bed-rest preview [prenatal whine #3]

[miss_swamp]

I was born two months early. My brother was three weeks early, after my mom was on bed rest for three ("and a half!") weeks. I know medicine has improved since the 1970s, but still. Having a similarly short torso, and being her own offspring, I'm not convinced I'll go full-term (end of July); nor am I convinced that I will finish this thing without being put on bed rest.

Well, I'm practicing today. Apparently my blood pressure is down, which means I'm light-headed. It's almost unbearable to be upright for longer than it takes to pee. It's not a big worry, it's just annoying. I'm supposed to be working out and grocery shopping and cleaning the house. Instead I stayed in bed for as long as I could stand it, then carefully got dressed and headed down to the sofa. On my left side, as prescribed.

What I'm most worried about is starvation, of course. I'm the cook around here, and it's hard to eat cereal lying down. But it turns out that James makes a very nice PB&J on toast--barely crisped, just the way I like it--so I'm good for now.

Thank goodness this happened on a Saturday, though. And I have Monday off if I need to head to the doctor for further investigation.


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Edit: Apparently by now I'm supposed to have 50% more blood coursing through my body than I did a few months ago. Fifty percent: that's a lot. If it hasn't been keeping up quite enough, well, I learned today what can happen. Rest, iron, liquids, I'm fine now. Not so fine that I want to cook an elaborate dinner, but fine enough to make my own PB&J if I'd sent James out for milk, say. Fine enough that I could work like this, though the 55 stairs up to my room would be tricky.

Comments

[erischild.livejournal.com]

for the record, my nurse husband and his prenatal nursing text book say that there's no real reason for bed rest. It's not been shown to be any more effective at preventing premature labour. Probably just the doctors don't know what else to do with you, and figure if you go shooting a kid out at warp speed, there's more chance to catch it if it's not aimed at a wall.
Not that I'd recommend hang-gliding, per se, but there's no scientific reason for you to have to pee in a bucket under the sheet.
Unless, you know, that's your thing.
Of course if you feel like you need rest, take it. I just don't want you to be all ants-in-your-pants thinking you can't fold a few towels (bake cookies, make rude faces at the neighbours, eat cookies, destroy the evidence of cookies having been made and then eaten, etc.) in between naps.