The Nitty Gritty

So, I have been asked to give more details about the pregnancy and the delivery. A lot of you know that I was having significant issues in this pregnancy, and thought it would be a good story to tell. Well, it all started with the weight gain. As I said before, I split through my size 4 in the first 2 weeks and was gaining a pound a week for the first 6 weeks, until the nausea started. This was not just morning sickness, but lasted all day and all night. I was sensitive to smells, unable to cook, for the most part, because the smell would bother me as I was cooking it and the lingering smell in the house afterwards would just about do me in. I ate a lot of meals out, but I couldn't eat anything I used to eat or like, since that would make me sick. No chocolate and no veggies. Fruit was manageable, and that was about it. However, if I didn't eat, the nausea and dizziness got so much worse, almost spiraling out of control. I had to buy new soaps, shampoos, laundry detergent, deodorant, facial lotions, anything with a scent made me cringe because I was so nauseous. Even the "unscented" ones I replaced everything with had a smell to me and if I could smell it on me, I was sick! The worst was dealing with smelly patients at work (which I have a lot of) or the ones who wore a lot of perfume, I had to leave the door open and I would come out green, my nurses laughing every time!

I endured this until my first OB appointment at 11 weeks. Dr. Teicher (who is a father of twins himself) told me that with twins, this nausea usually lasts longer and is worse than with a single baby...these words I would then hear all throughout my pregnancy!! He said it would go away at about 16 weeks, instead of the usual 12 for the first trimester. I remember thinking how the hell I was going to make it 5 more weeks, when every day was agonizing to get through. I was starving, but I couldn't eat and if I didn't eat, it would spiral out of control, so I would be gaging and vomiting. Then I think when I saw him around 19 or 20 weeks, he said "too bad, if it lasts this long...it will never go away." And, the day my water broke, it went away and I wanted to eat finally, however, at that time, I was NPO, I just couldn't get a break!

Then the shortness of breath started. I would typically run for 45 minutes to an hour with Bailey in the foothills 5 or 6 days a week and go to muscle hour and yoga a few times a week. So, I started noticing around 8 or 9 weeks along, that I would be so out of breath along my run out of the norm, that I would have to stop many, many times throughout the run. Then when Brian came out at 10 weeks, we were running and I couldn't make it farther than about 5 minutes without having to stop and catch my breath, and at this point, I measured my heart rate up at about 180. All this and I just kept thinking about a friend of mine who was also a runner, ran 25 miles per week up to her due date!! I felt like such a failure that I wasn't even able to make it through the first trimester. During muscle hour, my heart rate would speed up so fast, I would be dizzy and have to leave the room before I fell down. The same thing happened during my yoga classes. When I was in downward facing dog, you might have thought I just got finished running a marathon, and I practically spent the whole class in child's pose before I had to give it up altogether over embarrassment! I was winded walking up the flight of stairs to my office and up a half flight in my house. The EKG showed prolonged QT of which the symptoms are syncope and sudden death. I was sent STAT to the cardiologist and had a repeat EKG, echocardiogram and stress test. I was given a list of medications I needed to avoid, which would also prolong the QT, and told to refrain from exercising for now. Later when I was on strict bed rest, I was completely out of breath getting out of bed and walking to the bathroom (10 feet away) and back. I would be huffing and puffing in bed much to the chagrin of Brian who thought I was being too loud!

Then, the numbness in my left thigh started. It felt just like I had a shot of novocaine all along the top of my thigh. That weird puffy, swollen, cold tingling feeling you get, that feels so weird to touch it because it doesn't feel attached to your own body - - yes, that was now my leg. Together with outrageous headaches that had me flattened on my office floor in between patients, won my next trip to the neurologist. The numbness was explained as femoral nerve compression from the weight of the babies (and they weren't even that big yet), and nothing to do except deliver those babies. The headaches, she was concerned about an aneurysm and suggested an MRI to rule it out. The symptoms of this were also sudden death.

