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LuLu's Land of the Fey

All the news that bores the pants off anyone who cares.

Monday, July 28, 2003

Of Vitamins and Birthing Rooms

Random thoughts for the month:

RE: Pregnancy
I'm still planning on letting my husband impregnate me this year. Went to see Dr. Martin (how cool is that? My OB/GYN's name is Doc Martin!) a month ago about pre-pregnancy concerns. She gave lots of advice (apprently it's best to have sperm in the fighting arena before ovulation occurs--it can live up to 72 hours in there. Neat!) and lots of prenatal vitamin samples. The first that I tried, wildberry flavored NataChew, were pretty cool because they were chewable. They reminded me of Flinstones vitamins, which I really liked as a kid. However, it kind of worried me because as a kid, I thought that these little Flinstones were more like candy than the medicine that they are. I never ODed on them or anything, but I would definitly take two or three if mom wasn't watching. Not that, as an adult, I would try to take two or three prenatal vitamins--the extra iron would make me sick--but I figured it would probably be best if it just wasn't an option. (Another area of concern: in this day and age, a company that doesn't have a webpage for its product is just...odd.

Which led to sample #2: Duet by StuartNatal. These had a mild laxative effect, as apprently pregnant women are in need of stool softeners (their words, not mine). Yay! Something else to look forward to in this creation journey! The outer coating on these babies (no pun intended) is bright yellow, about two steps above the color of Mountain Dew, which normally wouldn't cause me any concern. Alas, the dye used to coat them is pretty easily digestable; my pee was a brilliant saffron color the week that I tried this brand out. So I've got the trots, and my pee is technicolored? Maybe Duet isn't for me.

Sample #3 was PreCare Prenatal by Ther-RX. Dye free! Yay! No more yellow pee! Alas, it also had a stool softener (couldn't they come up with a better term for laxative?), so it was nixed as well. I'm batting 0 for 3 here--I don't know much about baseball, but I do know that those kinds of odds aren't favorable.

Sample #4 was Prenate GT by First Horizon Pharmaceuticals. Ok, I'm a dork, but I like these for several reasons. First, they don't make my pee yellow, nor do they give me the trots, both very important features at this point in the game. Secondly, they don't taste like much of anything because they are gel-coated. Thirdly, when I was a kid, I had a kick-ass bike--a DiamondBack GT. Now, at the time, I was a punk-ass cake-eater, so I didn't know that DiamondBack and GT were two different bicycle companies. I'm still not sure how I got the idea that they were one company--I probably saw the two brands next to each other in one of my brother's bicycle magazines and just made an assumption. Sigh. I didn't find out until much, much later in life that this bicycle type never existed. So even though I'm an adult now, and I know that the two companies are not the same and that there is, in fact, no such thing as a DiamondBack GT bicycle, in my mind, that's what the bike was. And these vitamins remind me of that kick-ass shiny chrome bike and that makes me happy.

So I'm getting the Prenate GT. Huzzah.

Incidentally, I was almost scared out of having a kid at the beginning of the summer. My cousin Eva, whom I have always considered more a sister than anything else, since I didn't have a sister and we were always close, had her second son, Logan Alexander Pochatko on June 16. He's beautiful. Tiny (at least the last time I saw him, a few weeks ago, he was still pretty small). Perfect. All around great infant.

I get this call from Pete, Eva's husband, around noonish that day.

"Hi Amy. This is Pete." Anxious.

"Hey Pete, what's up?" Curious--Pete never calls. It's usually Eva who is calling.

"The baby's on his way." Hee hee hee!

"Holy shit! He's not due for another month!" Yowza!

"I know. He's decided to come early." Glee, excitement, nervousness. All the typical 'I'm about to be a Dad' emotions.

"Ok, I'm on my way--let me brush my teeth and put some clothes on and I'm out the door." [Editorial note: I am a teacher, and in the summer time, I have been known to sit in pajamas (as I am doing right this second) with unbrushed teeth and sloppy hair, eating slices of cheese wrapped around hotdogs all day long. I figure I am more than responsible during the school year--I can have my summer months to brush my teeth when I think about it and put on clothes when I have to see someone or leave the house if I want to.]

