We be Parents

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all.  Here is Yenari’s 16 week belly shot, taken last Sunday before going for a tasty meal at Jeff and Sarah’s house:

 

16 week belly shot

I would have posted it earlier if a computer virus hadn’t reaked havoc with our computer (all resolved now, thankfully).  In human health news, Yenari’s tailbone is now at the 93% level, so a big improvement over last week.  Now its not really preventing her from doing everyday things, but she gets a little reminder everytime she sits down.  The real test for her was a three day stretch of work this week – three days in a row was tough for her even when she in perfect health, so doing it while pregnant with remnants of back pain and some fresh tailbone pain looked quite daunting, but she made it through just fine and is back into the swing of things.

After a couple days of serious pain, Yenari’s tailbone pain has improved by 76%.  She was in good enough shape to work yesterday and today, so things are heading in the right direction…here’s hoping that the last 24% will be gone soon!

On Tuesday afternoon around 5 o’clock, Yenari was getting ready for her work holiday party and started having some piercing pain whenever she sat down, stood up, or did just about anything that involved movement.  She felt like her tailbone was falling off and that it had broken off.  Nurses measure pain on a scale of zero to ten, ten being the most painful thing you can imagine, and yup – she was rating this pain as a ten out of ten.  Now, of course we realized that this pain scale will likely be recalibrated after she experiences labor pain, but for now, this is as bad as pain gets.

She survived the holiday party, but as the night went on it got worse and worse.  Even a simple thing like getting in and out of the car turned into a painfully complex and slow process.  When we got home, we did some searching about tailbone pain and pregnancy and found numerous reports about people having problems – most of them as a result of childbirth when the tailbone actually breaks, but some people were complaining about pain during pregnancy that lasted until they gave birth!

She got into bed and actually did get some sleep, but she woke up several times in the middle of the night yelling out in pain.  Yesterday morning she woke up early and called the doctor, and they said that there isn’t much that they can do, but that if we were worried about the health of the baby that we could come in and they’d make time between the other appointments.  We went to the OB doctor and she examined Yenari – she did a full exam and confirmed that the tailbone was the problem and that there isn’t really any treatment except for Tylenol – Yenari isn’t really down with taking medicine while pregnant, so she’s bearing the pain without any help.

The doctor then did a  quick ultrasound – maybe only a minute or so – to make sure that everything was ok.  The baby was moving around, the heart was beating, and the doctor said that everything looked perfect – we were both very relieved.  Sadly they didn’t give us a picture of this ultrasound, so there’s nothing to share (come on, even Alden got a photo from his ultrasound).  The doctor said that hopefully the tailbone was injured and if so, it is likely to heal in a few days or weeks, but in the worst case it could last for a lot longer.

Yenari called in sick to work yesterday and was off today anyway, so she’s been taking it easy and learning some tricks on how to get out of bed, sit down (though she tries to avoid sitting whenever possible), sew while standing up (yup, there’s no stopping the sewing sweatshop in this house), and how to get into a car without screaming.   Last night, as we were driving from store to store trying to find a cushion that would help her sit more comfortably (no luck in finding one, however) she started in the front seat leaning forward to shift her weight off her butt, but after a stop or two decided that it was better to lie down in the back seat of the car.

Her tailbone still feels bad now, but it feels better than it did yesterday, so we’re hoping that she’ll be in the ‘lucky’ crowd that only suffers through this for a few days.  Wish her luck!