Good news, weird dream

Last week when we decided not to do the CVS, Rocket Man and I did go ahead with having our blood drawn for chromosome mapping or whatever it’s called. The genetics counselor called this a.m. to say that everything looks perfectly fine. One of fancy doc’s colleague’s suggested, because of the two 1st trimester losses, that we do the chromosome thing to see if we have an unbalanced chromosomal translocation. I didn’t really understand what we were looking for and now I don’t have to. Whew.

Lat night I dreamt that fancy doc and I were trying to start a fire in a stainless steel stock pot with coconut husks. The fire wouldn’t start because the husks were wet. Then fancy doc stuck his face under my chin and sniffed me, slowly, all the way to my belly button. Then he sniffed me again from the back of my neck down to my hips. Then he said, “You know what they say about infections?” I looked at him expectantly and he said, “They smell.”

The implication was that he could smell that I had an infection. I had an instant of horror and terror for the baby and then mercifully I woke up. I think it scared me so badly that some automatic shut-off switch in my subconscious just ejected me right out of the dream. I couldn’t go back to sleep and it was 4:45.

The smelling thing in the dream is interesting because after we found out in the hospital that I might have an infection in my amniotic fluid, I had an amnio to withdraw some fluid for testing. Fancy doc held up the shotglass size cup of fluid and smelled it. He said that often infected fluid smells infected. Mine actually didn’t smell infected.

Not sure what to make of this dream. It actually doesn’t freak me out much more than I am already freaked out. I think I’m at some kind of a freaked-out plateau. Who am I kidding? If I really thought about it, I think the dream would scare me even more.

Tomorrow morning we’ll get up at the crack to be at the hospital by 7:20. I’ll have a quick ultrasound right before the surgery so we can make sure the baby is still alive. I won’t even go there right now with what might happen if the baby is dead. Hey I guess I could get a quick D&C since the OR will be reserved. Perhaps I could just have my tubes tied right then and there. Enough, ENOUGH.

I will get an epidural for the procedure to answer one of your questions. To answer another question, I have to have the cerclage but I didn’t have one with my son or daughter’s pregnancies. My cervix has been deemed incompetent.

After the procedure I’ll be in recovery until I can move my toes. Last time I had a cerclage put in, I was in a lot of pain afterwards and asked for more pain meds. The meds that they gave me caused my bladder not to function so I couldn’t pee when the time came to pee. My bladder filled up from the IV fluid and caused a great deal more pain. They gave me more pain meds not realizing that the pain was partially caused by my distended bladder. The cycle continued and I was EXTREMELY uncomfortable by the time, about six hours after the surgery, that they put a catheter in and drained a liter of pee out of me.

I am usually fairly tolerant of pain I think but man that really sucked. I plan to try to deal with the pain on my own as much as possible because THE LAST THING I want to happen is to have another catheter. In my mind, catheter = infection even though the doctors don’t think that my infection came from the catheter. Why take any chances? It is well-documented that catheters introduce infection. I’ll be peeing as soon as possible unless of course fancy doc nicks my bladder which is one of the risks of the surgery. I’ll ask for a squeeze bottle and we’ll pull out all the stops to get the pee flowing.

Enough about peeing already. I should be out of there by 1 p.m. or so. There’s a 5% chance that I’ll be kept overnight for observation. Naturally I’ll be eager to get the f*ck out of there ASAP. Less time in hospital = less exposure to funky hospital germs = less chance of another infection that forces the premature delivery of my perfectly healthy baby.

Unfortunately it seems that I’ve also equated cerclage with dead baby. I know that I need to have one or I will surely deliver too early which will equal dead or severely premature baby. I’ve considered just going on complete bed rest and not having a cerclage at all but the numbers look really bad in that scenario. My doctor has put in 2,000 cerclages in 20 years and he’s seen an infection like mine happen one other time. Those numbers look pretty good except that I was one of the unlucky ones.

Doing a cerclage this early in a pregnancy is much safer than doing one at 20 weeks, where I was last time. My cervix is nice and long and will be less susceptible to infection. The acidophilus will help restore my good bacteria after 5 days of antibiotics plus a mega-dose in the hospital. I’m pretty conflicted about the 5 day course. The evidence says that it doesn’t help. I personally don’t like the idea of wiping out my beneficial bacteria, hence the acidophilus. Is there a doctor in the house who cares to weigh in on the topic?

Now that I’ve whipped myself into a frenzy, I’ll sign off. Thanks for listening. I meant to spend this time writing about how I got into this mess in the first place. Some other time.