On the outside

Yesterday I went to visit a friend who at twenty weeks was put on hospital bed rest for the remainder of the pregnancy due to "incompetent cervix". She had the cerclage and is now just hanging out on her back in a hospital bed until March. Guess who this friend is? Yes. It is my former nemesis.

I can't even imagine being in a hospital bed for four months. As I drove home, I thought about what it would have been like had this happened to me (and it could have - why not?). I thought first about the bill - a $7000 yearly out of pocket limit, x 2 because of course it spans two years, so a nice whopping $14,000 bill at the end of it. Then not being able to manage my home - all the pets, the maintenance, the fear of the house or the car being broken into in my long absence. The food going rotten. The inability to keep up with my various jobs. The difficulty in doing all the tax work I need to do in the beginning of the year. In other words, a nightmare! When I think about how easily something like this could have happened to me in my pregnancy, and what a total life-altering disaster it would have been, it makes me cringe.

Fortunately she has her husband to keep the home fires burning, but when I asked her how he was doing she said she thought she was doing better than he was. She, by the way, is doing fine, because she's one of these people who just doesn't let things get to her. I think I would probably do this - drop into an intense depression after the initial shock, then rally a bit and try to make my time there festive, then towards the end get fed up and depressed again.

I will make an effort to visit every week. I know how important that must be, to have visitors under those circumstances, especially after the first couple of weeks when people get caught up in their own lives again. Today I am having my first day out sans Bumpus in what seems like eons. I am going to see a dumb movie and then to a Christmas party with some girlfriends. Can't wait for a little Mommy time.

Pregnancy and birth is just so fraught. Sometimes I think you have to be nuts to want to do this, with all the potential for disaster at every turn, and a guaranteed dramatic, physically challenging end. For today I'll celebrate that I was just crazy enough to do this, and that The Bumpus is happily and safely OUTSIDE my body!