The Mind Boggles
Brain damage.
Well, technically, it’s called an ocular migraine, but it seriously feels like brain damage. It all started during my last pregnancy, when I noticed a tingling and numbness running from the left side of my face down my left arm. Shortly after that, I couldn’t see straight ahead and had to rely on my peripheral vision for about 15 minutes. Since I was writing a TV show at the time, I figured it was carpal tunnel, at least until a few weeks later, when I woke up and couldn’t talk.
I mean, words came out, but they didn’t make any sense. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I tried to tell my husband. But what I said was, “The chair is over two interrupt,” or something like that.
We did what anyone would do- We freaked the hell out and called every doctor we could think of. Because clearly, this was the end for me, and I wouldn’t even get to tell everyone goodbye; I’d only be able to say, “Tree farm.” While we were waiting for calls back, Hubs rang up my dad, who’s an eye doctor, expecting him to scream at us to call an ambulance, for heaven’s sake. (I had resisted the emergency room option by shaking my head and saying, “Wicker basket!” repeatedly.) Instead, Dad maintained an admirable calm.
“It sounds like the onset of an ocular migraine,” he said. “It should go away in a few minutes, but she’ll probably have a horrible headache for the rest of the day.”
He was right. Within a few minutes, I could talk again and within another hour, I had a crushing migraine headache. Later, I remembered that my OB had told me that if I already had migraines (and I do, although they’re generally very minor), pregnancy would likely either make them much better or much worse. Sure enough, when I had my baby a few months later, the migraines went away.
Fortunately, this pregnancy, it looked like I was going to be migraine-free. At least until two weeks ago.
I woke up at about 6am and realized in a stupor that something was off. It felt like my brain had short circuited. “Oh shit,” I thought, before going back to sleep. An hour later, I woke up with a migraine. Going downstairs, I attempted to make 13 a sandwich for her lunch but felt like I was moving through a fog. When Hubs saw me, he knew immediately what the problem was.
The fog cleared and I did okay for most of the day, but by the time Hubs got home from work, I’d had it. I went upstairs with the worst headache of my life and slept for 14 hours. It took a full three days for the migraine to go away completely.
“Why didn’t you call my office?” my OB asked when I told her that the migraines had returned. “I could’ve written you a prescription.”
“The stuff you gave me the last time didn’t work,” I said.
“Well this will,” she said grimly, writing on her notepad and handing me a slip of paper.
I looked down at it. Whoa. “Is this safe to take while I’m pregnant?”
“Well, I wouldn’t want you to take it every day,” she said, “but it’s fine on the rare occasion that you have a migraine.”
So now, I have the option of either enduring the splitting headache or sitting around like a drooling, drugged idiot. I think you know what I chose when I got another migraine last week.
Of course, pregnancy woes are a common topic of conversation among new moms and I’ve tried a few times to commiserate with my own problems. It doesn’t go over so well.
“I had the worst hemmorhoids of my life,” one mom will say, blushing.
“Well, my ankles swelled up like elephant legs,” another will admit.
“Oh my gosh, I woke up one morning and couldn’t read or type or say anything!” I’ll gush. Silence.
“I’ve never heard of that,” someone will say finally.
So come on. I’m begging you. Top my third trimester brain damage with a horror story of your own.
Please?
>Yikes! Suddenly, I don’t remember pregnancy being all that bad. AFTER the birth (and the epidural) I got a spinal headache, which was more painful than labor. Otherwise, spider-veins, fugly disorder, morning sickness…yep…no brain altering migrains!
>I have been relatively migraine free for this pregnancy (I’m due the end of March), thankgod. However, my brain damage is manifesting in different ways. For example: yesterday I washed a whole load of laundry and went to dry it when I realized that I had not, in fact added any type of detergent and/or bleach.Then I put a gallon of milk into the pantry. Where I found it this morning.I think my husband thinks I’m ready to be checked into a padded room.
>Wow! I can’t say I had it all that bad. I actually liked being pregnant…(don’t hate me!)My bad thing was the sciatica (only 10 days prior to delivery and then done!)
