Well fuckity fuck... look what I'm doing.
I used to think I was busy a year ago... HA-HA-HAAA!
SO MUCH has happened and I am SO ANGRY with myself for not writing it up sooner. Now after all this time, much of the detail is gone.
Let's start with this one:
I have a baby. A little boy. An awesome little human with big eyes and a bigger smile and an even bigger attitude.
Baking him was the worst, ABSOLUTE WORST. I hear many, dare I say MOST, women mention how pregnancy is so awesome and how they glow and blah blah blah. Good for them... but FUUUUUUCK that shit. Pregnancy was THE WORST time of my fucking life. I was pregnant in mid-January, and by (Sunday, I remember this because I was at an Olive Garden celebrating my sister in law's birthday) February 19th I was puking my eyes out FOR THE REST OF MY PREGNANCY... every single fucking day. No joke.
That was the entry I was working on back in April 12th, 2019.
It's weird to read old entries and hear my voice in them.
I don't think I have much of that anymore.
Not many people told me about that "pregnancy brain" shit... it's so real. I lost so much of my fucking brain in these two fucking years of being pregnant, I'm not sure I'll ever be myself again.
As I type all this shit up, bits and pieces of my personality are coming back to me... it feels pretty good.
So, let's keep going with this Quarantine Journal.
What I was talking about up there was basically just going to evolve into me talking about all the shit pregnancy symptoms I had.
I've always claimed to be an anomaly, and pregnancy only proved it more so.
The first months of the pregnancy, around week 10, I started bleeding. Shit freaked me out.
"Shit, so I'm going to be one of those ladies who loses her baby," was all I could think.
Turns out I had a massive "subchorinoic hemorrhage" (getting pregnant taught me so many fucking new vocabulary words. I would have done way better in biology classes had I been pregnant while in college--No). "It hits about 3.1% of all pregnancies" they say... and I was a lucky one. It was basically nothing to worry about, just bleeding until the blood clot drained completely. In my case, it took about a month to clear.
Add to that the fact I mentioned of constant, non-stop vomiting. Every. Single. Day. I couldn't even think of food. Commercials for restaurants would ALWAYS send me running to the toilet to have my barf fest. Ordering food? It was the fucking worst thing you could ask me to do... the food on the menu would be the biggest trigger to my vomit. Eating? That was a no. I puked every damn thing I ate. I could only drink milk and mineral water, I could only eat BREAD and cheese. Not one fucking vegetable was tolerated. Not ONE.
That is no way to live.
I puked up until I fucking gave birth... I was pushing AND puking at the same time. It was as glorious as they show on tv.
I knew I had pre-eclampsia from around month 4. I was listed as "high risk" so I was constantly at the doctors getting check-ups. My biggest issue was protein in my urine, and my increasing blood pressure readings. I normally have really low blood pressure, but in the pregnancy my blood pressure would spike a little above normal.
In my last month of pregnancy, I gained 20 pounds in ONE WEEK... and that set off alarms for my doctor (she's the motherfucking shit). In total, I gained 60 pounds... not cool.
My little bean was measuring about two weeks ahead of schedule-- he was a big ol' baby. He was monitored three times a week the final month of my pregnancy because of my pre-eclampsia.
I would do urine tests every week (they are the fucking worst. You collect ALL of your piss for an entire day and keep it in your fridge. It's more annoying than it sounds) and blood tests sometimes twice a week.
My little dude was doing fine, I was the one fucking shit up... so my doctor decided to induce me at 37 weeks after seeing my liver enzyme levels charting way too high.
Now, I'm not someone who goes to the doctor, I never had health insurance growing up, so I was going into this blind as fuck. Sure, I studied this shit in college, but mammalian physiology wasn't my fucking thing. So being told my liver enzyme levels just made me shrug and say "Cool... so like, I'll be good after I get this baby out of me?" They assured me I would be.
So here we go, week 37, go time.
I went in Sunday night, and they did all of the inducing shit (so many hands in my vagina... so many objects in my vagina... why does no one tell you you're going to get so many people looking at and touching your vagina when you're going to have a baby? My fucking shyness went out the fucking door after the third nurse shoved her hand down there. Fuck it). Nothing was working. It was motherfucking Wednesday when the doctor finally said I was ready to go. I had only been feeling contractions for a few hours, but not bad ones. I only really started feeling pain when I was at a "6" dilation. They asked if I wanted an epidural, to which I agreed 'cause fuck it... I didn't want to know what vaginal tearing felt like. So they come in and do the epidural (I fucking feared this happening since I was in 6th grade)... I had to have the biggest nurse hold me down like I was a wild animal. Epidurals are gross... you feel that shit in your spine and they ask you to tell them when it's dead center-- really hard to do when all you want to do is squirm and cry.
