This entire entry is about my crotch. You’ve been warned.

I figured I would make the title of this entry all the terms I searched late last night in the hopes that some other poor soul might find this page later and gain something from it.

Just under four weeks ago, I pushed an 8 lb 12 oz baby out of my lady parts. So in the grand scheme of things I’m doing pretty well. Recently, though, things took a turn for the worse. As most of you know, we lost power late last week. While Sunday afternoon brought the return of electricity so that we could run around the house turning light switches on and off, it was also about this time that my crotch started to hurt significantly worse than it had been.

I thought things were going so well too. The horror film levels of gore had long subsided (I will never look at chicken livers the same again) and we were down to a very manageable bit of blood. But in those dark nights with no power I started noticing that I would literally be woken up by a sharp pain or burning feeling several times a night. Since sleep is a premium around here, that wasn’t going to fly.

I then became convinced that my stitches had dissolved too soon and that something was torn and would never heal right on its own. I would forever have a FrankenCrotch and all those men who waggled their eyebrows at Rich in anticipation of the infamous second trimester would offer their somber condolences over his wife’s war-torn nether regions. My anxiety would have to wait, though, because it was Saturday and we had no power. It’s hard to investigate one’s own genitalia with a hand mirror and a head lamp.

By Sunday night, things had gotten much worse. I could no longer sit without leaning up on one hip or the other. I had gone back to the cave woman hunched walk of my first days after delivery to try to relieve any pressure or friction. I couldn’t sleep on my side without two giant pillows stuffed between my knees. This was officially getting old.

As we drove back from dinner Sunday night, I was in a fair amount of pain and was frustrated that things had gotten worse instead of better. It was a burning, itching, throbbing kind of pain – the kind of pain like an ear ache or an impacted wisdom tooth where it just radiates all over and you can’t get away from it. I started getting all weepy in the car telling Rich how upset I was and that I didn’t understand why everything had to be so sore.

He looked at me with raised eyebrows and huge eyes. “You didn’t see what I saw when you gave birth. You didn’t see what came out of you. You stretched tissue and strained muscles and moved bones to get that boy out of you. It’s one of the reasons I said you were a superhero. It’s only been three weeks. I think you just need to give it some time.”

Ok, fine, so I passed a Volkswagen out of my fully blossomed flower, but that shouldn’t mean I have to feel like that Volkswagen is running me over repeatedly weeks later. Adding insult to injury, on Monday I came down with some sort of cooties that made my whole body ache. Or at least ache more that some parts already were aching. I slept all day Monday, only waking up when Rich delivered a hungry infant to me and going right back to sleep once said infant was fed. By Monday night, my chills and overall body aches had waned but I still had this horrible aching, burning, itching, stabbing feeling in my crotch. So while Rich slept on my left and Ian slept on my right, I spent a good chunk of the hours from 1-3am Googling any and all of my symptoms trying to find some relief.

Around 3am I had a breakthrough when I finally found a page that didn’t talk about c-section pain or episiotomy stitches itching or hemorrhoids. I finally figured out that in addition to the “normal” swelling and discomfort I should be experiencing, I had a yeast infection compounding everything else, which is what was driving me insane. The itching was leading to the burning which led to the stabbing and then the weeping. Finally an explanation! Thank you, Dr. Google!

I actually woke Rich up to tell him I figured out the root of my crotch woes. He sleepily said, “Jeez Louise, that sounds unpleasant.” (Apparently 3am makes him too sleepy to curse, because I was expecting more of a “shit yeah, those hurt like a motherfucker!”) It was all I could do to not drive to a drug store right then. Instead I researched home remedies to hold me over until morning. You may be interested to know that apple cider vinegar does a decent job of easing the pain until one can make it to a Walgreens. It also makes one’s bathroom smell like a Carolina barbecue.

I’m literally relieved to say that while I still have a tender swollen crotch, it is no longer on fire like it was last night. And while I was a bit alarmed to discover a string coming out of me this evening, one that I didn’t dare tug on or investigate its origin, I’m hoping it has done its job and my carefully trimming it did no harm.

And here’s hoping by my six week follow up appointment that Volkswagen is a distant memory.

This is what I look like two weeks after pushing a baby out.

Really, I can’t complain. My belly appears a lot flatter than that normally because I’ve found I actually tighten my stomach muscles most of the time without thinking about it. This picture was in the middle of me telling Rich, “this is me not sucking in at all.” And with my rack having doubled in size, I’m easily passing that test of my belly not protruding further than my boobs do.

