The School of Hard Knocked-Up

As the inveterate reader of this blog has certainly noticed, late pregnancy is a time of many discomforts.  In the second trimester you can ignore your pregnancy from time to time, in the third trimester that becomes impossible.  Heartburn has settled in permanently, a good night’s sleep is a relic of the distant past, I get out of breath just turning from one side to the other at night, while the belly cries that  it is going to split open like a watermelon left in the hot summer sun.

But you know what?  It’s not a big deal.  It’s all just discomfort.  It will be over soon.   For all the physical discomfort these days, there is no comparison to the ‘discomfort’ of going through an IVF cycle.   Folks, after 8 cycles, I can tell you: this is nothing.

I was reading a book the other day that talked about the nature of pain.  Researchers have discovered, the book claimed, that there is a distinction in pain between the sensation of pain itself and the sense of suffering from pain.  It is apparently possible with some anesthetics to have the sensation without the suffering, and, as strange as it sounds,  it is also possible to have the suffering without the sensation.

I thought this was a good metaphor for thinking about the difference between the pain and discomfort of late pregnancy and the pain and discomfort of IVF cycles.  Maybe on an objective measure (“sensation”) things are now equally or more difficult.   But on the subjective measure (“suffering”), an IVF cycle has this beat, hands-down.  In late pregnancy, chances are that everything is going to turn out fine, we will end up with a live baby in our arms.  It’s uncomfortable, but you get through it and there is an other side.  With IVF cycles?  You get the discomfort of injection after injection, the pain of bloated ovaries, the insanity induced by drugs, and then layered over all of it you get the abject suffering of not knowing if it will work… this time, or ever.

Now that is hell.

[Context for this post: those of you who have been around for a while know that it is really important to both of us that Mr. Nishkanu and I are treated as equal co-parents.  And we have been discovering throughout this pregnancy how much this goes against the grain of US culture, even among those who pay lip service to egalitarianism.]

Today we went to interview a pediatrician.  It was really hard for us to find one to interview; we had gotten 5 recommendations from people and the one we went to see today was the only one of the 5 who was accepting new patients.  It took 3 weeks to get the appointment with him.  We crossed fingers and hoped that it would be a good match.

In terms of philosophy and the quality of the practice he seemed fine.  But here’s the weird thing – he made no eye contact with Mr. Nishkanu at all.  Everything he said, he said to me.  Even when Mr. Nishkanu asked him direct questions, the doctor did not look at him while answering, instead directing his answer to me.   He had a lot to say about “moms” too, that “moms” should do this and “moms” should do that.  He said “moms need to trust their instincts and not worry so much about what the books say.”  That is my philosophy, too, but, as Mr. Nishkanu said plaintively on the way to the parking lot, “don’t I have instincts too?”  It’s just not OK to me that the doctor doesn’t take Mr. Nishkanu seriously as a parent.

Off we went to work.  As soon as I walked in, I saw one of my colleagues, who looked at my giant belly, said “oh my god,” and for good measure added “I saw you weren’t in, I thought that maybe you were out for the big event!”  Two minutes later a colleague passed me in the hall and asked me how my pregnancy was doing.  Two minutes after that another colleague ran into me and said, “Oh, you are still at work!”

Folks, I am still 2 weeks out from my due date, which means the baby could come any time in the next 4 weeks – a long time to listen to inane comments like this.   Poor colleague #3  got an earful.   I said, “Please treat me like a normal person!”  I told him I was going to start wearing a button that says “Please talk to me about something besides my pregnancy.”  Yeah, I know my figure is impressive these days, but folks, I am still me.  I still have interests and activities besides gestating.  I am pretty sure that Mr. Nishkanu, who is facing just as giant a life change as I am, is not fielding queries every 5 minutes about whether he is a dad yet.

A couple of minutes later another colleague stopped by and asked me a question about… this will be a shocker… work.  What a relief!

Thanks for the suggestions and ideas about how to find a solution to our names dilemma (if you have more, I am still all ears).

After  I wrote the last post, my gut feeling was similar to what Mommy’s Midlife Crisis suggested – that I had already compromised pretty substantially on Girl Name, and compromising on Boy Name as well just felt pretty unfair.  I expressed that opinion to Mr. Nishkanu the next day.  He did not take to it well, stating that while it was true that he had gotten “his way” on the final pick, that he had compromised a lot on the way.   We let it rest a couple of days, then Mr. Nishkanu said that he might be willing to compromise on Boy Name.

I should note that the problem with Mr. Nishkanu’s favorite name is that it flunks one of my central criteria, that the name should be something we pick because it is meaningful to us on some level, not just because it sounds nice.  I really think this is something important for a child.  My family’s names are all “meaningful”, while Mr. Nishkanu’s family names were all chosen because they happened to be fashionable the year they were born.  This is something I have always felt sorry for him about.  The name that I would prefer is not as cute as the name he prefers, but it is my brother’s and very close to his (deceased) sister’s name, which I think makes it pretty special.

