Five Days In

Five days of bed rest accomplished, twenty seven left to go. Yeah, yeah: I know they aren't really going to let me up when I hit 28 weeks, but they said they would and I need an attainable goal to focus on, so I'm counting down my 27 days and working under the 'ignorance is bliss' theory

And what a five days they were:

Day 1 was Thursday, and Bruno and I were sweet to each other. Bruno returned to his nesting ways, creating safe resting places for me in the bedroom and the living room, pinning tiny pink onesies up on the bedroom walls as a sort of vision board for me. We ordered in Chinese food and watched many many episodes of Lost and thought: we can do this again.

Day 2 was Friday, and it hit home that we were having to do this again. Old terrors began to resurface and memories mixed with realities. I had way too much time to concentrate on the sensations of my body, and every time I closed my eyes I re-remembered Pedro's water breaking. I think that moment was the single worst moment of my life, the moment we knew it was over and we had lost.

Day 2 also included the primal scream dinner incident. Bruno had been slaving away in the kitchen, making a fabulous meal, the 9th or 10th one in a row (first breakfast, second breakfast...) that he prepped, cooked, served and cleaned up entirely on his own. I meanwhile had been lying in the bedroom having two contractions in a row, and was now terrorized that there would be more (there weren't any more: just a good old fashioned Braxton Hicks scare). Bruno had the meal all ready to go and called me to make the slow trek from the bed to the living room couch.

This would probably be a good time to mention that Bruno has a pet peeve about serving the meals he makes hot off the stove. No dilly dallying: get to the table and no messing around. Only right now, I'm a big mess. Getting my increasingly stiff body onto the couch, arranging the pillows properly to achieve the just-short-of-lying-flat angle that makes all the difference in bed rest eating: these things take time. And expediency wasn't helped when we discovered that the romantic, breakfast-in-bed tray no longer fit over my belly. As steam started to pour out of Bruno's ears, and the tray, loaded with Bruno's beautiful dinner, teetered dangerously over Mt. Lisa, Bruno yanked one of the pillows from behind my head to use to shim the tray.

And that's when it happened. Filled with nerves and despair, frustrated to the breaking point, and certain this alteration in the delicate pillow eco-system would trigger another contraction, I opened my mouth and screamed. Primal screamed. Worry-the-neighbors screamed. And when I was finished, I broke into sobs and hiccupped, "I... was comfortable!"

Bruno went white. I'm gonna have to guess "with rage", but he didn't speak for a long time after that so I may never know. When we finally did start talking again, I 'fessed up to the contractions, and rage turned to fear, and everything changed. My wretchedly out of control behavior was forgiven and forgotten and all thoughts turned to what my body was doing for the rest of the evening. Which turned out to be nothing: apparently the scream shamed all of us into behaving.

My arms are now out of blood, so I'm going to have to tell the story of Day 3 and the "search for the perfect chaise lounge" fiasco another time. But one thing is becoming clear: bed rest is excellent practice for both partners in the kind of letting go that I imagine parenthood demands.