"Excellent--I'll see you in a little bit."

"See you around 3 o'clock-ish!" Eva lives several hours away and so I had to pack a quick overnight bag, run by Robert's office, let him know where I was going and get money, and haul ass.

And haul ass I did. I got there around 3:30ish, almost 4ish. She's in labor, doing the breathing, groaning, all the things you see a woman doing on TV when she's about to have a kid. Only this is for real, and she looks miserable, not all glowy and 'Hey, this is actually kind of fun! Watch me grunt a little and bitch about how hard childbirth is!' like you usually see on TV. Pete's in the room. Eva's in the room. And now I'm in the room.

"Where's your mom, Eva?"

"She's in the air right now." Diana works for the airlines as a flight attendant.

Oh.

"Where's your dad?"

"He's in Africa. He won't be back for another week or so." Donnie works overseas right now, several weeks on, several weeks off.

Oh.

"Where's your parents, Pete?"

A whole lot of cussing that, in the interest of brevity, I'm editing out right now. Let's suffice it to say Pete's not happy with his family of late.

Oh, and did I mention that the doctor comes in every 15-30 minutes and sticks his fingers up into Eva, so that he can measure how far along she is?

Yep, this is definitly going to be an education for me.

About an hour or so of "regular" laboring along, Eva starts getting her contractions a lot closer together and consequently, starts screaming a lot more regularly. The doctor comes in, starts prepping. The nurse comes in and starts her prep as well. The doctor tells Eva that she's got to keep her legs pulled back to her chest while she pushes using her rectum muscles. I'm watching this from the corner of the room going, "Holy shit--this is going to happen before I can even get down to the waiting room."

And Pete turns to me and says, "Ok, Amy, you're going to hold one leg back and I'm going to hold the other one back. You have to make sure it stays as far back as possible, and don't let her kick you."

Um, ok.

So I step up to the bed, pull back on her leg when instructed to, and watch this kid squeeze out of her, kind of like watching a living, breathing playdough fun factory. My God, kids come out covered in some nasty shit! Never again will I tear up at a birth on TV--there's no way those clean, pretty babies are just out of the womb.

All along, I'm thinking, "I'll have to do this in a year. Boy, is that going to suck!"

But the fact of the matter is, having seen a real live birth, having practically been a part of it myself, it doesn't scare me as much as it used to. It's going to hurt. A lot. No getting around that. Even if I went for a C-section, it wouldn't be all shits and giggles because that's a major, invasive surgery and, frankly, I'm not all that interested in that option unless it becomes a necessity.

Later, Pete apologized to me profusely for "making" me be a part of it. I told him that, first of all, I was honored that I was allowed to be there and be part of the welcoming party for the new baby. Secondly, I told him, I could have opted out at any point, but I love Eva and him too much to have deserted them when they needed my help. Finally, having seen that it isn't the end of the world, that, yeah it kind of sucks, but it's not a forever kind of pain, I feel a little bit more prepared to do it myself and so, if anything, I should be thanking them for letting me see how not-so-scary it is.

Hands down, it was the freakiest shit I have ever seen. It amazes me that OB/GYNs see this stuff every day. I am in awe when I see Eva and the baby now. Hell, I'm in awe when I see most women with their babies now. I look at them and realize that they went through that same experience and I'm a little bit blown away. At the risk of getting all "Hallmark moment" here, it truly is a miracle to see.

So that's it for now. Less scared about the birth. We finally sold the house and moved to the new house in Marshall. I love the new place--it's big, it's plush, it's everything I could hope for to bring a baby home to next year. I'm up to my ears in boxes, but I still stop to think occasionally that this is where my family is going to start; this is where my baby will grow up. It makes me smile, and for now, that's all I need.

.: posted by amy 1:27 PM