Well, today is my due date. Happy Maybe Birthday to Spencer. He's a boy - we found out in December when I had my ultrasound, so my belly has been male since then. He's been so kind to share his testosterone with me... I've developed acne and randomly occurring body hair. No labor developments as far as I can tell except maybe...
Last night I stayed up all night and read Dry, by Augusten Burroughs the sequel to Running With Scissors, which I mentioned the other day. It was brillliant. I read the whole book in about 3 hours. Couldn't put it down. I finished reading about 3-330am I think, and put my head down on the pillow.
Then, it happened. RAGING HEARTBURN.
Stinging, acidy fire, pulsing up and down my esophagus. It started off lightly sizzling while I was reading and I sort of ignored it - I get it a little at night sometimes and I'm tempted to think it's hunger. Usually dissipates when I go to sleep.
At approximately 4am, (30 minutes after I fell asleep from reading), I am nodding off when our amazing Brittany Spaniel, Mack, bursts off his chair in our room and flies down the stairs out into the backyard barking as if an army of intruders was stationed there. Simultaneously, I feel the burning fire in my gut establishing itself as a force...yummy berry-flavored Tums are chewed, I whine, and back to bed go I.
Not even two hours later , the fire in my organs re-ignites and I am awakened again. Somehow the Tums had been assimilated by the Borg of Heartburn and is now attacking with vigor. Guy is now in stirring mode, having been so rudely awakened earlier by the guardbeast, so he goes to get me the Tums and then proposes I take his cure-all - Baking Soda in water. I crab at him, concerned about safety of Baking Soda in pregnant women and chomp my Tums while lying there in semi-sleepy misery.
Oh, and have I mentioned my hands are alternately falling asleep and the splint I'm wearing on my right wrist is just taking up more space I don't have to spare? Thank you very much "fluid retention". I don't get big old ankles, but my fingers are almost always tingling and when I wake up it feels like someone broke all my fingers and reset them.
I fall back asleep practically sitting up in the bed. Guy is nearby, trying to comfort me.
Now it's about 7 or so, and what has now become heartFIRE makes me prop myself up in the bed. It BURNS and BURNS in my belly and chest and I feel like someone poured acid right down my gullet. It's unbelievable. I get up and Guy is there to tell me that he researched online and it's ok to take the baking soda which is already prepared in a little dixie cup on the dresser. I gulp it hungrily and climb back into bed. Guy puts on Howard Stern and gets in bed again to hold me. He's trying, bless his soul. I'm actually glad he falls asleep at 9pm and wakes up at like 530 in the morning - doesn't make me feel so bad that I've been waking him up since 4.
The rest of the morning I spend tossing and turning, delerious from partial dreams, baby belly shifting and twinges of a possible third or fourth attack from within. It's now 1145am. I can feel it down there, lurking. I have what feels like sugary rawness in the lining of my cheeks - like when you eat too many Sour Patch Kids or drink too much Kool Aid. I think it's from the Tums. OR it's the tracks left by heartburn regimens trying to dissolve me from the inside out.
I am a walking biological battleground and child growth/storage unit. Am I a Borg?
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