At this point of my hospital stay I have gotten used to missing out on a lot of events that I was supposed to attend. This latest one being the Passover Seder, and it is probably the first time I have ever missed going in my whole life. Usually at my family's Seder, we read the story of Passover about how the Israelites were freed from slavery in ancient Egypt. Then, we talk about our own lives and how over this past year we were "freed" from something ourselves. Last year for instance, my husband was very excited to speak about how he was finally free from school since he had just graduated from Pepperdine University with an MBA. This year for me, in less than a month I will soon be free from my hospital bed and allowed to actually leave the four walls of this room which have become my world over the course of four months. But as I near the end of my pregnancy, even though it feels really good to be so close to going home, these next couple of weeks will not be too easy on my body. I have gained 50 pounds so far and with my limited mobility of being on bed rest, it has gotten extremely hard to walk back and forth to the bathroom since I feel out of breath and exhausted. While lying in bed, if I need to switch positions, just turning from one side to the other feels like I am trying to complete a marathon. I have a special bar above my bed which helps me move around by using my upper body since I basically don't have functioning abs at this point. To help with my motivation, I have hung baby clothes on this bar so that I am always keeping my eye on the prize no matter how difficult it gets (I have to give credit to one of the Moms from my bed rest Facebook group who gave me this creative idea). At this point, my main concern is just getting home and starting to take care of two newborns with this altered body. By then, I will not only be recovering from my muscle atrophy and fatigue, but also the c-section surgery. Regardless of how uncomfortable it is being enslaved in a body that has been put through so much, I will finally get the freedom to be a mother which I have constantly been longing for.
Even though I am in a lot of pain and discomfort right now, it helps me so much to flashback to a time where I gained another huge sense of freedom when my infertility issues were finally solved. It really felt like my husband and I had a huge loss of control with trying to get pregnant for two years. Especially when it seemed like everyone else around us automatically got the privilege to create human life without complications. We were slaves to alternative treatments and drugs with constant appointments to our reproductive endocrinologist and acupuncturist. Every time there was a failed attempt to get pregnant, it was so devastating and difficult to start all over again with a new plan of action. You try so hard to stay positive but yet you don't want to get your hopes up too much just in case it wasn't meant to be. At last year's Passover Seder, I could not help but think about my own "bondage" to these fertility drugs and really prayed that this "affliction" would soon be over. Luckily, all of my prayers were answered four months later when we finally got good news that there was not only one embryo but two!
So for now, I am just going suck up the pain and keep myself laser focused on what I came here to do. I have already endured two years with the infertility problems and now almost four months of strict hospital bed rest. I can certainly last a few more weeks if it means that all of my dreams will come true of having a family of my own. "Free! Oh, what a word!"
*The song "Free" is from the 1962 Broadway musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forumwith music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The character Pseudolus is a Roman slave who wants nothing more than to be free and agrees to help his master Hero find love in exchange for his freedom. In the song, Pseudolus is fantasizing about what it will actually be like once he is free and starts talking about all of things he will get to do. I have already romanced this idea in a previous blog post but now with the reality so close, I have taken it a step further and started a to-do list of important things to get done once the babies are born (call the health insurance, get the car seats installed into the car, schedule the first pediatrician appointment, etc). It will be so strange to be back in society where I am not constantly connected to a monitor and watched like a hawk to ensure that I am staying in bed. This freedom thing will become very real when all of the things in my room get packed up and then I am getting wheeled into the operating room to start my new life as a mother of twins.
My bar gets me out of bed and doubles as a rack for baby clothes!