i don't know his name but i do know his regiment

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Lisa's recent post re pregnancy-friendly fashion has led me to revisit my brilliant idea (spawned when I was pregnant with Becca) of launching my very own range of Blimpwear™. Said garments would be practical, stylish, and, most importantly, would replace cutie-pie slogans such as 'Mind the bump' or (shudder) 'It started with a kiss...' with more realistic and useful legends. Best suggestion so far contributed by Jack:

THE BABY NEEDS PIES.

Feel free to submit others.

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

More pictures, mostly of Rebecca

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little fluffy clouds

Becca's made the long-awaited connection between her arse and the potty. Mere words alone cannot express the joy and relief her father and I are experiencing at this development; we're both drifting about on a big pink fluffy cloud of parental pride. And today she used the toilet in the J'ville mall with no fuss whatsoever, not even a demand for jellybeans, which have been the training tool of choice (one for a wee, two – well, you get the idea...) This is good: I was beginning to wander whether she thought that her newfound continence was a guarantee of a lifetime supply of sweeties, especially when I emerged from the bathroom the other day to be informed that I had been a good girl and merited a jellybean of my very own.

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Monday, January 29, 2007

Have just survived bruising encounter with Flickr, and I DEALT to that fucker. All this to bring you an inaugural picture of my bump. Such as it is.

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TMI?

Friday, January 26, 2007

Hunted out my medical notes from Rebecca's birth – after I'd made Jack spend the evening hauling every box of petrifying crap from the furthest reaches of the garage, they eventually turned up in the filing cabinet in the 'Rebecca' folder. (Ooops. All I can say that if ever proof were needed that motherhood erodes your identity, there you have it. At least that's how I tried to justify it to a cobweb-encrusted and slightly seething Jack.)

After all that, however, my notes had nothing to reveal on the actual surgery. All I can find is a couple of fairly cursory discharge summaries (one for each of us) detailling times, drugs given, reasons for the c-section ('poor maternal progress', humph! That's right, blame the mother: like it was me who retreated into the wrong end of my pelvis, refused to come out, and then got stuck.) And some stuff about Becca's APGAR scores, which should hopefully get her into a good school, but nothing at all about on the rather important subject of what sort of c-section was performed.

From what I can glean from an evening's frantic Googling, there are about four different types of incision used during c-section but here's the executive summary: if it was a low transverse, i.e. horizontal incision, I'll be allowed to try for a Natural Fun Birth™. However if it was a 'classical' or vertical incision, used more rarely these days (but, notably, more likely to be used during emergency c-sections!) I'll be booked in for an elective c-section as this type of scar is structurally weaker and so there is a risk of, erm, uterine rupture if a vaginal birth is attempted, leading, in worst case scenarios, to all sorts of Bad Stuff that I won't enlarge upon here for fear of alarming my mother.

So here's hoping that the medical notes I'm requesting from the Rosie will be more enlightening: I don't mind having a c-section if medical reasons necessitate it – and the chances of a second c-section after a first are reasonably high anyway – but if we can't find out what sort of incision I had, I'll likely be booked in for a second c-section for safety's sake, and it would be a tad annoying to have to have surgery due to poor record-keeping, don't you think? Still, not to worry: I'm sure the legendarily efficient NHS will come up with the goods in the next 18 weeks! In the meantime, must--stop--reading--surgical--websites...

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not many people know that

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Today's Fascinating Fetal Factoid: the site and direction of a c-section scar do not (necessarily) correspond to the site or direction of the incision in the uterus, which determines whether one is allowed to have a crack, if you'll pardon the expression, at a VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean) or simply booked in for an elective c-section at 39 weeks. The person doing the determining will be the consultant, whom I'll be seeing at the Women's Hospital in a few weeks' time, and the meantime I've some hunting to do through boxes to see if I can disinter my notes from March 2004, which I'm hoping haven't been lost in the transcontinental shift, and to send a form off to the Rosie in Cambridge requesting a copy.

While the elective c-section would certainly make scheduling simpler, it's an outcome I'd rather avoid, not because I have any emotional investment in the mythical natural birth experience so vaunted by organic midwives and Para Pool salespeople, but simply because dealing with both a newborn and a boisterous toddler immediately after radical abdominal surgery doesn't really appeal: Becca weighs about 17 kilos and 'don't climb Mummy' is not a concept she's altogether on message with, and being unable to drive or lift heavy things for six weeks just don't seem like viable options just now. Not that I'm stressed about the whole business. Much.

Fortunately my midwife is sensible and supportive: keen for me to try a VBAC, but perfectly happy for my to change my mind at the last minute and have a elective c-section. In fact, I think I may love my midwife. Today I mentioned having my waters broken when I was having Becca and she said 'It makes you cry, doesn't it?' at which I wanted to climb onto her lap and burst into tears, but instead cleared my throat in a very grownup fashion and muttered something like 'well, it certainly wasn't the most pleasant experience of my life, hrumph, hraagh'.

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how green was my valley

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Whatever the Verve may think, medication can be surprisingly effective. Up to a point: the Maxolon my midwife's got me on has dialled the constant nausea right down, which has certainly made life more pleasant, but without actually stopping the vomiting, a disconcerting consequence of which is that I now have little or no warning about when I'm going to be sick, resulting, the other day, in an emergency stop on State Highway One the other day (but let's face it, Levin had it coming).

