Monday, August 26, 2013

Smoke 'em out!

When our local Dolly Madison plant shut down in the wake of Hostess brand's bankruptcy, it put several twinkie bakers out of work (thankfully it was only temporary and many of them are back in business!). And though I was sad for their unemployment status, I was also a bit jealous because the end to my twinkie baking was a LONG way away. I was still quite pregnant.  

In the last weeks of my pregnancy I was measuring well beyond my actual baking time. It seemed the progesterone shots were working their magic and giving my uterus all kinds of room to stretch and accommodate the growing twinkies because all three of us were doing some serious growing. In fact, at my last ultrasound and OB appointments we were carrying some seriously heavy numbers. I'd put on 40 pounds from the start. The twinks were estimated to weigh over 5 lbs each. And I was measuring a chick 46 weeks into her pregnancy, which makes me sound a bit like an overachiever, but I wasn't even 35 weeks along at the time.

And that's just the last time we actually measured.

In the time between then and the actual d-day (maybe a week??), things continued to expand. I'm ashamed to admit it, but the estimates that folks gave me in the early days of how much I'd gain with twins were dead on. I weighed over 200 lbs. when we arrived at the hospital for their birth....I'd put on exactly 50 pounds, the last 10 of which I knew was nothing but water weight as I swelled to the size of a zeppelin.

This picture was taken only hours before my water broke. Thankfully, our bags were already packed since we were scheduled for a c-section that day anyway! In the picture (I'm clothed, you just can't see it from the front hump covering my shorts) you can see how disfigured my legs were. The swelling was insane....so much so that my skin actually began to tear from it in places. Check out the splits in the skin on top of my ankles!


This picture was also taken the day before I delivered...I'd been sporting those cracks for a couple of weeks before then. But on this day, (despite the risk of infection) I was determined to have a pedicure. The whole of me felt disgusting and uncomfortable so I figured I could at least have decent looking toe nails as they strapped me to the gurney for fileting.

Here are pics of my feet from other occasions before D-day:



Suffice it to say, I was miserable. Every movement hurt....even sitting still. Though I once believed I could actually make it all the way without getting stretch marks, my beliefs were quickly shattered. One day I went to bed after discovering my first TWO stretch marks (I cried myself to sleep over those) and woke up with what seemed like 10 times that many the next morning. And they only got worse from there.

As the swelling set in it's a wonder I didn't have stretch marks elsewhere - like between my toes. My skin was stretched so badly, not just on my stomach, but everywhere. Everything but my hair felt and looked pregnant and my skin groaned from the pressure. My legs constantly felt as though the skin around them would pop....the only pain comparison I can offer is that of a shin splint...only more severe and more constant. I could literally feel my pulse in the tight skin of my calves.

If the tampons up my nose didn't subject me to enough embarassment in earlier days, the old lady compression stockings the hubs would stuff me into surely did the job.



I tried elevating my feet, but that came with its' own set of issues, as well. One, I don't like to sit still when others around me are buzzing with action. Makes me nervous. Makes me feel like I'm gonna miss the bus to some important destination. Two, sitting still wasn't any more comfortable than standing. It just made other parts of me hurt. Like my tail bone. Poor thing still hasn't recovered post-partum.

I kept moving for the most part because despite the aches and pains (I felt them lying down, too) I was at least able to accomplish something...and that lessened the psychological stress for me if not the physical.

Heck, I was still mowing grass (on a riding mower) and washing the car in my bikini not long before the twinks emerged. I do not have pictures of that (aren't you glad?!). No doubt it was scary for witnesses. Too bad. My car needed to be washed before the babies went in it. And I needed a tan. Brown fat is much prettier than white fat.

Each morning I'd wake up (if you can call it that, since I didn't really sleep to begin with), say a prayer of thanks to God for blessing me to see another sunrise, get in the shower, put my shoes on (before any other article of clothing  unless I was planning to go barefoot), and put one foot in front of the other until the day was done. I didn't slow down.

Until I did.

In the last 2 weeks of my pregnancy, my misery reached highs I never knew existed. I was constantly in tears from the discomfort. And though I wasn't ready for the babies to be on the outside, I couldn't take any more of them being on the inside either.  If I had been able to move more easily, my white flag would have been raised.

One morning my prayer actually went like this:

"Dear God, thank you for this day. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I'm struggling to stay in this skin for another day. I dont want to pray for an early delivery because I know that's not best for the twinkies. But I'm also growing weary. So, if there's any way you could turn me into a chicken and the twinkies into eggs I promise to sit on them 24/7 until we've reached 40 weeks and you can turn me back to myself. I just can't hold them inside anymore. Amen."

