Still pregnant.

Still horizontal.

Still contracting every 3 minutes for hours at a time (which does, sadly, tend to put a bit of a crimp in my ability to type coherently. My Train Of Thought turns out to be especially vulnerable to derailment onto the rather banal broken track of ‘ohfuckohfuckohfuck’ upon encountering pain repeatedly).

The only development of note is that my umbilicus now looks like this:

Okay, so mouths have been drawn on to protect the identity of that rather shy little nub of flesh that is currently feeling all naked and fresh air exposed so far outwards of it’s accustomed hidden depths. I’m sure the principle remains. Just be glad I chose to draw a mouth.

OB visit tomorrow.

Guess I’d better have a bash at Blind Razor Hair Removal again, and the interests of safety perhaps I better use a blunt one. I don’t fancy explaining just why I need stitches there to a stranger, no matter how professionally they restrain from giggling in my presence. I do not want to be lumped in the mirth-filled diagnostic group of people who have done Dumb Things To Their Genitals. After all, that group includes people who profess befuddled confusion as to just how the telly remote ended up in their bottom.

In summary, The Scan today revealed no items to overly twist my panties over. And I’m VERY talented at finding reasons to knot knickers…

Despite this I can’t quite shake that nagging instinct to fix my metaphorical gaze upwards, in search of that other damn shoe. It has to drop SOMETIME…

Today’s scan was relatively routine, complete with the now traditional red-faced radiologist explaining in exhaustive detail how clean and sterile and sheathed in a glove the vaginal probe is (to my exposed perineum) whilst I cheerfully responded that as long as I got warning if needles were attached, I wasn’t known for my fussiness over what ends up Up There. Heck, I can’t even see what’s going on Up There any more, courtesy of The Fetii comprehensively blocking my view. Neither can I see to attend to matters of a more grooming nature in anticipation of aforementioned girly bits exposure. Not that a minor matter like lack of vision prevents me from doing my razor-waving best purely by morse code, of course.

Goodness knows what the poor man was confronted with, really.

Anyway, it appears that my cervix has been smuggling an extra two and a bit centimetres out of digit reach. Either that, or I’ve stuffed up and picked a stumpy-fingered OB.

Presumably this means that I shan’t be shooting up steroids (strictly for medical reasons, of course) at my next OB visit, to the relief of all concerned. Of course, given the multiple risk factors for pre-term delivery  I appear to have collected (let alone the fact that I can barely move without doubling over in Contractile Distress), the bed/couch remains a Good Place to park my ever-expanding butt.

As for the non-cervical items, both Fetii continue to grow like beings with no concept of being in a container of ultimately finite proportions. Foetus B actually yawned with boredom whilst in her rather uncomfortable looking jack-knifed feet-behind-the-ears position. Presumably there’s no cable or ‘net in (my base model) uterus.

If it wasn’t for all the uterine misbehaviour, bringing with it an ever-present reminder that things reserve the right to change without notice, I’d probably be obnoxiously observing just how easy this whole pregnancy thing is, after all.

And for the curious…. 24 weeks is on the right.

a.k.a 24 weeks and 2 days and running out of fresh material.

The scene: sometime around the hour of dark and ungodly ay-emm. Say, maybe three am.

Bladder: ‘Geohde, please, wake up?’

Geohde: ‘Snuffle, snort, laborious roll over in bed.’

Bladder: ‘No, please, wake up. I need to do pee-pee.’

Geohde: (Grumbling....)’You better mean it..’

Bladder: ‘No, honest, can I make-a-pee-now, pretty please?’

Cue mild swearing as I lever my increasingly unwieldy bulk out of bed and into the bathroom.

Geohde: ‘Is THAT it?’

Bladder: ‘But I really needed to go! I swear!’ (strains….)‘ Mountain streams! Dripping tap!’

Geohde: ‘I hardly find twenty mls of urine justification for dragging me out of bed. Is that the best you can do these days? Don’t wake me again unless it’s IMPORTANT, okay?’

Bladder: (Whimpering…)‘I promise!! Next time I will be so full of wee you’ll be impressed with my powers of sphincter contraction’

Rinse and repeat above events at hourly intervals for several hours….

Bladder: ‘I’m most awfully sorry, Geohde, but guess what?’

Geohde: ‘Piss off (no pun intended)’.

Bladder: ‘No, really. Gotta go, now. Next step is pee-pee dance!’

Uterus: (butting in) ‘For cryingoutloud listen to the damn thing already or I’ll REALLY have to get your attention….cramp…craaammmmp…you ain’t going to get back to sleep with this strategy, fool’.

Geohde: ‘Screw you both.’

Another twenty mls of urine later…

Geohde: (speculative tone) ‘Would it be necessarily wrong to invest in Depends?’

With a distinctly reserved right to resume drowning at any future point I see fit.

