herveryown

Still Rough

After stuffing my bra with cabbage and my stomach with NSAIDs and sage tea, my breasts finally went from Huge Unforgiving Lumps of Agony to A Bra Full of Impending Sag.

Millbarge has to go to a specialist today, either to have something ruled out or ruled in.  We're hoping for good news, but I am terrified.  Other than this issue, I think she is doing very well.  She is chubby and beautiful and loves to pitch fits, even in her sleep.  Before Millbarge, I believed that babies were quiet while they slept, but she fixed that for me by constantly muttering and grunting to herself throughout the night.

Fitz-Hume is extremely tiny and always looks vaguely pissed off.  The bottles never come fast enough, she doesn't see why she has to get naked in order to have her diaper changed, and she greets every burping session with an incredulous look of "What the fuck are you hitting me for?!?"

Sleep is still a challenge. 

I still don't feel functional.

I can't stop worrying. 

Our health care costs tripled this year.  We've already cut every corner we can.  I dread talking about this, because I know the pat answer: "Why did you have kids if you couldn't afford them (you asshole)?"  Well, it's a funny thing.  The increase in health care costs occurred when I was already pregnant and just before I went on three months of unpaid bedrest, rendering it impossible to plan for the impending financial blow.  At this point in my recovery, I'll be lucky to hang on to the job offering us this health care, because we'll never qualify for anything else.  When I return to work, taxes and health care costs will eat up my entire paycheck.

I want to breezily say "Oh, that's so kind, you shouldn't have," but I have to admit that the idea of a paypal button might not be entirely unwarranted right now, and would be appreciated more than I can express. 

Two questions: Will you still respect me in the morning, and how do these things work?  I haven't a clue.

Letting Go, Hanging On

Of course it wouldn't be that easy, the theoretical ride off into the (baby-head sniffing) sunset.

I had a blood transfusion, which I definitely needed.

Fitz-Hume and Millbarge were well enough to room in with us after a few days.  They spent no time in the NICU and only a few nights in the nursery.  This represented such a radical departure from our expectations the first time I went to Labor and Delivery Triage back in November that we could hardly believe it to be true.  This entire pregnancy has conditioned me and Sam to keep our expectations low, and we continued to do so right up until we were all shown the door after maybe four or five days. 

It was after discharge that things started getting weird and by weird, I mean disturbing.  When the bloat started to resolve, it became painfully apparent how much muscle mass I'd lost during bed rest.  I was as weak as a kitten.  A really candy assed kitten.  My back hurt.  My incision hurt.  My boobs hurt.  And then there was my emotional state, which...damn.  I don't think it's entirely unexpected, do you?  Unmedicated Manic Depressive Mother plus Premature Twins equals No Sleep (der), which leads directly to problems. 

I had a couple of really fucked up days.  I was slipping in and out of REM sleep so quickly, it felt like I was hallucinating.  When I slept, I had nightmares that would peel the paint off the walls, the car, the Mona Lisa, the Golden Gate Bridge, you name it.  I couldn't eat.  At one point, I was barely sleeping, just worrying for hours and hours and hours. 

I was completely convinced that if the doctors could see how weak I was, how poorly I was managing, how I was unable to care for them by myself, that someone would lock me up and take them away.  I was afraid to talk to their Pediatrician, afraid to say the wrong thing.  Evil Insurance Company, Inc. tried to schedule a post partum home visit and I tried to turn her away because I was afraid she would tell someone how sick I was and that the house was messy and we'd lose the girls. 

I was too tired to hold them or feed them.  I couldn't feed myself.  I was too tired to cry.  Every time anybody looked at me (up to and including the cat), I would whimper "I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry."  If Sam wasn't the most amazing husband ever and my mother hadn't stepped in to take care of all of us--well, I don't like to think about what could have happened. 

Like I said, it was some fucked up shit for a couple of days there.

My mother finally badgered me into eating a meal that Sam had prepared earlier ("You have to eat this.  He made it for you because he loves you.  Now eat.") and things slowly started to turn around.

My milk came rushing in at about the same time that I realized that breastfeeding was a spectacularly bad idea for our family.

Don't get me wrong, I am a big believer in breastfeeding.  I loved breastfeeding them for the fiftyseven Yoctoseconds (total) that they successfully latched on.  I loved making milk.  I even loved pumping.  The problem was that between waking up two premature babies to eat every three hours and pumping every two to three hours and me already being so physically compromised (not to mention really needing to go back on my crazy meds sometime in the near future), it just wasn't a very realistic goal for us.  Add into that the amount of research on the safety of breastfeeding on Manic Depressive meds (very little), the amount of invasive/painful testing the girls would have to experience to ensure their safety while receiving my milk (a lot) and the degree of paranoia we would collectively experience while trying to monitor them for side effects ("OH MY GOD, she sneezed and farted simultaneously!  Do you think it's a sign of brain damage?!?"  "Hers or yours?") and...no.

I am sad about not breastfeeding.  I am also sad about missing out on all that glowing pregnancy shit and not being able to walk or leave the house for several months and not being able to give birth to them without major surgical intervention (and what a post that will be), but I am choosing to let go of those things and hang on to what matters: Our disgustingly beautiful and amazingly resilient daughters.

