Sleepless Nights

Blog

  • Facebook keeps telling me it’s her birthday

    That’s the problem with social networks. They don’t know when someone is dead.

    It would have been her 67th birthday today. We would have wrapped our Easter celebrations into a birthday celebration as well, and it all would have gone smoothly.

    Instead, it’s been almost three years since she died and there is so much she has missed. How is it fair, to have someone you love, miss some of the biggest milestones in your life?

    April 2009, we were moving through the cancer haze. A mess of appointments and treatment and long conversations in cafes. Of learning to read a CT scan report so that the doctors couldn’t gloss over the worst details. Of knowing, in depth, what metastasize meant in a real way, rather than an academic kind of way. Dropping cake crumbs on my new baby’s head, as he was carried to and fro with us.

    It’s never pleasant to walk the path with someone dying, and yet, we were honoured to be able to do it.

    —

    Winter is coming.

    It sounds trite and ripped from Game of Thrones – and you’re right. It is.

    But it’s also how this time of year feels. April heralds the beginning of the dark months, as we move through birthdays and anniversaries. I could read back through my blog and find out what appointments we were attending three years ago, but I don’t want to.

    April moves into May, which moves into June – the darkest of the months.

    Cancer moved from her lungs, to her lymph nodes, to her bones.

    Life moved on to death.

    That is how this time of year works.

    —

    Death leaves a hole in your life that is unfillable. It will scab over and eventually scar, but you will always miss them. Sometimes with a deep ache, sometimes with a smile.

    And sometimes, with piercing pain.

    —

    Happy Birthday Nan.

    I’m sorry you’re not here to watch my children grow up and life continue on – I think you’d be amused at how similar Amy is to Mum.

  • Redefining my version of success

    Sometimes, you’ve got to take a step back and reassess “success” as you thought you knew it. Like today, when I sneezed twenty times in a row and didn’t wet myself even a little bit, despite the fetus kicking me in the bladder.

    And earlier, when I managed to eat an entire breadroll (filled with bacon, cheese and tomato) for breakfast, without having to have any anti-nausea medication immediately afterwards. I also managed a cup of tea about an hour later, although in the end, that required a lay down, with some breathing exercises to keep it down. Liquids are harder to keep down than bread, apparently.

    The nausea continues, although it’s worse of an afternoon and evening, meaning that I am trying to pack in all my calories of a morning time, which is usually a poor time for eating anyway, due to the lax gastric system. I can’t really win, but I’ve managed to gain a kilo in the last six weeks, putting me at a mere two kilos lighter than my pre-pregnant (and finally healthy) weight.

    I’ve finally hit what I am calling the half way point of this pregnancy. At 19 weeks, 3 days I am half way there, based on my last pregnancy. It’s starting to become very urgent (inside my head) that things get DONE and SORTED and I’m pretty sure that I’m driving Nathan mad.

    Having the greenhouse built is a huge tick on my to-do list, because I’m hoping to have a few grow-bags full of spinach and herbs, so that in the post-newborn haze, I have some fresh veggies to work with. Not to mention somewhere quiet to sit and hide from my older children.

    Speaking of older children, it’s Easter holidays and success has been redefined to mean that no one needed copious band-aids, that meltdowns were minimal and held in a bedroom, not at my feet and that everyone ate at least one piece of fruit or veg during the day. My standards are super low and I am good with that.

    Success is also defined by the fact that I am still walking and mobile – albeit slower than usual, due to all my internal organs squashing my lungs. I can feel that I’ve lost muscle tone, which I can also deal with, considering the most energetic thing I can manage is pottering around the kitchen throwing things in the general direction of the sink, before giving up and having to lay down again.

    The big ultrasound is in less than a week now and I must admit, I’m excited to find out the sex of this baby. My money is on a girl, for the record. I’m determinedly not thinking about the possibility of heart problems, or the sub-chorionic bleed that was hanging around in there. I figure as long as there is kicking happening on a regular basis, then I can count everything a success.

    Right?

    SUCCESS.

  • This pregnancy is killing me. Figuratively.

