So, we made it through Wednesday, which means we are now six days closer to Rigby making his advanced-screening appearance. It's amazing how much lying around all day will take out of you. Seriously. It's the cat-napping part that's the worst. It's not the nurses' faults. They're just doing their job. It's just that their job involves strapping a highly uncomfortable blood pressure cuff around my arm that inflates till my hand is tingly and painful, all the while emitting a painful, bleating sort of sound that suggests the machine is as pissed at being asked to do something at 3 a.m. as I am. Then there's the thermometer-in-ear thing, which is not too invasive, and really, seems like it should be no big deal. But then you must recall that I am a worrier of Olympic proportions, and I know exactly the tenth degree at which my temperature will be deemed too high and require the immediate delivery of a baby. As such, what normally could go almost entirely ignored in these late night nurse visits for me, turns instead into a groggy awakening followed by a jolt of surefire adrenaline and panic, followed by grasping at the nurse, asking her what the result was. The poor lady. It's not like she's telling me if my husband made it off the Titanic, or if a recent life-saving surgery had been completed safely... I'm just asking what my temperature is. And this fiasco plays out three times throughout my normal REM cycle sleep time. Needless to say, the result is me spending the rest of my day in a drugged stupor, where simple questions annoy and confuse. Like today, when we were down visiting the NICU (more on that later) and meeting some other parents with babies currently in there. One lady asked my "gestational age" a couple of different times. I kept hearing "adjusted age" and all I could think of were adjusted scores for grading curves and things like that. I kept loudly pronouncing that I didn't understand what adjusted age meant, and that I was new here. Finally, thinking I might be retarded, a nice mom said "It's how old they are in weeks in utero. You know, their gestation."
Aaaaaand, then I felt stupid and didn't talk for the rest of the evening.
I also got told I have an "irritable uterus" today when I went for my non-stress test. What did my much-abused uterus do to deserve this rather harsh moniker, you ask? Well, as many of you ladies know, on a monitor, contractions look like little hills with valleys in between. My read out today looked like the little scalloped edge of a party napkin- way too close and tiny to each other to be real contractions. This lead the nurse to proclaim (louder than I felt was entirely necessary) that I had an "irritable uterus."
The going on 3 hours of Ambien-induced sleep part of me immediately wanted to punch her in the ovaries and ask who had an irritable uterus now? Fortunately, saner heads prevailed, and I consented to be wheeled back to my room in silence, where I promptly passed back into the interrupted Ambien stupor and proceeded to drool all over my pillow. It was a decent afternoon.
However, the important thing I keep trying to remind myself of at every irritating moment, is that Rigby is doing well. His heart rates always look great, he's moving around, and every day, he gets stronger and bigger. I never thought I'd need to wish for a bigger baby, but now, I welcome it!
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