As our crap-ola economy continues to deteriorate (yes, “crap-ola” is an adjective, somewhere), we’re hearing more about all of the “Occupy” movements taking place worldwide. As a matter of fact, “Occupy” has become one of the most popular words of the year. As serious as the demonstrations are, folks are having fun with the term too (“Occupy the Bar”, “Occupy a Desk dammit”). I am currently Occupying my beloved brown suede couch…and I’ve been told to do so for at least the next 17 weeks (somebody buy me some Febreeze for this thing!)
Being ordered to chill out on my couch is what I always prayed for! My job required me to wake up at 1 in the morning, 5 days a week and basically be shot out of a cannon to different locations for the next 12 hours. The older I got, the harder it was to do (especially with a damn smile on my face). Saturday and Sundays became the loves of my life as I attempted to catch up on sleep and do things normal people would do: Keep up with the Kardashians, see blue Aliens save the world at the movies, or at least clean my dirty shower. When Monday rolled it’s ugly head around, I would curse it with all of my breath and then commence like the 80’s group LoverBoy once said to “work for the Weekend” (remember that one? Good tune!)
I was in this mode of working and reaching desperately for the weekend when I went for my 18 week pregnancy checkup a couple of weeks ago. Sure I was deemed to be a “high risk” pregnancy for a couple of factors, but we were rolling along so far! We had seen the kids tallywacker proving it was a boy, his heart was beating like some David Guetta techno song, and I hadn’t even puked in my 1st trimester! But anytime people start furrowing their eyebrows during your ultrasound, something is up! My issue? A shortened cervix. I know, I know, TMI, but listen, it happens and it is friggin scary! It means you’re at risk for early labor, and no mom wants to hold their baby at 18 weeks weighing less than a pound. My doctor sat me down and told me it was time to stop working, and, for the sake of my pregnancy, go on bed rest until our baby was born. While this would’ve seemed like a dream to the old me, the new me burst into tears. It was a blind side: I thought we were ok? I’m not due until April! And who the hell shortened this cervix of mine?? I think in that instance, I became a parent because I realized “I’m going to be worrying about this kid for the rest of my life.”
I left the office totally terrified but determined to sit on my tookis and calm this kid down! 2 days later after vegging out on my beloved brown suede couch, we returned to the doctor. This dang cervix had shortened even more!! Furrowing her eyebrows once again (not a good look for a pretty doctor), my doc called in the “big gun”, the head of the high risk department. He came in and after a good 5 minutes of looking at my charts and furrowing their eyebrows together, he spits out a french sounding word to me: “cerclage”. It didn’t sound as tasty as “croissant” or “champagne” so I knew it was something that was gonna hurt.
Basically a cerclage is a procedure to sew your shortening cervix shut to prevent pre-term labor. This head honcho only slightly bragged to say “cerclage is my thing”. Hey, if you’re gonna have a procedure, go to the guy who brags on it, right? They sent me to the hospital right from the doctor’s office with plans to cerclage-it-up in the morning…whatever that meant
After a night of listening to a woman in labor sounding like she was being murdered (there were applause once the baby came out, but do you think I wanted that to lull me to sleep that night?), there was a flurry of activity to prep me for the procedure. My tiny veins led them to stick me (and hard) 5 times to get an IV-luckily, that was probably the most pain I felt all day. Then they started bringing up the “E” word-Epidural. Now anyone who has even heard about pregnancy and labor knows (at least kind of) about epidurals, but I had a weird view of them. I was waiting for them to pull out some long needle an stab me like Julius Caesar. So there I was, hospital gown open and back and butt exposed waiting for it. Then I said to myself “hey dope, you have a tattoo, get over it!”. Thank goodness for self-deprecation because my cynical self was right–It didn’t hurt.
My feet and legs went absolutely numb, I got the shivers (thanks epidural!) and then it was time for the cerclage. I felt nothing, seriously, NOTHING! They had to position my legs for me to do it, but it was all over in a matter of about 10 minutes. Then more worry ensued: “Did it work?”, “is our baby ok?”, “am i peeing on myself and don’t know it?” I spent the next 2 hours tossing those questions around, and like Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill”, I willed myself to wiggle my big toe that was still numb because of the epidural (remember that scene?).
The feeling eventually came back in my legs and nether-regions a few hours later, but the worry and wonder continued and still does. If you do an internet search of the medical term “cerclage”, you see the good, the bad, and the emotionally draining stories that comes with it. I read as women on message boards shared their emotional stories of going through the procedure and delivering “angel babies”–if you don’t know, those are the babies that didn’t make it even after the procedure. And the thing about cerclage is if you have one, you have to have them with every other pregnancy you ever had. Can you imagine going through that with all of the uncertainty each time?
So now hear I am. 20 weeks along and back on the brown suede couch that has comforted me for the past couple of weeks. The doctors aren’t furrowing their eyebrows these days-as a matter of fact, there were a lot of smiles and laughter on my last visit. Cervix and kid are both doing well! But the Occupation is still in its early stages if we want to see everything through to a healthy completion. And there’s only so much crap-ola Reality TV a gal can watch…