After being in the hospital for what the doctors are calling a minor placental abruption and finding out that has increased my chances of going early (I'm hoping!), not to mention realizing I'm currently at 32 weeks (that's 8 months, non-preggers), I decided it was time to get back to reading all those wonderfully HUGE books I have on pregnancy.
Get back, you say? What do you mean get back? You mean you haven't been fiendishly devouring every piece of information you possibly can over the last 5,000 hours of pregnancy? Bad Pregnant Woman! Bad!
Answer is: no, I haven't. Like most women who find themselves brand-spankin' pregnant, I did at first feel obligated to read a lot. I'm an educated person, and we live in an age where you can be a homebound expert on anything with just the click of a button, so I felt I had no excuse for not reading the brochures, booklets, binders, novels, and encyclopedias which found their way into my home eight weeks into fetus incubation like so many stinkbugs sneaking around my ceilings during the month of October. But I was finding that a lot of what I read was redundant, still kinda vague, or downright inapplicable. Why, at eight weeks pregnant, would I want to read about effacing and dilation and the intricate convulsing of the body when labor time arrives? Hell, no, I don't wanna know! Not yet anyway. So I put the books away--well, I did decoratively arrange them atop the baby dresser when organizing the nursery--and just went about my life. And that was working great.
Until the whole hospital and oh-shit-that-due-date-is-getting-close thing. I decided to read again, because now, understanding labor was relevant.
Lots of people like to ask you if you're scared when you look ready to pop. I had been telling people that no, I really wasn't scared of labor. And I hadn't been lying. I figured that nature would know what it was doing so my body was going to do its thang whether I was hyperventilating or Lamaze-ing, and I was going to be surrounded by medical professionals in a sterile hospital environment whose sole jobs it would be to ensure my and the baby's health. The baby would come out, just like millions of unsuspecting little souls before had, so why be scared? I have maintained that I'm way more scared at the thought of bringing her home, away from medical people who deal with these itty bitty beings every day, leaving the poor thing with just her father and me and a crazy little puppy to keep her alive after only three days in this godforsaken place we call Out of the Womb. That, my friends, is the true psychotic nature of making a baby: the fact that you have to maintain its survival without having earned a Masters degree in Parental Implementation and Supplemental Infant Psychology.
But then, I read the books.
And now, I already know more about labor than I ever really wanted to, and I didn't even finish the chapter. I think it caused instant acid reflux and eye spasms. I wasn't scared before I read all of the stuff that is supposed to make me feel prepared, but after reading all the information that is meant to make me feel comforted by educating me on the inner workings of ceaseran section versus vaginal delivery and positioning and all-around vagina-ness, I think I'd rather fall asleep and have to face off with Freddie Krueger. So thanks for keeping me informed, books.
Knowledge may be power, but ignorance is bliss.
So my advice? Read stuff if you want to. Stop if you break out into hives...and avoid anything that discusses ALL risks and possibilities. Chances are, your labor and delivery will be routine, and you'll feel freaked out for no reason. And if anything does occur, you'll be way calmer if you don't really know, which will probably just give better results in the end since you won't be clenching up in parts that are rather vital to whipping a baby out of your body. Be a Good Pregnant Woman by preparing yourself the way that makes you most comfortable. And just tell everyone you read everything. Maybe throw in a few medical terms for good effect. And go back to flipping through the pages of Cosmopolitan for awhile.
After all, your cooch loves magazine articles on the act of baby-making way more than she could ever enjoy the novel chapters on baby-pushing. So let her just enjoy these last weeks of normalcy. She'll hate you soon enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment