Weeks 30-31: Vegan Pregnancy

  A large part of pregnancy involves planning. You plan for the room, the name, the new lifestyle you are about to embark on. You create a birth plan, with every intricate detail that you hope will come into play when your new baby enters the world. Movies always show the in-labor mothers needing to toss aside these meticulously composed plans due to all the unexpected surprises that come along with bringing a human being into the world. Turns out, life imitates art. 

 Let me back track a bit, to the less eventful Week 30. Week 30 involved organizing our new place, deciding which books would go where. Week 30 also involved finishing up with getting the addresses to my shower hosts and finishing up the final touches of the registry. Around this time, I also confirmed my doula: Megan Adair. We met up in the early part of Week 31, a decaf espresso for her and a decaf tea for me. Oh, and a vegan/gluten-free muffin from Vegan Vee --which was fabulous! 

Megan and I talked about my aspirations for this birth. It was a difficult task to visualize something that I'm so new to, so ignorant to. She asked how I wanted my birth to go. I said quick and painless, trying to be funny. Be careful what you ask for.

September 11th was our first Childbirth class; it was a Thursday evening. The room consisted of five other couples and we watched some videos and just summed up pregnancy, especially the third trimester. I left the class feeling incredibly excited, realizing how close we were to the end of this journey. 

That night, or rather Friday early morning, I got up to use the restroom--as I have to quite frequently now, obviously. I discovered I was bleeding, quite profusely. My first reaction was to panic, of course--but I remained relatively calm and called to Eric. Not to say I didn't shed some tears of concern--but I was able to make a composed phone call to the doctor, who told me to get to the hospital and get checked out. At the hospital we discovered that I was already dilated to one centimeter and that baby's head was very low. At only 31 weeks. 

I was then wheeled to another part of the hospital, hooked up to an IV, given antibiotics--all the unnatural things I have been trying to avoid. I was also forbidden any food. Baby sounded good and there were minimal contractions, just the bleeding, dilation, and head position to worry about. Also, there was the concern of my job. They didn't like the idea of standing eight hours a day and lifting/bending. 

We stayed in the hospital overnight, leaving on Saturday around ten am. As of now, it's up in the air what is going on. I'm on modified bed rest, meaning mostly beds and couches with the occasional restroom break, showers, and fixing a quick bite to eat. It's pretty boring. Maybe I'll actually finish revising my novel? We shall see.

In the meantime, I'll be here--keeping this baby intact, inside the womb. Hanging out with Pandora, who believes bed rest to be the best concept ever!