To 'Make it' to 34 Weeks

I have now been at Sunnybrook for about 8 weeks.  When I was first admitted, I didn't really believe, couldn't really believe, that I could be here this long and that Baby G would wait until this major milestone came.  I am so happy to be at 34 weeks because I feel safer, more secure, and relaxed.  The nurses keep telling me that I have done well.  But honestly, whenever they say that to me, I tell them that I didn't do anything special to get here and that I am just lucky to not have an emergency like so many of the other women here in the High-Risk Obstetrics unit.  That is how I feel.  Lucky to have a healthy baby.  I don't want to take away from the struggle of the other women here - who still delivered their babies early despite all their hopes for a different outcome.

I have learned to crochet and I find it very soothing and mindful. 

I even made a little wool hat that I think is very cute and perhaps Baby G will even wear it.  It's wool though so...itchy.  We'll see.  She can always wear a thin beanie under it.  That is what I do.

I am finding it more and more difficult to move around.  I am so big that I can't walk for long without getting uncomfortable, and I have been passing blood clots on again off again so I am very wary about pushing myself too far.  I have gotten greedy.  Now that I have gotten to 34 weeks, I want to get as far as I can. 

My belly is so firm because it is so full of baby!  I can feel her moving everywhere!  I will miss this so much when she is delivered.  One the other hand, once that placenta is out, I can go back to self-medication using chocolate with more impunity than I have now, and I can get my body back into shape after months and months and months of 'taking it easy'.  Taking it easy is really not my style.

I think that society needs to know what pregnancy can be like.  It is not a disease or a sickness - but rather a condition.  Sometimes it is a messy condition.  Movies portray it as humorous and awkward and it is those things.  But for those of us who end up in the hospital, we have no voice, and no identity in society.  There is no sexy movie about this journey.  It is still as if pregnancy, and especially a truly high-risk pregnancy, is a final bastion of the silence that surrounds women's health.  There is nothing gross or embarrassing here.  This is what some women (and don't forget their partners!) go through to have children. 

I am dedicating these posts in my blog to all of the women who have been through pregnancy.   And I also dedicate them to all those who have tried or who are trying, or who have lost babies, because it is all part of the same journey. 

As always, thank you for reading.

Leslie

Thankful

According to my Duoling app, which I have been using to practice my Romanian every day since I was first admitted to hospital, I have been here for 43 days.  Today is Canadian Thanksgiving and amidst the Facebook posts of cottage time, family gatherings, and delicious food, I have decided that it is time to reflect on what I am grateful for these days while I am here at Sunnybrook.

First of all, since I have to be in a hospital somewhere, I am very glad that is only a five minute drive from our house.  Alex is able to visit me twice a day.  The coffee he brings me from home sets the tone of the day.  Even though those morning visits are short, I look forward to them.  He then comes in the evening either straight from work or after he has first stopped off at home.  If he has no business meetings or pressing duties at the house (cat, chores etc), then we watch something on Netflix.  It is almost like being at home.  He also keeps me well stocked with greek yogourt, cottage cheese, fresh-cut flowers, and berries.  Bless him and his little cotton socks as Heidi would say.  My room smells like strawberries right now and I couldn't be happier about that.  Today's lunch was a turkey dinner of sorts. 

I appreciate the effort to make it sort of festive, and I snapped a photo.   Not my mother's home cooking by a long shot, but a kind gesture for those of us who are in the hospital over a holiday.  I admit that I ate less than half of it.  😕

I look forward to the check-ins from the nurses that take place four times a day.  I get to hear Baby G's heartbeat and get virtually constant reassurance that she is healthy and thriving in there despite my situation and the food that I get here.  I also have the added bonus of seeing her weekly on ultrasound.  I didn't realize how few ultrasounds were given to regular women with low-risk pregnancies.  

This morning, Alex came early in order to be able to be there for today's growth ultrasound.  The baby is now 4.6 pounds!  I am so happy and so relieved.  That is pretty big for High-Risk Obstetrics.  Now I just have to wait for her to continue to get fatter, and for her brain and lungs to continue to mature.  

After that, we went outside for some air. 

They don't let me leave the floor by myself so I am always grateful when someone visits who can take me and a wheelchair to the courtyard area behind the H-Wing.  There are some picnic benches and park benches, some green space and some flowers sandwiched between a parking lot and some of the older buildings that make up this hospital.

Alex sleeps over on Saturdays, but all other nights and most of every day, however, I am by myself in my room.  I go for small walks after meals to help control my blood sugar, and very occasionally I hang out in the patient lounge for a change of scenery, but generally I stay in my room.  Yes I have plenty of books to read, and I do read them, and puzzles and magazines and, when all else fails, images for coloring and extra fine markers.  These things, combined with my newly-discovered ability to crochet, somehow pass the day.  Many people have advised me to enjoy this opportunity to rest, sleep, and read because I won't have any time to do these things after the baby comes.  The sentiment is well-meant, and I know where they are coming from, but only someone who had never been in the hospital for weeks or months at a time would say something like that.  No one would choose to spend her entire third trimester here.  I feel fine but what I am allowed to do is severely restricted.  I stare at the same four walls almost all the time and almost never see the sky.  It is a sacrifice I'm willing to make in order to give my daughter the best chance at optimal health when she is born, and Alex and I would do it again, and again.

There is a whiteboard in the room that never gets used for anything so I write the date on it every day, and add some goals and quotes. 

It helps me focus a bit and help me remember some of the things that I wanted to get done.  

32 weeks and 5 days.  Signing off now.  As always, thanks for reading.