>I had a few migraines in my first trimester and early third trimester. I took my sugar pills, I mean Tylenol, and slept them off for about five hours at a time.My due date was yesterday, and still no baby. Stupid due dates!
>I wish I could trump your story, but alas, since I’ve never been pregnant, I can’t. But I do really feel for you — I can’t imagine how horrible you must have felt. 🙁
>During my third pregnancy I had an ongoing yeast infection for the entire third trimester.The only thing that made it manageable was to eat three cartons of yogurt a day. The doctor thought that as long as I was in a “holding pattern” she didn’t want to medicate me.Good days, I tell you…
>Hey, you are doing it to my computer! I just copied, “ocular migraine” onto my mouse, but when I went to my computer dictionary and pasted it, this is what appeared, “We Are All Welcome Here” certainly NOT “ocular migraine”.So really, are you serious? I’ve never heard of that. Sounds scary.
>wow that would scare me to death. I’m glad you had someone in the family who knew what was going on. My worst symptom was the sciatica. My kid loved to be on that nerve and/or my bladder.The end is near…hang in there.
>The yeast infection would be worse, I think, than the migraines.I also talked to a woman once who weighed about 110 pounds. When she got pregnant, some sort of mysterious medical condition made her gain 100 pounds, 70 in the last three months! Now that would suck. And it did not come off easily.
>nope sorry to report i had three uneventful pregnancies one ended with me hemmoraging to the point of surgicle intervention. That same birth experiance ended with the fist time at a delivery doctor should not have been here when it was a challenging birh in the first place dropped my baby on his head. Said baby was not even ten seconds ol. baby comes out, baby gets dropped. course it did make for a cool birth video.
>Well…I discovered I suffer from a VERY rare thing called ICP (Intrahepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy, occurs in 0.5% of pregnancies). Basically, bile doesn’t get secreted from the liver and backs up which results in lots of crazy things, but mainly itchy skin in the 3rd Trimester. And not just skin itching from streaching. ALL your skin itching so so SO bad with nothing that works to stop it. I still have scars on my feet from where I scratched them in my sleep and they’d start bleeding. After my first child I held onto the hope of “It only reoccurs in 40-50% of the women who have it.” I am one of the blessed ones who had it reoccur. And try telling people you have itcy skin. They look at you like you’re crazy, or that it’s no big deal. Or say “Have you tried ___”. Yes, I had tried it. Trust me, didn’t help. Not sure if that is better or worse then the migranes.
>I wrote about my problem with gagging: http://momcast.blogspot.com/2007/01/gag-me.htmlI don’t even have to smell bad things to gag: I just have to think about them. And, I don’t even need to have smelled a particular smell before: just imagining what it might smell like is enough to make me gag hard enough to not only pee my pants and/or throw up.Yeah, I’m just waiting to feel babe swimming around all the time and I’ll be reminded why the heck I did this to myself.
>Oh my goodness. That would really freak me out! I think I was lucky, with just indigestion and discomfort from the hugeness of the baby in the 3rd trimester. Well, that and the mental anguish over the fact that my husband began his own nesting 6 weeks before the due date — by gutting the kitchen. Not.Kidding.Three hours of pushing, then a c-section. That’s pretty much my horror story.You’re almost there Lindsay!! Have you decided on a name? Not that you’ll tell us here in blogland what it is, but have you & Hubs chosen a name?
>I bleed alot.My nose, my gums, you know…gush, red. Daily.How gross is that.I also get migraines. Which are related to the sinus and bleeding issues, I think, snce I spend weeks and months feeling like I have the flu.And this last time I swelled up like someone’s Water Balloon Lady circus freak.Also I know for sure I lose at least 2 IQ points per pregnancy.I had other symptoms but I’ll spare you. However, I never had morning (or any other time of day) sickness and so everyone said I should be grateful. (insert eye roll cuz’ I can be rude that way sometimes)Does that make you feel any better?Sorry about the migraines.
