Uncommon Misconception

Itty Bitty um... Committee

Let's face it: Although nursing is great - best for the kid, wonderful bonding, yada yada - it doesn't do a whole lot for the mom's aesthetic.  You can't wear dresses.  Nursing pads look vaguely* obtrusive, at best, and downright glaring, at worst.  LilyPadz, while better, can leak, if used improperly (or just carelessly, in my case).  To say nothing of what hauling you boob out in public can do for your self esteem, camouflaged though it may be, under a precariously balanced receiving blanket.**

Really, the biggest pro nursing has going for it in the image department is size.  Yeah, you heard me.  Size.  At least for those of us who were modest or average to begin with.  In fact, this time, gaining a few cup sizes was the one thing I was really looking forward to.  This time around, I was going to make the most of my, um... gains.  I was going to get nursing bras that put them where they belonged and shirts that cut low enough to get a bit of attention.  'Cause let's be honest: the business below the rack ain't what it used to be.  And the rack itself will be returning to a far-less-than-glamorous state in the not-so-distant future.

Alas, 'twas not to be.  While my chest grew impressively during pregnancy, requiring a whole new range of bras in a size never before accomplished when I wasn't actually nursing, the post-engorgement phase has been less than impressive.  I'm actually a smaller cup size now than I was while pregnant. [sigh.]

The end result is that my nursing bras from Hannah's days are woefully over-adequate.  Woefully.  So I went down to Mimi Maternity (holy cow, have they gone off the deep end in price! and their touch with reality.) to buy my favorite daytime nursing bra in my current size.

I dug around for about three minutes before a seemingly helpful sales lady approached.

"Can I help you find something?"

"Um, yeah.  I need this bra in a 34C."

"Oh, I don't think we carry small sizes like that." [need I say, my emphasis?]

[In my head: "OH NO SHE DIH-INT!"]

Apparently, Mimi does not cater to those of us touting anything more petite than a 36C.  And while I was delighted to find that a 36C actually works just fine for the moment, I know that once we begin cereal in another two or three months, my cup will once again runneth under and, apparently, I'll be SOL for that particular bra.

Now, more to the point, does Mimi Maternity not recognize that some of the world's most prodigious nursers are teeny little women with small chests to match?  I've watched my neighbor, who's pushing 100 lbs. soaking wet, nurse two strapping boys who were both off the growth charts as infants.  I guarantee you she was not sporting a C-cup.  And what about those "average" women out there, like me, who may have the goods to begin with but certainly won't for the second half of our nursing stint.

I don't get it.  I'm disappointed.

And, moreover, can anyone recommend a good, underwire, side-snap, hopefully push-up nursing bra for when the wheels come off this here cart?  'Cause I can already hear the rattlin'.

*It might amuse you to know that I misspelled vaguely and the options spell check offered up included "ugly", "saggy", and "messy".  How does it know?!

**I really do enjoy nursing.  And I even consider it handy in public.  But it helps make my point to focus on the drawbacks here.  And really, I'm all about making my point.

Unmentionables

As a warning, all items in this entry are either inappropriate, gross, or simply too much information.  Don't proceed unless you're inexplicably drawn to the aforementioned sort of topics, as I am.

#1
The tabs that cover the adhesive on my pads keep bidding me a "happy period."  I  think the fine folks at Always have unduly limited themselves.  After all, periods are not the only occasion we have for utilizing feminine products.  Perhaps they should consider the following slogans:

Have a happy lochia!
Have a happy hormone therapy-induced six-week period!
Have a happy ruptured membranes!
Have a happy leukorrhea!

#2
When we were checked into the hospital and being prepared for surgery, Todd asked when I'd be allowed to eat again after Caroline's birth.  "I don't know," I admitted, "I can't remember.  But I think it's performance-related.  I think I have to do something first."

"Do something?"

"Yeah.  Like burp or fart."

Todd snorted right away.  "Pffffrrrrrrrrrt!  Now can I have a cheeseburger?!"

I laughed so hard I sent the fetal monitor off the chart.

