Bed Rest Diary

Q's Reflections on A Mighty Mystery

A friend in England just called to tell me she is pregnant. With twins.

I have thought about this, and I have reached the sage conclusion that it just isn't possible. I didn't tell her this, of course. I didn't want to worry her. I said, how wonderful, how exciting, just the one pregnancy then; how marvellous.

What I was thinking was, there is no room for two children plus one adult in one human body.

Since I heard my friend's news I have been examining my own belly carefully, trying to see if there's a bit of square acreage for another child to squeeze into. As far as I can see, there isn't. My skin is stretched to breaking point - long red weals prove this fact. My stomach protrudes as if my belly button were attached to a pair of charging elephants. My son's head is snugly lodged beneath my ribcage. Where, exactly, would another child fit? Where could it possibly go? Around my heart and into my neck, perhaps? Down into my hips?

And then there are other things to think about. She is going to have feed two children at the same time (surely, even if you bottlefeed, you need four arms for this - one for each child, one for each bottle??? Why are humans equipped with only two if they are capable of producing more than one child?). And how will she ever go shopping? I've seen those seats in the carts at the supermarket, and as far as I can tell, there's only room for one child. What do you do with the other kid? Stick it in the basket with the jumbo packs of Cheerios and the dairy-farm's worth of milk?

I am awed at the thought of what is about to happen to her. My own problems seem slight in comparison. She has three human hearts beating in her body right now. Seems - scuse the pun - inconceivable.

New York Times Fall Out

Responses on the web to my New York Times op ed piece last Friday have been interesting. Mama sites have generally been positive (see http://www.bloggingbaby.com/2006/03/25/bedrest-a-novel/; http://www.mamazine.com/Pages/mamalike231.html, post plus comments; also March 27, http://allthis.typepad.com/ - Emmie has posted on this site as well).

I've also been inundated by Emails from women around the world saying, this happened to me, it was incredibly hard, thanks for talking about it. These have been wonderful to receive.

Medical blogs, on the other hand, have been less complimentary. Who is this woman and why is she "whining" about her medical advice? they say (I wonder if I'd have been accused of "whining" if  this piece had appeared under a man's name?). She was at perfect liberty to ignore the advice she was given, they continue.

Now this strikes me as an extraordinary response. Presumably I have a right to expect that the medical profession will give me the right advice and not the wrong advice! If the evidence is not there to support the use of bed rest, then for God's sake, why on earth would you prescribe it? And oddly enough, I've seen no postings or comments that say, 'look, I know the evidence is sketchy right now, but my own clinical experience tells me that bed rest works.' If I read that, I'd think; fair enough; I might encourage you to investigate clinical studies further, but such a response would convince me that the doctor was acting in good faith. It might even make me think that the evidence for bed rest's use is there, it just hasn't been uncovered yet.

Instead the postings suggest that many doctors know perfectly well bed rest may not work, but they feel it persuades patients that everything possible is being done to ensure a good outcome (which is what I said in my op ed, incidentally). "This author would be the first to sue if something went wrong," one doctor cried (I'm not quoting directly, but that's the substance of it). Er - no actually. (And by the way, again this was a suggestion I made in the article - that fear of litigation encourages doctors to prescribe the rest cure.)

Look, it's not up to a medical practicioner to decide what will make me feel I'm doing my best! Frankly, if that's the only reason they're prescribing bed rest, why not tell us all to go home and pray? Many women would no doubt find this more comforting - and it would impose fewer restrictions on their lives, not to mention having fewer physical and psychological consequences.

I want to stress, it's not that I think the entire medical profession is represented in the few blogs I've read. It's not that I think individual practitioners who prescribe bed rest are acting in bad faith. I think my own doctors are lovely people who genuinely did the best for me they could.

I'm taking issue with the profession writ large, with its prevailing mode of operation, and also with *some* silly doctors who are acting like daddies, even as they tell ME I'm acting like a child for complaining about the advice I was given. If you give the advice, take responsibility for it! Do the research! (Some web-posters have even claimed that the woman on bed rest should do the research and decide for herself whether to continue on bed rest; another astounding claim. So a woman with no medical training should analyze years of clinical research and make a decision that will affect the health of another human being???)

Don't think for me. Don't decide what will make me feel better. Give me sage, reasoned advice I can trust. Is that too much to ask?

- Sarah

Husbanding the Bed Resting Woman

It may be awful being on bed rest, but it's almost as awful having a wife on bed rest.

I work - a lot. Long, long hours. And now there's no-one to share the daily routine of life with. It's like she's stepped off the travelator. And I have to run twice as fast to keep our living moving at the same speed.

We need groceries - I've got to get them. And the list of things she HAS to have is staggeringly long. Milk, cheese, eggs, cold meat - protein in other words - must be constantly by her side (to improve fetal growth; I'm trying to keep two human beings sustained, it seems). Leafy vegetables with lots of vitamins. Prenatal vitamins in case the vegetables don't work. Bread, cake, cookies, chips to deal with the yawning hunger of a heavily pregnant woman.

Two pitchers of ice water by her bed side to keep her hydrated. A constant supply of new magazines and DVDs and newspapers to keep her entertained. Stamps, envelopes, and paper so she can write letters to friends. Pads of drawing paper, in case she's feeling inspired.

Clean laundry, so she doesn't feel too disgusting. Blankets to cover her cold, cold feet. Indigestion tablets to deal with the ever-present pain of heart-burn. Tylenol in case the headaches become unendurable.