>Hm, you win. Sorry, can’t top it. Wish I could, so you’d feel better but I can’t!!!
>Hmmm. I threw up in the grocery store and probably scared a little boy into being permanently freaked out by pregnant women (projectile vomit. Always a crowd pleaser.)But no, I think yours pretty much takes the cake.
>You WIN. I carried twins to 35 weeks. Couldn’t drive, couldn’t tie my shoes and developed gestational diabetes…. but you still win. That is terrifying!
>Oh, I had 2 of those migraines in my last pregnancy, too (having not had a migraine in several years). I thought I was having a stroke. I was trying to look something up online but it was like I was reading gibberish. My doctor told me that it’s unusual to have them in the second pregnancy if you didn’t have them in a first. But thank God — I was so green in my first that I probably would have checked myself into the nearest hospital and refused to leave until the baby was born 2 months later. Best wishes to you — I discovered your blog a few months ago and have loved reading!
>Yes, we have chosen a name. We think. :)And the itching thing? Definitely worse than the migraines. Because the migraines go away.I guess on the bright side, I’ve never had morning sickness, either.
>i work in a wholesale seafood company that is mostly men–there were 3 other women here at the time. my water broke in front of 4 of those men. not my idea of a good time. i got the hell out of there STAT! if a very pregnant woman were to run a marathon and win, surely it would have been me. i get migraines, though, but never as bad as yours! i hope they’re over with for you! ouch.
>During my pregnancy with my first, I had some version of restless leg syndrome. Even during the day, I would get this really edgy feeling and start kicking at random. Towards the end of that pregnancy, they put me on a heart monitor because I developed a little murmur. It felt like my heart was jumping out of my chest. It sucked and it hurt and it was scary. Everything cleared up, but every so often I still can feel my heart do a little jump. I hate it.
>You win, hands down. With child #3 I was nauseous nearly every waking moment for 4 months. I remember wishing I would just throw up because then I might feel better, but I couldn’t. I lived off of bagels with cream cheese and V8 juice because I couldn’t stand the sight or smell of anything else. I also ended up hospitalized twice at the end of that pregnancy with unexplained bleeding. No pain or anything else, and she was fine, but it was scary.With the last one I gained so much water weight that after they let me out of bed (c-section) I was going to the bathroom every hour and peeing a litre at a time. Better out than in, but sheesh.And you still win!
>After my kid was born I had blurred vision for days – turned out it was from all the fluid they pumped into my IV for 24 hours – but the more people I told about my 20/20 vision being all blurry the more I got blank stares (not that I could really see, I just knew). It was like torture. Still a lot of people I tell about look at me like I’m an alien.
>Hi my name is Chris Elrod, I am a Franklin Realtor, my husband (ethos) has you on his blogroll, we really enjoy your blog and I was wondering if you would link to me?Chris Elrodwww.chriselrodproperties.com
>I’ve got one for you- my last pregnancy- he’s four now- We were living in Germany(military family), and Hubby was sent back to the US for 3 weeks for school-I was at the end of my 7th month- I just knew something was going to go wrong- One week in- I suddenly had a migraine, and was HOT HOT HOT! Go see my ob on a Thursday, she said, “You’re fine”, No I’m not, my body doesn’t feel right- she sent me home anyway, b/c she knows best and it just my body! Saturday I feel really “off”, by 11 pm I am calling my neighbor, in tears, I think I am in premature labor- oh, I also had an 8 yo at home with me- Neighbor takes me to ER- her hubby takes my 8yo- after tests and me crying, they send me HOME!! They thought I was faking!!! Didn’t give me jack! Next morning @ 6am- neighbor takes me back- I couldn’t even walk anymore- Get a different doctor this time- after hours of tests- they found the problems, yes plural! I had pre eclampsia, gestational diabetes, pancreatitis and gall stones!!! But I wasn’t in labor, whew! They proceed to drug me up so much that I slept 55 straight hours! Hubby was flown back immediately- went ape shit on everyones asses! My hero- anyway- no food or anything by mouth for 3 weeks! then they induced! Thankfully we have a healthy baby boy- who’s lungs developed those last three weeks- but we will NOT have more- it was the hardest time of our lives!
