All is well...

... I'm just sort of overwhelmed, is all. House triage proceeds at an intense pace (look! the dryer vent doedn't need to be threaded through a window anymore! We have temporary storage in the kitchen! and the upstairs bathroom! I've unpacked at least 6 of the 200 or so boxes that have infected the house! And we're anticipating a quote, any day now, from cabinet people who only have an 18-week lead time!). The diaper stash has gotten its initial washings. My ankles have realized we're not going back to British Columbia any time soon and have consented to occasionally not swell, despite the heat. And friends keep inviting us over for dinner, even the ones with tiny babies, and bless them all.

Work? Not so much. Today I will go into my office and send confessional e-mail to Dr. Wow, that I took a few more days off than I'd intended. Ooops.

Basketball belly? Huge. I gained 6 pounds in the three weeks between my last two checkups. That early-second-trimester I'm-so-hungry-I-could-cry-right-now hunger has returned. Blood pressure is okay, and everyone (except Beaker, sob, whose mother blames her permanent basketball belly on her third pregnancy, during which she was 4 years younger than I am now) keeps telling me I look fine and healthy, so, whatever.

Granolaton matrons are very happy to tell me about their early Lamaze experiences. "Of course, if you need the medication, that's okay. But the breathing really allows you to oxygenate during the contractions..."

Some good news: I'd been afraid to call Cornell to ask, well, what was left on ice. We shipped out 4 vials of Beaker's sperm, way back when, and we hadn't gotten any storage bills. And it's not like Cornell is shy about asking for money! But, we finally got a bill—looks like the last one got lost in some forwarding tangle—and let me tell you, they charge for that Upper East Side real estate. But, they still have 3 vials left: only one was used.

Which keeps the possiblity of trying all over again, which I know we shouldn't even be thinking about, which would be very difficult indeed—teaching schedules! financial ruin from the earlier cycles! from the renovations, too! my ever-aging ovaries!—well, it keeps it open. And if it weren't, I would have cried very, very hard.

Comments

[altmama]

Glad things are going well for you. Also, very interested to read this post. As I think about my own little two-step with infertility, one of the things I find very odd is that not only might this first child be ver hard to conceive--I've almost gotten used to that--but that any child we'd have would be hard to conceive. I can't really imagine going through all the fertility stuff (which currently feels like a precipice I'm readying myself to jump off of) more than once.

[delagar]

I'm not trying to scare you. But breathing through the contractions?

BWWWAHAHAH!

Go for the epidural.

(Actual quotation from my labor experience: mr. delagar, looking at the epidural sign-off sheet: "Do you want me to read this to you first? It's about complications that might--"

Me: "JUST SIGN THE FUCKING THING!")

Of course, YMMV.

Some people have a lovely time in childbirth. So I hear!

[Moxie]

I breathed through contractions. But not using Lamaze panting breathing. Blech. Not helpful. Lamaze was really important when it started because it gave women knowledge and a semblance of control over their bodies. But the breathing part is counterproductive.

If you do want to go drug-free, the things that are most useful are to resist being induced, to stay upright (and walking around, if possible) as long as possible, and to have people around you who know you can do it.

Beaker's not telling you you look good? Poke him with a sharp pin.

[Sally Bowles]

Breathing through contractions, combined with splashing in a warm bath, worked for me. So did screaming and groaning and grunting and growling--it probably sounded beastly, but that's par for the course. I didn't yearn for pain meds during labor. I did, however, contemplate why anyone would want to go through this more than once.

[CanuckDoc]

18 hours in, when they said I likely has several more in front of me (it was indeed 17 more hours), I took the epidural gratefully so I could get some rest. That stupid TENS unit was useless, and all the money I'd scrounged from my grad school stipendiary income to take those granola classes was so much a waste of my damn time!
I hate that some women have turned labour and birth into a new form of moral competition.
Do what works for you, don't feel guilty about it, and don't explain.
Also... I had an electric pump at home and a manual one on the road. I *definitely* recommend the electric one (but that thing just WOULD NOT SELL in my garage sale later. Go figure. :P )