I’m pretty active most days, though I think today was my body playing catch up from the previous week. I slept from 7:30pm last night until 11:30am today, waking up only long enough to feed the boy and never leaving the bed except to pee a few times. I think I needed that.

My crotch still aches but it’s pretty manageable with Motrin throughout the day. I have to remind myself to give things more time to heal. Oh, and I should just remove the hand mirrors from the bathrooms until another month from now. I’m worrying that everything is going to heal back where it should but staring at it isn’t going to make it heal faster or better. We’ll just cross that gynecological bridge when we get there.

I never really realized how much my breasts were going to take on a life of their own. When I go do my doctor’s appointment I expect them to ask about me, my baby and my breasts to make sure all of us are doing okay. Since the baby and I seem to be doing pretty well, all things considered, my breasts really are the only thing that could be considered temperamental from day to day or hour to hour. But you really can’t beat this whole “I can make food at a moment’s notice” thing. It really saves on space in the diaper bag.

I’m happy to report the modified bassinet is working well. I still may want to raise it another two inches or so, but it’s worlds better than the original.

I’ve only had a few weepy moments here and there and they were short-lived. Most of those could be attributed to fatigue. But I just can’t say enough how much physical contact with the baby makes that easier. Holding him is better than Prozac.

We’ll see how I fare next week once Rich is back in the office. But I’m hoping some structure and a few simple outings will keep me from going stir crazy. If nothing else, I have a blog post each day to compose.

When I was about to be discharged from the hospital, the doctor on duty came by to go over my discharge information and see if I needed anything. While she was there, I asked if I could have a copy of all the medical records from my stay in the hospital. She thought for a moment and said, “well we normally only give those to other doctors, but it’s totally within your rights to have. We just don’t get anyone asking for them.” I told her that I know it was a bit of a weird request and she just smiled and said, “yeah, but you’re a little weird.” I took it as a compliment.

So I went back to the hospital today to sign for my medical records and drop off a few much-deserved thank you cards. My OB Dr. D had unfortunately gone home early after pulling an all nighter the night before so I missed her, but was able to chat with a few of the nurses and promised to bring the boy back for another visit next week. My fetal diagnostic nurse was there and super excited to see our beautiful son. And I was able to get to the front desk of the maternity ward to deliver thank you cards to my delivering doctor and nurse which they hopefully will receive this evening when they get to work (more soon on all they did to deserve those as I chronicle this birth).

After getting fussed at by the woman at “Patient Information Services” (that’s what they call the medical records department now) for bringing the boy with me to the hospital while she has a cold, she did print out a copy of all my records from my stay. For being such a thick packet of paper it is surprisingly sparse on the details of my birth experience. I did find out I was officially on an epidural from 23:35 Wednesday night to 06:44 Thursday morning, but nothing says what the dosages were during that time and I know for a fact they turned it off around 3am. I had to Google what it meant for me to have macrosomia since it sounded serious – apparently that’s medicalese for “big baby”. Other notes include:

“Patient requests natural TOL (trial of labor?) despite Bishop score of 2 and fetal macrosomia. Patient preference is no Pitocin, saline lock on the IV, doula in the room, and not to remain in bed during trial of labor. Patient has been offered a C/S (c-section?) in the past and today, but requests TOL prior to C/S.”

I also learned that I had “bilateral 2nd degree sulcal tears repaired with 2.0 vicryl” which translates to “shredded crotch”, but it doesn’t detail all the lengths and care the doctor went to putting me back together.

The records told me that Ian’s Apgar score was 5 at one minute and 7 at five minutes, something no one told me while we were there.

What’s odd is that nothing says what time I was given Pitocin and what the increments were changed to over the evening. I’m not sure if this is because they didn’t give me all the records or if they literally don’t log all that. I lean towards the latter since it says I only had 30mL of mineral oil and I know for a fact they must have dumped at least a gallon on me to keep me from tearing more than I did.

All of this goes to show that if you want to know what happens to you when you’re at the hospital, it’s up to you to log it yourself. I look forward to reading the notes our doula took for us as she wrote down the name of every doctor and nurse we spoke to as well as all the medications I was given and when. It was still very worthwhile to get all the records, but they certainly only tell part of the story. I’ll be curious to see if there are more details somewhere else that my OB will have when I see her in a few weeks.

I’m typing this between contractions while sitting on a giant rubber ball. Forgive any typos.

