Aches and Pains

To my fellow bloggers: Do you feel like you have somehow failed as a blogger when a post you've written generates no comments? :)

We're 6 weeks out from the due date - NEXT MONTH!! Crazy times. It's starting to hit me that this is ACTUALLY happening. I'm saying many prayers that everything goes smoothly from here on out and that we end up with a healthy baby girl and a healthy me. I think we tend to forget that it's not always an easy road and that nothing can be taken for granted. I should qualify all my statements with "God willing."

I always thought a second pregnancy should be easier than the first, as your body knows what to do and it's not a huge shock to the system. Apparently that's not necessarily the case, as pregnancy does take a toll on your body. I just can't see doing this again. It's definitely been a more painful pregnancy. I was very uncomfortable with Liam, but not any more uncomfortable than you would expect to feel at the end of a pregnancy.

With this one, my tailbone has been hurting so badly. I can only sit in about one position in a chair to where it doesn't kill it, and when I stand up, I pretty much look and feel like a crotchety old lady.

I wish that a donut pillow would not scream "hemorrhoids!" Maybe I should get one and put a sign on my door at work that reads "I swear it's for my tailbone!" I'm actually thinking one of those pillows that you put around your neck on the airplane would be perfect. Everyone I've spoken with about it says "but you're pregnant - you have an excuse." I say yeah, but everyone would just think "she's pregnant, and pregnant women get hemorrhoids." I don't want people to think I have hemorrhoids, whether I have an excuse or not.

I didn't know what a Braxton-Hicks contraction felt like until I was about 2 weeks from my due date with Liam. This time I started feeling them early, and they can be intense at times. My doctor said I should be taking them seriously if they happen more than 6 times in an hour. The thing is that they'll come on strongly and happen like 10+ times in an hour, but then after that hour they'll subside. I haven't called the doctor's office during an episode yet because I know it'd net me a trip to Northside about every day, and they'd be gone by the time we got there.

I've also been feeling like the baby is kicking me in the spine, but then sometimes I wonder if it's more like a contraction in my spine. It's as if she's taking her hand and pressing it firmly against my lumbar spine for about 5 seconds and then slowly taking it away. It'll keep going like this sporadically for about 30 minutes or so and then stop. It doesn't usually coincide with the contractions. Weird. I have an appointment on Tuesday and will definitely be asking about it.

I just wonder - given that with Liam I didn't have a SINGLE sign of labor outside those few Braxton-Hicks contractions until the post-due-date induction, are these signs that maybe she'll come a little earlier? I don't want her to come too early, so sometimes I fear that they're things that I am eventually going to have to deal with.

Compounding it all is this chronic cold/cough/bronchitis/asthma that I've had since about the beginning of December. I had about a month's worth of relief from March to April when I finally took an antibiotic, and then the pollen started bothering me for the first time in my life. I had cold-like symptoms for a brief period of time, but then that always induces my asthma. I had about a week break from the cold-like symptoms and then developed a real cold, and then had another asthma outbreak. I am still trying to get over it and get the junk out of my lungs. I'm afraid the only thing that's going to cure it is going to be another round of antibiotics, which I would really like to avoid. I just feel like I'm hurting the baby with all the medications and traumatizing her with the incessant coughing. May this subside when she is born...I am miserable, and she must be, too.

I will be okay. 6 more weeks. It's funny how 6 weeks during late pregnancy feels like 6 months, yet 6 weeks of your baby's life feels like 6 days.

I guess the other conversation I am going to have at my appointment is what the risk of c-section is inducing at 39 weeks as opposed to inducing at 40 weeks. If the risk is no higher at 39 weeks, I might be all for it. If waiting another week to induce or go into labor spontaneously would help me to avoid a c-section, then I think I can survive it. Maybe, just MAYBE, Baby will come on her own as soon as we hit full-term. Could I be so lucky?!