    First, I will start with a disclaimer:

    Yes, I know how lucky I am to be pregnant. All of my pregnancies have been flukes and I am very grateful that I conceived naturally, despite being told that my chances were pretty terrible. But being pregnant was not the end result – having a real live baby at the end is. Thus, I reserve the right to hate the means and love the end.

    —

    Fourth pregnancy, third baby. I underestimated how hard this was going to be on my body.

    I have a disability, which I don’t think about very often, because this is just me. I pass it off as “dodgy joints” or “crappy genetics” but when you get right down to it, I have a disability and my joints dislocate spontaneously, leaving me writhing in pain. I also throw up, can’t regulate my own body temperature properly and have a slightly leaky heart valve, although it’s “nothing much to worry about yet”. I probably also have POTS, but having a complicated genetic disorder means that no one really wants to talk to me about the secondary issues that a fucked up genetic code causes.

    This is amongst other things that I try really hard not to think about.

    The good news is, my brand of Ehlers Danlos doesn’t come with spontaneous arterial rupture or aneurysm, and they’re pretty sure that if I’ve managed to carry two pregnancies to term without my uterus rupturing, then it’s unlikely that there will be any major complications with this pregnancy.

    I’m also incredibly lucky that unlike many other women with Ehlers Danlos, I have two and a half babies to show for my four pregnancies and we are incredibly hopeful that my success rate will be a whopping 75% by the time August rocks around. If I was a duck who’d hatched three babies out of four eggs, you’d keep me. A lot of women with Ehlers Danlos will go through miscarriage after miscarriage, failing to bring a child to viability at all. I seem to have missed that part and for that, I am grateful to my uterus.

    All that said, my joints are falling apart. At almost 19 weeks pregnant, the relaxin is firmly coursing through my system and my ribs have forgotten what their main job is meant to be. I keep dislocating my left shoulder while I sleep and my pelvis is more like a wobble board that a supportive girdle of holdi-togetherness.

    Last night, after running my children a bath, I turned around and felt my pelvis slip. One hip went one way and the other went in an entirely new direction, while I wondered if I was going to be able to walk again. A little bit of quick thinking and some serious remembering of what a physio said to me and I gingerly managed to get onto all fours and rock my pelvis back into place. The baby didn’t aid me in this, considering s/he wanted to lie transverse, with each end pushing on one half of my pelvis. I guess it was trying to make things roomier in there.

    I joked to one of the mums at school that if I can stay walking throughout this pregnancy, I will be incredibly proud of my joints and I am scared that it isn’t going to happen. The pain is pretty bad and somehow, panadol is pretty useless on the ‘your whole body is falling apart’ pain.

    Pregnancy is miserable, for me. The baby at the end is not miserable, but pregnancy is the hell I have to go through to get a baby. Even labour is not this tough, or this bone crushingly painful.

    My blood pressure and various autonomic nervous system functions are not working as well as they ought and I seem to spin between feeling moderately unawful, to wondering if the floor is going to come up and smack me in the head. (For the record, I’ve not passed out yet, but I’m well versed in laying down wherever I am, in order to avoid the blackout)

    It’s exhausting, feeling this crappy. Amy is at school full time and while the break is amazing, she keeps asking why I’m not doing parent help. I tell her it’s because I’m unwell, but really, it’s not all that pleasant to be the one who can’t do anything, because you’re too sick.

    I was reading on a “your guide to pregnancy week by week” site about all the symptoms of pregnancy that should have eased by now. The second trimester is meant to be the golden trimester and all I want to do is shoot the writers. The nausea should have eased! Your exhaustion should be a thing of the past! Headaches are caused by hormones and should stop by the second trimester! I want to shoot them, and then bring them back so that I can shoot them again. Pregnancy is miserable.

    Finally, in a moment crowning glory, the midwifery appointment that I was meant to have a few days ago – they wrote down the date incorrectly, so that I missed the appointment, because of an admin error. When they remade the appointment, instead of being at the clinic closest to my house, it’s now at a different clinic, a further 25 minutes drive away (40 mins away all up), at a totally inconvenient time, if I wanted to spend any time at home between school drop off and school pick up. I’d ring them and change it, only I’m scared that it will make things even more inconvenient for me. Better the devil you know, and all that jazz.

    It’s a good thing I can feel this baby wiggling and kicking around in there and that I wasn’t relying on the midwife to provide me with proof of life, isn’t it?

