Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Mama J: the J is for Jabba the Hut or Jinxed!

This is what I feel I look like...



Everyone I come in contact with gives me the ole "you look so great!" line but I know what I look like (see above photo). I am 35 weeks pregnant right now and suffering. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am ready to not be pregnant, but so not ready to have a second child.

This pregnancy could not be more different than my first with M. I don't remember a lot of the first one 3 years ago, but I definitely remember not being this uncomfortable at this point in my pregnancy (of course I had M in basically a week from now! GASP!). Heart burn, indigestion, constipation, hemorrhoids, plantar fasciitis...I am exhausted and ravenous as well. And to top it all off I am dealing with the worst back pain of my life.

Ten years ago I injured my back at the gym...I slipped on a puddle of sweat left after a spin class, and ended up herniating a disk in my lower back. I was young and stupid and didn't go to a doctor right away, but took dance classes and worked out every day and just kept taking Aleve to help with the pain. Little did I know that I was making my back worse, and causing stress fractures to my spine, so I will one day have to have a serious surgery to fix it all. For now I just have cortisone shots in my back (4 shots at once every one to two years) and unfortunately didn't have one for a year before I started to try and get pregnant with this second baby...so now I am suffering!

Over the past week I have been suffering even more so because the disk that is herniated is now causing nerve problems in my right hip. So much so that I was sobbing in tears because the pain was so bad last week that I literally could not move from where I was standing. I have a very high tolerance for pain (at least I think I do) so my husband knew that this was serious. Unfortunately for me, he is so crazy busy with work right now that he can't take time off to help with M, so my parents had to come in to help around the house the last few days (thank the universe for them!!)

So as soon as the pain got really bad I put calls into all my doctors...My one OB (there are 4 at the practice) told me to go get cortisone shots. The side effects would be minute (possible slowing of the babies growth but that could be monitored and was very rare) and the benefit much outweighed the risk as I could barely move. I then went to see my back doctor who told me I was too far along in my pregnancy to get cortisone shots, and that I should stretch. Stretch this I wanted to tell her!! I can't move when I get this pain! So then I called my OB back again, who told me to go see a Chiropractor. I go see a Chiropractor and I leave the office unable to walk across the street to my car in tears.

I call my back doc again and she told me never to go to a Chiropractor with my back injuries! She then tells me that maybe I should consider bed rest. Bed rest? I wish I could go on bed rest! I would love to lay in bed for the next 4-5 weeks and watch TV and putz around on the computer and not have to worry about anything else, but I have a 2.5 year old to take care of! Unless it was medically necessary and I was told by my OB I needed to go on bed rest, it is out of the question. So now I am meeting with an acupuncturist tomorrow...I am desperate for relief and will try anything.

And the problem is that I only have this terrible debilitating pain about 10% of the day. The rest of the day I am fine. Seriously it is every time that I say to myself "wow I feel really good now" that I move a certain way and the pain comes on like a Mac truck in my back and hip. I totally jinx myself each time I put that thought out into the universe! Not cool universe.

So for now I have to suffer, and grin and bear the pain until the baby comes and I can take some stronger meds than Tylenol. While I have enjoyed being a pregnant woman, and all the attention that comes with it, I am so ready to be done and have my body back. Yes of course I love the miracle of growing a baby inside of me, and when I sit on the couch and this child is moving around so much you would think she was trying to claw her way out of me like Renesmee it is pretty cool (and pretty creepy if you ask me)...but baby I am ready for you to be out of me and join our crazy family!

But then there is the fact that my lawyer husband will be on trial out of town for two weeks right before my due date...but that is for another post! Enough from Mama Jabba!!





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1 comment:

  1. Oh goodness! I'm sorry to hear you are in so much pain. Here's hoping things get better for you soon. Good luck!

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