#3
The poo story.  (In order to preserve a pinch of my own dignity, which is in short supply as of late, I'm going to leave out many, many details on this one.) As those of you who've had c-sections or other major surgery before (not the outpatient sort) know, disruptions of the digestive tract are to be expected in the days following surgery.  And indeed, before you can eat solid food, you have to demonstrate your preparedness by farting.

Having proved myself worthy of solid food, I dove into the hospital's room service-style menu and ordered up plates of French toast, chicken sandwiches, pork tenderloin and the like.  Each balanced nicely with fruit juice, seasonal fruit, and the occasional salad.  But nevertheless, five days after having Caroline I still had not, um, rid my body of the waste.  I felt worse and worse and more and more bloated until one night when it all came to a head.  We sent home friends who had brought over dinner and I sequestered myself in our bedroom.

But it was all to no avail.  Suffice it to say that by six in the morning, my father (yeah, my father) had been dispatched to buy an enema, while Todd went into Chandler mode and cracked inappropriate jokes while I quite literally cried in our bathroom.

It was awful.  No, really.  AWFUL.  I thought I was going to tear open my incision.  I thought something else might very well tear, too.  It was the closest thing to labor I've ever experienced, aside from labor itself.  In the end (ha!), the enema did the trick and I felt so much better I cried with relief.

The moral of the story, gals, is to do whatever it takes to avoid constipation after a c-section.  Whatever. It. Takes.  You'll thank me later.

#4
Again, during prep for the c-section, my male nurse shaved the, uh, area.  Very standard practice, of course, but the method had changed since Hannah's birth.  Then, they used a razor.  This time, an electric shaver.  I had about a nanosecond to think, "Cool! Less razor burn!" before I was overwhelmed by tickle!  It tickled so badly that I jerked around on the bed like I had Tourette's, apologizing each time.  But the best part came later, when I finally had a chance to inspect his handiwork in the mirror.  He shaved nearly everything in the front, but left all the business down below because it wouldn't be involved in the surgery.  The end result was nothing less stunning than a vagina goatee.  Lovely.  I know - you can't wait to sport one of your own.

Well, that should be enough humiliation for today.  Feel free to share your own stories of shame.

A New Kind of Special

I'm home, safe and sound.  And I have the preliminary results of yesterday's MRI.

No one is surprised that the MRI report suspects "myometrial invasion"... in other words, either an accreta or increta.  But I do have to put my own special twists in, so not to be outdone, this time I apparently have added a bilobed placenta into the mix. 

They theorize that a bilobed placenta occurs when the embryo implants in a less-than-desirable location (in my case, likely an area that had previously been compromised by surgery and scarring).  In an attempt to find greener pastures, the placenta begins to migrate toward healthier tissue and atrophy in the middle.  I happen to have one lobe anterior and one lobe posterior, with a network of vessels communicating between the two halves.

Fortunately for me, my placenta is not low-lying, so I do not have vasa previa, which would be much riskier.  Nor do I have a velamentous cord insertion, which means that the umbilical cord does not insert directly into the placenta, but rather into the membrane of the placenta where it loiters unprotected for a bit before entering the placenta.  Alas, I did not know until after a thorough google search that I didn't have the cord insertion problem, which caused more than a few hours of concern as words like "fetal exsanguination and death" practically leapt off the page and danced through my head.

We may now, however, have an explanation for my strange spotting episodes over the past month or so and maybe even for the heavy bleeding incident very early on.  Or not.  No one can really say.

I am currently waiting for my OB and my specialist to have a phone pow-wow so we can develop a specific game plan.  It should be some variation on Hannah's birth: a very planned c-section with a full OR, a couple of radiologists, a gynecological oncologist, the director of anesthesia, and a nice supply of blood waiting in the wings.

Our big questions at this point revolve around timing (balancing baby's maturity with the need to avoid spontaneous labor) and overall risk, as it may be further complicated by the bilobed placenta.  But I can sleep over the next few days as I wait for those answers because that's just a variation on what we've done before.