We are still in negotiation stage, I told him if he can suggest another name which is meaningful to us and which he likes that is OK with me too.   At least we have gotten out of the “I must have mine and you must have yours” negotiation breakdown situation.

Normally, Mr. Nishkanu and I are pretty good at compromising.  Being a pig-headed person, this was a very difficult skill for me to pick up, but as reported previously on this blog, it was a required skill for our marriage to survive our long path through the world of infertility.  There is one area, though, where we are having a hard time compromising: baby names.

I didn’t really see this one coming.  You see, we have had a list of baby names worked out for years already.  Lists of names we both thought were promising, based on a mutually-agreed-upon procedure for choosing names.  Boy’s names, a bit  thin, but girl’s names a-plenty, and from my perspective, beautiful ones that we could pick almost anything from and be happy.

So when we decided to actually make some kind of dang decisions about baby names a few weeks ago I had a bit of a heart attack when Mr. Nishkanu announced that he didn’t like any of the names on the list after all.  In fact, he hated them, and thought the agreed-upon procedure that had generated them should be abandoned.  One boy name survived the name holocaust, none of the girl’s names did.  Since I had grown very attached to 3 of the girl names on the list this was not good news.

10 minutes of brainstorming later, we had a list of 3 acceptable boy’s names.  Girl’s names?  A nightmare.  Many, many names and suggestions later, Mr. Nishkanu had rejected pretty much everything I came up with (he even, in fact, went the dangerous route for a moment of making fun of the kind of names I like…  wisely, after some growling on my part, he backed off from the edge of that particular cliff).  I wasn’t crazy about his suggestions, either.  Finally, though, we have compromised on a girl name.  It is his top choice, it is not my top choice, but it meets all the major criteria I think are important in a name and so I can live with it.  But I am a bit bumming that all the names that I thought are great seemed to be rejected out of hand.

On to the boys’ names.  We had to eliminate one name from our list of 3 because we discovered it is a super ultra fashionable name in Mr. Nishkanu’s home country right now (something that shocked us because honestly we thought our problem would be that no one in that country had ever heard of the name).  Mr. Nishkanu has a “fashion name” for his era and he hates that about his name – not just the sharing your name with 7 other kids in your class but also the ability of the general public to estimate your birth year within 2 years from the moment they are introduced to you.  So we both agree that that name should be shelved.

The remaining two names?  We both think both names are acceptable but I strongly prefer one and he strongly prefers the other.    We’ve talked round and round in circles and I understand why he prefers his and he understands why I prefer mine.  But, neither of us feels comfortable budging.   We already did all possible background research into frequency of names in Mr. Nishkanu’s country and mine, meaning of the names, etc.  None of this is going to make a difference any more to our decision, we are just stuck.  When I ask Mr. Nishkanu how we are supposed to decide, he says “I don’t know!!!”

At the moment our default strategy is to wait until after the baby is born and then flip a coin.  But neither of us is particularly happy with that strategy.  So, my dear readers, here is where I need your advice.

When you and your sweetie cannot agree about something that is important to you, how do you go about deciding what to do?  How would you resolve a name dilemma?

It is amazing how many consumer products I require in order to be able to have a shot at a good night’s sleep.  Every time I discover a new one I am worshipping at its altar… until a new problem crops up that will require new products to solve.   In case this is helpful to other folks struggling with the same issues, here is what I need in order to sleep:

1. T.ums (or actually the generic version).  I have them on the bedside table and if I wake up in the middle of the night getting slayed by heartburn, in they go.  Z.antac (or actually the generic version) actually works a lot better.  Today I had one for lunch and in the afternoon thought to myself “weird…  I don’t have heartburn.  I wonder why not?”  A minute later, “Duh, I took a z.antac.”

2. A wedge pillow.  These are intended to elevate your upper torso so that the stuff has a harder time crawling out of your stomach and into your esophagus to torture you at night.  Key for heartburn management.

3. At least two regular pillows.  One for my head, one available for tucking under my belly to prop it up or to jam in the small of my back for some extra support.  On a bad heartburn night, both required to prop me up so I can sleep in a semi-reclined position.  That is, if I were able to sleep in that position.  But at least they make the heartburn less painful.

4. A giant body pillow.  I didn’t get the fancy pregnancy ones, just a run of the mill 4 foot long pillow from the local store.  It is great, it is possible to develop quite an unnatural attachment to this thing.  I can cuddle up with it and it supports my belly while keeping my hips and feet at a good angle.  If my little one will let me, I could prop myself sideways onto it in a passing resemblance to what in the old days was sleeping on my stomach.  And I can lie on my back and prop one side of my body on it so that it is almost like really lying on my back…  at least I could until my belly got too big to support its weight.

