Paroled

I am free! Freeeeeeeeeeeeee! Actually, I've been off bed rest since talking to the doctor on Friday, so I guess I've just been enjoying my liberation too much to update the blog until now. And before that, I was too sleepy, or something. Amazing how sloth begets sloth. Anyway, since I haven't had any out-of-the-ordinary contractions since I left the hospital, I can go back to doing stuff!

So that's just a quick update to let you know I'm still alive... more soon!

Home From the Hostabul

Alternate title: A Possibly Inappropriately Flippant Post about a Serious Topic, But This is How I Cope

Hello, Loyal Fans! It's Kirsten, coming to you from the couch, here at the end of my first day of what many Americans call "Staycation," but which my doctor prefers to call "bed rest". I just got back from a couple days in the hospital with preterm contractions. That's the bad news. Lots of good news, though: the scary part is over, and The Deuce and I are both doing OK, and I'm glad to be out of the hospital, and my mom is flying in tonight to help out for a little while (let it be said, however, that Chris' parents were also quick to enlist, and may yet be called to active duty). But, yeah. I have to basically do nothing for at least the next five days, and I have no idea what the doctor will recommend once my Friday appointment rolls around.

So, how did this all happen? On Thursday, I was happily working at the computer all day, occasionally getting up to eat and pee and other fun things pregnant people do, and I noticed that my abdomen was hurting whenever I walked around. I went to pick Soren up from school, and took a walk with him, and was definitely feeling bad by the time we got home again, so I did some good old-fashioned lying down on the couch. If I'd known how much time I was going to be spending doing that very thing in the near future, I probably would have chosen a more exotic spot to lie down. Like the mall. Or the French Riviera. Anyway, once the vague pain started resolving into contractions, and I started timing them and thinking I must be wrong about how close together they were, it was time to go to the ER. Our wonderful neighbors, the Moons, were nice enough to come over at 9:00 PM and stay with Soren until Chris came home.

Once I was hooked up to the monitors, it turned out that the contractions were two to three minutes apart, and although they weren't as painful as I remembered labor being last time, they were still painful enough that I had to breathe through them, and that was freaking me out. Plus it took two nurses and four tries to get a decent blood draw from my arm, which wasn't helping. Luckily, I was only about 1.5 cm dilated, which isn't out of line for this stage of pregnancy, and the contractions weren't lasting long enough to do much further dilation, so while there was some talk of the excellent chances a baby has after being delivered at 29 weeks, it looked like we could avoid that scenario with IV fluids, a dose of Nifedipine, and 24 hours of observation.

Once we had that course of treatment settled, I felt much less scared, and sent Chris home so he could get some sleep. I daresay he slept better than I did, since the secondary mission of the hospital, next to "Serving the women and infants of Rhode Island" or whatever, is "Making sure no patient gets more than five hours of uninterrupted sleep". They're always coming in to ask you stuff, or give you a pill, or readjust the monitor because your troublemaker fetus keeps running away from it so it can't pick up his/her heartbeat. I mean, yes, OK, the main point of being there was to be treated, not to sleep, plus I got plenty of chances to sleep all throughout the next day, so I guess I can live with the interruptions. But it makes for a long night.

For a time, I was lying there thinking how much The Deuce, via the monitor, sounded like a mustang in a thunderstorm, what with the racing heartbeat and the really loud rumbling produced by his/her rolling around all over the place. GALUMPH GALUMPH GALUMPH GALUMPH GALUMPH GALUMPH GALUMPH GALUMPH GALUMPH GALUMPH KKKKKKCCCGFFFFKKKKKPPPKKK GALUMPH GALUMPH KKCCFGGGGGGGCCCKKKKHHH GALUMPH GALUMPH. It was like visiting the high plains in the Old West. I will grant you that I was very tired when I made this observation.

The next day, my doctor told me that she wasn't sure what brought on the preterm contractions, but that I seemed to be experiencing a classic case of Irritable Uterus. Well, sure! The rest of me is irritable enough, so why not my uterus, too? If I were slightly more inspired and were allowed to, like, move, I would set up a little photo shoot at this point wherein I'd have some phrases like "Turn that racket down!" and "Get off my property, you hooligan kids!" written across my belly, and then I'd post them here on the blog by way of witty illustration. Hopefully the written description is as funny as the pictures would have been. Anyway. Every time I got up to use the loo, or someone adjusted the monitors on my belly, or the sun would shine at a particular angle through the window, my uterus would be all like QUIT DOING THAT OR I SWEAR I WILL TURN THIS CAR AROUND, and the contractions would start up again. So until all my lady business was in a better mood, I was going to stay in the hospital -- at least one more night. Ugh. A lot of people have it worse, certainly, and I won't say I had it really rough or anything, but still. Ugh.

