Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Damn Doctor!

    My regular Doctor will be back in his clinic on Monday and MAN am I pleased.

    He took a holiday (first time in ages) and headed to Italy with his family. While he was gone, everytime I rang his clinic (he works from home and had a Locum taking care of things) I would get an answering machine telling me to call back at such and such a time.

    The first time I was calling at 11am on a Monday morning. The answering machine told me ‘I’m very sorry but the clinic is unattended right now. Please call back after 9.30am on Monday morning’.

    Now where I was it was WELL past 9.30am and I should have at least gotten a damn receptionist!

    The second time I called I was told that they were currently too busy and to please call back in 5 minutes. IT’S A COUNTRY TOWN CLINIC! The town it is in has a population of 50 people!

    Fuck me.

    After many more days (where I was thanking god I wasn’t actually sick or anything) I finally got a receptionist. She told me that she was busy right now, could I please hold? 10 minutes later I was still holding, only I wasn’t listening to music, I was listening to her wander around her office making coffee and talking to the doctor.

    Then, when I finally heard her heels walking towards the phone and I thought I was actually going to get to talk to her, she hung the phone up. Without checking to see if I was still there.

    I rang back.

    And got a freaking answering machine!

    You should have seen my ears smoke. Nathan says it was funny.

    So I rang back again, and rather snippily told her that I had JUST rang her to ask for an appointment. I got an appointment, but not until she blamed ‘someone’ for hanging up the phone. I should have told her that I could hear her the whole time.

    But the straw that broke the camels back? I went in when I was first pregnant (May 23rd to be precise) and got all the necessary paperwork done to be sent to the hospital.

    [Basically here, you go to your GP, get a positive pregnancy test and then promptly get referred to the Hospital for a booking in appointment with the midwives and then a health and well being check with the doctors. Then if all looks good, you get cleared to continue seeing just your GP until you are 36 weeks. High risk pregnancies don’t have this option and need to go to the OB’s at the hospital for every appointment]

    I had to ring the hospital a fortnight ago to cancel a GYN appointment I had, while the lovely lady was checking the appointments and congratulating me on my pregnancy she noticed something odd.

    Despite having seen the GP weeks before, they had no record of an antenatal referral for me AT ALL. I asked her to check again and she did, she even went so far as to check through all the recently received paperwork that hadn’t been entered into the computers yet.

    Nothing.

    So I of course, rang the GP [Locum, remember] to try and sort out what the fuck had happened. Do you know, I haven’t been able to get in touch with him! When I do finally get my call answered, I got told that the current receptionist knew nothing about it and could I call back when the other girl was working and they had had a chance to talk to the doctor please?

    Fuck ME!

    So I didn’t bother. I figure I’m not going to die between then and when my regular GP gets back to work (Monday, sweet sweet Monday) and I will go see him then and get everything sorted out.

    No matter that I will be nearly 11 weeks along by the time I get to see him. No matter that it takes up to 8 weeks to get an appointment at the hospital. No matter that everything that counts will have been done by then, even though the hospital won’t know I exist.

    Dammit, I just want to see my regular GP and have him sort everything out.

    So my advice? Never trust a Locum, or the receptionists when their boss is on holiday, because you won’t get anywhere.

    —-

    So far everything is still going well. My abdomen continues to expand with intestines and stuff, while my uterus remains pushing hard up against my spine [my hip and lower back are protesting this quite a lot].

    I cannot wait for this first trimester to be over and for the nausea and exhaustion to stop. I want to be able to feel the baby move so I can stop thinking morbid dead baby thoughts. I want to feel certain that at the end of all this, I will have a real baby to take home.

    I am still definitely pregnant and heading closer towards the time when I can schedule a NT scan. I want to be able to discuss my dates vs my ultrasound with my REAL doctor.

    And there is some other stuff going on here that I can’t blog about right now, but it’s big and it isn’t pleasant, so any good thoughts you send my way won’t go to waste. Trust me, send the good thoughts. We need them.

    xx

  • It’s Been A Bad Day, Please Don’t Take A Picture

    So I need you to do some imagining.

