Photo montage of my bed rest experience

The dot marking my amniocentesis

I do obsess about this a bit, but this is my "scar" from the amniocentesis. I look to see if it is still there about once a week (not sure why - maybe it is a badge of courage since I was so terrified to do it).


My usual place, the couch

Monitoring on the couch


Monitoring, tummy view

Monitoring, but from my point of view


Me, bed resting

Here I am, this is what I do most days, though the laptop is not on my lap and would have been a more accurate picture since it is on my lap from 8 in the morning until 10 or so at night.


Boadicea "Boba" eating my breakfast

Boba and I eat breakfast together every morning. It seems that eating something and drinking some water before monitoring can help prevent or lessen those pesky contractions. And just so you know, I eat first, she get to clean out the yogurt container, we don't eat it at the same time. =D


My picture window

I reference this in an earlier post, there are no birds because they have been frightened by the men working on our gas line in the alley behind the house for the past two weeks.

My afternoon at The Farm

The Farm

This is what The Farm At South Mountain looks like (at least the view from where we sat). It was such a pretty afternoon.



Chris, taking care of me as usual

Chris bringing me our food. He loved it at The Farm, it was his first time to visit there. I have taken his parents there for lunch before, and they loved it. It seems to remind them of the restaurants that the different Vineyards (Heurigen, as they are called there) have in Austria.
The one owned/run by his sister and her husband is called Weingut Stadlmann (Chris did the English parts)


Chris and I at The Farm

Schatzy (it is actually spelled Schatzi and means treasure in German) and I enjoying our lunch. I sat at the table for the picture, but if you look in the lower left corner of the picture, you will see my portable chaise lounge.

Tests, tests, and more tests

As I was monitoring today, I received a phone call from my OB's office saying that my results for my one hour glucose test for gestational diabetes were "slightly elevated". Now I have to arrange to go and sit through the three hour test .

I suppose I really should not complain, after all I don't have an actual diagnosis of gestational diabetes. However, it still sucks that I may and it sucks that I have to get poked four times for my next test!

Anyway, I need to get out of the house right now, so we are taking my portable chaise lounge and going to The Farm At South Mountain for lunch.

I will return later this afternoon and tell you all about my typical day in pictures.

Bed rest, television and clothes

11 weeks down, 11 weeks to go...
~sigh~
of bed rest that is...

It is amazing how solitary life is to someone on bed rest. I am so relieved to have finished the eleven weeks, but the thought of eleven more is awful.

Yesterday, I spoke with three people on the phone; in my previous life I would have had many different conversations with many different people. We are social beings, after all. I wonder if there is any way to deal with just how quiet life gets, I know that TV helps, especially shows like Ellen (who saved me during my hospital stay), Oprah and the Jane Pauley Show, where your mind is made to think about issues and process a little. Then there is also the Food Network which is great to watch and I am adding to my 500,000+ recipes I want to try. I hope to get to use some of them when I sign up for the LINKS program at the Junior League of Phoenix when this is over. Many other shows are just mindless by comparison.

Now, I guess I should explain how Ellen saved me in my hospital stay. If there is one thing that can help one when times are unsure it would be having a sense of humor. I saw the Ellen show for the first time my first day in the hospital, and I laughed pretty hard. Now, I love the surgeon and the other doctors in the perinatology group (not my OB, who I really love too, but she is in a regular OB/GYN practice), but each and every one of them gave me a different story, from the one who told me I needed surgery to the one that told me I need two cm to get out of the hospital. Some doctors told me I could maybe go to lunch, others said no lunch, one would say reclining is ok, another would say no, that I had to lay flat the whole time. These conflicting stories were a major source of frustration for me. Ellen reminded me that laughter was important. She still does.


Me watching Ellen, while working on the Ellen portion of this Blog

I also added Old Navy Maternity to my links section. Well, part of being able to survive this is getting up and putting on real clothes every day. There are not a lot of clothes that I can wear anymore, so I had to buy some to at least get through this winter. Living in my husband's pajama bottoms and t-shirts are just not acceptable, as would be living in summer dresses that are blousey in winter. So, I got some ad mail for old navy and it was also something my OB had mentioned to me when I complained about not having much to wear. Well, the nice thing about old navy is that since I am pretty darn sure I won't be going anywhere, I could buy from the bargains sections and was able to buy what I hope will get me through the rest of my pregnancy, and buy some baby/infant clothes for a very reasonable price. The site was also pretty friendly, in respect to sizing too, so I could guess what I would fit into and they have an excellent exchange policy.

