Rule # 15: Stay on the Sunny Side (of Shitty)

Like most things in life, just when we think it’s smooth sailing, we find ourselves partway up shit creek. (Ah, I love using my beautiful local colloquialisms sometimes.) I had been having no problems with my pregnancy outside of the normal whining and complaining you’ve born witness to through these writings, and so I cruised right into week 28 (that’s seven months for you non-preggers out there) like the world was as it should be.

And then, there was blood.

Gross, I know. And completely out of place. I had just been going for a routine pee, and when I pulled down the undies, I found what looked like the very beginning of a period. Now, it had been some time since I’d seen the beginning of a period, so the sight of that brownish but bright red spot on my pantiliner doubly shocked me. Then sent me into Holy Shit Mode.

Obviously, whether you’re pregnant, have been pregnant, or can’t stand the thought of cells ever congealing together in your uterus, you can figure out that you shouldn’t have blood leaking through your sweatpants like a newly-blessed sixth grader when you’re seven months down the road. So I called the doctor, had the hubby drive me to the hospital, where I was admitted and poked and prodded and monitored, and where I sat perched upon my little bedcage for three whole days.

In case you’re curious: speculums inserted into your recently bleeding wahoo are super uncomfortable. Of course, so is sitting in a hospital for two days waiting to be told everything is fine, just a fluke, go home and be normal again, please.

So far, I’ve only had that one small instance of bleeding, and nothing since. Far as they can tell, something probably happened with my placenta. The doctor was telling me something about an indentation and a possible “abruption” and more things that I heard but only listened to long enough to gather that the wee one and I are okay and they just need to track us for a bit to make sure we stay okay. Since then, I’ve been allowed to return home and continue bed-arrest for another week from the comforts of my own couch and toilet, and—of course—computer, so I’ve done a little research of my own, and it seems as if I lucked out in the placental abruption market, at least for now. So things could be worse, as they always could, right?

I mean, how bad can being doctor-ordered to sit around and do next to nothing be? If you’re anything like me, it can be torturous, since your brain has a lot of time to run through the gazillion things you could be completing in the time it takes to run through a day from Regis and Kelly to Oprah. Not to mention missing so much work unexpectedly. Oh, my uterus is going to contract just thinking about it!

But here’s the lesson: to be a Good Pregnant Woman, you need to remember you are not Super Woman and you cannot, indeed, do everything just as you had before getting pregnant, or even as you did when newly pregnant. This third trimester kicks your ass, even when you don’t know it is, as I quickly discovered. So prescribe yourself some relaxation and laziness before your placenta says enough is enough and springs a leak. Trust me.

And if you do spring a leak or have contractions before you should be or have your water break and need netting shoved up there and find yourself talking sweet nothings into a standard-issue hospital pillow, look on the sunny side of the shitty situation: you get to preview the people and place where you’ll be delivering, you get to show your husband just how much you really do around the house by giving him the list of chores you are no longer allowed to do, and you get to catch up on some of those guilty pleasure TV shows and stacks of novels that everyone is very quick to tell you you’ll have no time for once little one officially arrives.

Who knew? Good Pregnant Women can find the silver (panty)-lining in anything.