Bed Rest from Hell

This talk about going on hospital bed rest from 25w has got me in a spin. I really don’t want to go to hospital. Obviously I will do what it takes to save my baby/babies, but oh lord, hospital bed rest sucks. It sucks unbelievably badly.

This past Dec/Jan I spent 5 weeks on hospital bed rest. Christmas and New Year. It was horrible. Boooooooooring. Picture me sitting forlornly on my bed, staring longingly at the revelers below on New Years Eve, with my two sips of wine smuggled in by my mother in a plastic cup. But the boredom and missing the outside world wasn’t nearly as bad as this stuff:

Firstly, you have to share a bathroom with potentially three other people. Luckily in my stay I only shared it with one person for about a week. It was horrible. I don’t share a bathroom with any one, not even my husband. I like my bathroom sparkling clean, with only my own germs and very private. I cannot make a number 2 if I know someone is waiting to use the bathroom. I don’t perform well under pressure.

Secondly, pg women pee quite a lot. This means that the bathroom door gets opened and closed, the light goes on and off about 4 times a night.

When you are pg, you don’t sleep that well. With the constant pee’ing, doors opening and closing, neighbors snoring or farting in their sleep, nurses talking loudly, emergency births etc, sleep is scarce in hospital. And you need your sleep. Plus every time you toss and turn your hospital bed squeaks, and the plastic covering over your luxurious mattress creaks. You wake yourself up with the noise.

Thirdly, night staff have a sadistic streak in that they think waking you up at 5am to check your temp and blood pressure is good sports after a long boring night shift. This is followed by your tea at 5:30. Then breakfast at 8am. Which is a fucking long time to wait from when you have woken up. And pg women are HUNGRY.

Then there is the food. The glorious food that is hospital fare. The ante-natal observation unit at my hospital is in the maternity ward. The rest of the hospital is basically a day ward or short stays. This means that the longest stay by a normal person (i.e. giving birth or over-nighters) is four days. There are therefore four meals on the menu. They are (in no particular order) macaroni cheese, a dish with mince of some sorts, a chicken dish in its various disguises and beef stroganoff. Then there are the lunches which are equally tasty and varied. Eventually I was allowed to make up my own meals, but nothing fancy and nothing like home. There was no pesto, sun dried tomatoes, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, fresh pasta, chilies etc, in fact there was nothing remotely tasty. It was all fried this, battered that, with fattening creamy sauces. Oh lord I was sick of that food. Plus the food is all Halaal because it is run by Moslem women. Not my kind of food. Plus who the hell wants to eat dinner at 5pm??

And yet, sadly, you live for your meal times. It is your one excitement in the long boring monotony of your day. Your world becomes so small that any disturbance to your routine is most upsetting. Dinner slightly late is a huge catastrophe, and a visitor over lunch throws your whole day out.

But my biggest pain in the ass of being on bed rest is having to listen to other people’s TV. It drives me fucking insane. I hate TV, I don’t watch it at home and the noise of the TV works terribly on my nerves. So now imagine being forced to listen to someone else’s TV blaring from 5:30 in the morning till midnight. Soaps, all day, only broken by cartoons. Cartoons for fucks sake. This one woman used to watch the Teletubbies!!!!!!!!!! I nearly lost it. I swear this is the part that freaks me out the most. I am not sure if I can bare the TV, I don’t know. I might have to shoot the screen out. Or the patient actually. What a brilliant idea!!

I know it is best for me, but oh lordy, I don’t want to spend 12 weeks in hospital, boo hoo. Not with the TV, please not the TV……

(note to my fellow bed resters at the same hospital, T and J, you are welcome to nod your head, sympathize and share war stories. )

Comments

[Janine]

Aaaah yes, she nodded, remembering her time on bed rest fondly: the woman in the adjacent room who snored like a drunkard, the inane conversation of the nurses who burst into your room at any given moment, the squeaking bathroom door, the urine samples, the ctg machine and the jelly on your tummy four times a day, the tv, the tv, the tv.
Best advice: learn to sew, knit, crochet. I managed to kill hours doing that and it blocked out the horror that was pointless conversation.

[eM]

T, it sounds horrid. I remember after the accident my dad used to sneak me in Sunday braai leftovers. I promise this time to bring you a colourful big take out from Kauai at least once a week. Maybe we can even track Sana down and get some butternut soup and homemade bread.

[Tanya]

War Story:

Remember when J was wheeled in next to me. She was quite perky and appeared to have a brain which was a big bonus so I was very excited to have a new roommate. But aah the innoncence. After a few hours she told me quite confidently that she would be going home at the weekend. Being a veteran of the ante-natel ward I did not even think of curbing my acid tongue and just looked at her and blurted out "nobody ever leaves". Felt really bad after that but for the record she did not go home that weekend (I really hate being right - really I do).

[Janine]

Rolling with laughter now. Image of naive first-timer being wheeled in, humming happily to herself and perkily chatting on phone to family and friends about how she'll be out by the evening. T's comment has stuck with me all this time, too. In fact, it was in the birth story I wrote for a magazine and I called it the sinister prediction of the veteran bedrester.