I was ready to go on Saturday afternoon, so it wasn't too bad. But I had no idea I'd be on bed rest until I asked the nurse on Saturday morning, "So, are there any restrictions on what I can do when I get home?" You know, thinking that I probably shouldn't walk more than half a mile for the first couple days or lift any 32-pound toddlers. But the answer was, "You really shouldn't do any more than you've been doing here." Which, it turns out, isn't a lot.

Of course, it's great to be home again with my men. It was lonely in the hospital. Chris and Soren did get to come visit me Friday evening, and it was so nice! Soren wasn't really fazed, so I got to read him a few stories, and he ate lots of saltines from the Patient Nourishment Unit (there is a tiny room with a juice dispenser and a box of crackers in it, and that's seriously what it's called) and helped the nurse by turning off the monitor when she invited him to. The next afternoon, when they came to pick me up, I asked what they had done that morning, and Soren exclaimed, "We went to the hostabul to pick up Mama!" So I guess he was happy to see me.

He was less happy to find out that I can't get up to play with him or take walks or anything, but he's mostly dealing with it all pretty well. I think he'll be excited enough about Gramma being here tomorrow that he'll forget about me altogether.

So, there's my saga. Again, I have no idea what the doctor will say on Friday -- maybe I'll be able to ease back into a lighter, but mostly normal, routine, or maybe I'll have to lie here until November. I'd really like to be able to get up and take walks and not be a total leech for the next two months, but I suppose extreme sloth is better than going into labor before The Deuce is fully cooked. I'll keep you all updated. Hey, I have nothing better to do.

This post seems unfinished without my expressing my thankfulness for how wonderful, caring, supportive, and hard-working Chris is. I think this may at times be harder and scarier for him than it is for me now that the worst part has passed. In a way, I have to work on _not_ thinking about it too much, since stress is counterproductive, but Chris has taken on a lot this weekend in terms of worry, chores, child care, not to mention thinking about that job he has to go back to tomorrow. So even though my account of the whole ordeal focuses on the lighter side, I'm quite serious about how glad I am to have Chris's support -- not to mention the support of the rest of our family, near and far, and our friends. Thank you. We're going to be all right.

Eating and Drinking with Daddy

Kirsten decided that I've been out of town plenty this summer, so now it's her turn. She's off in Denver with her adult sisters, leaving Soren and me to a guys' long weekend at home. I understand that today she enjoyed a "Day of Beauty," which, you know, is about time because, since my spa treatments in Vietnam, I've frankly been feeling a bit out of her league.

As you might expect, the absence of Mama has led to the erosion of the sobriety, morality and nutrition of her men. To wit, last night we went to the food court at the mall to have dinner. The remnants of Hanna were blowing through and we were trapped in the house all day, so it was nice to go to the mall to stretch. We got dinner from India Gourmet, which, it turns out, is really quite tasty, and convenient since no one cares what your toddler is doing at the mall food court.

Soren and I sat at a table across the aisle from another Dad and his 6 year old. They were squabbling loudly over the conditions under which the son would eat his dinner, fried chicken fingers and white rice. Soren was seated across from me, eating happily, without whining or fidgeting, his dinner, nan mounded with saag paneer, which is basically pureed spinach. While I'm constantly aware that Soren's food policies could change at any moment (witness chocolate cake), I couldn't resist a little smugness at the contrast of Soren politely eating spinach with the older kid having difficulty with fried food with little nutritional value.

Of course, not eating fried food doesn't count for much if you're drinking the wrong stuff. Especially if the wrong stuff is canola oil. Before dinner tonight (not at the mall food court, thank you very much), Soren felt I was a little slow at getting his apple juice, so perhaps I needed some help. He went to the baking cupboard and got out a bottle and put it on the table for me to pour into his cup. However, we keep the apple juice in the refrigerator, not the baking cupboard. In fact, he had given me a bottle that was remarkably like the apple juice: a Stop & Shop brand goldenish liquid in a bottle with a narrow "waist" about 2/3s of the way up, a trimmed rectangle below, and some more ornamentation above. He had found our vegetable oil, and was insisting that I pour some into his cup for him to drink with dinner.