(A friend asked me the other day why this blog lacks a comments function – mostly because it would just fill up with 'Enough about morning sickness already!' and similar observations.)

For the record, we weren't in Levin just to add to my Compendium of New Zealand Bergs I Have Vomited On (forthcoming from Victoria University Press, 2007) but to take Becca to the Levin A&P show (viz. county fair) to see the animals. She had a marvellous time, even managing to cuddle a baby bunny without making its eyes pop overmuch. The larger specimens had her a bit worried though; as we picked our way past the bullock pens she announced timorously 'I want to see some amimals [sic] that don't make noise.' She perked up when we took her to see the pigs though, all pigs being, as far as she's concerned, incarnations of Wilbur the Famous Pig from Charlotte's Web, which she's seen approximately five hundred times, much to my chagrin, since I'm not talking about the new CGI/live action version, but the 1973 badly-animated Hanna Barbera version with Debbie Reynolds as the spider, a film that manages to be both relentlessly Pollyannaish and unremittingly maudlin at the same time, for 94 long, long minutes. Don't know what the new version's like, but it surely can't be any worse even though Oprah's in it; at least it has Steve Buscemi, typecast as Templeton the rat.

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melon-caulie baby

Monday, January 22, 2007

Bid formal farewell to my pubes the other day. Not that I'm planning to do, or have done, anything drastic to them – it's just that at the current rate of expansion, I may be losing sight of them fairly soon, and, pregnancy yoga notwithstanding, likely won't be seeing them again for a good few months.

From BabyCenter, this week's Fascinating Fetal [sic] Development Fact: I'm supposed to have put on about a stone by now. Which means that, since I've put on no weight at all, technically I've lost a stone, right? Right?

Sent by my brother this morning: if you think the Wedding Industry was terrifying, you ain't seen nuthin' like the Pregnancy Industry, gone mad.

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in the name of the father

Thursday, January 18, 2007

In the Œdipal psychodrama that is the Williams Elder household, Becca is now, according to her at least, the Mummy, while Jack is still the Daddy – all bang on schedule according to the Freudians; at least this is how the experts tell it. Not sure where that leaves me: relegated to some sort of domestic/breeding concubine, I guess.

In other news, have signed up for pregnancy yoga: one of these pregnancies being not like the other, while I'm still chucking up every other day, I'm not suffering the vile reflux that dogged the first pregnancy from the very beginning. This precluded any form of exercise that involved bending forwards so I had to eschew pregnancy yoga classes lest Downward Dog segue unfortunately into Outward Lunch. Classes start in three weeks. At least my yoga mat wipes clean.

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heavenly host

Friday, January 12, 2007

Monday's 20-week scan entirely scare-free, unlike the last time back in Cambridge, when we were whisked into a Family Room and plied with sugary tea and explanatory pamphlets. This time around, it appears, I have managed to grow a correctly-specced umbilical cord with the traditional two arteries and one vein. Last time, being a novice, I went for the economy model with one of each, sending everyone into a frenzy apart from the sensible foetal medicine obstetrician, who took a look at the scan and blood results and gruffly remarked 'that is a perfectly healthy baby: go home and enjoy your pregnancy!' In any case, the sonographer has assured us this time around that the two-vessel cord is a normal if uncommon variation and is regarded as an interesting anomaly rather than a danger sign unless there are other indications present (such as actual anatomical malformations in the foetus). Information I could have used three years ago, but no matter.

Apart from a standard-issue cord, the scan showed a perfectly-good-size-for-dates and anatomically correct wee proto-person of undetermined gender – having no marked preference (although Rebecca is clamouring for a sister) we've decided to wait and see. Will post pics of the HP's noble profile as soon as we can figure out how to digitize the images from the films – our poxy wee scanner is currently rendering them as so much black on black.

In other news, the morning sickness continues unappeased by the news that everything's going well ('good sign' my gastric sphincter). Food has become the enemy, with my digestive system rejecting entire nutritional groups on an apparently random basis – I have visions of a tiny bearded and cloaked thesp perched at the frontier of my duodenum clashing two wee sticks together and and squeaking 'You SHALL NOT PASS!' – and frequently making me sick even on an empty stomach, presumably to keep me match fit for the next time I dare to eat something it doesn't fancy the look of.

Accordingly, yesterday's midwife visit mostly focussed on the condition of the host organism, and the question of why, well into the second trimester, during which it is traditional to moon about in a floaty frock stroking one's belly with an expression of imbecilic contentment, do I feel so unremittingly shitty? Dismissing as medically unsound my theory that I'm simply rubbish at being pregnant, my formidable LMC has ordered a bunch of tests, as well as prescribing Actual Drugs for the sickness (my timid suggestion that I could just put up with it for the next four months was also met with a snort of derision).

Weighed myself sneakily on the way out: discovery that I have gained not an ounce, not so much as a gram, during the entire pregnancy, afforded a moment's grim satisfaction. Am now off to drink sugary solutions and be bled – there being an hour's interval between these two events, I shall spend the time caressing my bump in the waiting room and practising looking fulfilled. And, hopefully, not puking.

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