Before I rather self indulgently proceed onto whining about how goddamn BORED I am when I’m not busy being absolutely terrified, let me first state that the babies have not in any way been born in the interval between the last post and this one. Despite several days of increasingly nasty uterine threats of eviction.

I appear to have made the first of what I fervently hope shall be many lines in the gestational sand, i.e. 24 weeks, although truth be told it’s a rather arbitrary and not-all-that-reassuring one. Simply put, today marks the day that if the babies were evicted attempts would be made at resuscitation. That statement does not quite have the ring to it that ‘If these babies were evicted I’d probably take two healthy babies home, alive, with no major long term disability’ has, hence some of the abject terror.

As far as times to be born go, 24 weeks is not really up there in the desirability stakes.

Anyroad, given the propensity of a certain generative organ of mine to contract at the slightest stimulus (not counting all the purely spontaneous runs it also throws in, just for kicks), I have very little of substance to report. Other than that the view from left side-lying on my couch is rather eerily reminiscent of the view I get when I alternate with right side-lying.

Scintillating stuff.

Oh, and my dear spouse, in explaining the situation to a (male) friend of his, summed up the situation thusly: ‘The babies are threatening to leave home a bit early, I offered to do what the Little Dutch Boy did to plug the hole in the dyke, but she turned me down’.

Men, it always comes back to s.e.x somehow.

Yesterday marked the occurrence of a relatively endangered species around these parts. A routine obstetric visit, at a pre-arranged appointment time, made in honest-to-goodness advance (albeit with several of the unscheduled visits between the act of making the appointment and actual attendance, but why knock the gloss off of the achievement?).

After the obligatory blood pressure check and belly poke, including some decidedly uncomfortable but enthusiastic wiggling around of whatever bit of whatever baby(ies) happens to be hiding out in the lower uterine segment (I’m guessing head and a bit of sideways trunk of baby A, although given how much they like to move around in there in some sort of never ending Uterine Turf War, it could just as easily be butt of baby B), conversation drifted to my broken-record complaint du jour. The ongoing disobedient activity of BT*.

The consensus view of the obstetrical opinion in the room (i.e. one OB, it’s easy to have a consensus in those sort of situations) was that it would be nice to get to 28 weeks, and that steroids (for lung maturation) may or may not feature in my next visit depending on some esoteric combination of how the fetii and the length-or-lack-thereof of my cervix appear at the next ultrasound in a week’s time.

Oh, and we all had a merry laugh at my scheduled c-section date.

Presumably just for kicks my OB also cheerfully advised me to keep my legs crossed for the next few weeks at least, and on this note the appointment concluded.

My current short term goal is therefore to stay pregnant until at least the next scan and OB visit are done with (one and two weeks away, respectively), and in that aim I plan to develop thighs you could crack nuts between.

*Bastard Thing (that shall not be named)

Despite all the angst and worry around these parts, not at all improved by yet another Nocturnal Contraction Bonanza of proportions that had me mentally envisioning my poor defenceless cervix being pulled into whimpering non-existence, I appear to be as inappropriate as ever.

Is it wrong that after so many cervical exams in such a short period of time that I think that I’m no longer going to be able to restrain the urge to cheerfully comment to my OB that ‘we really should stop meeting like this’ the next time I find myself in The Position?

Speaking of The Position, it really is a sweet touch on the part of my OB to delicately place a sheet over the external bits whilst hunting around Up There, but really. I mean, it’s not like we both don’t know exactly where the vanished hand is, although I must assume (given the aforementioned tactful sheet) that enthusiastic ventriloquist dummy pantomime on my part would not be appreciated.

Or is it more wrong that I’m frighteningly likely to cheerfully divest myself of all and sundry garments from the waist down upon arriving for my next appointment without waiting for anything in the way of verbal instruction to do so?

23 weeks today.

Otherwise known as the Hydration Paradox.

Given that pharmacology alone is not precisely reining in the errant contractile behaviour of a certain occupied generative organ (to which, as mentioned previously, I shall not refer by name), I’ve been trying out all the non-pharmacological methods out there. Methods that a healthy dose of cynicism honed sharp by years of bitter experience tells me are likely to be at least 90% old wives’s tale and 10% habitual routines to soothe the desperate when there is little real option left.

I can conlusively say that neither a warm shower OR a bath make an ape of a difference. My Not-To-Be-Mentioned is quite happy to contract in an aquatic environment.

Lying in bed all day probably stops a lot of the generalised contractile irritability set off by such provoking stimuli as standing upright, but as evidenced by my 3am wakenings, does little for the more alarming efforts. Besides, when you think about it, I’m always already lying down and so relaxed that I’m asleep when the nocturnal palaver wakes me. Bedrest-schmedrest. 

Not that this stops me spending my days carefully rationing Upright Time into the bare necessities. Just in case, you understand. 