I wanted to give a little background on how my OB appointment went yesterday. We knew it was going to be a bit of an ultimatum (I’m so impressed I just spelled that right just now) appointment but figured we would just see what everyone had to say.

When Dr. D checked me, my cervix had softened/thinned a bit more and moved anterior/forward but I still hadn’t dilated past that one centimeter. She also was concerned that baby boy’s head had not fully engaged in my pelvis in that she could touch him but could still push him away.

So I was given two options:

1) wait another week and if he didn’t come on his own go in for a c-section. I pretty much knew this is not what I wanted since I would always wonder if I could have done it and the stress would have made me a giant ball of snot and tears walking into the hospital.

2) Schedule an induction date for this week and see if he would come out on his own either before then or with a little prodding.

We decided to go with option 2. They looked on the calendar and scheduled me for Wednesday morning at 7:30am. When the physician’s assistant (more words I’m stunned I just spelled/typed correctly) told me that date, I asked if she had something a little later. “We normally do all our inductions first thing in the morning.” “Well, I meant do you have something later in the week?” I smiled sheepishly.

Nope, Wednesday was the best day because of which doctors would be on call and who would be most agreeable to let me try to birth this baby on my own and not skip straight to surgery. In the end that seemed like the best idea. We all agreed on that and left the office.

And as Rich drove us home, I cried the whole way.

I just needed to mourn a scenario that I really wanted to happen that was having its door closed. I knew I could still stand a good chance of having this boy vaginally and without medication but it was not my ideal situation. I would literally have to pick my last meal that morning, drive in to the hospital and be given Cytotec to encourage dilation and hope that contractions started up on their own before folks got impatient. I really dislike hospitals so the idea of spending at least 24 hours there with no food and no baby and possibly no progress was not very appealing.

Over the course of the evening I started feeling kind of crappy. At one point I had convinced myself that I had contracted swine/bird/moose flu and would have to suffer through contractions in that condition. We called it a night around 11pm.

Around 5am I woke up to pee and felt a little rumbly-tummied (don’t even ask me if that’s spelled right). Once my body decided to reboot its digestive system, I felt worlds better and curled back up in bed. That’s when I noticed those tell-tale signs we talked about in birth class. My back would tighten up, then that tightness would wrap around to the front. I could feel my whole uterus pull forward for about a minute and then it would slacken up. This kept up the entire time I was lying in bed and I must say I was napping with a huge smile on my face.

Throughout the day my contractions have been picking up speed and intensity. At the moment they’re about 3-4 minutes apart. I’m obviously still able to type, but that may not last much longer. And as Rich says I’m not finishing my sentences in a timely manner anymore so it’s a bit like charades in our house.

My family has always had some sort of crisis that kicks our collective asses into gear to do something. The yard will be a wreck until someone reports it to the city and then my father moves mountains to clean it up. The roof will be in disrepair until it leaks and risks ruining the rafters underneath and then suddenly we can empty the attic in a weekend and replace the roof in two days.

So when things started picking up this morning, I told Rich that this baby was just like all the other Powells and wasn’t going to do anything until someone gave him a hard deadline. As Rich said, we called the city on him.

It’s been a bit of radio silence over here the last few days, mostly because there’s not much to report other than I’m still pregnant.

When my mother was pregnant with me, I was born right on time, but when she was pregnant with my older brother Perry he came late. Very late. “Oh my God I may stay pregnant forever will no one believe me this has to be a world record for pregnancy he’s going to come out eating solid foods” kind of late. It’s still hard for me to wrap my head around, but my brother was supposedly due in late November and was born January 12. When my father lamented recently that Perry was “born under a bad star” because of all his poor luck, I pointed out that he was supposed to be Scorpio and ended up a Capricorn.

My mother says that she went to the doctor every week and they would continue to pat her on the head and tell her she must have counted wrong. And every week she would go home in tears, still pregnant. I find it ironic that recently that I’ve been going home from my doctor visits in tears because I am trying desperately to remain pregnant.

To add insult to injury, for the two months from November to January, my mother’s mother would call every day to ask if the baby was coming that day so she could go get her hair done and not look like a “booger bear” when she came to visit Mom at the hospital. Every. Day.

My mother told me that little tidbit in an email earlier this week. She has also called me every day this week with some random question or another just to see how things are going. When the phone rang today, Rich looked at the caller ID and said it was my mother asking if she should get her hair done.

So no baby quite yet. But I promise to let you all know when we get close, so you can call your local salons.