Week 26

I’m trying to be very good and stay horizontal or just propped on one side as much as possible. According to my OB and research, a compliant patient on home bed rest is just as good as hospital bed rest so I’m trying to avoid an extended hospital stay by following doctor orders. I can tell that inactivity is taking a toll; either that or the babies are sapping my energy. I’m pretty tired each time I get up out of bed or off the couch and I have abdominal tightening. I don’t know if it is really contractions or Braxton-Hicks (false labor) or what is going on but it is scary enough to make me scurry (or waddle to be more precise) right back to bed. I’m fine once I lay down again so that is the good news. I have another sonogram next Tuesday with my perinatologist and they will so all the same tests as last week. Hopefully everything has stayed the same and they will just tell me to keep doing what I’ve been doing. As painful and tiresome as bed rest can be I know every bite, glass of water and day counts as what is best for the babies.

Of course my goal of 37 weeks seems totally absurd but absurdity is the name of the game these days especially when it comes to heartburn.

My nemesis on bed rest has been heartburn. The amount of water/food I have to consume paired with staying mostly horizontal (not to mention my organs getting pushed up) makes for terrible heartburn. Sometime I wake up in middle of the night dry heaving from the burning. For some reason, this seems to happen more frequently when Rich is around. I mean, a girl can’t help being a little dramatic to remind her husband how uncomfortable this whole process can be.

Nothing seemed to help, including Rx medications, until some friends of Papa and Bambi in Wisconsin sent a special gift of Eastern medicine. My heartburn is helped by these little Chinese candies made of haw, sugar and water.

I was eating them like candy (because they are!) and then I thought I should probably look into this a little further. This is what I found out:

Haw, or hawthorn fruit promotes digestion, removes stagnated food, activates the flow of qi, promotes blood circulation, removes blood stasis, and expels worms.

I don’t have any worms and if I did, I don’t anymore and the rest of that seemed pretty good so I eat haw candy after every meal. Who knew a little candy is better than a prescription.

Speaking of creepy crawly things, we have a slug problem in the garden. I like to think of them as snails. This is what they have done to my plants.

So my plan is to set up a little snail bar next to the plants and get the snails so drunk they fall into their drink and drown. In other words, put out cups of beer and hope there are dead slugs in there in the morning. Isaac went to the gas station and bought the beer that he thought slugs would like most- Budweiser- so we will see how successfully he selected the beer by the number of slugs in the morning.

I haven’t totally lost my mind; I’ve had a few people say this might help. But for back up, my dad did spray with Slug-O but the whole tricking the slugs into getting drunk seems much more interesting and I need all the entertainment I can get these days.