As for yesterday's procedure, well, I'm afraid it... well, it sucked.  It sucked big, hairy monkey balls, as my husband would say.  The day started out just fine; we were at Texas Children's Hospital, which as you would hope, is staffed by generous, compassionate folks.  We weren't asked to fill out obscene amounts of paperwork, and they even called us back for our ultrasound a half hour early!  The ultrasound lasted for about an hour and a half, and the technician was lovely.  We didn't learn much about the placenta, but we did learn that Baby Sister is also measuring quite large (although, we all know how unreliable those predictions can be at this stage).  At 34 weeks gestation, she's measuring at least two weeks ahead, and they estimated her weight at 6 lbs. 2 oz.  With six weeks left until her due date, that's pretty freakin' impressive.  Of course, she could just be long-limbed with a giant noggin.

We had to wait quite a while for the MRI, but that was no big deal.  There was even a humorous moment when we were preparing to enter the MRI "environment" and Todd thought he was going to have to put on a gown.  I should have let him think that was the case, just to see the look on the nurses' faces.

They told me the MRI should take between 15 and 20 minutes, if everything went smoothly.  But it did not.  It ended up taking more than an hour and a half, including two breaks to rearrange everything.  It was brutal.  Awful.  Really, really bad.  I can easily say it was the worst non-invasive procedure of my life.  I moved quickly from discomfort to outright pain, with contractions and pressure the whole time.  Baby Sister barely held still for any of it and they needed fluid in my bladder, which only served to make things worse.  At one point, they were actually having me hold my breath during a contraction.  By the end of my third and final session in that god-forsaken tube, I was thoroughly shaken.  I needed a lot of help getting up to a sitting position, and as soon as Todd was within reach I began crying.

The doctor said he was sorry that it took so much longer than normal, and then he said he wanted to do another ultrasound.  By the time we were done and I'd put my clothes back on, it was peak rush hour Houston traffic.  Oh, and I hadn't eaten since 9:30 that morning.

Don't get me wrong, I still prefer a thorough evaluation and I thanked the doctor.  But it was really an awful thing to have to endure, and I can say that having been through some truly horrible situations, both physically and emotionally.

So, there you have it.  You know as much as I do at this point.  Come Thursday, after my next visit with Dr. Save-a-Ute, I should know more.

Dysplastic

The dermatologist's office called (bright and early, on my day to sleep in) yesterday.  Two of the three moles I had removed on Tuesday showed moderate dysplasia.  In the world of precancerous lesions, there are three basic categories: mild, moderate, and severe.  Then comes cancer. 

I'm well aware that this is not a big deal.  I'll have to go back and have more tissue removed from around the, um, mole holes.  They'll put a few stitches in.  I'll bitch about how they happen to be right at my bra line and how my skin won't tolerate bandage adhesive; about feeling like a kindergarten hole-punch confetti project gone seriously awry, blah blah.

I've got two more moles to remove and test yet.  One of them is the one the nurse so politely pointed out to me, saying, "Are they going to remove that one, 'cause it looks just like one that I had that came back funky."  Sweet. 

For some reason I cannot yet grasp, they have to wait for the original "shave" to heal before proceeding with the ellipse (removing more tissue).  And they can't do more than one at a time.  So I'll be doing all of this in and around the holiday season.  Again, blah.

But!  The important take home message is this:
GO GET A FULL-BODY CHECK.

Did you get that?  Because I don't give open-book tests, people.  Aw, who'm I kidding, yes I do.

I really didn't think anything would come back weird.  I am a freak about using sunscreen, and although I've had my fair share of blistering burns (falling asleep with sunbathing topless, forgetting sunscreen while snow skiing on a fine, blindingly bright day at an altitude that makes the angels jealous), I would never have noticed those moles or thought anything of them.

So, everybody chant with me now: GO GET A FULL-BODY CHECK.

Hey, at least it wasn't my ass mole.

Whee! (and this time, without sarcasm!)

The oracle has spoken!  Again!  For the fourth time.  I'm digressing...

Having been awarded my honorary radiology degree, my radiologist invited me to join in the celebration today as we admired my FABULOUSLY remodeled uterus!  My GOD, but it was attractive!  Perhaps even better than the time I made the cover of this (relatively unknown) publication!

