Inform the Masses!

Yesterday I complained to you all about feeling mis/uninformed. I've been thinking about it, and the problem is really much worse than we think. There are so many things I've learned by experience that I had no idea about before. (Disclaimer: Very informative. Men might want to skip this post entirely.) For instance:

Did you know that after a woman delivers, she has what is basically a month-long period afterwards? I learned that from WebMD about two weeks before my mom thought to tell me about it.

I'm hungry all the time. People keep on saying that I'm eating for two, implying that I should take double portions, but the fact is that right now I'm lucky if I have room for half of what I could eat in one sitting before I was pregnant. This is because there is a tiny little person where part of my stomach was. As a result, I have to take smaller portions, but get hungry faster. By the way, if I don't eat when I'm hungry, I usually get sick.

Almost everyone knows that during the first two trimesters of pregnancy, the upper real estate looks amazing. What nobody tells you is that the girls hurt like crazy! I think the best adjective I could use is "engorged," and I'm not even breast-feeding yet. It would make sense that when the body is figuring out how much milk it needs to make, things would be a bit tender. But I had no idea it would be a problem before the little squirt arrived.

Muscle pain is (sorry, Mom) a bitch. Again, it makes sense that because the uterus is expanding, bones get moved around, but did you know that when a woman is pregnant, her spine is actually moved out of alignment? Okay, maybe you knew that, but it doesn't just cause back pain. I have a very difficult time putting on pants in the morning, because I have to lift my feet. I've resorted to sitting on something and then standing to pull them all the way up, or lifting my legs one at a time with my hands. Also, any movement that has to do with lying down, or getting up from lying down, requires strategic planning. I primarily use my arms to roll over.

These are just four examples of things that I feel women should be made more aware of. Not just in pre-natal classes or doctors appointments, but starting as early as sex education classes.

I hear a lot of criticism of schools who emphasize abstinence so much, they neglect to educate children on effective birth control. The argument is that teens will have sex no matter what you tell them, so you should emphasize more the necessity of safe sex. The argument has some merit, and I believe we can all agree there are many shortcomings in the education system. (I don't know if I've ever discussed on this blog the circumstances of this child's conception, but the point I would like to make is that no birth control method is 100% effective.) I think if girls knew exactly what kind of hell pregnancy can be, they'd be much more apt to take the safe road and skip the sex. Even with that one incident in the Bible, abstinence still has the highest pregnancy prevention rate.

Doctor Says

I've hit 35 weeks. For those who have trouble counting, this means that I'm just starting my last month of preggo-ness. It also means that I start going to see an actual doctor (since I moved to Michigan I've been seeing the RN instead) weekly. The visits have been gradually getting more and more frequent and uneventful, which is why you rarely hear about them. Results from these visits are usually the same: The baby is healthy. It's normal to feel crappy. It's going to get worse before it gets better.

For the past couple of days something has felt a little... different. There's been pressure "down there," along with some sharp twinges and having to use the bathroom even more than usual. Luckily, today I had a doctor's appointment so I mentioned it to the nurse when she came in. The doctor did a cervical exam and to quote him exactly, "Okay, the baby is low. Oh my, the baby is very low."

He wasn't able to tell if I was dilated or not because his poking around was hurting me quite a bit, but his basic response was, "You could go into labor any day now. See you next week!" And then he walked out the door to the next victi-- I mean, patient.

So that's what the doctor said. I'm more interested in the things he didn't say.

Were it not for my (informative and well-informed) boyfriend, I would have been freaking out. According to Meng the med student, the baby is ready to go into labor at any time but probably won't for another couple of weeks. This is reassuring, kind of. It would have been more reassuring if the doctor had thought to tell me that himself.

After a short walk in the park, we went home for some dinner and relaxation. We'd been lounging for a while when I went on one of my many trips to the bathroom. (Disclaimer: about to get a bit graphic. Men might want to skip to the next paragraph.) The trace amounts of blood on my toilet paper didn't worry me too much. It had happened at the clinic and no one had said anything, so I figured a little more was okay. It was the fleshy looking bit resting in the bottom of the toilet that made way for concern. After a half hour of googling things, we found out that it was my "mucus plug," which I had heard about but had never seen. That would also be where the blood came from.

Of course I freaked out because this is on the list of early signs of labor. More research showed that it's quite common for this sort of thing to happen after a cervical exam, and that it does not necessarily mean that labor is eminent. This is just one more example of something that has been frustrating me. Why didn't the doctor tell me it might happen? I'm sure if I'd asked him, "Later today, if I find something strange in the toilet, what is it?" he could have told me. But he didn't. Even though, had I not had Meng with me, it would have completely freaked me out, the doctor did not say anything.

It just seems like common occurrences like this should be mentioned when someone sticks their fingers up your hooha.