The latest acquisition occurred after I couldn’t sleep for several nights last week because my nose was so stuffed I couldn’t breathe (as mentioned previously on this blog, as odd as it sounds, nasal congestion is a pregnancy symptom).  Sure, you can breathe through your mouth, but (a) it feels like cotton after about 2 minutes and (b) when you are sleeping on your side, sleeping with your mouth open is an invitation to drool.   So Friday night I was at the store in desperation, purchasing a package of Brea.the Right strips.  Those are those things that look kind of like bandaids that you glue on your nose and they are supposed to hold it open a bit so you can breathe better.  Holy moley, and do they ever work.  After acquiring this item I slept two nights  the whole night through (with the exception of the obligatory pee breaks) and by the end of the second night I was ready to personally declare the inventor of this product a saint.  Super congestion still there, but no problem with the breathing and hence no problem with the sleeping.  It is a miracle!!  I speak of them with such enthusiasm that Mr. Nishkanu wants to know when I am going to film my television commercial.

I have said before that I am not a big fan of consumer culture and the imperative to buy, buy, buy but for blessed, sweet sleep I will make an exception.  So those, my dears, are my product endorsements.

Sorry my recent posts have not been super sunny positive.  It’s not that things are going badly, everything is fine really.  Nevertheless I will once again give vent to some frustration.

Today’s appointment at the midwives, this time with a nurse practitioner who I hadn’t met previously.

NP: How are things going?

N: Well, I can’t walk around so much any more.

NP: That’s OK.

N: It’s making it hard for me to do my job. I was wondering if you would be able to write me a note that I could give my employer, so that they would give me a handicapped permit so I could park near where I work.

NP [Taking on a school-marmish tone]: No.  Pregnancy is not a handicap.

N: That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t change that I can’ t walk that far.  I have two offices that I have to work at, I can park near one but the other one is 20 minutes away. I get contractions if I try to walk that far, plus I am wiped out the rest of the day.  So what am I supposed to do?

NP [this is a direct quote]: Just tell your employer you can’t do that part of your job any more.

Gee, thanks for the  helpful suggestion!!   That sounds like a great solution.

She ended up giving me a note that said “please let Nishkanu park closer to her office” which I hope to god my employer will accept. Apparently it was the “h” word that set her off.  But I don’t really understand why if you hurt your leg and can’t walk far that is a “handicap” but if your cardiovascular system is so overloaded that you can’t walk far that is not a “handicap.”

I am at 36 weeks now.  And OK, call me an idiot, but I had no idea how totally wiped out a person gets in the last month of pregnancy.  I also have no idea how people work 40 hours a week up until the moment of their due date, as is standard in our “what? you expect any accomodation for your health issues? especially of the girly type?” country.  Monday I had a big day at work, by the afternoon I was wiped out completely, and the 3 hour infant safety + CPR class in the evening polished off whatever energy was remaining.  Tuesday I was still wiped out and it was only the existence of an appointment on my calendar in the late afternoon that kept me from going home and going to bed.  By evening I was so comatose even making mac & cheese out of the box for dinner was a major challenge.  I lay on the sofa cowering under the intimidating presence of the baby todo list saying “baby will be here soon!  won’t you be sorry you didn’t get me done!”  Tuesday night I had one of those classic late-pregnancy “wake up at 3 AM and never get back to sleep” nights.  By Wednesday I was such a zombie I couldn’t see straight.  I took the day off of work, figuring that I would sleep in the morning and then get caught up on work in the afternoon.  I did sleep in the morning (thank GOD!) but the afternoon was still total zombie mode.  Like just sitting and staring straight ahead was plenty of entertainment.  I started to get worried I would never have energy again.  Fortunately I slept OK Wednesday night (as in, woke up every few hours and had trouble getting back to sleep each time, but no wake period lasted more than half an hour) and today I am back into the half-dead zone rather than full-on zombie.

All this is making me look at my various to-do lists with a new eye.  I have a bunch of stuff to get done at work before I go on maternity leave that is really important… and which until now I haven’t really had time or energy to work on.  Uh, that time and energy does not look to be in my future either.  And the home to-do list?  Let’s just say that is getting firmly shoved in Mr. Nishkanu’s direction.   Today I am going in to work and taking an axe to my appointments and commitments, to make sure I can get those key things in still.  Folks, from now until the day the little one decides to come, the priority around here is going to be resting up.

I went to the midwives today for my “how pesky is your placenta planning to be?” ultrasound.  This was the one that would determine whether they would schedule a c-section for me.

And….

1) My placenta is now more than 4 cm from my cervix!!  For those of you who do not have the “pregnancy complications cheatsheet” by your side, that means that I am no longer considered to have a low-lying placenta and therefore do not need to schedule a c-section.

2) The baby isn’t breech any more, it has obediently turned head-down.  And that means I can throw out those sheets of advice on “how to turn a breech baby” which I have been collecting while waiting to see what the placenta felt like doing.

So, it looks like everything is good to go for a plain old regular vaginal delivery.  Of course, we all know that everything could still get screwed up, either before the delivery or during it, but two big bullets got dodged today.  Hooray!