Surviving HOSPITAL bedrest

Here are some tips for surviving a long-term hospital stay while pregnant. Some of these are more general, some are very specific, but my learning curve is your gain! :

1. Make friends with the nurses. This is the single best thing you can do for yourself. You will see the doctor for a few minutes a day, but the nurses are the ones who will re-fill your water, answer your questions and come to love and know your baby. They'll get you special menus, run to buy you candy at night, teach you tricks to relieve your perpetual discomfort, and advocate for you with the docs. Plus, they are full of juicy gossip about labor and delivery. So don't annoy them.

2. Along those lines, each time you get a new nurse, jot down their name and a few tidbits that you learn about them and their family. I also include something special they did for me. I am doing this for two reasons - one, so I'll know who to write cards to once this is all over (and be able to thank them SPECIFICALLY), and two, so when visitors are here I can introduce my nurse to them along with a conversation starter. For example, when the nurse comes in, I say, "So and so, this is Nora - she has been a labor and delivery nurse for 35 years! You should HEAR her stories!" and then it starts an enjoyable chat for all :) This sounds sooo dweeby, but it really has helped me establish relationships with my nurses. Refer to point 1. The nurses ARE. YOUR. LIFE.

3. Send your husband home. I know. Super sad. The first night Jason left to sleep at home, I cried and cried, but in the end, it is better for him to get a good rest (and give the needy dogs some TLC) so he is ready for whatever the night or day holds. Especially if your baby could literally be born at any second. There needs to be at least one of you in tip top shape, and I am sayin', it will NOT be you.

4. Wear your own clothes. As soon as they let you, get out of that hospital gown. Since the items of clothes I can still fit is slowly dwindling, I send Jason home with the previous day's clothes each night for him to wash and bring back (for example, I send him home with Sunday's outfit on Monday night, which he brings back on Tuesday). I felt 100x better after getting out of that gown.

5. Ask to get out of a labor and delivery bed. If you are told you will be there more than one night, ask if they can get you a different bed. The L&D beds are narrow and hard. The regular beds are squishy and wide so you can cuddle with your hubby. Our hospital also has egg crate mattress covers that my nurse gave me. This made ALL. THE. DIFFERENCE and got rid of a significant amount of rib pain and back discomfort for me.

6. Get those night meds. I have mentioned my little BFF Ambien. Before I got pregnant, I was like, "I am not going to let coffee touch my lips, never will I take a bath, I'll live only on veggies and tofu and I will CERTAINLY not allow ANY medications to enter my TEMPLE of a body." Noah (well, his little uterine home) had other plans. I tried everything I could to avoid the few medications I am on, but at the end of the day (or after several weeks of trying alternatives), I was done with the agony. If you are laying around all day, you WILL NOT sleep at night. And as the nurses will tell you, you NEED to sleep while you can. For me, lack-of-sleep was contributing to my contractions so it was also a health issue. And you better not tell my baby he can't have chicken strips. That does NOT go over well.

7. So they have these monitoring bands which are made of cloth and elastic, sort of like the belly bands you wear with your jeans when you first start popping out of them, but looser. These are so much more comfortable for monitoring than the velcro straps and easier/quicker to get on and off. I love my special band. And Noah does, too. He used to throw huge fits and run from the monitor (we think the sensors were just pressing on him and annoying him) so what was supposed to take an quick hour would be two-three hours of chasing him around. That has not been a problem since I switched to the belly band. I am told some ladies prefer the straps, but you never know until you try it once or twice.

8. Don't be a hoarder. There are women here in really, really sucky situations. Some are here for months, some have no support from the daddy, some have serious financial stress, and some have to check out against medical advice for various reasons. At the end of the day, bed rest in the hospital sucks for everyone. If people bring me goodies or magazines or activity books, I use them for a while (eat my fair share) and then pass them on. The nurses will take them to someone who REALLY needs a pick-me-up :)

9. Get yourself a routine. Early on, I realized that I needed to figure out a schedule that worked for me. When you get a new nurse, they will ask you how you like to do things and what your preferences are, and it helps to be able to tell them. I get up, tidy up my room (so my Russian housekeeper will continue to repeat to me daily what a good wife I must be - so bizarre), shower, do my makeup in my bed using my special table, eat, and then get monitored. This works for me. I like to do all this as soon as I wake up, mostly because I am paranoid that I'll be have an emergency and be carted off to deliver without my life in order. I have other little routines for the day, but it gives me some sort of constant in a very weird situation.

