When to Worry

I am posting this at 2:49 am, after an evening of throwing up both my lunch and dinner, followed by 3 trips to the bathroom to accommodate the other end.

Before I started exploding, I was hunched over in the bathroom, one hand gripping the sink, the other grabbing the doorframe, unable to stand up straight from stomach cramping. Michael sat vigil on the stairs across from the bathroom, Pregnancy Handbook in hand, flipping pages.

"Are you sure you aren't having contractions?" he asked.

"Yeeeees," I moaned. "I just need to puuuuuke."

"Okay, well..." I watched his head turn slightly from left to right as he read the manuscript. "make sure to tell me if you do, or if you have...um, several soft stools in a row...or bloody show." And with that he looked up from the book. And I puked.

Two weeks ago, we had our first trip to the maternal/fetal assessment unit for preterm contractions, which became very painful after an ordinary stroll through the neighborhood. Blog entry on that to follow. Ever since then, my work hours have been reduced to 6 a day, and I'm not supposed to exercise much at all.

I thought the end of the first trimester would bring a sigh of relief, and a decrease in worry. And there is a lot of comfort in knowing via ultrasound that our little guy is now 4 pounds, taking good breaths, and doing very well. But the worrying continues; it's just that the focus of the anxiety has changed. When contractions set in, I have to look at the clock, knowing that if they're not dissapating within an hour, I need to call and drive to Abbott for testing and monitoring. When I have about 10 an hour, it raises some concern and my hubby becomes clandestinely worried.

One Sunday morning, I was snipper than usual with Michael - many Sundays begin with me having a case of the crabbies, as a result of trying on several outfits that didn't fit, followed by a mad rush out the door with breakfast in hand, trying to stuff it in my face before arriving in the church parking lot a notorious 3 minutes late. I apologized with tears: "He's sleeping in, I haven't felt him move yet today!" Michael assured me that this was a good thing that our son was napping. I disagreed, explaining that the baby was getting into a pattern, and he usually didn't go so long into the day without moving. "You can't worry about every little thing," Michael said.

Oh, but you can. It dawned on me that day that in your third trimester, you receive a lot of flow-charts, lists, and verbal instructions for when to call the doctor. Fetal kick counting- counting how many movements you feel in 10 minutes twice in the day - is likely to drive a pregnant woman mad. Was that a roll or was it gas? He has one more minute to give me three more movements, go go go! Appointments alone can raise alarm. Gone are the days when our smiling family practice physician measured my uterus and checked for the heartbeat monthly. Now the appointments are nearly weekly and last 2 hours on average. If these things don't give a hormonal woman cause to worry I don't know what will.

But a good friend of mine, who was 8 months pregnant at the time, put it well when she said, "somehow I don't think the worrying is going to stop when they're on the outside." How very true.