He didn't turn me into an actual chicken, but that didn't stop me from acting like one. I stopped short of scratching and pecking at the dirt, but only barely.

I was desparate. They had to get out. Their once cute kicks and bumps were now agonizing. Their fits of hunger and hiccups (which we're still plagued with today and are no less irritating) brought tears to my eyes. Despite my concerns for their well being, I was done. Finito. They had overstayed their welcome. I sent daily eviction notices when I screamed "GET OUT!" to them while holding my belly up. All to no avail.

I'd tried bribing the doctor with a prompt delivery of filet mignon and case of his favorite Mexican beer at the hospital if only he'd go ahead and cut them out.

But he wasn't budging. He wanted me to make the 36 week mark.

So I needed a plan of action.

And Operation Smoke 'Em Out came to be. 

Doing a little research I learned that there are all kinds of remedies for birthin' babies on command.

One is eating spicy food. And so I ate hot wings as often and in as great quantity as my tongue would tolerate. I tried mixing them up with a salad every now and then for some nutrition.

No dice.

I tried pineapple....so much of it in fact that the inside of my mouth was raw and sore from all of the acid.

Nada.

I danced around the house and in the car - some more.

Still nothing happened.

So I tried doing squats. But nothing (or no one) came out. And let's face it, I wasn't able to do many of those anyway. The months of no exercise and weight gain, plus that crazy front hump left me with little stamina and zero balance.

Next was walking. I did that all day at work and the little ladies hadn't made an appearance, so I opted to amp up my speed. It didn't resemble power walking as much as power waddling, but it was the best I could do. I'm pretty sure I looked like Donkey Kong and funny noises followed me, but I did it anyway.

And still nothing.

I drank herbal tea. But that just made me sweat.

I considered a drive to Atlanta where Scalini's eggplant parmigiana is rumored to enduce labor almost instantaneously. But that plan was killed when the doc issued a travel ban. And my typically "outlaw" husband was all of a sudden following all of these crazy rules!!!!

If you're interested in visiting Scalini's yourself, here's the link! They fully believe their dish will help you push a kid out.

http://www.scalinis.com/Bambino.htm

Research shows that castor oil can help, but I steered clear of it after the hubs told me how disgusting it smelled and tasted. He reminded me that I wasn't willing to drink baking soda water for heartburn, so there was no way I would swallow castor oil once its' aroma hit my nostrils. I'm sure he was right (don't tell him though) because on one occasion when I was pulling my hair and screaming "GET OUT!" while pacing the living room like a caged lion, he grabbed the car keys and was heading out the door to the drug store for the rotten stuff. I conveniently remembered the car was low on fuel and told him before he got any further - I'd have hated to be the reason that he was walking on the side of the road, you know?

But there was a moment not long after this incident when my desperation returned and I eyeballed a quart of Castrol 10w40 motor oil in our carport with second thoughts. Fantasies of relief and visions of my feet (It'd been a while since I'd seen them) swirled through my head as I wondered if it had the same effect as castor oil when ingested. Heck, there wasn't even a huge difference in the name....just one little ol' L. Thankfully, I spared us all the trauma when I decided I didn't want to smell like my '65 Mustang when first meeting the twinkies. But it was a close call.

Nipple strimulation is said to lead to uterine contractions and help spur on labor. So if you live in my area you more than likely caught me perusing the aisles of Winn Dixie while groping my boobs. I don't like my boobs and never have - they've always been a nuisance bumping into stuff, hurting my back and drawing unwanted stares from short men who were eye level with them - so trust me, I wasn't touching them for kicks. It was pure function. I was desperate and didn't care who knew it.

But those efforts failed, too.

There was always the option of sex, but that requires a willing participant. Apparently uterine contractions experienced during intercourse help kick things into high gear. But the only kicking I was getting came from the 4 feet in my ribcage. The male's sperm is also said to contain hormones that soften the cervix and prime it for thinning. But the hubs was not interested in helping the cause in this manner - not even when I handed him a turkey baster and asked for a donation. He refused to take one for the team so to speak. Frustrating, yes. But I can also understand. I outweighed him at that point and yelped from pain all the time. I doubt all my lumps and ouch's and previous conversations about bum complications were turn on's for the poor guy. 

Not long after, the doc finally consented to set a date for delivery - May 30th. Even if the twinkies weren't making efforts to move toward the light (and trust me, I'd considered lighting a fire and smoking them out), I was given a serious energy and morale boost with this deadline because my light at the end of the tunnel was getting brighter.

