Life is Flowers

WARNING: The following post may not be suitable for those who don’t have children but might want to someday, those who have children and haven’t yet begun the painful potty-training process, to those of weak constitution, weak bladders, and those who scream at the sight of spiders.  If you fit this category for the love of all that is good in this world.  Please, please leave now.  Really, I mean it.  This is not a joke.  I’m warning you….Okay, your funeral.

I’ve previously alerted the masses of how wonderful a parental unit I am, and how I keep a watchful eye on my child never trusting her to be left alone to the world and the dangers that lurk in the bathroom.  I hereby present to you yet another stellar example of my fine, fine parental skills and clue you all in on how I manage to protect my child from the dangers lurking in all bathrooms.  Yes, a danger that affects us all, a danger that would send many people screaming from the bathroom in sheer terror and disgust…..we call this danger the Potty. (duhm, duhm, duhm)

My previous encounter taught me well never to leave a toddler unattended in the bathroom.  The concept of privacy is overrated when you must defend yourself from the dangers that lurk, and the pain of cleaning up pee from the floor is enough to humiliate anyone.  So, with renewed vigor and a determination to provide the best parental care possible I decided yet again that it would be fine to leave the munchkin to do their “doodie on the poddie” while I had a brief (really brief, nanoseconds we’re talking here) conversation with the in-law units.

“Splish, splish, splash, splish!”

?Huh?  That doesn’t sound right.

To my horror I find Isabel stomping her feet in a puddle of “pee water.”

The toddler in that brief nanosecond managed to stop up the toilet with an entire roll of toilet paper which she gleefully unraveled and dispensed of in the proper location.  Only problem was that she followed that up with repeated flushing in an attempt to hide the evidence against her.  The repeated flushing then resulted in a brilliant and highly accurate recreation of Niagra Falls.  Lovely “pee pee” water cascaded from the toilet and flowed conveniently straight for the wall where it did two things.  One, it trickled along the wall making a beeline for the hallway, you know the one with the carpet.  Two, it searched out for whatever small and insignificant cracks and holes in could find so that it could then cascade through the floor into the basement below, right next to the laundry.

Now would be the time to hire a professional potty-trainer, or at the very least apparently I should never, not even for a nanosecond, remove my eyes from the child.  Next time she might blow something up.

Cerclage day (otherwise known as the day Edie thought she was going to die from fright) was a success.  Michael drove me to the hospital first thing in the morning so that we could be there in plenty of time for the torturous preparations that needed to be done before the surgery.  I am not the most pleasant person when I am nervous/scared but Michael was amazing in his efforts to keep me sane along the way

At the hospital, we sat around for a while and then I was dragged kicking and screaming into the pre-surgery prep area all by myself.  OK… I wasn’t exactly screaming out loud but I certainly felt like letting out a good hearty scream of panic.  The nurse was real nice and she settled me into my hospital bed and gave me a wonderful pair of fun, hospital booties.  Another nurse came in to start my IV and finally Michael was allowed to come back into the room.  Whew!

A whole slew of people came in one by one to give me a bunch of info about the surgery and anesthesia.  Much to our dismay, we then found out that they were going to switch doctors on us.  Instead of the wonderful head of the high-risk department, my surgery was going to be done by 2 doctors that I had never heard of.  Needless to say, I was annoyed (especially because we had just met with the guy yesterday and everything was fine.)  We were told he had an unexpected meeting.  Annoying!

They did a quick ultrasound and then we just had to wait for a bunch more fluids to get in me before they could take me into surgery.  Apparently, it helps prevent my blood pressure from dropping too much with the anesthesia.  After I was all filled up, they came in to roll me away.  This was definitely the scariest part of the whole thing.

The operating room was freezing!  They transferred me to the table and sat me up for the spinal.  The spinal itself wasn’t so bad but I was shaking from nerves (and the polar ice cap conditions) so it was probably a little harder than it should have been.  They gave me a super-low dose of medicine so as soon as they gave it to me, they flipped me upside-down in the bed to allow the meds to flow to the proper area.   The surgery needed to be done in the Trendelenburg position (with my body slanted down towards me head) and I kept sliding off the table.  It was awful.  They had to slant the bed the other way and then try to push me back down.  I felt like a beached whale.  At some point, they even had to call someone else in to help move me.  What a way to start off the surgery.  At least they only had to do that twice!

The surgery itself was easy (for me at least.)  I didn’t even realize that they had started and then they were all done.  The only annoying part about the surgery itself was the fact that the doctors were constantly rambling in a language that I didn’t recognize.  I was really frustrated because I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about… were they having problems getting the stitch in?  Were they talking about my funny looking butt?  Were they talking about what they wanted to eat for dinner?  I would recommend that doctors do not ramble in another language unless they want to make their patient really stressed.  After it was over, they did a quick in-and-out catheter (because I wouldn’t be able to get up for about an hour and thought it would be nice if I didn’t pee the bed) and then they wheeled me into recovery.

Recovery from the anesthesia was very quick.  They gave me such a low dose that I could start to move my legs before I even left the operating room.  In less than an hour, the anesthesia wore off, I went pee (a prerequisite for letting me out of the hospital…good to know, huh?) and they paged Michael to come meet me in recovery so I could go home.

Everything was fine until about 1/2 way home when the pain meds started wearing off.  Wow did I hurt!  We were stuck in rush hour traffic and had a long way to go before we got to the pharmacy for more pain meds!  That was NOT fun!

We finally got home and the official start of bedrest began.  All in all, the surgery went well.  I bled a lot more than everyone said I would… and was in a lot more pain… but at least the stitch is in!  And hopefully, it will keep our little goober nuggets safe and sound for many months to come!

Nothing makes me feel older than having the doctors constantly point out that I am of “Advanced Maternal Age.”  Even when they don’t say it out loud, you can always find paperwork inconspicuously labelled “AMA.”  I’m 35 for goodness sake!  It’s not like I am 100 or something.  OK.. I know that they do it for a reason.  I have more of a chance for complications or chromosomal abnormalities because my eggs are old and stale from sitting around for 35 years…. but still!  Can’t they think of a better name like “Slightly-Higher Maternal Age” or “She’s Really Not That Old”?  They might as well just call me “Old and Stale Girl.”

Anyway… because of my “Advanced Maternal Age,” the doctor recommended that we get a Nuchal Translucency screening to check for chromosomal abnormalities (such as Downs Syndrome and Trisomy 13/18) before they stitch me up.  The Nuchal is just an “ultrasound on steriods” and they combine the findings with a bloodtest to determine my odds of having babies with chromosomal abnormalities.  The Nuchal was like torture as it took an hour for the babies to flip in the proper position for the tech to take her measurements.  I thought that my stomach was going to rip open from all of the pressure.  I almost drowned in ultrasound jelly!

We got the results right away and in a rare moment of good luck, we actually received fabulous results.  Before the screening, we had about a 1 in 253 chance of having a baby with Downs Syndrome and a 1 in 451 chance of Trisomy 18/13 (purely based on my risks as a mom with “Advanced Maternal Age”   After the screening, we supposedly have a 1 in about 3,000 chance of Downs and 1 in 9,000 chance of Trisomy.

As a bonus, they have this fun graph that shows your adjusted age based on the risks and it says that I have an equivalent risk of a 20 year old.  I am only 20 years old now and I have paperwork from my doctor to prove it.  So there!