Me being grouchy...

Warning: This is going to be a grouchy post.

Before you read this I want everyone to know how incredibly grateful I am to be in the situation I am now in. I wouldn’t change this for the world. I am so happy to have these two babies growing inside me and would go into complete isolation and hang upside down for months to get them here if this is what it would take. Also I know that some of my friends and family who read this are still trying to get pregnant and hearing someone bitch about being pregnant would be the last thing I would have wanted to read about for the last few years. But I am feeling grouchy…

Bedrest. 2 little words squeezed together that both sound so good. Bed. We all love our beds right. The place where we curl up at the end of a long day. The place where we get to hang out for a few extra special hours on weekends. The place where we feel better when we are sick. Rest. Sounds good too. Rest comes after work. It comes after exercise. We all look forward to it, none of us normally get enough of it. But when you put the 2 of them together it really sucks!

I know that people spend months and months (even years) on bedrest in hospitals, in old age homes or perhaps even in their own houses. I know that bedrest for some people means they are unable to move, to pee by themselves, to change position on their own. I don’t pretend to compare myself to them. But I do have to say I have gotten a new understanding for people who have to spend their lives like that, dependant on others.

I have been on bedrest for almost 2 months now. In that time, I have left the house 6 times, each time for a trip for a checkup or an ultrasound. I am driven to the appointment, sit in the waiting room from 5min. to 2 hours, see my Dr, get poked and proded, and then am driven home. Sound exciting? Well it has been the highlight of my last 2 months.

I love my house. All the main rooms are on one level and I can easily shuffle down the hallway from the couch to the bedroom and back again making stops at the bathroom on the way by. The kitchen is right there and I can grab food when I want it. I can grab food when I want it, if I have remembered to ask my hubby to pick up said food want, the day before. If we are out of something, well there is no popping to the store to pick it up. I love my house, but when you spend 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in one area you start to notice its flaws. The stain on the carpet, the paint scratch on the wall, the blind that always opens crooked, the box that needs to be put away, the mess the cat made knocking things over. Most of these things wouldn’t bother me in a normal situation, and if they did, I would fix them. Now I just stare at them willing them to go away. Sometimes it works… More often than not it is because my aggravation level reaches a point where I mention it to someone and it is finally taken care of. I found a partial solution to this. I hired a house keeper. The problem has been that for the last 2 weeks she hasn’t come. The first time was my fault, as I cancelled when I had an ultrasound booked for the same time slot. Then last week she had an emergency come up and cancelled. So now it is close to 3 weeks since my house has been cleaned properly. The problem with a house cleaner though is that as lovely and cat hair, dust and tub ring free my house is after she leaves, the box is still sitting there, the paint scratch is still there, the blind is still crooked. She cleans things, moves them to clean under them, and puts them back where they were. This is great, if everything is where I wanted it in the first place.

Five years ago my hubby and I moved out of the city to a place close enough to commute for work, but rural enough to have my horses. Since then we have made a group of local friends. We go to local house parties. Once a month we get together with a group of them at one person or another’s house. We make plans and do stuff with them. Many of our family members live in the same province but are all an hour or 2 or 3 away. Many of our friends still live in the city, and we tend to do things with them in the city, usually after work. Many of my best friends from High School and University have left the province and live a distance away, but come back to visit, or I travel to see them. Why am I writing about this? Well usually I feel like I have an active enough social life. I love spending time at home with just my hubby and I, but when I want to see other people I make plans. I stop in to visit them, I arrange to meet for a coffee, I invite them to my house for a meal or a party or I go to their house. I just kind of took being able to see other people, to have company when I wanted it, as a given. Now I find I am lonely.

I have a few friends and relatives who have been amazing, and I thank them for that. People who have brought the groceries for meals and cooked for me, friends who have stopped by with a special treat for breakfast when they have the morning off of work, people who have brought me reading material, DVD’s and little treats. Friends who have brought their babies to visit and, even though I can’t pick them up and toss them around, I can watch them learning to crawl. Friends who have stopped in to help me out with something they knew I couldn’t do myself. As well as friends and relatives who have taken the time to call and chat or who have sent an e-mail or an MSN message on a regular basis. These people make my life much easier.

Even though I do have people in my life who come and visit, I spend many many hours by myself. Fortunately I like my own company, and have things I like to do when I am alone. I do get tired of being alone though. I am sure I could make an effort to invite more people to visit me, but it is hard to extend an invitation to someone when you don’t have something to offer. “Please come and visit me and watch me lie on the couch…” not nearly as interesting an invite as “Lets meet up at such and such a place for a hike” or “If you drive all the way out to see me from the city, I will cook you an awesome lunch”. I also feel like I don’t have as much to offer conversation wise. My world is very limited right now. I can talk all day about babies, and ultrasounds and pregnancy, but that is about the only thing going on in my life at the moment. I love hearing about “the outside world” though.

I only have another couple of months of bedrest until the babies are ready to come out. I am sure at that time I will look at the words “bed” and “rest” a little more fondly again.