>You women have all the luck: A medicine for migraine, of all things.
>You win! Well the itchiness would be nasty too. I get migraines but they are mostly better when pregnant. I am also bipolar..and it all seems to even out when pregnant. There have been times I considered just staying pregnant for the rest of my life. But..well..that wasn’t real practical.
>My pregnancy was pretty uneventful, but I’ve got a birthing story that no one has every heard of, even my cousin who’s been a L&D nurse for 10+ years.My labor was progressing very slowly, so much so that my epidural was wearing off. They started to re-dose and I started having shooting pains up my spine. They stopped, waited 1/2 hour or so and tried again… same thing. They might as well have been shooting acid into my body. The pain was worse than any labor pain I ever experienced and it never went away. I laid in the fetal position, grasping the rail of the bed because now I could also very much feeling the labor pains, since they couldn’t give me the full dose — labor pains, plus shooting back pain, not my idea of a good time. When it was time to push, I was so exhausted and my back pains kept me from being able to sit up. I literally didn’t have it in me to push. I felt like such a wimp, that I was giving up. My doctor told me the only other option was a c-section (which she knew I really didn’t want to do), so I tried one more time — couldn’t even push for a count of 5.13 hours of labor turns into a C-section… and the story continues. The regional anesthetic didn’t take. They kept poking me with what felt like a thumb tack, asking if I could feel it. Yes… I can feel it. “Do you feel it less here?” Yes… but I still FEEL it… please don’t cut me open yet! I had to be put under, hubbz couldn’t be in the OR and I slept through The Boy’s first hour and a half of life. I have to say, though, when I woke up to see this 9 lb little person laying in the baby warmer next to me (and saw the size of his head — still off the charts to this day!), I was thankful for the c-section.I still think you’ve got me beat. I think I saw that condition on an episode of House once, but with a man, not a pregnant woman
>Feeling like the baby might fall out if I don’t keep my legs crossed.But wouldn’t it be great if that were true? That would mean that when you decided to give birth, all you’d have to do is uncross your legs!
>I couldn’t go without peeing every 15 minutes. And if I did, I wet myself a little. And I got a horrid chafing rash from pantyhose, so I walked with even more of a waddle than normal, and then got a horrid yeast infection. And I wore the pantyhose because I was told it would help with the awful swelling in my legs. Yeah. Not really.
>Honey, I can’t top it but I do love the milking it for laughs. Good on you. If you can’t enjoy it, you can at least use it for blog fodder!
>Oh shit, I’m sorry, but that was so funny, I couldn’t stop laughing at you saying “Wicker basket!”. Brilliant. Anyway, my horror story – bulging blue grape like veins coming out of my, my well, my vagina! Hideous. I did like you and freaked, but the Midwife said “oh, that’s normal”. Seems like anything is “normal” with pregnancy. They did go away when baby was born. I called it my “bearded clam stuffed with grapes” condition. Hubby was horrified.
>My left leg would suddenly go totally numb and give out.. no particular reason. Id be walking or just standing still and suddenly I was on the floor. It happend almost every day. It was like I was some wierd push button donkey.
>Um, my liver failed. Do I win?
>Normally I lurk, sorry! Hi!Worse thing, during my first pregnancy and in my 2nd trimester I had to have surgery for an ovarian cyst. Yeah, the Doctor told me afterwards that if it had burst while pregnant, it could have killed me. Ooh, fun, could have done without that knowledge! Second child, 3rd trimester, Doctor tell me your Son’s shoulders are too wide, we’re going to have to do a C-section. More FUN! As for migraines, I had them before my 1st child, not after, not during 2nd child, AFTER 2nd child was delivered “YOWZA”, they were back. Saying a prayer for you!
