This Is the Pregnancy Commiseration and Support Thread

my very best wishes to you, carl & baby, I hope the waiting time goes happily and well.
signed, yet another fan of your lovely haircut/eyes.

<3 thank you!!!

quincie, I forgot to mention that part of the overall care available includes visits from social workers who specialize in women undergoing high risk pregnancies. As a student of social work, I thought you might find that interesting. And yes, I am 100% availing myself of that service.

Wait, you got a CHOICE of foods?? In the hospital?? I got cream of wheat that wasn't even microwaved, it was like a hockey puck made of horse glue.

The hospital caf had Jamaican beef patties, but could you get those delivered upstairs? Could you fuck.

Only after I'd been there overnight. The initial dinner and breakfast the following day were just whatever they gave me. Then lunch that day day was a choice of veggie burger, Salisbury steak, or hot turkey; peas and carrots or just carrots; mashed potatoes or french fries; potato leek or some other soup (the potato leek soup is the thing that was actually pretty good); garden salad or cottage cheese and tomatoes; a few different things for desert; and then beverages.

Dinner was a set of similar choices - meatloaf, chicken breast, something I can't remember; carrots or broccoli; mashed potatoes or "bread stuffing" (decent); salad or cottage cheese; desert; beverages.

But it was the same choices both times I was there, so you know, once I'm at the point where I'm like "Oh, Salisbury steak just for variety!" then I'll know I'm a defeated woman.

To my eternal frustration, it's an iceberg salad and their dressing selection is Italian, thousand island, Catalina, or fat free ranch. I had a puking incident involving Italian salad dressing early on in the pregnancy and I hate every other dressing option, especially fat free ranch because I like regular ranch dressing just fine, especially on iceberg lettuce (if you're going to go low brow, go all the way I say).

Best health wishes to you and the babby, Carl!

quincie, I forgot to mention that part of the overall care available includes visits from social workers who specialize in women undergoing high risk pregnancies. As a student of social work, I thought you might find that interesting. And yes, I am 100% availing myself of that service.

Oh that's so great! Are you finding it helpful?

First session is tomorrow, but I am comforted even just knowing it's available so I'm going to go ahead and say yes.

Really not impressed with my initial experiences of NCT. First they encourage me to sign up for a direct debit to pay and I leap at the chance, given their antenatal course is costing over £300. Then when I come to pay, it transpires the direct debit only applies to the £40 membership fee, so this is just a tactic to get me to stay a member after the initial year as presumably they hope I'll forget to cancel the payments.

Now I get an email confirming my reservation on a postnatal course, which I didn't book. I write to let them know, and a woman gets back to me with a C&P of a paragraph buried in an earlier email telling me how, since 80% of their members feel they gain from a postnatal class, they have taken the liberty of booking me onto one.

Fuck this. What next, partnership emails from Bounty?

They have taken the liberty to book one for you... What the shit.

bloody hell. I didn't do NCT, we moved and it was too late. I'm glad I didn't bother, not one of my local friends went to the same NCT group, because we're at the edge of so many areas.

They came highly recommended by a few friends - not because of what you learn so much but because of the network of babysitters friends. But this stinks, especially as they're a charity. Of course now I'm now panicking in case the woman I sent a snippy email to is actually leading my class...

I met all of my local mother friends at the local baby group I first went to when A was about 4 weeks old.

How did you find the local group, V? Was it advertised somewhere in particular? I'm avoiding the big online forums at the moment because all the Opinions terrify me.

They did have notices up but it was run by a couple of the local health visitors. Have a look out at local cafes for notices, and go to the library singing sessions too, to meet other new mums. The NCT is an easy, if expensive, way to have a ready made network though

Per my previous update, I am officially admitted for my course of hospital bed rest. So far so good, but it's only been a few hours and they've already sent a social worker in to assess my mental state and to warn me not to be too surprised if my cheery disposition dissipates in a few days.

Hilarious hospital food update: lunch was a hamburger, steamed broccoli, and two (2) different kinds of canned fruit - mixed fruit cocktail and a peach half in a dish on some lettuce. It's one scoop of cottage cheese away from being a diner diet plate! For some reason, though, they've got me coded as having food allergies and being on a restricted calorie diet, which I think accounts for all the fruit. I sorted that out with the nurse, though. Restricted calories my aunt fanny.

Good luck, CA - hope however long it takes goes as smoothly and undepressingly as possible.

Thanks, M!

The plan is two weeks and then a c-section as long as nothing happens to foreshorten that time frame, but the doc told me this morning if I stay stable, they'll delay the delivery by up to a week. I am really hoping that's what happens!

Put your feet up and watch 2 seasons of Scandal on netflix, is my advice.

I'm going to be able to watch the Bulls season opener tonight, which is on a cable channel, so that's kind of exciting.

Scandal has been in our queue forever. Maybe now is the time.

ooooh this is getting so exciting! Babby soon!

