Shedding

Almost every night, Woog and I take our bath together. It's part of our bonding process. And well, truth be told, it saves both time, water, and ergo - money. (What cheapskates the members of this family are).

One might ask, where is Atch in all of this? One may find the man of the house taking his own sweet time in the downstairs bathroom – his one concession to luxury – where he may fill the sweet air with the acrid smoke of his Winstons as he sits on his “throne” and contemplates his day. Later, all fresh and moist, we come upon each other at the junction of the stairs, whence we proceed to retire to our room for some quality family time.

Last night, as we were toweling off in the bathroom, I found the urge to have one last pee. Wiping myself off as Woog was doing his running commentary on all and sundry (he sure does talk, that kid), I pulled away a long sticky brownish clump of mucus plug with the toilet paper. Woog stopped in mid-sentence and gaped. I have been shedding these things for about a week now, and although Woog has seen this phenomenon before (and been duly informed of the facts), it was the first time he witnessed such specimen in such globulous quantity so up close and personal.

I took one look at Woog's face and tried not to laugh. His eyes were gleaming with a kind of horrified fascination normally reserved for say, freshly squashed roadkill frog, or his Wawa (grandmother) taking off her dentures. His upper lip was curving upwards, and whether it was the start of a gag reflex or the beginnings of an “oh ewwwie, Mom!”, I couldn't quite say.

Again I explained to him that I was shedding my mucus plug, that thick gel-like substance that blocks the cervix and protects the fetus inside. Once a mommy is nearing labor, her cervix thins out and releases the mucus plug. This is a sure sign the baby would be coming soon.

After a very long thoughtful pause, Firstborn declared, “I'm not going with you to the hospital, Mom.”

“Why not?”

“I'm afraid of the mucus plug.” (and at this, I mentally waved a sad little adieu to the subtle brainwashing tactics of his two doctor aunts who have been enthusiastically, albeit prematurely, grooming him for the medical profession).

“You can stay in the hospital room with Tatay,” I ventured hopefully.

“Can I stay home with Yaya instead?”

*Sigh*

“Mom,” Woog said, exiting the bathroom with a pat on my belly, “don't give birth to Eli until my birthday, ha...?”

And since Woog just turned four earlier this month, the thought of carrying this prodigious, malingering fetus for another year almost sent me to my knees in laughter – and tears.

29 June 2006

Tired and Terrified

Atch winced mightily as his wedding ring cut across his clenched fingers. The pressure was growing intense, but he silently endured the pain just as his wife bore down unceasingly on his hand. This was his role, after all, and he dutifully soaked everything up like a sponge.

This is not a scene from the delivery room. Or even the labor room. This incident is set around a routine check-up of a full-term pregnancy. The OB-Gyn withdraws her latex-gloved fingertips from the violated orifice of this red-faced algophobe. Freed at last, said algophobe's husband shakes his poor mangled hand gingerly, perhaps hoping to get some of the circulation back.

The OB-Gyn is shaking her head. The mucus plug is still too thick, the uterus still too high up. For a second pregnancy 38 weeks old, this is a bit unusual. And I've been 3 centimeters dilated for the past week.

Atch starts getting a determined look on his face, and I could almost imagine him hectoring me through a regular exercise regiment of power walking, squats and lunges. Anything to get my uterus contracting and the baby descending. Anything to avoid a costly cesarean section. As one, we blink away the image of hundreds of peso bills flying out the window. This is probably one of the reasons we fell in love – the irresistible primal call of one skinflint to another. *Sigh*

On the way down, we take the stairs. I am so tired. I can feel the clenched muscles in my aching lower back and Eli's weight pressing sharply down on my bladder, incessantly grinding against my pelvic bones. My thighs are trembling from exertion. I am snorting like a fire dragon out of steam.

Stoically, I have borne this for the last few bloated months.

I am so tired. And so terrified.

Four years ago, I nearly became a permanent occupant of the labor room. I lay for three agonizing days in induced labor before some sympathetic senior resident burst my amniotic sac with a wicked-looking plastic probe. After that, I lost all remaining shreds of dignity as I clawed my way through my husband's shirt and the drenched sheets. I fancy if I had any more strength left, I would have bent my IV stand in half. As it is, Atch tells me he has heard carabaos with a more mellifluous bellow.

Four years after pushing out a 7.11-pound Woog, I am back at square one.

I am so tired. And so terrified.

And so, undoubtedly, Atch and I will be pounding the pavement, son and dogs in tow. Muttering our prayers, shoring up a courageous front, and hoping to raise a low pain threshold.

We'll see...

27 June 2006

“Alien Lifeform” Within

Eli kicked up a fuss over lunch today. Being quite used to it, I lingered over my grilled milk-fish, fresh tomatoes and the usual office gossip, until one of my co-workers exclaimed that my tummy was heaving in irregular little bumps and bulges.

My Eli. He's turning 36 weeks soon, and the apprehension of future labor pains washes over me. This is NOT the kind of pregnancy where I have to monitor fetal movements intermittently. With Eli, I have become the privileged recipient of enormous belly-quakes that wake me up in the middle of the night. With Eli I have mastered the art of sleeping upright, proudly surviving heartburn, acid reflux and the accompanying breathing problems.

Eli at 12 Weeks

In the middle of the working day, I load the cd-rom drive with the classics and bring the speakers right up to my belly: voila! The tiny tornado that is my second child quiets down to the occasional stretch and hiccup, allowing me to get on with trying to earn a living.

The other night, sandwiched between my husband and four-year-old son, Woog, while watching Disney Channel (you can guess who wears the viewing preference pants at home), a tiny limb from within began to violently poke Atch's arm. On the opposite side, another body part started an epileptic little dance against my volatile pre-schooler's ribs.

Two sets of eyes turned to me. One crinkled with amusement, the other with two thick eyebrows bunched into a unibrow. My husband laughed and gently rubbed my belly, while Woog moved away from his offending sibling muttering a “tsk” sound, his eyes turning back to Lilo & Stitch.

Boy, do I have my future referee work cut out for me.

While browsing through some baby websites, I learned that at 35 weeks the baby should have grown to around 18 inches and would weigh in the neighborhood of 5 pounds. The snug-as-a-bug scenario should about limit the room to somersault in. But this medical fact hasn't seemed to stop my little blackbelt from issuing regular roundhouse kicks and elbow jabs to my poor abused insides. Sometimes I imagine my uterus to be one whole black-and-blue mass of tenderized meat, courtesy of the unstoppable juggernaut that is Eli.

A deluge of folic acid and iron supplements notwithstanding, my OB-Gyn assures me everything's normal: from the initial butterflies-in-my-stomach fluttering in the fourth month to the UFC-inspired moves in the ninth. But Eli's hyperactivity came as a great surprise. Woog, while not the most complacent of fetuses, was gentle in comparison.

As I type this, Eli is drumming an energetic sousa march against the top of my stomach – his heels, most likely. I think its about time to turn on the classics again.

08 June 2006