My Time in Bed

Bed rest is real pain. Literally.

I can't tell you how many people have off-handedly commented, "Gee, I wish someone would tell me to go on bed rest".

No, no you really don't. What you want is to be able to lie down and take a nap or read a book without guilt. And then get up when you are done. That isn't bed rest.

Bed rest is having to ask someone else for every conceivable thing you might want or need. It is never eating Cheetos because you are too embarrassed to ask your mother-in-law to bring you some. Bed rest is learning how to eat lying down, and perpetually having crumbs in your bra and food on your face. It is drinking coffee through a bendy straw. Bed rest is losing so much muscle tone that you have perpetually pulled groin muscles from the simple action of getting out of bed to use the bathroom. It is missing phone call after phone call because you are facing one direction on the bed and the phones are behind you and it takes too much straining to turn around in time to answer them. Bed rest is enduring the humiliation of tutoring high school students while lying on a couch. It is horrible heartburn and throwing up in your mouth in the middle of the night (actually, that might just be pregnancy). Bed rest is the depression that comes from not moving your body, from not going outside for weeks and weeks. It is far too much time to think and worry. Bed rest is numb arms and shoulder pain as you type an email. It is having to stop knitting because you dropped the knitting needle and no one is around to pick it up. Bed rest is spilling kefir all over the feather pillows. It is spilling water all over the computer. Lately, bed rest is back pain and hip pain and leg pain and neck pain and headaches and vertigo. And a stuffy nose.

And those are just some of the things that bed rest is.

Last night, I was feeling miserably sorry for myself, trying to sleep and alternating between shooting pains down my legs, and rotten room spins whenever I rolled over. I fell asleep writing this blog post in my head.

And then I dreamed.

I dreamed that I went to the hospital because I was bleeding, and when I got there, they told me I was tearing through my cerclage, and that Dr. K had ordered me to stay in the hospital with my bed in Trendelenburg position. The bed was practically vertical, with my head close to the floor. I was terrifically upset. When I asked to go to the bathroom, the nurse insisted on accompanying me and checking me in while I was using the toilet. And when I got into the bathroom, the room started swaying like we were on a boat on a rough sea.

And when I woke up, bed rest didn't seem so bad after all.