At the time I had no idea just how bright and awesome that light would be. It may have looked like the bright halogen lights of an operating room at the time, but it cast a whole new view - our newborn baby girls.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Today's blog is brought to you by the letter H!


In the last weeks of my pregnancy I was plagued with all manner of discomforts. Though they covered the gamut of symptoms and the whole of my body, they shared one thing in common: they all began with the letter H.

First came the headaches. Unlike any I'd experienced before. I've never had to deal with chronic headaches or migraines like so many preggos do, but these were constant. No tylenol abated them. No caffeine  worked (go ahead and find your whip and give me lashes.....I admit it - I drank caffeine throughout my pregnancy. Shame on me. I did not, however, drink it in excess. We're talking a soda or cup of coffee each day - not a 6 pack of Redbull). Hot showers, neck rubs, dark rooms, cold packs, heat packs, you name it. Nothing worked. I kept a dull ache from the neck up all the time. The only thing that helped was sleep and that was extremely difficult to come by.

Next were the hip cramps. I'm talking make-you-scream-and-come-out-of-nowhere hip cramps. And the kicker was there was no way to stretch them out. Most muscle cramps that came prior to that could be stretched with a little time and patience (and lots of rubbing from the hubs), but these hip cramps were the devil. Since sleeping on my side was the only option and baby B insisted that sleeping on the left side (her sister's side) was the only alternative, my range of movement at night was extremely limited. So I'd wake up from cramps in the left hip and feel paralyzed. I looked like a Heisman trophy in bed when they struck. My joint felt locked from the intense pain and there was no way to rub it out...it always felt like the cramp was in the actual ligaments and tendons of the joint where you couldn't reach them to massage. But I'm no doctor. I have no idea what was actually going on. I just know it hurt like the dickens. Doc suggested taking a few antacids before bedtime to prevent them, but I was already doing that thanks to the next H.  

The heartburn. Oh sweet baby Jesus! I was belching fire. Old wives' tales suggest that heartburn is a sign that your baby(ies) will have a head full of hair. Ultrasound pics in the last few weeks did show little silver lines of fur floating on their scalps - and I was thankful to know I wasn't the only person growing fur. But that little bit of floating fur didn't match up to the whole lot of heartburn I was experiencing.....it didn't add up. I began to worry that this reputed hair might be growing some place other than their heads.....there's a whole lot of furriness and baldness on opposite sides of the DNA helix. Thankfully I didn't birth any Yetis....but there was a time there when I wondered. 

In the past, I'd get heartburn from your typical spicy/acidic foods like a lot of people. But this heartburn seemed to arrive without trigger. Fires require oxygen in order to keep a flamin' and my guess is that breathing oxygen set it into motion. And again NOTHING worked - not sitting upright, not tums, not milk. And trust me, I tried them all in excess. Only after inhaling a whole bottle of tums one evening did I check the back label and notice you're not supposed to consume more than 12 tablets in a 24 hour period. Oops (shame on me again). The only remedy I didn't try despite the hubs suggestions was baking soda mixed with water. Now, I'd eat some crazy stuff during pregnancy, but white powder that isn't some form of sugar or flour was not on the menu - not then and not now. In my mind, baking soda cannot be placed into one of the food groups and therefore is not food and therefore should not be consumed. It deodorizes stuff. You sprinkle it in carpets to get rid of the dog smell for crying out loud! How can you eat it?!

Then again, you're supposed to sprinkle baking soda on kitchen fires to put them out, aren't you?

Maybe he was onto something after all................ 

And then there were the hemmorhoids. That's right. Bum lumps. I said it.  

Never in my get togethers have I ever experienced such and I care not to experience them again. I was in h-e-double hockey sticks. All the time. Sitting, standing, walking, lying down - it didn't matter. Everything made it worse and nothing helped. Hemmorhoids are a common symptom in later pregnancy as the growing fetus and subsequent weight gain put pressure on the bowels. And constipation only furthers the problem. That growing belly does more than make it difficult to shimmy in and out of a bathroom stall, my friend. It tries to make your innards outards, too. No bueno. And the fact that you're in T-rex mode and can't reach or bend or really do anything that requires flexibility made this predicament even more complicated. 

