July 2
We are in a semi private room with a revolving door, in the hospital. Not for you and me, Baby but for the Moms who come in to have their healthy baby and head home. There is a definite pattern, I have found. The bed beside us is empty, then a baby gets born… always in the middle of the night… which means the new Mom is delivered to the room by 1:am, given her baby to feed, and fussed over because Baby is not latching and the nurses are sure the Mom is doing something wrong – ah, the blame on Mom’s for their children’s behavior starts at the breast, I have found out. Finally Baby is fed, family members leave, lights out by 4:am, just as the sun is starting to rise in the east. We try to fall back to sleep and are just about there, when the overhead lights flood the room. It is 6:am already – time for the vampires to stick you and me with more needles, trying to cajole blood out of a stone, it would seem.
By now, your condition has a name – you are a “Small to Date Baby”…because of our Placenta Previa… That means every morning we are weighed. Not being one to step on the scales at home, I am shocked to find out I weigh 112lbs. Last time Dr. D.. weighed me I was over 120 Lbs…, I thought. I realized I was dropping weight in other places as my tummy grew, but eight pounds, huh? Every day it seemed I dropped a few more ounces, as my arms and legs became sticks. Early on in the pregnancy, Dr. D. railed against me gaining too much weight. Later on I questioned Dr. D., when I did not seem to be gaining as much as my sisters who ‘had been there, done that’. As the opposite scenario presented itself, he largely ignored, no… I would say he embraced it and declared I would have no trouble getting back to my normal pre-pregnancy weight of 104 lbs. Other Mom’s with eclampsia had the opposite problem, gaining weight on a daily basis, as their extremities ballooned and they could no longer bend down to tie their shoe laces. Wonder what their doctors counselled?
July 4
What an array of Mom’s In Waiting we have met in a few days, by walking the halls and going to the Meet and Greet Room. Two very interesting Yuppie Mommies shared a semi private. The Politician’s Wife Mom had both eclampsia and her nose in the air. It was a second marriage for the her husband…a politician… the second family and he had as much time for her as he had for his first family, I suspect. Be careful the row you hoe.
The Politician’s Wife Mom would talk to immigrant Mom’s in the hallway and Meet and Greet Rooms but she let me know she wasn’t sharing a room with them. She would pay for a private room before she submitted to that! Hhhmmm! Interesting optics for a politician’s wife! Her room mate, Mom of the Later in Life Twins, (apparently fertility drugs worked for her)… although a Yuppie and in agreement when in the company of the Politician’s wife could change her mind and deny believing it ever, when the Politician’s Wife Mom left the hospital… (Cont’d on Part 13B)