The sunset hasn't arrived yet.  Things are still kind of hard over here.  My physical recovery is just beginning and I still can't care for Fitz-Hume and Millbarge on my own, which is rather disheartening.  Today is the first day I've been awake for a respectable portion of the day, gotten out of bed more than a handful of times, or eaten a full meal. 

I don't feel like this is a happy ending to our collective story, but only because I don't feel like this is an ending of any kind.  This is just the beginning for all of us.

Can't Sleep, Babies Will (not) Eat Me

Sam typing here.

After a not-quite comedy of errors, Fitz-Hume and Millbarge were delivered via C-Section. Beautiful, healthy girls, which makes us wonder if they are really ours. We're not going to tell the IVF clinic they may have made a mistake.

Akeeyu's high points of the recent past: 

• Being casually told by a nurse, "Well, and there was some concern during the operation because you started to bleed out..."
• It appears her body forgot to order milk; expecting some in the next few days.
• She has been reduced to monosyllabic grunts while the hospital-grade breast pump is on. "My...brains...are...being...sucked...out..."

Updates to come once we start sleeping again. That sounds awfully far in the future. I'm sure she'll post again before then.

"So, How's Your Ass?"

Ruby opened a conversation with this query.  Have I mentioned how much I love Ruby?

My ass is fine, or fine-ish.  Since issues such as this can progress from wee dainty pink spots to Oh My God, My Eyes! in a very short time, Sam carefully inspects my butt and delivers detailed reports about four times a day.  This is the most action either of us have gotten in almost a year.

The pressure owies are ranging from 'stable' to 'somewhat improved', so I have continued on a plan of slightly less restricted bed rest until next week or so.  The real pain in the ass (har) is that after spending so much time flat, you'd assume that a normal progression would be moving from 'flat' to 'less time flat, more time sitting up and walking around,' but after a bit of trial and error, I have discovered that sitting up is a super bad idea.  Furthermore, any time I stand still for more than say, 30 seconds, my feet turn beet red and feel like they're being stabbed by angy Lilliputians, so my options have dwindled to 'being flat in a really uncomfortable position' or 'walking around and therefore having contractions.'  Joy.

35 weeks, three days.
87 days on bed rest.

Tightrope

35 weeks, 0 days (34 weeks completed).
84 days on bed rest.

We seem to have come to a point where the risks of continuing bed rest are starting to approach the risks of a slightly early delivery.

It's not just my current veal-like state, although really, you should see my sad little skinny arms, people.  They're pathetic.  I'm pretty sure the cat could kick my ass at arm wrestling.  Hell, she could probably beat me at thumb wrestling and just between you and me, she doesn't even have thumbs.

In addition to the muscle atrophy, my blood pressure has been creeping up (yesterday's high was 145/95, but I'm not dumping protein), the shortness of breath is back and I have developed little bruises on my butt that are apparently the early stages of er, 'pressure owies'.  I would totally use scientific terminology, here, but then somebody would feel the need to Google it and blame me for never being able to get those images out of their head, and trust me, my butt doesn't look like that anyway (it's just teensy bruises at this point), and Oh My God, My Eyes!  Nobody needs that.

Ew.

Moving on.

The perinatologists have given me permission to discontinue tocolytics, be less restrictive as far as bed restiness, go off bed rest entirely, or what the hell, go ahead and give birth if I happen to feel like it.  They have also given me permission to stay on the tocolytics and continue to be bed resty for another week, if I so desire.

On the one hand, I'd really like to get another week's worth of lung development and growth on board, and on the other hand, my ass is literally on the line, and on the other other hand, my uterus may be making plans independently of me, my medical team, and my butt, making all of this navel gazing completely irrelevant.  Wait, who am I kidding?  I haven't been able to see my navel in a couple of months.

I guess this is a pretty roundabout way to say "Who the hell knows what will happen next?", but as that's been the takeaway message of this pregnancy since about, um, July, I suppose I might as well be consistent.

Still Here, Cat Still Hates Me

T'lgo doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of what's going on in the Buttmansion abode.  Since her girly bits were smuggled out under cover of darkness before her first heat (meaning that her last experience with pregnancy was when she was on the receiving end of an umbilical cord), she doesn't seem aware that I am, in fact, all kinds of pregnant and not just reeeeally letting myself go.  When I started getting poochy and burping a lot, she began to give me this look: "Lady, having one bloated, uncouth human around the house is quite enough.  If you start up with that crap too, we're going to be over our quota and possibly in violation of several building codes, so quit it."  Showing flagrant disregard for the integrity of our floors, I have persisted.

34 weeks, 5 days. 
82 days on bed rest. 

The atrophy of my arms and legs has become quite pronounced.  I am now the human equivalent of veal.

The Big Fancy Perinatologist Place recently had to scramble to wedge me in for upcoming appointments on gestational dates nobody ever thought I'd hit (and therefore didn't bother to schedule in advance), which continues to both shock and amuse me.  Apparently when the peris told me I wouldn't make it to term, my uterus took this as a dare.