I actually love the Red Hot Chili Peppers, even if I don't understand their lyrics. I'm writing, of course, about "Scar Tissue" in both the literal and metaphorical sense. I know from scar tissue.
First, the literal: 30 weeks has brought with it several new symptoms that I have dodged until this moment. My 28 year-old opmhalocele scar is still a place of refuge for PB (she loves to wedge her head under it) but it has become a site of radiating discomfort for me. I've been doing a lot of reading on the issue of abdominal adhesions and pregnancy. For some women, the pain starts much earlier, around week 20 or so, but like the rest of this crazy ride, I've been lucky to put off the inevitable until much, much later.
With 7 weeks to go, I now have what feels like a permanent side stitch that won't go away, no matter what position I'm in. At first I thought, "Dear God, my abdominal muscles are finally shredding in two!" but no, no. It's not that. The pain is localized on the right side just beneath my 5 inch scar and unfortunately for me, it's unavoidable. It's a matter of very old scar tissue finally being stretched to its capacity with nowhere else to go until the adhesions tear internally, pushed out of the way by a rapidly expanding uterus. Until now, my uterus has stayed below belly button level but now that PB needs to gain 4 pounds and grow another half a foot before she's ready to be born, my grace period is o-v-e-r. Naturally, I will be asking about this condition at next week's visit but all I can do in the meantime is try to make myself as comfortable as possible.
I hadn't given much thought to this particular reality, though I was warned early on by my OB that I could have a very uncomfortable pregnancy due to my 5 previous abdominal surgeries. I'm just thankful that it hasn't been an issue before now. If the worst thing I have to deal with in the next month-and-a-half is this annoying but mostly bearable stretching, I'll take it over a massive hemorrhage or premature labor. Duh. PB won't be affected at all so that's the bright side.
Onto the metaphorical scar tissue: it is one year to the day that our first IVF cycle was cancelled. Go figure. Who knew one year later I'd be experiencing intense abdominal twinges for a happy reason? To put things in perspective for myself, I took a look through some old emails I wrote to explain to people what had happened to cancel our treatment. I remember all too well the crushing disappointment after weeks of injections with little yield. I think we got one follicle from the first cycle and it was tiny. Obviously hindsight tells us "oh yeah, there was a slight complication called a tubo-ovarian abscess and your body thought you were dying so no duh you were a poor responder." Didn't learn how serious it was until three weeks after that last RMA appointment, or that I'd need yet another surgery to correct the issue. Last summer seemed to exist in a temporal vacuum, that's how long the agony dragged on.
It was all worth it, though. Well, it will be worth it once she's here. I can't wait to have this baby. If she were fully mature, I'd gladly deliver tomorrow, that's how ready I am. Our journey to this point began two years ago in earnest so it's mind blowing to look back on the roads we've had to travel to arrive at this point in our journey. The waiting will soon come to an end, along with the temporary discomforts and irritations. There will be a whole butt-load more to come, recovering from a C-section, but hey, I've more or less been down that road before so I know bit more about what to expect than your typical patient and it doesn't scare me one bit. Seriously, 15 minutes in the OR and I get to hold my daughter? I will gladly take on another massive scar for that any day.
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