Dinner at night. Breakfast in the morning. And a tempting lunch, plus three snack meals, to keep her going through the day.

I go through an enormous check-list before I leave in the morning. I run around the apartment collecting magazines, shaking out laundry, filling up pitchers, collecting mail, cutting up carrots, slicing portions of cake, covering cups and plates and bowls with saran wrap.

By the time I get into the office, at 7am, I'm exhausted.

New York Times today

Just to say that I've added my four pennoth to the bed rest debate in an op-ed in the New York Times today ... http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/24/opinion/24bilston.html

- Sarah

War of the Worlds

My husband Tom got back from work early last night, miracle of miracles, so we watched War of the Worlds together. Fifteen minutes of people shouting incoherently followed by an hour and a half of waiting for the evil alien monster beastie to turn our trusty hero and his ringletted daughter into dog chow. I couldn't handle it all. I don't know why, but since I've been pregnant, I've been unable to handle any scenes involving a) blood b) horror c) cruelty to children d) cruelty period. I spent most of the movie hiding under the blanket, anxiously whimpering 'don't leave the child, don't leave the child, why is he leaving the child?' My husband, who remained utterly stoic in the face of lost limbs, shattered families, and oceanic tides of blood, muttered something dismissively about my hormones until I rained pillows on him and told him he was an unnatural husband and father.

Advancing Pregnancy

Now here's a funny thing about pregnancy. For the first twelve weeks or so your doctors treat it as a sort of gynecological complication, hardly meriting their attention. They barely want to see you until you've hit the end of the first trimester. "It's very early," the woman on the front desk at my obstetrician's office told me, in reproving tones, when I hinted I might want an appointment in - oh - week 7. "Anything can happen at this stage, you know."

Then you enter the second trimester, and everything changes. Blood tests, ultrasound screens, heart beat analysis, umbilical cord studies; now, it seems, you have a real baby. And as the trimester advances, before you know where you are, lo! Your baby becomes the most important person in your body, so to speak; the vulnerable one, the one who needs protection.

And then, if you're like me, you find that as you hit the third trimester, you're asked to sacrifice your own body entirely for the little one's well-being. Go to bed, they say; all your energy, all your blood, your oxygen, needs to go to helping your baby thrive.  And of course you want the same thing too; every nerve is stretched, every fibre of your being strains to protect the child you're just discovering you love.

But that doesn't stop you finding it strange to think how far you've come, how great the change has been, in thirty short weeks.

What is Happening to Me?

It struck me this morning that, after all these weeks immobile in bed, I am now capable of walking from my bed to the bathroom and back again. And that's it. Walking to the door, down the corridor of my apartment building, into the elevator, and out into the street is an unimaginable odyssey. As for walking round the block - I am filled with awe at the thought that there are people who are even capable of it. At the thought that there are people in the world who are able to walk for more than five minutes without collapsing breathless and shaking in a chair!

Some people (and I think of these with blank disbelief) are even able to run.

I dimly recognize that at some point in the future I will become one of those people again. In fact, I'll have to be someone who can not only walk around the block and run to catch trains, but someone who can do these things with a 15-pound baby and three bags of shopping under her arm.

How is this miraculous transformation ever going to take place?

Inventions I would Love

I wish I . . .

- had water and cranberry juice and hot chocolate (with cream) on-tap

- had a very long feather duster so I could reach the sere dead moth under the armchair that's been bothering me for weeks

- had a body pillow that actually worked

- had a pain reliever that's totally, completely, 100% safe to use in pregnancy

- had flowers by my sofa that never faded and never lost their scent

- had a lending library that came right to my couch

- could siphon warm sunny air right into the room

- had a crystal ball to see into the future.

Eating for Two

Just when you get over morning sickness, and kindly friends stop thrusting ginger down your throat (our cupboard is still overflowing with ginger snaps, cookies, cakes, and witchy brews in suspicious brown bottles), you realize your menu of food options is substantially reduced as a pregnant woman.

There are the obvious, of course; no wine and no coffee, which apparently "crosses the placenta" (I repeated this phrase owlishly to colleagues over the coffee machine as if I knew what it meant). But there are the less obvious candidates too. No herbal teas. No-one can really explain why, but that's because no-one seems to know what's in the teas to begin with. No soft cheeses.  Hideous bacteria lurk within, apparently. No store-bought salads, in case their eggs are improperly stored. No sushi. No hot-dogs. And limited quantities of Vitamin A.

"You girls today know too much," my mother remarked, oracularly, when I mentioned my longing for a nice, rare burger topped with goops of soft cheese and a big glass of cold beer. For once, it struck me she was possibly right.

6 Things Any Bed Resting Woman Should Have by the Sofa

1. Tums. I'm getting indigestion something chronic. Because I'm lying on my side all the time, the food doesn't go down, it just sort of hangs out at the back of my mouth.

2. Two pitchers of water the size of the barrell Monmouth drowned in. I still haven't quite fathomed how this water goes from my mouth to my stomach and then to my uterus, but apparently it does, so . . .

3. This laptop. I am considering some sort of commitment ceremony with it at this stage.

4. Assortment of nail painting utensils. You can polish your nails! Then take it all off again! Then paint them a new colour! Then scrub 'em clean! The hours pass by . . .

5. Collection of rugs and blankets. Limited blood circulation in fingers and toes, my feet are like small ice blocks at this stage.

6. Assortment of reading materials people think I "ought" to read. Ie - a stack of Serious Books on everything from the Western Canon to the Scientific Principles of Something Or Other. Usually I read the backs. Then put them down, and surf the web instead.