Dance me to the children who are asking to be born (Part 1)

Squeamish folks, look away now.

Because just seven months late, I'm finally writing the story of Kyla's birth. I choose to write this publicly because if I don't, I fear I may never write it at all. And I really want to have this somewhere, kept for posterity. Perhaps Kyla herself will read this years from now and be interested. Or horrified.

This has to come out in parts, because there is far too much to get down in one sitting, as as I recently lamented, my 'sittings' these days are brief and soporific. I also must write this before I forget the entire experience. The details are already fairly blurry. In fact, my husband accused me of getting bits wrong just days after the birth so who knows how much of this actually happened...

It's September 6th, and I'm 41 weeks pregnant. I go to my doctor for the routine 'isn't it getting a little late?'-check up. I pee in a cup and am strapped to the fetal heart rate monitor for the umpteenth time. Everything looks good, except, when the nurse comes in to take my blood pressure she tells me my diastolic is high - at 90 - which I'm lead to believe is taken fairly seriously at this stage of a pregnancy. The doctor comes in shortly thereafter, glances at my readings and tells me I'm free to go home.
"I'm sure you'll have had the baby by this time next week" she predicts cheerfully.
I'm half way out the door when I pluck up the courage to question the small matter of my bp.
"90? That's not right" she assures me, but nevertheless squints at the chicken scratch handwriting on my chart. Finally she calls the nurse back into the room.
"Yes, it's 90" the nurse responds defensively.
"You'd better write more clearly in future" my doctor scolds her, "I almost let Yvonne leave"

Apparently they can't send me home with elevated blood pressure at a week past my due date. So I'm instructed to make my way to the hospital, a few avenues over on First. I call Matt on the walk over, and tell him to bring the packed bag as "this could be it." I also call my mum in Scotland to give her the news, as I know she'd be anxious if she didn't hear from me for a while.

And just before arriving at NYU Medical I make one last pit stop, at a bagel store to load up on carbs. During my childbirth education classes, I was horrified to learn that once you go into labour in this country, you are not allowed to eat, or drink anything - ANYthing - until that baby is out of you. I'm convinced this is a peculiarly American rule, no doubt something to do with the crazy litigious nature of health care here. As a marathon runner (& a person with a modicum of common sense) it seems to me ludicrous that women are expected to put their body through that kind of endurance event without fuel. So I gobble down a bagel (later to seriously regret not having made that two or three,) knock back a Gatorade and head towards the hospital.

As I cross the street I am stuck by the bizarre realisation that this could be the last time I'll ever walk anywhere, and not be a mother.

Catching Up

I'm once again attempting to finish up an entry before I crash for the night. When Kyla drops off at about 8pm each day, I have about an hour and a half to squeeze in, - well all the things I have to get done when I'm not at work and not feeding/ changing/ bathing/ consoling/ entertaining/ being entertained by a newly-crawling 7-month old, before the weight of my eyelids forces me to bed. Frankly (& obviously), blog posting hasn't made it onto the priority list lately.

I feel like I'm living in two running worlds at the moment. In the alternate reality of my fantasy, I'm running 40mpw at at a strong 8.5mm pace. But in real reality it's more like 15-20 at an awkward 9.5 or 10 minute pace. At least my butt issues cleared themselves up, and I am running relatively pain-free. Shouldn't complain. I know my fantasy reality will become real reality at some time soon enough. I finally cashed in my guaranteed entry to the NY marathon, and can already feel the motivation of fear gnawing away at the back of my mind.

Looking over a calendar today, I set myself the goal of being up to 30mpw by the beginning of June. That will give me a good enough base for 5 months of more focused training.

I was reminded this morning of how much I seriously dislike running in heat and humidity, and wondered why this didn't stop me volunteering for another sweltering summer of marathon training. But it also spurred me on to formalize my exciting spring '08 marathon plan. More on that later...

Wow, my fingers out-raced my eyelids tonight. I can't believe I'm actually about to hit 'publish' :)

Idling over

One of the (many) great things about watching American Idol of a Tuesday and Wednesday evening is that I can get so much done. During the epic commercial breaks of a single program I can: feed Kyla, put her to bed, make dinner, eat dinner, hoover the floors and write a blog post – and not miss a second of singing or judge in-fighting.

So I took 10 whole days off running. This is way more than I ordinarily would, but I’ve been so incredibly, exhaustingly, ridiculously busy that it suited to me to justify it in the name of ‘healing.’ My run home from work tonight went well; I felt just the faintest hint of butt ache. Let’s hope I’ve seen the back of that particular new problem.

The sad thing about this setback is not only did I miss the More half and the Scotland 10K, but I’ll probably have to skip the Brooklyn Half too. I received an NYRR letter in the mail today reminding me I have less than a month to exploit my guaranteed entry into the NYC marathon. Time to set my sights on some other shorter race before then...

post script: I just realized Chris Sligh must have been voted off last week! What the hell?!!!