"When I was 10 months pregnant with you, I had debilitating morning sickness but I was still working three jobs. I didn't have a car so I was walking, uphill both ways, 4 miles to and from my jobs each day. I went into labor while cleaning porta potties at a construction site and had to deliver you right then and there! I had to ask the construction workers who whistled at me every day to help with your delivery. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have random construction workers all up in your vag like that?! THAT'S how much you've embarrassed me with this stunt you've pulled!"Or is that just on TV? Well, I definitely know that moms like to tell these stories to pregnant women. I've heard far too many of them (unsolicited) in the past 9 months.
My story isn't quite as dramatic. Yet, I feel like I should detail last week. It was a doosey.
I went to the doctor on Monday. My blood pressure was through the roof. Like, she was about to send me to the hospital kind of through the roof. By the time I sat there and heard about all the signs of pre-eclampsia, talked about all the tests she was about to run on me, did the normal measuring and listening to the heartbeat, it was back down to something less frightening. Personally, I think it was a fluke and they should pay better attention to the stethoscope instead of trying to talk to me while taking my blood pressure. BUT, I'm not a nurse or doctor, so what do I know? Don't get me wrong, it had been high and continues to be slightly elevated, but nothing like what they measured that time.
So, I had a non-stress test, got 5 vials of blood drawn (which the results called a HELLP profile) and was given a jug to collect my pee in for 24 hours (8am Tuesday through 8am Wednesday). Super exciting.
Oh yeah, and she told me I needed to quit working. For weeks, I'd been saying "All I want is to make it to the 15th." I had one really important thing to get finished at work by the 15th. There was just one thing that I needed to take care of myself. After that, it was a "whatever happens, happens" situation. I had joked many times about my poor planning on that front but didn't actually think it would matter. Monday was the 11th, by the way.
If the point of not working was to lessen my stress, pulling me out of work just 4 days before my deadline was not the way to do it. We compromised on teleworking.
That was all on Monday morning. Little did any of us know that the storm of the century was going to roll through Dayton on Monday night. Our power went out at 9:00pm and didn't come back on until 8:00pm on Thursday.
Needless to say, my low stress week of teleworking was not so low stress. It was quite miserable, actually. After the storm, temps were in the 90s all week. Humidities were also around 90%. I peed in my jug in the dark. I actually went into work a lot last week because being there in the air conditioning was far less stressful than sitting in my scorching hot house. The only bright spot is that we were able to buy a generator to run the fridge and a couple fans. We also used it to power the cable box and TV in the bedroom, if that tells you anything about our priorities. At least we didn't have to completely restock our fridge on top of everything else. And, we didn't miss America's Got Talent. Ha!
Additionally, all my tests came back normal by my appointment on Thursday morning and my BP was back down to normal.
So, while I was pretty miserable, the story isn't that great and it doesn't come to an exciting conclusion...which is a very good thing, in this case. The story I'll tell Evan one day goes something like this,
"When I was 8.5 months pregnant with you, I was housebound per doctors orders. We got a hurricane-- yes, a hurricane in Ohio!-- that knocked the power out for weeks. After the hurricane came the hottest heat wave ever recorded in all of Ohio's history. It was 110 degrees in our house and the air was so thick you could practically swim in it. But, I kept my chin up for the sake of the delicate baby boy (that was you, Evan!) growing in my womb. Did I mention I was 10 months pregnant? And housebound with no air conditioning? For weeks!? Come back and tell me it's too hot to go outside when you've been 12 months pregnant and stuck in a house without air conditioning during the hottest heat wave ever recorded in the history of time. Then we'll talk. Now, go outside and play!"God, I'm going to be such a good mom.
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