10. Olive oil. The air here is super dry. Dry to the point that my regular face lotion (which I have used for years) was giving me a rash and I was getting dry patches all over my skin. My sister brought me olive oil and I rub it into my face after my shower each day. It has helped immensely. I (or Jason) also rubs coconut oil on my stomach a couple times a day, but for the face, just straight olive oil without scents or anything is best.

11. Bring a little stand up mirror (or have someone buy one for you). You will need this to do your makeup lying down in bed. Some people might not care, but I am not an invalid, and I don't want a reputation as the resident antepartum hag. And I hope it goes without saying, but shower. Each day.

12. Get a stuffed animal. My Uncle Gary brought me a stuffed hippo that I named Meatloaf (because I spilled meatloaf on him the night I got him). He is much easier than a regular sized pillow to maneuver behind my neck and back or wherever I need extra support. He has a nice pot belly and I pretend he is Maddie when I fall alseep.

13. Bring pictures of your dogs. Or kids. My dogs are my kids, so I have pictures of them and it really is a mood booster when I miss them so badly I think I will bust out of this joint AMA.

I think that is all. I have a few hospital drama stories and a few horrifying/hilarious labor and delivery stories from my nurses, so I'll try to get those out in the next few days.

Dear Brad Womack,

You bore me. And this is from a woman confined to a hospital bed for 24 hours a day. Aaaaannnnddd still? You bore me.

Every season The Bachelor provides me with pathetic excitement accompanied by incredulousness that anyone would ever apply to the show and a grateful heart for not ever having to go to such ridiculous lengths to meet my husband.

I am not sure what about helicopter rides, trips to Fiji and filming tv spots have to do with REAL LIFE marriage, but I am pretty sure they don't tell those woman much about what type of husband Brad Womack will be, nor give him too much authentic information about the ladies and how they'll handle wife-dom.

My nurse and I were talking last night. We have an idea for a NEEEW show to replace The Bachelor.

It is called BED REST! (say it very dramatically in your head, please). (Disclaimer: This is my intellectual property so nobody better be stealin' my fame and fortune. My sister is an intellectual property Nazi and I will have her sue you. So make a good choice).

BED REST takes place in a hospital converted to a t.v. set. None of the women are actually sick or pregnant obviously, but the producers would have them all line up and down the hall in isolated rooms and pretend they are on bed rest for pregnancy. They would get all the same treatment that a regular woman gets on bed rest and Brad Womack would play the harried husband trying to meet all their needs. Every once in a while, the woman or Brad would get a special card (to replace the "date" card) called a FATE card, which would detail a complication in the pregnancy. Like, "The nurses can't find a vein anywhere in your arm!!" or "You can no longer reach your legs to shave them" or "The baby has shoved himself completely under your rib cage and you are in severe pain!" and then Brad Womack and the ladies would have to deal with the result of the Fate card just like in real life.

Who would the Bachelor choose if he had to judge the women based upon their patience, resolve, and kindness in the midst of pain and uncertainty (as opposed to their willingness to repel down a building or make out with him)? Would the ladies continue the show once they saw how he reacted to the stress of balancing a job, home responsibilities and a cooped up wife? Or would they dump him when he refused to go get them a Kit Kat bar? Hmmmm.....

You would get voted off each week in a c-section ceremony. Brad would call up each woman and say, "You are NOT cut!" - meaning the pregnancy isn't over. To the ones he dumps, he would say, "YOU. ARE. CUT!" and they would have to shuffle home in their hospital gowns.

The show would end after a couple months once he had narrowed the women down to the LEAST psycho and then he could ask her to marry him (or leave her abandoned at the c-section ceremony or whatever).

Now THAT is how entertainment is done, Brad Womack. 'Course half of the drama would be lost since the women would be isolated from each other... So maybe I shouldn't be so worried about my intellectual property, after all.

And I already know how it is all going to end in the real Bachelor, anyhow. Brad is going to forgo all women (yet again) and marry his therapist. Mark my words.