After about an hour, I felt the pain getting far more intense. I finally asked the nurse checking my contractions if I was supposed to feel my contractions.
"You're at an 8... you're telling me you can feel them?!" I sat there and pointed out each contraction while she read them form the machine.
Turns out they fucked up my epidural... there was a "kink" in the line. SO.... here came epidural 2. In that case, it was fucking INSTANT when my legs went numb. It felt good.
Pushing time came around 8AM. I remember not feeling a fucking thing, I had to be told when to push. I pushed with all my might, and I could feel pressure in my vagina, but didn't think much. I just remember looking over at the clock and seeing it was 10AM.
Holy shit, I've been pushing for two hours?!
The doc told me she was going to give me some time to rest, she'd be back in an hour.
I wasn't tired, but my mom and husband were (my sister in law had left the room before I started pushing. I was mortified she was there because she was watching my naked ass getting poked and prodded all fucking night).
Pushing time part B came up and I pushed until 12pm, when my doc informed me my baby was "turtling" which is when they stick their head out and stick it back in. She said I had two choices: she was going to vacuum my baby out, which could lead to permanent damage to him, as well as multiple broken bones for him... or a c-section.
Who THE FUCK chooses a vacuum?? I didn't hesitate to agree to the c-section.
So they take me back and cut me up in an emergency c section where I was cracking jokes the entire time about how it felt like they were doing dishes in my torso. They pulled Baby out and to my surprise, I started crying.
So here's the baby, I do the three day recovery thing at the hospital and everyone's laughing.
Then on the third day, as I'm laughing with my favorite cousins and my aunt/uncle, I notice my ankles get HUGE-- they notice as well.
Nurses look concerned. I get blood work done. Shit goes south FAST.
As I'm getting ready to be discharged (I had been looking forward to it all day), a different doctor walks in looking very concerned and tells me I'm not going anywhere.
I was in the room with just my mom, since my husband and all of his family had left for dinner.
"Your lab work is very concerning. Your liver levels are in the 400's when they should be in the 10s. Your brain is swelling and you can fall into a coma any minute. We have to re-admit you and start emergency treatment now. We're changing you to a different room, don't worry, you baby will be able to stay with you," the doctor said.
That is the most shell-shocked I have felt in my life. I remember everything going silent and only being able to focus on the doctor.
BRAIN SWELLING?! COMA?! WHAT?!
It was all so bizarre because I had been feeling fine... just that weird swelling in my ankles.
Once the doctor left, I remember feeling the fucking heaviest, most enormous tears plop into my lap.
"What the hell is happening? Mom, I'm scared..." was all I could say before sobbing loudly.
My favorite nurses came into my room to help me walk over to my new room and they all looked SO SAD. They all liked me, they'd say I was a good patient because I was always so happy and funny... and now they looked like they too wanted to cry.
I went to my new room, had to get hooked up to all the shit they had just taken off (getting a fucking drip put in sucks on so many fucking levels... but not as much as getting the goddamned catheter shoved up your WhoHa), and the therapy began.
My room's temperature was dropped to something like 60 degrees and I still felt hot. They dimmed the lights and told me to sleep.
Me? Sleep? After being told I *might* slip into a coma? BITCH, NO.
I stayed awake watching so much fucking "Ridiculousness" and "The Jersey Shore," I can remember being disappointed thinking how shitty it was going to be that I was going to die having that shit be the last thing I ever watched on Earth.
I stayed at the hospital for an extra 2 days while they pumped me with magnesium sulfate for 36 hours. I was so fucking high the entire time, I remember it all with the coolest, saddest buzz.
I didn't improve until around hour 30, when the maximum amount of time I could be hooked up to that shit was 48 hours.
What killed me was seeing my husband's side of the family not take it as serious as it was.
The doctors had told me I had jumped from eclampsia to "HELLP Syndrome"... which meant nothing to me, but in one of the many hours of therapy, I googled it and scared myself shitless.
Everyone thought I was being dramatic, and that shit broke my heart. That fucked up, stupid fucking mentality that pregnancy and delivery is so easy pisses me the fuck off... and that's how my in-laws take it.
After this episode, I can honestly say my hostility toward the in-laws entered a new level.
I finally left the damn hospital a week after being admitted.
What followed was months worth of blood work and monitoring to make sure I didn't fall back into the swelling shit. Also battled around for a fucking gastroenterologist for my liver.
I was diagnosed with fatty liver and told I needed to return in August of 2019 for a check up to hopefully see some improvement.
Then June 2019 came around the corner and I found out baby number two was on its way.