Sorry you have to be inpatient, tho. By "bedrest" do they mean "u no getting up, please pee and poop in this pan" or can you do some walking about?

I can get up to go to the bathroom and shower! I'm in the process of lobbying them to let me go to a mysterious place called the "coffee room" so I can get my own water instead of calling the poor nurses to bring it to me (which is nice, don't get me wrong, but I'm going to be here for two weeks plus and I don't want to annoy anybody) and I am going to see if they'll let me go outside for some fresh air later this week when it's not raining. The last one is probably pushing it, but I think they'll let me get the water. I mean, hell, yesterday I walked a mile home from the store carrying a bag of groceries. Shuffling around the corner to the water and ice machine shouldn't be an issue.

hope all goes smoothly carl!

I am dying for the big name reveal!

Oh jeez, that reminds me of Carl and Little Carl from that episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Good luck and here's to a happy and healthy Little Carl!

omg Carl by my math you could choose to have little baby Lexy on november 14 like the universe desires! SECOND COMING. Seriously though, wishing you the best of bed rest, freedom to get your own water and an excellent wifi connection for Netflixing (or is that on TVs in hospitals now?)

good luck CA!! hoping all goes smoothly for you n babby

How's it goin', Carl? Wishing u best.

Day 11. Spirits high. Though I can't stop thinking about the wallpaper in this room. It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

Man, carl, you're a champ! My roommate just got out of 10 days in the hospital and I think it was getting him down finally, although it's less fun if you can't breathe, I'm told.

What secrets lay within the coffee room?

xp Just kidding there's no wallpaper in here.

I'm fine. Antsy and I had a breakdown about dinner last night that lasted like 45 minutes but that's probably to be expected.

Fetus continues to be a total badass. If everything continues as it has been, they'll start taking it day by day as of Tuesday and see if we can't give the kid a few more days on the inside to make a few extra ounces of baby.

Jeff continues to be a total badass as well. My parents are here and I've had lots of lovely visitors. So all in all: reasonably okay.

The coffee room remains a mystery. There are two water/ice machines and I am permitted access to the closer one, which is in a storage closet. It's too bad, too, because I like the ice from the coffee room ice machine better.

I'm glad your roomie is home, io!

Expected?? I'm amazed it took that long! Rest, have breakdowns, do whatever you do while kiddo gains a gram here, a gram there. Pics suggest Jeff is getting bored enough to start cataloging "The Nights and Days of Francie" so I'm sure he'll be fine.

Thanks for the good wishes for R, you know I'm secretly delighted when someone is completely under my control so I quite enjoyed making him dinner on a tray the first night AND I got to see the holes in his side from where they punched through his ribcage wall to put a tube in his chest. He's on morphine now so all is well.

early morning lol @ yellow wallpaper

Carl, you had me worried with the wallpaper. Glad the waiting is tolerable, that babby's probably growing like mad due to peanut butter variations.

yellow wallpaper ref <3 <3 <3

I'm glad it's all going reasonably ok! hope the storage closet ice undergoes a mysterious improvement to coffee room ice standards.

I was wondering how everything was going and wishing you the very best xo

Pics suggest Jeff is getting bored enough to start cataloging "The Nights and Days of Francie" so I'm sure he'll be fine.

Ha, I have to spend some couch time with Francie every night when I get back from the hospital, otherwise she goes crazy from lack of human attention. Unfortunately Francie time is invading sleep time.

I too enjoyed your yellow wallpaper joke.. Dork :) glad the rest is doing baby good at any rate

yellow wallpaper ref <3 <3 <3

Morning, carl!

the nurses in our recovery area started referring to me as the guy who walks the halls because i refused to press the stupid call button to get ice water or new diapers or whatever, so i feel you on the ice machine access. apparently none of the other new fathers ever do this?! which seems so weird to me but hey, lazy or freaked out or w/e i suppose. obv this same freedom of motion was not granted to k, who was on the bed rest tip

I know! I feel like a tool calling for water, too. Right now I'm on the fetal heart monitor for six hours at a time (six on, six off so I can have six blessed, precious hours of sleep at night) so I end up having to call for bullshit like that sometimes. But I figured out how to unplug and plug in the monitor cables and can often successfully readjust the sensors so I can at least go to the damn bathroom without having to involve anybody else.

Got good news today, though - me and the baby are stable enough that they are going to reschedule the c-section for next Tuesday and then take it day by day until then. Any bleeding, significant contractions, blood pressure issues, fetal distress, or if I just decide that I can't take any more and they'll deliver earlier. But I'm determined to get this kid to 35 weeks, dammit, even if it means lying still with those stupid, noisy, hot air compression boots on all day.

Can't wait until the kid is older and I can say shit like, "You got a C in biology??? I didn't spend at extra week on hospital bed rest to make sure your brain developed as much as possible so you could get a C in biology." Or "I fought doctors and gravity to keep you in my womb an extra week and you repay me by dating this asshole?"

Fun times.

hahaha

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