I can’t say I’m planning to try my OB’s suggestion of a glass of wine (complete with stories about how they used to place women in preterm labour on ethanol infusions, thus making maternity wards rather hangover-exposed venues), given some nights I’d be plastered drunk (and probably still cramping away).

The one that really gets my goat, however, is the ‘Drink lots of water and stay hydrated’ line. I mean, really? I can’t think of anything that sets the Foetal Squeezing machinery in motion much faster than more than about a teaspoonful of urine in my bladder.

Now if I could only actually get hold of my OB to mention the passing minor matter of persistant BH’s despite medication, self-upping of dose, weeping sleep deprivation and an impending sense of doom…….My next appointment is in six days and I may just have to hope that things don’t deteriorate to the point of no return in the meantime.

I must confess that I was hoping that the addition of a splash of calcium channel blockade to my diet would represent somewhat of a miracle cure for all things Disobediently Contract-y. Okay, perhaps just one thing Disobediently Contract-y, but you’ll have to read between the rather obvious lines since I fully plan never to give it the satisfaction of referring to it by name again, given the Bastard Thing remains determined to make my life miserable.

I admit the initial results were, dare I say, encouraging. Having been lulled into the happy state of barely even having a damn tightening all day long on the first day, it represented a rather rude shock to still be woken up at 3am (as an aside, why must these things always be at 3 bloody am?) with all the usual ‘ow-ow-ow hard belly, softer…no HARD, and co-incidentally why do I feel this nasty pressure in my pelvis all of a sudden??’ palaver.

I was even less amused, and went as far as to check the expiry date on the medication packet (just in case), when the same thing happened the second night.

I briefly considered garroting the pharmacist on suspicion of medication substitution with placebo when it happened the third night. Three days of no sleep rather increases the violent bloody-mindedness quotient around these parts.

Needless to say, last night, when Bastard Thing began cranking up for it’s nightly performance of next-verse-same-as-the-first (but a little bit louder and a little bit worse) early, I had enough. The fact that technically I wasn’t due for another burst of please-g-d-make-it-stop (in tablet form) for four hours notwithstanding, I liberated another tablet from it’s foil backing and sent it to the Great Big Stomach In The Sky.

and waited for something to STOP happening….

It didn’t.

So, with the only other option being a nocturnal trek to L+D where they would probably only do what I was about to (but with the addition of a latex glove temporarily in my girly bits and a machine that likes to make printout versions of uterine activity), I took another tablet, and lo, at a cumulative dose precariously close to the maximum daily dose allowed Bastard Thing was finally quelled.

I must assume temporariy.

Guess I better tell my OB.

Wish me luck tonight.

Two weeks until Tentative Viability…..

My, thus far pharmacologically un-interfered with, pregnancy is now decidedly interfered with.

This morning I took my first Nifedipine, washing it down with a dose of hope and (in case threats help) a firm admonishment to the tablet that it  better bloody well work. Then I sat up, and (of course) my uterus gave a clear two-fingered opinion about things in unambiguous terms, becoming both rock hard and painful.

Hopefully my little calcium-channel blocking friends will render this simply a passing shot in (rather spiteful, dearest uterus, I must say) defeat.

I can’t say that I particularly like taking a medicine that is officially (because rule makers are stuffy) Category C in pregnancy and comes with warning about causing birth defects in animals. I don’t. But I also know that the rat-snuffing effects were at non-human doses, well more than even the most anxious contractor would ever take and that there is good data out there showing that what happens in rats does not necessarily happen in humans*. In fact there’s no reason, some authors state, that nifedipine is even given a Category C with the human data that is now available*.

Besides, since nobody has ever applied for this widely-used tocolytic drug to be licenced in knocked-upness it’s no surprise that it isn’t.

Besides the first besides, what other choice do I have?

Real Labour at this gestation would unambiguously equal Dead Babies. I’ll take slightly murky off-licence use over that any day.

As the infernally chirpy ticker on the right reminds me, only a bazillion days more to go. Or, realistically speaking, a mere eleven weeks until my goal gestation of 32. Why 32? Long term outcome for babies born at 32 weeks are as good as term births, and since I don’t think it especially likely at this point that I’ll reach term, 32 is sounding just wonderful.

Wish me luck.

I only hope that tomorrow I’m not posting a disillusioned entry about how the pharmacist must have sold me sugar tablets.

PS. I’m also off work until the flipside of pregnancy with a bonus dose of ‘increased rest’.

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* http://www.mja.com.au/public/issues/jun16/brown/brown.html

* Ray D, Dyson D. Calcium channel blockers. Clin Obstet Gynecol 1995; 38: 317-322.
* Magee LA, Schick B, Donnenfeld AE, et al. The safety of calcium channel blockers in human pregnancy: a prospective, multicenter cohort study. Am J Obstet Gynecol 1996; 174: 823-828