A Fart on the Chart

Yesterday morning when I woke up, I was all, "Ugggghhhhhh" and "Urrrrrrrrghh" and "Blaaaaaahhhh." I seriously could not move more than a few steps before my heart would start to pound out of my chest and I'd be gasping for breath as if I were suffocating. My peripheral vision would blacken like I was going to pass out, and I would get lightheaded. Curtis had already gone to work, so I moved through my usual morning routine this way - getting the kids and myself fed and dressed, tending to our ridiculous animal menagerie, starting a load of laundry. It was all punctuated with me having to sit down every two minutes or less. It sucked.

By the time I came home from taking Colin from school, I couldn't even make it up the eight steps from the garage to the main floor. I had to sit until I was physically able to climb up the rest of the way. So I did the unthinkable: I called my doctor.

This is a really uncommon occurrence for me, y'all. I hate going to the doctor unnecessarily; I think it stems from my childhood when I felt like I was at the doctor all the time for one reason or another. (The last time I was really sick, I stayed at home for two days with a 105-degree fever and a raging strep infection before grudgingly consenting to be dragged to the Urgent Care clinic.) So now that I'm an adult and can actually choose when I go ... well, I never go. Except when I'm pregnant. Or dying. And yesterday I was thinking that maybe both of those criteria applied.

As I thought, they wanted me to come in. So I did. And after they checked me out at the doctor's office, they sent me to the hospital, up to the labor and delivery floor to monitor the baby. "The baby's fine!" I wanted to say. "I'm the one who's all jacked up!" But when you're pregnant, the one in utero is the one who takes top priority. So labor and delivery it was.

I got into one of those stupid flimsy backless gowns. They took a urine sample. They started an IV. They tested my glucose. But as unpleasant as all that was, there was one awesome surprise. One of the nurses came in (shoutout to Crystal!) and was like, "I know you!"

I was thinking oh Lord, am I supposed to know her? Because I don't think I do. She doesn't look familiar at all. Has she introduced herself to me at one of my Zumba classes, and I'm such a flake that I don't even remember? Should I pretend like I know her too?


And then she said, "You're the 'Fighting off Frumpy' blogger!"

Y'all? I just about fell off my little hospital bed. Someone knew me. Exclusively from my blog. It was awesome. Except for, you know, the meeting-her-while-half-naked part.

I so hope she's on duty when I actually deliver. Maybe she can hook me up with a celebrity birthing suite a la Beyonce.

... Or, you know, a hospital mug full of ice water or something.

Anyway, with all the monitoring, there was a lot of sitting around. Curtis had the kids and they were getting restless, so he took them home and fed them before finding someone to watch them for an hour or so (thanks Erica!). So I was alone in the little room a lot of the time. I watched my baby boy's heart beating away on the monitor, and watched my intermittent contractions register. Every time Corbin would move, I would hear it, and it would register as a little "blip" on the printout.

And then? I farted.

And I could hear it on the monitor, just like Corbin's movements. Frrrrrrp. Frrrrrrrrrrrrp.

And I was all, OMG did that just register on that paper? Is there a printout of my fart? Are the nurses going to look at it and be like, "Tee hee, did you see this? She must have farted right here."

I've never had documentation of a fart. Evidence in the form of a lingering odor, perhaps - but never an actual, tangible printout of the deed. I'm surprised the little squiggly lines on the paper didn't spell out "FART."

It's bad enough that passing gas in private is usually a surefire way to get someone to come in. I can personally attest to this phenomenon: in my early twenties, I worked stocking the freezer section of a grocery store at night. I'd be in there at 3 o'clock in the morning and not see another soul for an hour or more at a time - until I had to slip out a little somethin' somethin'. And then inevitably, it would be like a beacon calling everyone within a ten-aisle radius to suddenly come over to my section.

Anyway, when Curtis joined me at the hospital, I told him about it. And he was like, "I MUST see this printout." He was poring over it, looking for "the incident," when I started laughing so hard I couldn't stop, and the printout of that was all over the place, and then my monitoring belt nearly slipped off my belly. Oops.

Fun times in labor & delivery.

(And now Crystal is probably gonna see my scheduled induction on the charts and make SURE she takes that day off.)

They didn't find anything wrong. I guess that's a good thing, although I wish I would've known what the hell caused me to feel that way. And today I feel a little better - still exhausted, but that's normal when you're twelve hundred months pregnant and the size of a barn.

I've got an ultrasound scheduled for this afternoon to peep out how big Corbin is, and after that I see the doctor. Hopefully he'll be like, "Let's just get this mammoth kid out of there today!"

Hey, a girl can hope, right?