36 Weeks, No, Wait! 35: The Doctor Who Failed Math
I am swollen up like Kirstie Alley after a 2-week Celebrity Cruise. My formerly 33” waist has been replaced with a flesh and blood frat party beer keg. I have gained 12 pounds in the past two weeks. My new layer of insulation is no match for the New York summer and I frequently feel I am about to pass out. I look terrible. I feel worse. And it’s not over yet.
I had eagerly awaited Thursday, August 4. This was the day my doctor had promised my freedom. I would be off the Trebutaline pump, and able to resume a semi-normal life in which I would be free to drive, sit up in a chair for more than 10 minutes, and even venture out of the house for a movie or a pedicure. After 9 weeks of bed rest, which amounts to little more than bed depression, I was ready.
It turns out that way back in January, when I first went to see my obstetrician and she pulled out the little cardboard wheel that calculates your due date, she somehow managed to fail this simple task. She was a week ahead of schedule. Now that I was primed to drop my invalid status, it was being yanked out from under me for another week. This sucks. One week, if you are to understand this correctly, is the equivalent of two months in bed rest. Think dog years here.
35 or 36 weeks, it matters little now. After yesterday, I don’t actually believe I will even make it to the 36 week point before this actually happens. Around 2 in the afternoon, I began to have minor regular contractions, that fit the profile for the first phase of the first stage of labor. We went in for trip 6 to the hospital. We weren’t there long. Because I’m in my final week, they just checked me out to make sure my contractions weren’t actual labor yet, announced I was dilated 1-2 cm, effaced 80-90%, and sent me home. But more than this, I just somehow know something is going to happen.
I feel very odd. I am far more irritated than I have been up to this point. I don’t feel like talking, don’t feel like being touched. The tiniest thing sets me off and ranting. If I wasn’t so exhausted, I certainly could kill. I have this bizarre OCD/nesting instinct that has come upon me in the last few days. I can’t bear there to be a dirty dish in the kitchen. The laundry is begging to be done. The cat hair clumps require napalm to remedy them. And it all drives me crazy. I, who have never willingly done a dish in my life, had to do them last night before I could go to bed. Earlier, I had stood over a boiling caldron of creamy chicken curry soup, enough to feed 40 people, which I was making from scratch, at 1 in the morning, ready to pass out from fatigue. I needed to make soup, this much soup, so I could freeze it for future use. No recipe and it really is delicious, but did I really need 2 gallons of it?
The changes are physical, too. I have been shivering slightly since last night. Even though the house is hot, even though I have no fever. In the past 48 hours my feet have swollen to 150% normal size, due to edema filling them with fluid. I’m having bad cramps. I am nauseous and very hungry, yet it takes me hours to get interested in actually eating now. For the past two weeks, I couldn’t stop eating.
I’m all fucked up. If this doesn’t mean I’m about to give birth, what the hell does it mean?