It's getting redundant to apologize for blogging being so light, but we are sorry -- we miss the interaction here. Darwin is swamped with taking up my slack, and as for me, it seems that even a mild few hours of being up can now raise my blood pressure to above the 140/90 limit, whereas if I stay pretty much horizontal I'm in completely normal territory. I have to trust everyone who takes my blood pressure on this; I literally cannot feel a difference between good and dangerous blood pressures unless I have the indicator of swelling, and now it seems that my hands can swell and pinch my carpal tunnel nerve (making typing a nip tricky) without my blood pressure necessarily being elevated. The good news is that I seem only to have gestational hypertension without indications of preecclampsia. The very good news is that it seems to be controllable with bed rest and tons of water and protein. The mildly inconvenient news is that I probably need to be mostly down until baby is born, I'm due in 18 days, and I have no history of going into labor early.
If all my posts lately have seemed fixated on pregnancy and blood pressure and whatnot, it's because this is now what consumes my days. I'm in good company: the Hail Mary starts off with pregnancy (I'm reading "full of grace" as a pregnancy reference these days; Jesus is grace, and if Mary felt anything like me, she was certainly full of him) and ends with death. It's a whole lifetime packed into one prayer. I feel like I've spent whole lifetimes in bed with this pregnancy, and I guess if my blood pressure gets too high there could be fatal consequences for me or baby, so the prayer is very apropos right now.
I have to emphasize what a minor cross this is to carry. It falls much harder on Darwin and the kids, who need to keep the house running, than it does on me. I have to stay in bed -- woe! When I consider the fate of those in North Korea, or mothers giving birth in the Philippines after the hurricane, or of those who don't have shelter from the cold, I can hardly complain. But time does weigh heavily on my (numbish) hands. I don't feel much like reading these days, even with hours to spare. I spend much of the day refreshing Facebook and clicking around blogs because I want some kind of connection with the outside world, and I say my Liturgy of the Hours because it helps pace the time.
But now I want to combine these two into something more productive. Let me spend this time in bed praying for you! If you have any prayer intentions, leave them in the comments, or send me a note at darwincatholic(at)gmail.com, and I'll remember them in my bed rest prayers.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
15 hours ago
15 comments:
I hope that maybe you can go into labor early... I ended up having my baby on Thanksgiving, the day before my due date and about 38 hours after my water broke in the middle of the night! I wouldn't recommend that particular process, but it was a good reminder to me that every pregnancy and labor follows its own path. Thankfully I have a calm and experienced midwife, and was still able to have a safe and healthy delivery at home.
I'll keep you and this new baby Darwin in prayer, as well as Mr. D and your kids. If you could pray for me and for my family, especially as I recover from childbirth and our family finds a new rhythm with our new baby girl added to the mix. Thanks!
Congratulations, Amber, and hooray for a little girl! I dearly hope I get one of these easy labors, but this pregnancy has been different enough from the others that I don't know what to expect any more. And I'm glad you didn't have to go to the hospital -- that's also my prayer, that I can stay peacefully at home.
I hope you have some good novels on hand for all this enforced rest time!
I'd love it if you could keep my marriage and family in your prayers.
Thank you.
I'll keep you in my prayers for healthy speedy delivery. Please pray for my marriage and family as well!
HannahG
Thank you, Mrs. D. We're in some very stressful family situations so I would appreciate your prayers for peace and healing in that realm, and also for my persistent loneliness and sadness at being away from my city and community. Praying for you too.
Amber, Kate, HannahG, Pentimento, you're my intentions for the night shift this evening.
Thanks for offering to pray for us! Could you please pray for my family, too?
I will pray for you and yours, also.
What a beautiful thing to do! I can relate to the difficult pregnancy, though my circumstances were different in detail; I'll be praying for you, too. His adorable plump little self is now six months on the outside of me. He is the delight of our whole family - making up, I hope, for the nine months of near-motherlessness endured by the five older children. Once you see that tiny scrunched-up little newborn face and nuzzle that sweet little head, it's easy again to remember that the misery was all really worth it!
I'll warn you about one thing, though: I felt SO GOOD immediately after he was born - compared to the sufferings of pregnancy - and I was SO EAGER to get my life back and get out of bed, that I chronically overextended myself for the first two months…and made a correspondingly s-l-o-w and p-a-i-n-f-u-l recovery. So don't do that! REST!
Sorry for all the caps.
Anyway, you offered to pray…and I would love it if you could. For my stamina, please. And for this cute baby to return to the good sleeping habits he had two months ago. Thank you, sister!
I've been following this blog for years through my reader, and I hardly ever comment, but for prayer requests I'll come out of the woodwork.
I'm pregnant with our first child, due in March, and we're just beginning to hunt for a house. We'd love to be settled before our baby arrives and my mother shows up to help us out. We're currently in a small single-bedroom apartment, and would much rather have someplace with a second bedroom so Mom can stay with us and not at a hotel. Please pray for us in our search, that God guides us to the right place. We're asking for the particular intercession of St Joseph.
Please pray for my younger siblings who are still at home, especially my sister. She's in her last years of high school and going through a rough space emotionally; she and my mom are often at odds. My brothers need prayers for their perseverance in work and school, particularly the elder, who struggles with clinical depression and seems to be often tripping himself up as he tries to work towards independence.
And not to go into much more detail, I have several dear friends who could use prayers. Please keep Rachel, Natalie, Meredith, Margaret, and Tracie in your prayers.
I have been praying for you and baby Darwin in your last days of pregnancy, and will add the rest of the family in as well. Thanks so much for this offer.
Praying for you too! I think it was Fulton Sheen that said do not waste your suffering on yourself. So now you have to offer your suffering for my personal intention ;-) Let me know if you need a meal or two.
Please pray for my friend, Tina, expecting her third baby any day now, and her husband, Anthony, who has just been hospitalized for a serious bipolar episode.
Finicky Cat, you give me hope that the constant stream of videos here will not permanently damage anyone.
I offered all these intentions up today, and will keep them in my prayers in the next few weeks.
Would you pray for a calm heart and clear mind for my highly-stressed eldest, who is desperately trying to finish too many school projects AND prepare to fly out for a job interview on the other end of the country?
And also for me. We've had a seemingly endless stream of hard knocks, and I am stretched far too thin, am working far too hard, and there is no end in sight. Each time I rev up to a new level of work, so do the crises and unexpected expenses.
THANK YOU for using your time so generously!
Julia, you're on my list for this evening.
What a lovely gesture, Mrs. Darwin, thank you. Sometimes I feel selfish asking God so persistently when there are so many others with serious infertility issues, but we'd love so much to have another baby before that window of opportunity closes. We have 3 girls 16, 11, and 5, so really, I can't complain... In the meantime, we will be praying for you and your family.
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