Fortunately, he lost track of which bottle was "his" while I was taking pictures of him with this two bottles of "apple juice", so I was able to perform the switcheroo before he sat down to dinner.  (What, you think I'm up to actually posting that picture?)

Mom's Questions about Vienna Answered

Since I seem to have blogger's block, I'll use Mom's comment on the last post as a framework. Clever me.

Don't they have any small ANYTHING in Vienna?

Yes: extremely small stitches in the insane petit point works you can get in some of the stores we passed. Other than that, everything is pretty much huge. And covered in gold. Chris and I decided that Vienna (and much of western Europe) shows that Americans don't know crap about old money, big houses, or insanely ostentatious people. I suppose Donald Trump does like to gild his possessions, but he really couldn't pull off wearing a jeweled crown and ermine stole. I'm sure the US will gain more opulence cred as time goes by, though, so fear not; in a few hundred years, McMansions will come to be seen as attractive and tasteful, and we will pay large amounts of money to pass through their rooms, which will be only sparsely furnished because the family will have had to sell everything before going into exile. I'll stop now.

What's with the Sistine Chapel for Spanish Horses?

That's LIPIZZANER STALLIONS to you, and they have an awesome riding arena because they are the best horses in the world and SO SO PRETTY. I'm pretty sure I'm serious when I say I suggested Vienna for our vacation because it was home to the Spanish Riding School, and I wanted to go see the Lipizzaners. Sadly, there aren't any shows in summer, so we didn't get to see such fancy maneuvers as the courbette or capriole, but we showed up for the morning practice and got to watch the horses trot around the ring for an hour or so. Chris claims not to have been too bored, which is nice of him. The light wasn't great for our non-professional-grade photo equipment, but we managed to get a couple nice (or artistic, at least) shots:





I've seen the Lipizzaners perform a couple times in New England; the most recent performance was at URI, by an American group, and it seemed pretty dinky compared to my memories of the show I'd seen in Worcester in 1988. Well, it turns out that the Worcester show was performed by the actual Spanish Riding School! So that explains why it had seemed about a million times better. We'd even gotten front-row tickets for free, because I'd posed for a newspaper photo with one of the horses in some Kmart parking lot a couple weeks prior. I should get my mom to scan that photo for me. Sadly, I didn't come away with any good photos of the event, because I was a dumb eleven-year-old trying to take flash pictures through a glass divider.

Why is there a dog in the bushes?

Aha! That's not a dog. It's a statue of a dog's butt. It was oddly fascinating, and I couldn't stop staring at it all through dinner.

Whose dog is it anyway?

Well, it was a pretty close likeness of the butt of what seemed to be the restaurant owners' dog. So there you go.

My guess is the folks who partake of the ever present torten only need to walk around a bit...it looks like canvasing the terrain burns a few calories.

Yes, especially if you are carrying a huge mutant baby like I am. Which you aren't so SHUT UP! YOU DON'T KNOW MY PAIN! Sorry. Hormones. Anyway, Vienna itself was flat, but Baden, Melk and Durnstein (our side trips) featured plenty of lung-popping hills and stairs. Funny, Chris didn't seem to be nearly as out of breath as I was after climbing all those inclines. Perhaps it had something to do with the huge mutant baby. Or all the eiskaffee.

Enough about you all...how was Soren's visit with Grammy & Grampy?


Oh, HIM! Right! He, of course, had a fabulous time in Ohio with Grammy and Grampy (plus some bonus time with Aunt Rachel and Uncle Dude). There were piles of toy cars to be parked in the living room, stylish new duds, visits to the children's museum and aquarium, and car trips with views of cornfields and LP tanks (which Soren apparently finds very interesting). Sadly, Chris and I didn't get to talk to him while we were in Austria, since our phones don't use GSM technology and Chris' emails to his parents about setting up time to Skype went undelivered (as were all his emails to .edu addresses, for some reason). He came back with a lovely photo album of his week in Ohio, though, so we have proof that he had a fun time. Come on -- what's better than a week with grandparents?

You know, besides a week without a toddler?

Of course, absence does make the heart grow fonder... so I'm very glad to be home with my little boy again.