I'm telling you, people, it was textbook.  It was triangular.  It had two, open tubes.  It even sat relatively straight in my pelvis this time, which it doesn't often do.  There were no blockages, no masses, no uneven sides or protrusions.  No "filling anomalies".

She's not allowed to give the final word, but we did a little high-five afterward, and I'm thinking that's a good sign.

EEEEEeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

__________________________________________

And, then, when I called Todd to tell him the good news, he rewarded me with more: He was contacted by an investor in California who loved his Web site* and wants to use him to purchase between 20 and 30 properties before the end of the year!!!!!!!!  We're not counting our chickens before they hatch, but HOT DAMN!

*That would be the site that his fabulous and talented wife orchestrated with the help of a reader and her company.  The site that has content so well-crafted as to cause the agent to call my husband and offer him large sums of money.  [That, my dear friends, is the sound of self-congratulations.]

__________________________________________

AND, we're expecting an offer on my best friend's house.  The one who is going to give birth any day now.  We would LOVE for them to be able to move prior to the immanent arrival.

This reminds me: My next post should be about the most fabulous experience I've ever had at an event that involved the word "shower".

So, to reiterate: WHEEEEEEE!!!!

Whew!-ish

Last Friday I got my period.  It's my first home-grown period in well over two years.  And I'd be lying if I claimed I didn't do a little dance of joy when it arrived.  It means I had a grade-A, normal-for-me 30-day cycle.

I called to schedule my post-op HSG for tomorrow.  If history repeats itself, I should be able to tell just by looking at the screen if we're in the clear.  (You didn't realize I had a degree in radiology, did you?!)  I'm trying to remind myself that we're just looking for "good 'nuff", not perfect.  But it's hard not to hope for the best.

It'll be interesting to see how Todd and I react to (I'm being positive here) the news that we're ready to try again, should we so choose.  I have no idea where we stand on this issue right now.  I'm thinking the most logical thing to do would be to wait until we're situated in the new house in December.  But then again, logic has never been our strong suit when it comes to all things baby.

Either way, wish me luck on my way the oracle.

The Great Unknown, Ah, How I've Missed You, Old Friend

If we're going to go down this road and try to have another child, I suppose I should ready myself for my old favorite pastimes, The Great Unknown and Interminable Waiting.  It's amazing how quickly you can forget these two, when you're just pleasantly going about your day, slaving working unappreciatedly for your husband and raising your perfect daughter (no strikethroughs there, baby).

But then you go and ask your body to do something and all hell breaks loose.

I'm supposed to be having my own, free-of-artificial-hormones cycle here, which we would like to see end in a period before I sign up for my post-surgical HSG.  As if the short-n-weird period I had at the end of my faux cycle hadn't wadded my panties sufficiently, now, three or four days after what should/might have been ovulation, I'm spotting.

Hello, Great Unknown! C'mon in! Kick your shoes off and get comfy!  Who's that you've got with you?  Oh, hey, Interminable Wait!  How the hell'r you?

Nothing to be done but hang out and see what the radiological oracle pronounces in a few weeks.

Okay, whine off.

That's Gonna Cost Me

Filed Under: How to Truly and Thoroughly Screw Up Your Child

Remember when I went out for a night on the town last week?  Well, that day, I planned on getting a bikini wax for the first time in ages - a bit of a reward for making it through the balloon ordeal and feeling more like a woman and less like a... papier mache craft project.  This plan revolved around my MIL being home from a job interview to take care of precious Banana.

Follow my line of thought:
MIL's job interview: 11 am
Bikini wax appointment: 3:30 pm
Distance from said job interview to house measured in time: 30 minutes, if you allow plenty of time for getting lost.

The flaw in my plan: MIL's severe inability to navigate.

If I could tell you exactly where I live, those of you who were familiar with the area would gasp when I told you where she ended up.  I know because every person I've told has done just that.  But instead, I'll have to suffice with telling you that she went to a city that's TWO HOURS from here.

And because the new salon was holding my credit card as ransom, lest I cancel (since when are salons approaching things like airlines?), I had to...

take Hannah with me.

