Who am I kidding?

I have been telling you that there's nothing to blog about.

The truth is that the risk in this otherwise-healthy pregnancy and upcoming ultra-surgical birth is consuming all my thoughts every day. (Cos I can't do anything without wondering if it will cause a bleed, I can't plan for the birth without facing the fact it will be a caesarean, and I can't pee without being compelled to check if I'm actually bleeding. And I pee a lot.)

I thought that I was really only dealing with a small chance of bleeding a bit over the next few weeks, and then a standard caesarean which was going to make all the stress go away. And I was getting my head around it. Slowly.

But today's appointment had me in floods of tears, both during and for hours afterwards. I didn't want to hear all the risks. I sort-of know them, I carry them loosely around with me in the far-back recesses of my brain, and that's all I need right now.

However, 'informed consent' means I have to be told, clearly and without any chance of hiding beneath the chair before they speak, that with my major placenta praevia, I will probably have bleeds (in fact, it's pretty surprising [but awesome] that I haven't had any yet), I am likely to bleed a lot during the birth, and a transfusion is likely to be needed. Not just minute possibilities here, this is what they are preparing for on the day of the birth.

They have bumped another lady off the list of caesareans in order to fit me in.

Instead of doing 3 caesareans in a day, they will only plan to do 2. This is because mine carries the added risk and the added complication and ... oh my goodness.

Sometimes, it's like there is a little janitor inside my brain and when I have reached my capacity in terms of stress and worry, he walks around my grey matter and flicks the lights off one by one. It's a self-protection thing. Today the lights started going off in my head when the doctor reminded me that in extreme cases if bleeding can't be stopped, a hysterectomy is sometimes needed.

I mean, I knew that.

I'd read it somewhere.

And although I'm not much of an "It'll never happen to me" sort of girl, I guess I must have read it and thought ... oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know I-don't-know-IdontknowIdontknowIdontknow.

Right now, I need to surround myself with positive people. And I also need to talk. Can I talk here? I mean: really talk? Some of you commenters have been wonderful - you seem to have really heard what's going on inside my head, my passionate natural-birth head, and have met me where I am. You've comforted me and said what I need to hear, without needing to beat your own drum.

Can you do it again? I think I need to talk. I need to relive Smoochy Girl's birth, I need to gripe that I never get to talk about other stuff anymore (sacro-iliac-related whinging, pregnancy carpal tunnel, baby's head smashing the insides of my hip bones, and WOW it feels low! ...etc) and there will probably be more.

Sorry. But it's my blog, and even though I won't be eloquent, I need to write. There might be God-Stuff, there might be too little God-stuff for a Christian's blog, but either way, I know my Christian and non-Christian readers alike will take me as I am. Thanks.