    I know that most of this discomfort will fade into the background once the baby is born and that by 6 weeks post partum, I should be feeling somewhat better. All of this will be a vague memory of discomfort and that is what I’m hoping for.

    In the meantime, I am just very glad that this is the last time I am going to be pregnant.

  • More stable than the greenhouse of doom

    The latest project here has involved Nathan building me a greenhouse out of all of the scrap wood we’ve got lying around.

    My father gifted us the laserlight to cover the frame when it’s built, so all we had to do was build it.

    And build we have. Yesterday was spent measuring wood, swearing over warped bits of timber and me holding things while Nathan screwed it all together. Isaac helped, and did really quite well, considering there was both a circular saw AND a drill in evidence (I had to hold his ears and cuddle him tightly while the circular saw was in use).

    The last greenhouse was a debacle. Does everyone remember the last greenhouse? How it flew merrily across the paddock in the wind and when it was rebuilt and star picketed to the ground, it decided to try and murder me?

    Remember?

    I remember. Oh boy, do I remember. You haven’t LIVED until a greenhouse has (apparently) become sentient and tried to stab you in the internal organs with its stabby supports of doom.

    Hmmph.

    Anyway, this greenhouse promises to be rather a lot more stable than the other greenhouse.

    (photo care of Isaac, who did a good job, I think)

    Tomorrow we will finish up the last of the structural supports and start screwing laserlight to it.

    And then I will have a greenhouse that won’t fall down; that won’t try and kill me; and that won’t try and escape to someone elses property.

    Nice.

    Photo also by Isaac. Aged three. Isn’t he clever?

  • 18 weeks

    Alternative title: Not an April Fools Day post.

    18 weeks pregnant

    I feel huge. And I know in reality that I am not that big, but my lungs are squished, my bladder is squished and my ribs are increasingly uncomfortable. We won’t even discuss the wonky things that my pelvis is doing.

    18 weeks pregnant

     

    The bad bits:

    Nausea continues. I’m still medicated for the nausea, which due to the type of medication has made my breasts leak early. I call this blatently unfair. The meds also give me a constant low-level headache, which is miserable. At least, I’m blaming the meds, it could be the Ehlers Danlos and hormones.

    Thrush. You know, thrush is pretty rotten at the best of times, but this pregnancy has thrown my system off seriously and I can’t seem to clear it up, no matter how many probiotics I eat. Hat tip to Blackmores Women’s Bio-Balance stuff that I first tried after a Bloggers Brunch, which seems to keep things manageable, if not cleared up. It’s miserable.

    Itching breasts. WHAT IS WITH THAT? The last two pregnancies that worked, I didn’t get itchy skin until the stretchmarks started to appear. This time, my breasts are constantly itchy. It’s driving me batty.

    Reflux. Something I am also still medicated for, considering the generalised laxity of my gastric system. My meds keep it mostly under control, until I try to go to bed with anything less than three pillows in strategic positions.

    My inability to sit up in a chair comfortably. Apparently, my internal organs have decided that the best place they can relocate to is my ribcage. Unfortunately, my ribcage houses my lungs and there is not enough room to sit up straight and also breathe. I was hoping to get to Melbourne in May for the Emerging Writers Festival, but I may have to give it a miss, considering I don’t think I could sit up for long enough to attend any events.

    My blood pressure, which is sitting slightly above dead and requires copious amounts of water and salty food in order to stop the dizziness.

    The Good bits.

    The increasing pokiness of kicks. I find myself worrying less about the baby dying and more about where it’s going to be placing its feet next.

    No new stretchmarks.

    An actual baby hanging around in there. That really trumps all of the bad bits, doesn’t it?

    And hey, I got to go to the movies with Nathan last week, which was a huge deal. We saw The Hunger Games in gold class, care of vouchers from a mate and seriously, that’s the ONLY way to watch movies, especially when you’re pregnant.

    I am contenting myself with the fact that I am almost half way there and that in a fortnight, we have our big ultrasound that will confirm that there is only one baby in there (one wiggly baby, who can kick in three places at once) and what sex that baby is.

    If you’d like to start placing bets on what flavour of baby we’re having, feel free to do so.