The medication you buy over the counter to treat this little problem says it's for the "mild discomfort" associated with hemmorhoids on the packaging. Ha! Mild discomfort my arse! Pun intended. That's the most discomfort I've ever experienced! I tried every over the counter solution available, soaked in the tub (again, shame on me, right?), and ultimately caved and talked to my nurse about it despite the embarassment. Judging from the pain I was experiencing I was worried I might have an abcess down there. If you've ever had a boil from a staph infection then you know the pain I'm talking about....it is like no other. It is excruciating. This felt a lot like that and I was borderline crazy about it. I would literally pull at my hair and the skin on my face from the pain. The hubs thought I was bonkers no doubt, especially since he was in the dark about it all. I was NOT going to tell him about my new accessories. I'd broken the ice enough to die from hypothermia when I discussed constipation and enemas with him in the past. We'd traveled south one time too many, thank you very much. Not going there again. Though I'm not trying to get knocked up again (despite all of the pleasantries - read sarcasm please), I'm also not trying to cease all relations either, you know what I mean?! If someone reports to you that there's a problem with a roller coaster, are you gonna want to get on and ride it later? Probably not. And I'm not ready to retire my roller coaster - just the cart that carries babies. It can stay off the tracks henceforth and forever more. Turns out I had to tell him what was going on later when I was running around the house screaming like my tail end was on fire (it kinda was). Thankfully, he didn't judge me too harshly, but it did not lessen the embarrasment or the "mild discomfort".

Aside from the pain, I worried about the possibility of infection and the proximity to the twinkies. My mind was getting a little carried away with visions of them getting lumps on themselves as if hemmorhoids are contagious! But overdramatization can happen when you're hormonal, exhausted and grossly uncomfortable. Thankfully, there was no infection....just another something to grin and bear temporarily. Maybe this was some twisted way to even the score for me since it was agreed that I'd deliver via cesarean. I wouldn't be enduring the physical strain of a natural delivery and experiencing an episiotomy, so it's only fair that my behind share in some of the trauma somehow, right?

In the early days of pregnancy I had all kinds of worries related to my bum, like many other moms who just won't say it out loud. I worried about tearing during delivery. I worried about being cut in an episiotomy to prevent said tearing. I worried about pooping on the table while pushing. I worried about having all my parts exposed. I had no idea I needed to be so bum conscious before delivery time arrived. When it was decided that I'd have a c-section, there was a part of me that felt relieved despite the problems associated with an abdominal surgery. I thought for sure that delivering in the OR would leave my hoohah and bum unscathed. Sadly, this was not the case. You're netherparts (all of them) are still exposed and tortured. Turns out nothing is sacred. And I mean nothing. Except maybe your eyelashes. Every other part of you can and will more than likely be harmed in the making of this baby(ies).   

As I rattled off this list of symptoms to my nurse and sounded way too alliterative, I was reminded of Big Bird and his gang. Sesame Street episodes are soon to fill our entertainment time as the twinkies learn their alphabet and numbers, much like they did when I was young. But at the time, I felt like I was getting a sick preview of it. I felt caught in the middle of some nightmarish episode featuring the letter H.



Thankfully, these symptoms have subsided since the twinkies' birth. They seem a faint memory now, just as many moms told me they would. I can remember them if I think hard enough. I know they happened. But they're getting harder to recall. In fact, a friend who just learned she is pregnant was asking me about the progesterone shots I'd taken regularly from weeks 15 - 35 (I think??) and I denied having ever taken shots. She looked at me quizzically for a moment and said "But I thought you said your husband gave you progesterone injections?"

And then it hit me. That had indeed happened. A lot of times. And I hated every one of the them. I'd danced around the bathroom with a side of my underwear pulled down and tears rolling down my cheek begging my husband to spare me the pain, or screaming "don't count down it makes it worse!", or jerking away before he stuck me. It happened and I was there. But for a moment I completely forgot about it all.

Maybe it's the pain associated with these memories that makes them so easy to forget - as if they're repressed in my subconcious.

But I really think it's a feeling of distance. Not so much physical distance since my twins are only 11 weeks old, but psychological distance.

Somehow I feel so separated from the person who experienced all of that stuff. That person wasn't a mom.

And this gal that I am today is, even though it's surreal when I hear myself referred to as "mom". I swear that title is referring to someone other than me.

All those H's and all that pain is nothing compared to the agony I felt when I watched nurses prick my daughters' heels, check their temperature with a rectal thermometer, or listened to screams as I cut a finger when trying to trim fingernails. Their hurt is so much worse to me than all of my hurts ever were.

It is the most bizarre mixture of Heaven and Hell (more H's!).

And I wouldn't have it any other way.