Today is Thursday, and it´s the first day all week that I´ve actually gotten something done. It´s interesting, too, because each day of this week has been worse than the day before, making this day the worst day of the week so far. I feel like I might just drop over unconscious at any moment, so I thought I would try to get at least one blog entry done for this week in case the weekend follows the trend of each day getting worse and I have absolutely no energy or will left!
I´m at the tail end of my pregnancy, week 36 (almost 37) out of 40 give or take, and as far as I´m concerned, my due date cannot come fast enough. This whole pregnancy has been a difficult one for me. I realize that many women have even more difficult pregnancies, with months and months of total bedrest or hospitalizations, etc. so I don´t want to complain too much. I have only been ordered on ¨partial¨ bedrest for the past few months, which here in Ecuador is not that restrictive. I am supposed to stay home as much as possible, and not do anything more than moderate work. I can wash the dishes, for example, but I´m not supposed to take out the trash. (Not like I take out the trash anyway...) They put me on partial bedrest in the first trimester for a while because of some cramping, but that went away and so did the bedrest, and I felt pretty good until the end of the second trimester. Then I developed some high blood pressure, but not really high, just enough for them to put me back on partial bedrest. This doctor´s visit I found out that my blood pressure is officially back to normal, but I have been having really frequent contractions and lots of cramping and my doctor is worried I will go into labor early, so I am supposed to continue with the bedrest until 39 weeks. Just a little longer...
Still, this week bedrest has been more of a self-imposed treatment...I have the habit of doing too much too soon because I get so restless ¨resting¨, but this week even I have not been asking to get out of the house. I have been in a lot of pain, especially lower back pain (and of course the contractions) to the point that I cannot even lie down comfortably. There is literally no way to get comfortable for even 5 minutes. Last night was the worst night yet, and neither I nor Jairo got any sleep at all. It was like those torture scenes on tv where they give you drugs in one arm to make you fall asleep and drugs in the other to make you wake up to intense pain...that was my night. I would fall asleep from being so exhausted only to wake up 5 minutes later gasping from pain. Thank God for my incredibly patient and compassionate husband who gave me back massages off and on from about 2am until about 5:30am.
Apparently this discomfort is caused by the baby being really low, or as the ultrasound guy said the other day, ¨stuck way down there¨. I suppose it´s nice that she is getting ready to come out...that gives me some hope. Still, I wonder to myself how in the world I will have strength for labor if this keeps up...I don´t even have the energy to walk around my apartment.
I am tutoring a teen from our church in English for an army entrance exam, and today was the second day that I tutored him. When Jairo woke me up to tell me that this guy had arrived, I could not stop crying. Jairo was going to send him home, seeing that I was completely hysterical, but I felt bad that the kid had come all this way for nothing so I got up and got changed and ready, crying the whole time. I was so completely exhausted that I couldn´t handle the idea of even being awake, let alone trying to make sense enough to teach someone. I got calmed down and got the class done, and hopefully it made sense, and then I figured that while I was up I would try to do something productive, since the crying spell was over anyway.
I was a little productive. I washed the dishes that were piling up (all of them!), washed 2 loads of clothes (but Jairo hung them up...I´m not that ambitious), made dinner (fajitas...definitely worth the work), made gatorade (from powder...my new best friend), and downloaded some pictures that Jairo needed for a design he´s doing. I was trying to understand when in my life I accepted this kind of activity as ¨productive¨ and then I remembered...oh yeah, somewhere around 7 months pregnant.
I have two new fears about this pregnancy, or actually about labor, that I never even considered before. First of all, with all this talk from the doctor about the baby coming early, I am really worried she will come late. Here I am expecting her to come about a week before her date, and what if she comes at 41 weeks or more? I think I would literally lose my mind. I keep dropping subtle little hints to the baby, like ¨the exit is in a downward direction¨ and ¨please oh please be born soon!!¨ Ok, maybe not that subtle.
The other fear I have is one I already mentioned, that I will have absolutely no strength for labor. I really do not want drugs, and I especially do not want a c-section. It´s not that I´m especially against epidurals and other medicines, it´s really just that we don´t have the money for extra interventions in labor, and I also just prefer a natural birth.
I have this list of 6 signs that labor is coming soon, soon being about 2 weeks or so, and according to the teacher once you have 4 or more it is time for your hubby to stay close. Not like never leave the house close, but definitely never leave the city close. Well I have four, which means absolutely nothing more than what we already know: sometime in the near future, this baby will be born. When? Who knows??
I decided early on that I wanted to memorize Scripture for labor, and I chose Psalm 91 for Jairo and I to memorize together. I also wrote down a lot of other good verses in a pretty little notebook that I plan to take with me to the hospital so that Jairo can read them to me or I can read them, depending on what works. But I wanted to have one memorized, to give me something to focus on. We worked on it a lot in the beginning, and then kind of slacked off near the middle of pregnancy. The other day I was at church with Jairo for a worship team practice, which I decided to go to because I felt pretty good and wanted to get out of the house. Well, that was a mistake. It wasn´t too far into the practice that the contractions hit. I was sitting, so I decided to get up and walk, since braxton-hicks contractions usually ease up if you change activities. Well, the contractions went away but then I felt this incredible pain in my lower back as the baby´s head crushed some nerve in my body or my spinal cord or who knows what. So I was left with a choice...contractions sitting down or shooting pain walking around. I was more scared of the contractions so I decided to walk around, and realizing that I had about 3 more verses to memorize in Psalm 91 and labor could literally be any day, I grabbed a Bible and started memorizing. It was an ok distraction for the most part, although there were a few moments where I would sort of double over for a second and try to compose myself from the pain getting stronger, and in those moments there is really no good distraction. Well, I got the Psalm memorized really well, because I was too scared to sit back down until the end of practice. I was proud of myself that I didn´t cry a single tear until I got home.
Well, I asked Jairo to take me with him to church tonight and he promptly refused...I think ¨no¨ is going to be the standard answer until after baby is born. He´s only going to do some kind of instrument installation thing so he won´t be gone long, and I would have been really bored anyway, but in some way despite knowing how much I really need the rest, it kind of just seems pointless anyway. Here or there, I am not really able to rest. So I´d rather just be doing something. Otherwise, these last few weeks are going to go even slower!
Anyway, that is my week in a nutshell up until now. I still have to make Jairo´s birthday present, and I am currently about 10% done and have only 3 more days, so I´m wondering what kind of miracle to pray for so that I can get it done on time. I already gave in and had Jairo pick out a cake mix rather than make a homemade cake, so I´d like to do at least one thing well!!
I think I will take a shower, which seems to be a nice pain reliever until I turn off the water, and then I will probably try to sleep...which might work for a few minutes. Hopefully I will get enough minutes in there to not be traumatized merely by waking up! Jairo´s looking pretty tired, too...I bet he´s just as ready for this baby to come as I am!
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