10 weeks of bedrest

Hi everyone,

I wanted to wait for a major milestone to write. I reached 28 weeks. I also “celebrate” 10 weeks of bed rest this week too. Baby is doing cartwheels, but seems to love being in breech position most… and is especially active when people are talking to me (which means that it knows that TV voices are different from real people voices, and I think that is so cool).

The surgery has still been a miracle; I am doing better than before the surgery at this point. I am still monitoring for contractions, and they are getting more “painful” though they manage to ebb and flow enough that I have not had to take anything more substantial than ibuprofen… yet.

I will stop taking the ibuprofen on December 2nd; this is because at this point the medicine has been associated with heart problems in the baby… so it is best to stop it at this point. When I told my doctor that this was a great birthday present to me, she said “Don’t thank me yet! You will probably have to take something stronger.”

I managed to get a flu shot when there where still some available. Most people have heard how people love to touch the bellies of pregnant women, and I thought I was going to miss out on the experience of having that happening and knowing if I hated it or not. When I was filling out the forms, a woman reached over and touched my belly, which, truth be told, reduced me to tears… I still don’t know how I feel about it, but in a way, it was one of the coolest experiences, because it somehow was a public acknowledgement of my being pregnant, that I showed and it was recognizable.

I also had a terrible cold, mainly a head cold, but took cough syrup anyway, plus since I am taking ibuprofen, I couldn’t take Nyquil and such because they have Tylenol… so, I took Benadryl which kept me in a fog for a week. Thank goodness it is over, and that it did not really reach my lungs, apparently coughing uses the same muscles as labor… go figure.

I have reached a stage where I can’t see my feet if I look down, though I can still see them if I move a little forward… for some reason this is exciting to me. Bending over is out of the question too. I think that if I were able to move around and interact with people, that I would love being pregnant more than I do (even with the nausea I still have).

I have also had to deal with a wounded pet, my cat Hannibal (picture below), and getting him to a vet and home and taking care of him with all that is happening to him. He had ear mites so bad that he got an abscess from it. For a while I felt my maternal skills were lacking, but he and I are resting comfortably together and I can tell he doesn't hold it against me for letting his ear get so bad that it got an infection and... well, it got gross but I will save you from hearing just how gross.


Hannibal wanting to have bedrest after his ord"ear"al

Bed rest has been the strangest experience of my life. One would think that being resourceful while on bed rest would not be needed, but I can tell you it is. I can’t believe physicians put women in this position and don’t give us coping skills or strategies, not to mention the whole other plethora of things that women on bed rest go through.

Did you know that it took 6 weeks to even receive information about support groups? I was lucky that I had a computer and could research this on my own and managed to get the support group link after only two weeks, but I did this on my own. I have looked at all the pamphlets in the various doctor’s offices I visit and I have not seen a thing. And the shocker, for me at least, was that when I finally received something it was from the folks that do the monitoring service and it was in a book they gave, no one mentioned it. My OB was not aware of it, but she told me of another patient she had that is in a similar situation so I made sure she knew about it. I must admit, that I had a friend who is a nurse that read Prevention magazine that had a section on bed rest and, it appears I did manage to find the few resources out there, plus a couple more that weren’t. I am lucky I have been able to continue working, but I can only imagine all the other issues related to working and legalities that some women may face. With all the information and stuff they hand out in OB offices one would think they could manage to give women on bed rest something other than the bad news… Since we are not all Julia Roberts (who is also now on bed rest) and have her resources (not that this is really any easier for her), I want to see what I can do about this, it would be so easy to work with places like the March of Dimes, Sidelines, hospitals and doctors offices, to tell women what is out there, what they need to think about (everything is just no longer as available as when you could stand, walk and drive), what to tell friends, how to deal with visitors, how to get things done, how to buck up and ask for help (the hardest thing for me, and still is).

So in the spirit of my new skill set… Anyone want to help me with this next year? It is pretty much a matter getting a group of people together and seeing what we need to put into a resource manual, finding physicians and hospitals willing to work with us… any one have connections that could help?

Another thing is that if you have called or stopped by and I have just talked and talked, please know that I know I am doing this on some level (usually after the fact), and it is OK to tell me you have to leave, I won’t hold it against you, I promise.

Now, for the most exciting news… I have a new nephew... Jacob Ellis was born on October 15th. See the pictures of the precious angel below. I have been able to see him twice, and I hope that dotcom is as good as he is. pictures removed per second party request


I hope that everyone is doing well!

Blair