[Julie]

Ahahahahaha, brilliant.

[Danae]

Start preparing now. You'll need a good set of earplugs, lots of edible snacks, and a laptop. (because we'll need our Tertia fix, after all) I can't come up with a solution to the bathroom problem. Maybe bring a portable radio and play it loudly while you're in there.

It DOES sound like torture, but so worth it! Hang in there.

[T]

Tertia - I highly, highly recommend that you order yourself a pair of Bose acoustic noise reducing headphones. They are truly a Miracle of Science, and while you may still hear some background buzzes of televisions and conversations, their white noise really does mute a good portion of whatever it is your neighbors are doing. The cost might seem daunting at first, but believe me - they are worth every cent.

[Julia]

I remember beginning to lose it after just a few days. But I'm still hoping you'll enjoy the pleasure of the hospitals finest nonetheless.

Earplugs are a must.

[Moxie]

How can they think this is healthier for you and the baby? Why not just have you do bedrest at home, where at least you can sleep? Assholes.

[sheryl mccumbee]

I was on bed rest from Jan 1st to Feb 3rd at hjome and since I would not listen to the doctor and actaully lay on the couch and not do anything.( I had a 4 year old and a 5 year old ) I was put in the hospital on Feb 3rd, 2 centimeters dialated. My due date was not until April 10th- I lucked out though, I shared a room with a girl for one night and she had body lice and they sat me in the waiting room for 6 hours. My husband had such a fit that i was not laying down that I was given my own room for free. I was in the hospital for about 3 weeks. When I left all the nurses had bets going on when I wold return. I actually made it until March 23rd - I think it was all the steriods that made him stay in. When He was born 3 and a half weeks early he was 8lbs 10 oz. Thank god I did not carry him full term:)

[Alli]

Tertia, I think the solution is pretty obvious.

You obviously know a hell a of a lot more than your RE, so you need to (in the next three months or so), sit your doctoring exams, get your house registered as Dr Tertia's Home for Incurably Caustic Pregnant Women on Bedrest, hire a nurse or two, and you're in business!

[Alli]

Tertia, I think the solution is pretty obvious.

You obviously know a hell a of a lot more than your RE, so you need to (in the next three months or so), sit your doctoring exams, get your house registered as Dr Tertia's Home for Incurably Caustic Pregnant Women on Bedrest, hire a nurse or two, and you're in business!

[RainbowW]

i spent a week in the hospital once with acute dehydration. i'd had my tonsils removed a week before and was unable to drink anything. when i got to the ER my by was 120/80 and my pulse was 135. if you don't know, that's stroke territory.

so in the emergency room they hooked me up to the line and started pumping me full of Lactated Ringers (a saline solution, basically). 3L of this stuff in my arm in just an hour and a half (ballistic drip, they called it) and not a blip on the urine scale. i hadn't pissed in four days.

the only bed in the entire full-service hospital they could find for me was on the neurosurgery service, so i'm in this ward with people who've just had discs removed, tumors attacked, and who were generally swaddled in bandages looking like giant Q-tips.

and i had the same experience everyone else does. bad food, no sleep, etc etc etc. the very nice nurse even told me, "hon, nobody gets any sleep in hospitals."

i can only be thankful that my wife's second hospital stay, where we were moved from L&D to antenatal and back to L&D four times (before finally going to the OR) was mercifully short. only a week.

[Ellen]

I was in the hospital ICU for pneumonia once for nine days. I HATED that plastic covering on the mattresses. It crunched constantly and made me wake up gross and sweaty.

[Mia]

Bed rest actually used to sound kind of fun to me. "Kick back, have food delivered right to my bed and watch TV all day??" Sounds great - where do I sign up?

That was before I had a hospital stay of 5 days. Since it began with an emergency room visit, the only room they had available was in the Pediatric Ward - because I am a short woman, they saved the few "regular" beds left for taller adults!

Yeah. That would be 5 (five) days sharing a room with a kid of unknown illness (he was actually cool - his family however, was wacked), plus all of the other kids roaming the halls, looking in each room out of curiosity and did I mention the clowns??? Yes, there were clowns one day.

Invest in a white-noise machine, bring lots of books and beg/cajole any and all of your friends to visit on a regularly scheduled, rotating basis.
Good luck!

[Sheena]

ha ha aha aha ahahahahahahahhhhhhhhhhaaaaaa!!!! This is exactly what I used to feel, think, do in hostipal! Oh no, I really hope u can stay at home instead (they let me go go home after 6 wks of nothingness in anti-natal ward. But then all you wanna do is get back there coz every slight spotting is "a sign") Good luck T, my friend of laughter!

[Laura]

Tertia,
You are right. Bedrest sucks. But I was willing to do it for however long I needed to. Mine was STRICT bedrest. Upside down in Trendelenberg position to take all pressure off cervix. And NO bathroom privileges. None. Nada. Zilch. Have you ever gone #2 in a bedpan. Yuch. But mine was shortlived. Only a week and I PPROM.
But I agree, bedrest sucks.
Hope you get to be there for the whole 15 weeks so you get some healthy TERM babies!!
Best of luck as ALWAYS!