2001-12-21
Well, it doesn't look as though this kid will be born on the shortest day of the year. Last night B suggested that Sunday would be a convenient day for him to born; I said I'd see what I could do.
This afternoon I drove around doing a bunch of non-essential errands that it will be nice to have taken care of (car dealership to order a replacement for the hubcap that's been missing for about six months, credit union, hardware store to return a bunch of unused items from our home improvement effort).
When I got home I was pretty tired but the main thing was that my left hip felt--and still feels--really out of whack. I wasn't aware of doing anything to it, and I tend to think it's baby-related. Like he's moving down or something. I expect these things to be symmetrical, but really, why should they be? He's in there sideways, feet jabbing at my left side, back smooth along my right side. Who knows if this is any kind of sign of anything? I spent a little time rolling around on the birth ball (one of those big inflated exercise balls, actually) and then got into the hot tub for a while. Seems to have helped but I only notice the weirdness when I'm standing and I'm sitting at the moment.
The hospital bag continues to grow. One of the approaches to pain relief I intend to use is B's TENS unit. TENS stands for transcutaneous electronic nerve stimulation, and the unit is a little battery-operated pager-sized device to which you attach pads that you then adhere to your body. The device emits low-level electric jolts that somehow drown out pain. B's used it in the past for chronic neck pain.
These are apparently used fairly widely during childbirth in the UK but much less so here. I did a little Web research--their effectiveness tends to vary, and in some studies was attributed to placebo effect. Not sure how they'd arrange that--was it emitting the jolts or not?--or whether it really matters. If you feel less pain, you feel less pain, who cares exactly why? Two very nice aspects to this device are that (1) it has no side effects and (2) you can discontinue its use at any time; neither of these are true for medication.
Hey, you know that novel The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen? (Oprah picked it then he dissed her; much publicity ensued.) I put a hold on it at the library when the whole brouhaha occurred and yesterday got notified that I was at the top of the list. I picked it up today. I'm hoping that it will engage me--it would be so great to get sucked into a big, long, good book right now--but I'm not exactly counting on it.
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