    Last night:

    First, you have a toddler and that toddler gets into the sugar bowl at 9.30pm, 2 hours after bedtime. Then that toddler suddenly had all! this! extra! energy! and discovers how to break out of her gated bedroom.

    Then you have to imagine various levels of toddler chaos until midnight, when she finally settled enough to fall asleep for me.

    Then she wakes a few times between 12am and 7am. At 7am her world needs to end and she needs to come to bed with Mummy for a few hours, regularly kicking Mummy in the back.

    She then spent the day out with my Mum (thankyou!) and came home in a slightly clingy, but mostly happy mood.

    She fingerpainted with guacamole, all over the carpet. She refused to eat her dinner, but sat next to me and ate all mine quite happily (seriously, how does that reasoning work?).

    Then I puked. And got a splinter. And trod on a bead and swore to high heaven.

    So, I did what I always do on shitty days. I turned on the music really loud and danced and sung like an idiot. Can you picture me dancing and singing like an idiot with Amy on my hip? Amy thought it was hilarious. So did I until I looked down and realised that she had pooped all over my hip.

    So, here is my song for bad days. It needs playing up REALLY REALLY loud.

  • Bigger and Bigger

    9w3d since LMP

    So, it has been 9w3d since my last period started. Even though my ultrasound put my dates at 8w tomorrow, I find that I am going to disagree with what the ultrasound said.

    Amy measured small from day one (at one point she ws measuring 3 weeks behind), despite me knowing exactly when I fell pregnant with her. This time around I know exactly when I fell pregnant, regardless of whether an ultrasound measurement agrees with me. At the end of the day, we have a nice healthy heartbeat and that is all that counts.

    I seriously doubt that a pregnancy test that recommended you wait until 19 days after you last had sex to test, would show a positive result a mere 8 days (and if we are going to be picky, it was 7 days, 8 hours) after our last, well, you know.

    So, unless otherwise told, I am going to continue to count things by my dates. And by my dates, MY WORD is my belly getting large. Like, REALLY big [here is last week’s photo for comparison. I didn’t realise how huge I looked until I saw last weeks photo]

    Sure, most of that is probably water and intestines and stuff, but hell, I am as big here (I took this this afternoon) as I was at 20 weeks last time! AND the photo was taken when all I had been able to stomach was some apple sauce for the entire day. Oy.

    So yes, the little one continues to grow and I continue to feel sick and exhausted and incredibly happy to have finally gotten here.

  • Bedtime Woes

    Sometimes I just get so angry that I could happily beat things to death. Especially at bedtime.

    Amy is never the reason I am angry, I accept that some nights she has trouble falling asleep and needs me to go and cuddle/resettle/kiss her eleventy hundred times.

    No, I get angry at things that are preventing Amy from falling asleep.

    Like when she will have just settled, and then the dog will insist on dragging the cat around the house growling, while the cat yowls and then, when I finally have them separated, Seven will bark and Amy will get out of bed just to tell Seven to ‘Shhhhh Dog!’.

    Or, when she is just falling asleep and then a cat will jump into her bedroom, prompting cries of ‘Kitten! kitten! Here pleasey!’ from Amy, again with her needing to get out of bed.

    And then again, when she is finally settled and all the animals are outside so that I don’t kill them with my rolling pin, or god forbid, my bare hands, the kittens will hear her in her bedroom (she sings herself to sleep) and jump onto her window sill and meow.

    And then she will get out of bed, and then Seven will jump up against her gate whining and Amy will spend all her time trying to climb over her gate, so she can hug Seven and then I will finally get Seven AWAY FROM THE FUCKING KID and I will get Amy BACK into bed and settled and everything will be sweet until Seven decides that she needs to pee and scratches to go outside, right outside of Amy’s bedroom.

    So, I will put Seven out, and put Amy back to bed, then Seven will scratch to come in and bother Amy A-FUCKING-GAIN and I will curse the person who put 2 of the bedrooms right near the outside door.

    THEN, I will bring Seven inside and wonder why the fuck I bothered because she obviously didn’t need to go outside in the first fucking place BECAUSE SHE IS PEEING IN MY CLEAN FUCKING LAUNDRY A-FUCKING-GAIN.

    And then, Seven will settle and Amy will settle and I will stop visualising murder and death and a padded room….

    And then…

    Amy will have a bad run of diarrhoea needing me to change her nappy 4 times in 20 minutes.

    And I will repeat everything ALL OVER AGAIN.

    Hi, My name is Veronica and this is MY LIFE.

  • Something Ends, Something Begins

    Xbox4NappyRash was asking the other day why people who have issues with fertility or trying to conceive seem to ignore the fact once we get pregnant.

    “From what I see and read, there are also relatively few recounts from people who have been here [dealing with infertility] and emerged out the other side. I find it hard to grasp why they would almost pretend it never happened.

    They must remember the sadness, they must remember the frustration and they must remember the prayers they offered, or deals they were willing to strike with anyone, just to end their longing.”

    I am thrilled to be pregnant, I am also aware of people who are still reading my blog while trying to conceive. I find myself trying not to blog about the mundanities of pregnancy; especially early pregnancy with its fear of miscarriage, because I don’t want to feel like I am rubbing it in.

    For this same reason, I am less likely to comment on infertility blogs. Someone said that ‘her diagnosis of secondary infertility between her 2 children didn’t last long enough to mean anything’ and that is how I feel. I don’t feel like I have any right to have an opinion on TTC anymore.

    We did 4 months of low stress trying and then 12 months of concerted trying; complete with cycle counting, sex on cue and propped hips afterwards. Also added in for extra flavour, cycle depression, many ‘just relax and stop trying’ comments and the always welcome ‘well maybe you are just trying too hard, stop stressing about it’.

    I have been bitter and wept at pregnancy and birth announcements. I have lamented my bitterness when a pregnancy announcement that hurt me badly ended in miscarriage, twice. I have been happy for friends, but sad, so awfully sad for me and then horribly sad when their pregnancies ended in sadness too. [No link for my other friend, she doesn’t blog]

    I feel like I have walked over hot coals to get here, but compared to others, I had an easy run. Because of that, I don’t feel qualified to offer advice on infertility. It feels like I wasn’t there for long enough to be considered part of the group.

    I don’t talk about trying to conceive much anymore. It feels a little surreal, but more than that, I would hate for someone to come and visit my blog only to feel blindsided by my pregnancy. The last thing you need at the end of a failed cycle is to head over to someone who has been understanding and sympathetic, only to find them whinging about morning sickness, exhaustion and toddler tantrums.

    We do indeed remember the sadness and the frustrations. We remember our longing; the prayers and deals offered all too well. That’s why once you walk through the fire and end up on the other side, you are a bit hesitant to talk about it.

    I remember intensely the feeling of hollow emptiness at the beginning of every period. I remember how angry I was with other people simply for being pregnant when I wasn’t. I remember the heart breaking sadness of a failed cycle; of knowing that my daughter was going to be just that little bit older; knowing that the age difference was going to be that little bit bigger.

    Once you have walked over the hot coals that is TTC, you are much more aware of how tenuous this all is. Of how lucky you are to be in this situation and how close you came to not being here right now.

    It makes you infinitely more grateful for everything, but also so much more aware of everything that could go wrong. Because you wanted this so badly, it tears the carpet out from under your feet when you just need to whinge about it all. Someone is always ready to remind you about how badly you wanted this, and what right do you have to whine when *someone else* has never seen 2 pink lines, or heard the doctor say congratulations.

    I can’t claim infertility because in the end, I didn’t need treatment to fall pregnant with this little one.

    I can’t claim a surprise pregnancy either, because it took us so long to get here.

    I remember exactly what it felt like when I wasn’t here. I know that I will be a much more supportive friend to anyone needing fertility treatments, doctors visits or simply a shoulder. I know that this has made me a stronger person and it has made me that much more grateful for a strong heartbeat and morning sickness.

    And I am able to stand here and sing ‘Ner ner neernerner’ at the ‘just relaxers’ because I know we conceived on a train wreck of a cycle, when I was more stressed than I had ever been. I am living proof that relaxing doesn’t get you pregnant, it takes a sperm meeting an egg, in whatever way you can get that to happen.