But it gets better.  The couldn't watch her for me in the waiting area because it would be a liability.  So, yeah.

She was in the room.

What's the going rate for therapists these days?

Did I Ever Mention My Gams?

My Friday night out with the peeps was Fan-freakin'-tastic.  It was just what I needed.  I paid for it a bit the next day (note to self: moderate hangover + three weeks of hormone therapy = nausea), but my water-between-each-alcoholic-beverage rule helped keep me from crossing the line into ugly land.

We started off at a happy hour with a guy-pal who I hadn't seen in months.  My long-long friend met us there and it was a great fit (you never know how ten years might effect someone, so I was relieved).  We had mexican martinis and ate queso.  We went with my guy-pal back to an apartment he was house-sitting to change and get ready for the evening downtown.  He was the designated driver for the evening, so we consolidated vehicles and headed down to another guy-pal's place.  We'll call him guy-pal-2.

Guy-pal-2 was the one I had intended to potentially hook-up with long-lost-gal-pal.  But get this: the chick he's seeing was there.  Chick is 20-years-old.  Chick has a kid.  Chick seems cool at first, despite the awkwardness for my gal-pal, who rolled with everything delightfully, but then chick began to show her inevitable immaturity.  By the end of the eveining, guy-pal-2 was wondering aloud about how to extricate himself from the relationship.

Anyway, back to me: I wore a teeny skirt that I haven't worn since before Hannah.  And I was workin' it!  Some girls have tig-ol-biddies.  Some girls have faces that belong on magazine covers.  Some girls are obscenely petite and cute.  Me, I got some rockin' legs.  And man, did it ever feel good to have people notice!  I'm as shallow as the next girl, and since compliments don't get handed out like candy in my house, I really revelled in the attention.  It's even more fun when your with friends who won't let anything scary with you and you don't have to worry about skeezy guys.

Guy-pal drove me all the way back to my house afterward, which is an amazing distance.  And then he drove gal-pal back to her place, too.  Man, I'm lucky to have friends like him.

So, all in all, a great night out.  I'll have to do it again before another year passes by.

Does This Come with Some Sort of Mileage Program?

Do you ever think of something goofy or cheesy to say, and then watch yourself go ahead and say it, as if from some out-of-body experience?  When I was talking with Dr. Smooth just before surgery I found myself doing just that:

Dr. Smooth: "Okay then, I think we're all ready..."
Me: "Hey, do you have some sort of frequent flier program for all these surgeries?"
Dr. Smooth: [arched eyebrow, thinking, "Aw, poor gal.  She really is simple, isn't she."]
Me: [not letting it die, for some reason beyond even my comprehension] "You know - buy two, get one free?!"
Dr. Smooth: "How 'bout we just make this one the last one?" [pats my leg.]

Me: "Heh."

But, because my Habituated Trauma Searcher is making a resurgence as of late, I wanted to keep myself honest here about what all these surgeries are like.

The suck.  Really.  They suck slimy monkey balls.

Today, six full days past surgery, I am still horrifically crampy.  I'll be okay for hours, but should I be so audacious as to, say, get my daughter her breakfast, change her diaper, or get her dressed for the day, I'm struck with bend-over, hold-your-breath cramps.  I feel like I'm pregnant with a stapler.  I walk around gingerly in loose-fitting clothing - a pose that resembles my post-partum days more than anything else since.

And then there's the hormones.  The weepiness has started.  And horniness.  Which sucks worse than usual because even the thought of doing anything gives me shivers.  And there's nothing to be done anyway with the "No water, no man in the vagina" rule.

Arg!

I suppose this is good for me, though, as this has to be just one little iota of how hard it would/will be to be pregnant again.  I can't help but wonder how I might possibly get through a first trimester without lifting heavy objects or straining myself (see aforementioned toddler).

The bleeding has increased today.  Thankfully, my notes from the last surgery reminded me to expect that.  Obviously, it's giving me little comfort, though.

But my mommy is arriving for a short visit tonight.  And we all know that my mommy can make it all better.  Eight o'clock can't get here soon enough.