Cue domestic violence.
I used to think I was busy a year ago... HA-HA-HAAA!
SO MUCH has happened and I am SO ANGRY with myself for not writing it up sooner. Now after all this time, much of the detail is gone.
Let's start with this one:
I have a baby. A little boy. An awesome little human with big eyes and a bigger smile and an even bigger attitude.
Baking him was the worst, ABSOLUTE WORST. I hear many, dare I say MOST, women mention how pregnancy is so awesome and how they glow and blah blah blah. Good for them... but FUUUUUUCK that shit. Pregnancy was THE WORST time of my fucking life. I was pregnant in mid-January, and by (Sunday, I remember this because I was at an Olive Garden celebrating my sister in law's birthday) February 19th I was puking my eyes out FOR THE REST OF MY PREGNANCY... every single fucking day. No joke.
That was the entry I was working on back in April 12th, 2019.
It's weird to read old entries and hear my voice in them.
I don't think I have much of that anymore.
Not many people told me about that "pregnancy brain" shit... it's so real. I lost so much of my fucking brain in these two fucking years of being pregnant, I'm not sure I'll ever be myself again.
As I type all this shit up, bits and pieces of my personality are coming back to me... it feels pretty good.
So, let's keep going with this Quarantine Journal.
What I was talking about up there was basically just going to evolve into me talking about all the shit pregnancy symptoms I had.
I've always claimed to be an anomaly, and pregnancy only proved it more so.
The first months of the pregnancy, around week 10, I started bleeding. Shit freaked me out.
"Shit, so I'm going to be one of those ladies who loses her baby," was all I could think.
Turns out I had a massive "subchorinoic hemorrhage" (getting pregnant taught me so many fucking new vocabulary words. I would have done way better in biology classes had I been pregnant while in college--No). "It hits about 3.1% of all pregnancies" they say... and I was a lucky one. It was basically nothing to worry about, just bleeding until the blood clot drained completely. In my case, it took about a month to clear.
Add to that the fact I mentioned of constant, non-stop vomiting. Every. Single. Day. I couldn't even think of food. Commercials for restaurants would ALWAYS send me running to the toilet to have my barf fest. Ordering food? It was the fucking worst thing you could ask me to do... the food on the menu would be the biggest trigger to my vomit. Eating? That was a no. I puked every damn thing I ate. I could only drink milk and mineral water, I could only eat BREAD and cheese. Not one fucking vegetable was tolerated. Not ONE.
That is no way to live.
I puked up until I fucking gave birth... I was pushing AND puking at the same time. It was as glorious as they show on tv.
I knew I had pre-eclampsia from around month 4. I was listed as "high risk" so I was constantly at the doctors getting check-ups. My biggest issue was protein in my urine, and my increasing blood pressure readings. I normally have really low blood pressure, but in the pregnancy my blood pressure would spike a little above normal.
In my last month of pregnancy, I gained 20 pounds in ONE WEEK... and that set off alarms for my doctor (she's the motherfucking shit). In total, I gained 60 pounds... not cool.
My little bean was measuring about two weeks ahead of schedule-- he was a big ol' baby. He was monitored three times a week the final month of my pregnancy because of my pre-eclampsia.
I would do urine tests every week (they are the fucking worst. You collect ALL of your piss for an entire day and keep it in your fridge. It's more annoying than it sounds) and blood tests sometimes twice a week.
My little dude was doing fine, I was the one fucking shit up... so my doctor decided to induce me at 37 weeks after seeing my liver enzyme levels charting way too high.
Now, I'm not someone who goes to the doctor, I never had health insurance growing up, so I was going into this blind as fuck. Sure, I studied this shit in college, but mammalian physiology wasn't my fucking thing. So being told my liver enzyme levels just made me shrug and say "Cool... so like, I'll be good after I get this baby out of me?" They assured me I would be.
So here we go, week 37, go time.
I went in Sunday night, and they did all of the inducing shit (so many hands in my vagina... so many objects in my vagina... why does no one tell you you're going to get so many people looking at and touching your vagina when you're going to have a baby? My fucking shyness went out the fucking door after the third nurse shoved her hand down there. Fuck it). Nothing was working. It was motherfucking Wednesday when the doctor finally said I was ready to go. I had only been feeling contractions for a few hours, but not bad ones. I only really started feeling pain when I was at a "6" dilation. They asked if I wanted an epidural, to which I agreed 'cause fuck it... I didn't want to know what vaginal tearing felt like. So they come in and do the epidural (I fucking feared this happening since I was in 6th grade)... I had to have the biggest nurse hold me down like I was a wild animal. Epidurals are gross... you feel that shit in your spine and they ask you to tell them when it's dead center-- really hard to do when all you want to do is squirm and cry.
