Baby and Toddler Foods: Bed Rest - I'm not sitting around watching TV and eating boiled lollies!

So, the only reason I have time to do this and look after THE busiest 16 month old, is because I spend 23 ½ hours a day in bed. I'm 'lucky' enough to be given "toilet privileges" which means I'm allowed up to go the toilet and have a quick shower, which probably gets me half an hour out of bed. Other than that, it's bed bed flippin bed.

This is the second time in a year and a half. First time was for 4 months - 2 months hospital on strict bed rest and 2 at home, attempting to get back to normal by completing such strenuous tasks such as making a sandwhich or walking to the letter box. This time is looking like being 13 weeks.

Why do this, when I'm not sick, injured or dying?

I'm merely pregnant - something millions of women get to be and live a normal life. It turns out I have an incompetent cervix (IC), like it failed that subject at school. As my uterus grows and the baby put pressure on the cervix, it softens, shortens and eventually opens.

I found this out the hard way with our first baby when my waters broke at 20 weeks. Babies don't survive that. Sometimes I feel like I barely survived. An infection got in. My temperature was 41° C when the ambulance came, but I know it had been higher. I was gushing blood like I’d cut an artery and it turns out, he was completely covered in Strep B. My body was ejecting him as fast as possible to save itself.

So I had extra scans for the second pregnancy. At 18 weeks my cervix was 27mm (as opposed to an ideal 40mm). I was told to quit work that day and go to bed as much as possible. An internal scan at 20 weeks was more accurate and read 9mm, less than a quarter what it should be. I was sent straight to the doctor who sent me straight to the hospital for a cervical stitch/suture. This was crazy and he’d previously talked me out my request for one, citing risks of labour and infection, and success rates as reason not to. But now, I wasn’t even allow home for a change of clothes and a toothbrush – things I know are nice from my first experience of being rushed to hospital.

So that’s where I stayed for 2 months. The admitting nurse said crazy things like I’d be transferred 500kms away to a major hospital when I was 24 weeks because there’s no use before then as the baby isn’t ‘viable’. And I’d be there till I gave birth. My mind was spinning! It turns out this wasn’t true, and I was to spend the next 2 months in my local hospital at least.

Taking advice from other mothers online, I researched this issue of ‘viable foetus’ further to establish how I felt about it. Turns out that she meant they don’t bother resuscitating as the chances of survival are so slim and the health risks are huge – bleeding on the brain, strokes, detached retinas, cerebral palsy, blindness, lung development. You are forced to make a decision on the spot. So I wanted to be educated on what it meant.

This pregnancy, I had the operation early – 15 weeks (a ‘preventative stitch’ instead of an emergency one). At 18 weeks my cervix was 37mm with an internal scan! Awesome! At 21 weeks it was 21mm... not so awesome and I was sent home to rest as much as possible (sure, with 15 month old). So I spent the days on family’s couches while they looked after my toddler. An internal scan at 22 weeks showed a 17mm cervix. Man! Things had been going so well dammit. The doctor wanted to consult his superior.

He called me back that after to tell me to drop everything, go to bed and don’t move unless it’s for showers or the bathroom. No making food, doing ANY lifting, walking, even sitting more than a 30° angle. At the time I was locked out of the house with a toddler and had walked down the road to buy an ice block and cool drink. I was wrangling to toddler, a melting ice block, a leaking drink, my purse and the phone..... not the right image for someone who was moments away from strict bed rest.

Up until this point, I’d given up all the ‘normal’ things you can do in pregnancies, particularly once the stitch was in. Walking distances, standing for more than 2 hours at a time, sex, immersing in water, coughing, sneezing and pooing all compromise the ‘competence’ of my cervix. Still, it wasn’t enough.

Prior to this current pregnancy I had really only just started to feel like I'd recovered from the first stint. I was able to surf for an hour, bike ride for half an hour, get up a short trot jogging and even had a snowboarding holiday (which I notice the extreme loss of muscle strength), all things I didn't without thinking before bed rest ever happened. BUT, we wanted a second child, and this is the only way we know how.

Looking after a new born is hard enough, but to do it AFTER 4 months in bed is exhausting. I made up a new term for it S.O.F.T - Sudden Onset Fatigue Trauma... it hit me like a wall! If I cooked dinner for friends or helped my father in law out at his work (why?? did I feel that guilty?) it took me days to recover. An attempt at a slow walk after she was born resulted in collapsed arches of the my feet (called plantar fascia). It feels like your feet and heels are bruised and you have to hobble, strap and ice your feet to cope. The pain lasted for months and months

OK, I don't have cancer or a terminal disease, and the baby was fine in the end. But it could have ended differently, and you never know the ending in this instance until you reach it. Till then, it’s all guessing a hoping and praying. Bed rest for this pregnancy holds no certain guarantee.

My cervix is currently open all the way to the stitch. If it gets 1mm shorter, he wants to send me to the capital city until I’m 34 weeks. I want this baby to as healthy and strong as the first, but lay here silently sometimes just doesn’t feel like I’m doing enough.

I’d read a quote from the husband of a mother on bed rest, so was told over and over again how nice it must be for her to lay down all day. His response was something along the lines of “She’s not at home watching TV and eating boiled lollies you know!”. I think it sums up how I feel perfectly.

http://www.sidelines.org/