And all this before my first appointment with the perinatologists at about 15 weeks. I was pretty much the train wreck that most doctors hope knock on someone else's door. So, then the fun started with the blood tests, urine screens, abdominal and transvag ultrasounds every 2 weeks. I had two amniocentesis', one for each twin, tried several medications for nausea, headaches, incompetent cervix and risk of preterm labor. When I got to NY, we were on a weekly schedule to see the doctor and some of those days, she sent us to OB triage and sometimes we were admitted to the hospital for more tests and days of extreme uncomfort. Fortunately, the twins were doing amazingly well. All their tests and ultrasounds found them perfect, growing well, strong heart beats, but my body was just falling apart around them.

Brian came out to visit again for Christmas and I was in worse shape than I had been at Thanksgiving, but I was still only about 13 weeks along. He predicted at the rate I was going that I would be on bed rest at about 20 weeks. I fought him on that one, I said that I was going to work up until a month before the predicted delivery at 36 weeks. But he insisted... or foresaw the future, as it turned out.

I thought I would sleep on all this information for a while, except the insomnia was so bad, even that would not happen. Also, the back pain was now excruciating, I just kept layering my bed and around my body with more pads and pillows in an attempt to get comfortable and feel better. When I was about 12 weeks I was finding it hard to roll myself over in the bed or get out of bed. This is where teaching your lab the command "back up" came in very handy. I would call him over to me in the morning, grab onto his collar and give him the command and rise right up out of bed!! It was great until he caught on. Then he was a little more than reluctant! As the belly got bigger and I was losing muscles on bed rest, I just kept ordering more and more pillows from amazon when I was in NY. Being pregnant and not being in your own home with all your comforts is one thing, this situation was entirely another. Brian was sick of the pillows all around me, he would count them, I think I was up to five or six, taking up most of the real estate in the bed. But the worst part was when I was so big, so weak and in so much pain, I really couldn't roll myself over anymore, he would literally have to hoist me out of bed! It was so demeaning.

Then settling in to Brian's 300 square foot Columbia graduate housing apartment I realized this was probably the best place to be on bed rest. Everything was almost in arm's reach! With no place to unpack my 2 suitcases, they were situated on the floor of the closet. So, as I got bigger, my muscles more and more atrophied, I couldn't bend over to get any of my clothes out of the suitcase or put things away. If I could get down on the floor, I didn't have the strength in my quads to get myself back up. So I could only venture into the suitcase with Brian at home. Which wasn't a whole lot. He was usually gone about 12 hours a day working in his office. He would wake up and ask me what my plan for the day was!! Sometimes I would think he would crack a smile after saying that since my plan was always the same, eat, pee and lay on my side in bed or on the love seat in the living room. "Are you kidding?" I would wonder. Usually I was only comfortable in bed, but the TV was in the living room. I was only comfortable for about 2 hours per day there and that was stretching it. So, I would switch from side to side in bed by myself day after day, reading, checking my email and facebook and staring at "the view" (the grey cinderblocks of the back of the apartment building next door, no view of the sky or sunshine shining through the windows!).

My mom was leaving for a 3 week cruise through China, Thailand, and Vietnam and she didn't want to miss anything. She asked if I could keep a journal that she could read when she got home. She wanted to know what I was doing every day. I told her I could prewrite it before she left and every day's entry would be identical: "today I was nauseous, couldn't eat anything, had to pee a million times, laid on my side in pain." I told her it would not be good reading!!

Then there were also the "normal" things some pregnant women go through. I was hot all the time with these 2 little heaters keeping me warm. It was winter in Manhattan when I arrived and I had to have the heat off in the apartment and the windows open. Brian would complain when he could see his breath in the bed at night! One time I was admitted to the hospital, I thought I was going to die from the heat. The thermostat was in my room, but controlled the room next door also where the poor woman was recovering from a c-section and when her whole body started shaking uncontrollably, they told me I had to turn the heat up a little. I had been comfortable, when the nurse came in to check on me with a blanket wrapped around her and Brian was shivering in his little pull-out bed, they didn't say anything, they finally gave the pregnant woman what she wanted! I also had uncontrollable blues. I think I must have cried every day throughout my pregnancy. I didn't know if this was due to hormones, the problems I was having, having to move across the country, the imminent risk of the twins being born prematurely, the utter discomfort I was in, the boredom on bed rest or any combination of the above. This lasted until about 30 weeks, then it stopped as abruptly as it started. All of a sudden, I felt great. I was under the illusion that I could really make it until 34 or 35 weeks now, things were looking up.