Leslie

I have always used this blog to document travels and adventures, and I haven't been on in a while.  I had so much fun in Iceland, and spend the long days taking in all the sights, that I didn't even think about blogging about it.

Now I am on another, very different kind of journey.  And I find that I do have time, and I want to document that this is happening so that others might read about it, and also to allow me to look back and remember how lucky I am.

Alex and I are expecting a baby girl, and at the time that I write this, I am 32 weeks into the pregnancy.  I have also been in the high-risk obstetrics unit at the hospital for almost 5 weeks now.  The placenta decided to attach itself over the cervix, and as a result, has a tendency to cause bleeding of random severity and at random intervals.  They are keeping me here until I deliver.  I had friends who developed preeclampsia or had early contractions or other problems, and were hospitalized for some time before their babies were born, but I didn't know anyone who had had this happen.

I feel incredibly lucky to live so close to this hospital that has an excellent neonatal unit in case the baby is born so early that she needs a lot of special care.  I never thought that my own baby would be born as prematurely as I was.  When we first admitted (in the middle of the night - as always), I had a bunch of specialists come talk to me within the first few days.  Amidst the shock, daze, and psychological trauma of being yanked out of a normal pregnancy and into a hospitalized one, I met with anasthesiologists, hematologists, pediatricians, endocrinologists, and many residents as they had me sign documents for a C-Section and blood products, did tests to gauge my health, and established a baseline for our care.

I have now been here for five and a half weeks.  I was discharged once, and was home for one whole day sitting in the sunshine on the Poang and watching Homeland, and had one night back in my own bed.  But in the middle of the second night, I started bleeding again and had to return to the hospital.  I remember standing outside of the car and looking up in the darkness at the house trying to fix the memory in my mind because I knew that after this bleed I would be admitted and probably not allowed to go home again until the baby was born-and that could be weeks away.

There are 23 beds in High-Risk Obstetrics at Sunnybrook.  the unit is sandwiched in between the Birthing Unit for people having normal deliveries, and the Maternal Unit for the recovery period.  Twice a day, after lunch and dinner, I walk through the units.  I peek into the open doors of the vacant rooms and admire the large windows facing the outside, the tiny beds where babies can sleep next to their mothers, and the sheer space of the rooms - easily twice the size of mine.  I am incredibly lucky to be in a private room.  I have been in a semi-private and also a standard room for short periods of time.  If you are here a short time, then you can exist in those tiny areas cordoned off by curtains that blow open every time someone walks by to see your roommate.  Once the shock and trauma of being admitted to the hospital wears off though, the privacy of having our own space is irreplaceable.  In this small room, I can be myself, listen to music, have my own bathroom, have Alex sleep over on the bench, and also cry in private when I am sad, lonely, frustrated, or cannot sleep.

I think that at this point, I may be the veteran here.  The HRO unit, like I said, is sandwiched in between places where women have 'normal births' and stay for a day or two or three.  I don't think that people even realize that when they are walking through the HRO unit to get from one area to another, they are walking through a place where women like me are essentially living out the final days, weeks, or months of their pregnancies.  Some women are here because they have placenta previa like me, or their water broke extremely early, or there is something else that is deemed risky enough that they could have an emergency at any moment and if and when they do, it is safer to be here because the team can respond in seconds.  We will not have the normal experience of feeling contractions, waiting, and then going in to the hospital for giving birth.  We will not even have the experience of waiting at home for our planned C-Section.  We have to be *here*.  The psychological impact of knowing that you could be fine one moment, and then in an urgent situation the next moment, is difficult.  Some people do get discharged from time to time, or sent to another hospital once they are past a certain number of weeks pregnant, but I also know that many, many women deliver here.

The vast majority of the time, I am stable and coasting.  I never really had any fantasies about the miracle of giving birth.  I am so incredibly happy to have a healthy baby growing inside me.  This is something that I never thought I could ever have.  I am so grateful, excited, and happy.  I always looked at the birth process as a necessary step to get me from the wonderful pregnant phase, to the happy with babe in my arms phase.  I am however, very sad to have to spend my entire third trimester spirited away in this little unit.  Every single pregnancy is a miracle, and I loved walking around feeling so lucky that I got to DO this.  I wanted to be celebrated, loved, and to coo over baby items in shops.  I wanted to nest and prepare the nursery.  I had to cancel my baby showers, massages, and other pre-natal rites of passage.  Now my only function is to be in the hospital, grow this baby day by day, be incredibly glad that when I go to bed every night, she is one day older, and be grateful that I had another day without bleeding.

Bleeding.  A week ago, I did have a significant bleed.  Faster and heavier than a period.  I wasn't afraid because I knew that this was why I am here.  The nurses had told me enough stories about bigger bleeds so that when it happened to me, I knew what to do.  Within seconds, three nurses were in my room and I was on the baby monitor.  Within one minute, the doctor fellow was there.  I had an IV put in, and I was taken to the birthing unit where I would get continuous monitoring and a dedicated nurse.  After being in HRO for so long it felt strange to get moved to a different room and watched over by staff I had never met before.   I spent four hours there before I was sent back when the bleeding stopped.  It has been back to business as usual ever since.  Knowing that I could go another five weeks until my planned C-Section, or ... not ... is a strange feeling, but I am getting used to it.  The baby is now big enough that she will do beautifully no matter what.  I definitely have fewer nightmares now than I did before.

I will sign off now being grateful for another day feeling her strong kicks and listening to her powerful heartbeat.  I have half of a cheese sandwich that I may or may not toast, and that I may or may not eat as my evening snack.  Life in the hospital.  What can you do?

As always, thanks for reading.

Leslie and Baby G.