diaper to catch the fluid and waited for labour to begin (did I mention it was around 2am?) The midwives came over, tested me and said, "nope, not amniotic fluid, you must have just peed."
Faaaantastic.
Congrats on your 33rd week!
I remember so well how funny it was to be pregnant. At that time, sleep was sooo good. Yes, it's so hard to get up in the morning. My enormous butt and belly made it also hard to do so. Cramps also is a contribution to the difficulty of the pregnancy. Still, it was fun! The whole experience of it was so new to me. A baby is kicking inside and I love it when I laugh. 'Cause when I do, he kicks a whole deal. :)
Happy preggerhood. ^__^
Seriously, my eyes completely glossed over the part where you peed on yourself because I was transfixed by the idea that you successfully daytime potty trained. My head was tossing around these thoughts: "does she know the secret? Will she impart it to me? How did this 'click' happen? Why won't the ChickieNob fucking sit on the toilet if her damn invisible friend, Bronner, is potty trained?"
I laughed so hard I almost peed all over myself. Congrats on 33 weeks.
I used to keep a Quart sized yogurt cup next to the toilet to pee into. Then I dipped all the sticks in the wide mouth bass. I couldn't hit the sticks with my pee to save my life!
looks like the Benjamin Moore fan deck. v. pretty.
yay to 33 weeks!!
Yay for 33 weeks! I didn't get REALLY uncomfortable until 36 or 37 weeks pregnant (until I delivered at 41 weeks) and I truly hope you get to see those uncomfortable days...both for the baby's health and for the potential of your posts.
Congrats on the 33 weeks and getting out of bed, and especially for the laughs which I needed right now as I am going through a personal hell of sorts at the moment.
Yay! 33 weeks- you're doing awesome. You're going to kick this delivery in the ass! I'm glad it will be a better experience than the last one (knock on wood).
When I had feet like that my husband used to 'lovingly' refer to me as Miss Piggy. All I needed was the silver platform heels.
Dude... how sad am I that I'd much rather piss on my hand twenty times in a row(maybe more) rather than having a visit with "The Hat" for another 24 hours. That fucking traumatized me, and, no thanks to my having only one kidney because of my lovely uterine anomoly, I'll most likely have several more visits from Mr. Hat over the years.
Fuck me gently with a chainsaw. More pee in my fridge? I will so totally go out and buy a mini fridge with money I don't have, to keep that stuff in before I ever put it next to my milk again(wrapped in bag after bag because I didn't trust the screw on lid).
That was just nasty.
Many congrats on making it to 33 weeks! It's absolutely thrilling that you've made it so far!
In my case, trying to reach around twins, NOTHING urinary is actually accessable at all with the approaches that worked before I got pregnant.
And I'm on prog pessaries. Spot the error with that concept, it won't take long.
As for the sitting up, I flex and roll my knees to the side, lower my feet over the edge of the bed and then ask my scrawny triceps and lats to lever the trunk up. Graceful, I am not.
J
OK, that's it, I'm moving to Japan. Bidets, bidets, everywhere! Maybe they even have one with a pee catcher attachment.
So glad to hear that all is going so wonderfully. Just a few more weeks!