After about an hour, I felt the pain getting far more intense. I finally asked the nurse checking my contractions if I was supposed to feel my contractions.
"You're at an 8... you're telling me you can feel them?!" I sat there and pointed out each contraction while she read them form the machine.
Turns out they fucked up my epidural... there was a "kink" in the line. SO.... here came epidural 2. In that case, it was fucking INSTANT when my legs went numb. It felt good.
Pushing time came around 8AM. I remember not feeling a fucking thing, I had to be told when to push. I pushed with all my might, and I could feel pressure in my vagina, but didn't think much. I just remember looking over at the clock and seeing it was 10AM.
Holy shit, I've been pushing for two hours?!
The doc told me she was going to give me some time to rest, she'd be back in an hour.
I wasn't tired, but my mom and husband were (my sister in law had left the room before I started pushing. I was mortified she was there because she was watching my naked ass getting poked and prodded all fucking night).
Pushing time part B came up and I pushed until 12pm, when my doc informed me my baby was "turtling" which is when they stick their head out and stick it back in. She said I had two choices: she was going to vacuum my baby out, which could lead to permanent damage to him, as well as multiple broken bones for him... or a c-section.
Who THE FUCK chooses a vacuum?? I didn't hesitate to agree to the c-section.
So they take me back and cut me up in an emergency c section where I was cracking jokes the entire time about how it felt like they were doing dishes in my torso. They pulled Baby out and to my surprise, I started crying.
So here's the baby, I do the three day recovery thing at the hospital and everyone's laughing.
Then on the third day, as I'm laughing with my favorite cousins and my aunt/uncle, I notice my ankles get HUGE-- they notice as well.
Nurses look concerned. I get blood work done. Shit goes south FAST.
As I'm getting ready to be discharged (I had been looking forward to it all day), a different doctor walks in looking very concerned and tells me I'm not going anywhere.
I was in the room with just my mom, since my husband and all of his family had left for dinner.
"Your lab work is very concerning. Your liver levels are in the 400's when they should be in the 10s. Your brain is swelling and you can fall into a coma any minute. We have to re-admit you and start emergency treatment now. We're changing you to a different room, don't worry, you baby will be able to stay with you," the doctor said.
That is the most shell-shocked I have felt in my life. I remember everything going silent and only being able to focus on the doctor.
BRAIN SWELLING?! COMA?! WHAT?!
It was all so bizarre because I had been feeling fine... just that weird swelling in my ankles.
Once the doctor left, I remember feeling the fucking heaviest, most enormous tears plop into my lap.
"What the hell is happening? Mom, I'm scared..." was all I could say before sobbing loudly.
My favorite nurses came into my room to help me walk over to my new room and they all looked SO SAD. They all liked me, they'd say I was a good patient because I was always so happy and funny... and now they looked like they too wanted to cry.
I went to my new room, had to get hooked up to all the shit they had just taken off (getting a fucking drip put in sucks on so many fucking levels... but not as much as getting the goddamned catheter shoved up your WhoHa), and the therapy began.
My room's temperature was dropped to something like 60 degrees and I still felt hot. They dimmed the lights and told me to sleep.
Me? Sleep? After being told I *might* slip into a coma? BITCH, NO.
I stayed awake watching so much fucking "Ridiculousness" and "The Jersey Shore," I can remember being disappointed thinking how shitty it was going to be that I was going to die having that shit be the last thing I ever watched on Earth.
I stayed at the hospital for an extra 2 days while they pumped me with magnesium sulfate for 36 hours. I was so fucking high the entire time, I remember it all with the coolest, saddest buzz.
I didn't improve until around hour 30, when the maximum amount of time I could be hooked up to that shit was 48 hours.
What killed me was seeing my husband's side of the family not take it as serious as it was.
The doctors had told me I had jumped from eclampsia to "HELLP Syndrome"... which meant nothing to me, but in one of the many hours of therapy, I googled it and scared myself shitless.
Everyone thought I was being dramatic, and that shit broke my heart. That fucked up, stupid fucking mentality that pregnancy and delivery is so easy pisses me the fuck off... and that's how my in-laws take it.
After this episode, I can honestly say my hostility toward the in-laws entered a new level.
I finally left the damn hospital a week after being admitted.
What followed was months worth of blood work and monitoring to make sure I didn't fall back into the swelling shit. Also battled around for a fucking gastroenterologist for my liver.
I was diagnosed with fatty liver and told I needed to return in August of 2019 for a check up to hopefully see some improvement.
Then June 2019 came around the corner and I found out baby number two was on its way.
Cue domestic violence.
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