>I love pregnancy horror stories. I’m pregnant for the 2nd time and those horror stories doesn’t freak me out, they just make me feel just not alone because honestly, anything could happen in pregnancy. Now it’s my turn for horror stories:The first trimester was horrible, I felt like I was constantly choking on something. It was like something was stuck in my throat and I couldn’t drink or eat anything because it felt like nothing would go down. Yes I could eat and drink but the feeling just prevented me. it also got so bad, I ended up being dehydrated and started vomiting. I couldn’t even hold down water and I ended up in the hospital on a IV overnight. Wasn’t fun. I had the same thing with my 1st pregnancy but wasn’t so bad but hey… go figure… I had a boy. Now this one is a girl and it’s widely claimed that girls make you sicker and feel just generally crappier. Now, during late 2nd/3rd trimester, I get sciata pain and I can’t sleep at night due to horrible burning pain in my hips and nothing I can do fixes it. I got sent to physical therapy but didn’t help much. So far, I have sciata once in a while right now but no burning pain in my hips *yet*. I’m only 24 weeks!I still haven’t decided if you win for this incredibly odd migraine…. I kinda feel the hip problem and the throat problem was really horrible to begin with. Oh all right, you win! 😉
>I actually got kidney stones during my second trimester. Sorry guys, pushing a baby out is much harder than pushing those little suckers out!
>During my 3rd trimester with my third baby I had my gall bladder go out on me. I was dealing with gall bladder attacks that I thought was heart attacks to start with. So till she was born I had attacks about every other day and they did a c-section because I was wiped out! 6 months later I got it removed. It took so long because it was bedly infected and they had to wait. Just to let you know, nursing at the same time you have a gall bladder attack is the most horrific thing. She ate ALL the time it seemed. Wouldnt you know though that when they removed it she refused to nurse after that.
>Ahhhh you haven’t lived until you’ve been told your baby is in the wrong position and needs to be “turned.” Lemmee translate:This means they give you a shot to “loosen” up yer already pissed off uterus, then not one, but two doctors put their hands on your belly at each end of the baby brace and…SHOVE … Repeatedly until somebody decides they’ve had enough – them, the baby, or YOU.
>Oh my gosh, I’ve heard about babies being turned. OUCH! Although my friend had a breech baby and she tried everything to turn him- nothing worked. Finally, she went to her chiropractor, who did some work on her hips and the baby turned that night! Amazing, huh?And I’ve got sciatica, too, so with the sciatica/brain damage/ headache combo, I think I’ve got MOST of you beat- Lena definitely is number one now, though!These stories are great! Keep ’em coming!
>Oh, and “bearded clam stuffed with grapes?” OMG! And I read the comment about the push-button donkey aloud to my husband , it was so funny. I could totally picture it!
>I was 17.Hah! I win!
>I didn’t have any real weird health issues but I had a couple of incidents I brought on myself.I was sitting on the pot in my third trimester with this big old uterus resting on my upper thighs. I saw a bit of lint or something on the floor and reached down to pick it up.*POP* ScReAM!!!! I broke my zyphoid process….for freakin’real. It is that little wiggly, dangly portion at the end of your sternum, at the bottom of your rib cage…the part of the body that can be broken during CPR if not careful. However, NO ONE warned me you can break your own if you have a really large uterus and you pound it into the top of your equally large late-pregnancy fat thighs while taking a constipated dump!I felt like I had been stabbed and could not straighten up. So, I sat there on the pot, barely able to reach around to give a courtesy flush before screaming for the hubs to come rescue me.I told my doc about it who totally blew me off with “you can’t break those like that!” (Duh, I am a nurse and I KNOW you can…and I DID!)Fast forward to delivery and skipping the whole horror that was my labor. When the kid with the watermelon sized head was finally out, the doc looks over my blue paper draped knees and sees my zyphoid process pointing all wonky toward my right leg. He said, “Hum, I guess maybe you DID break it after all.”Then he reached up and POPPED that sucker back into place! If I could have gotten my fat legs off those stirrups, he would have gotten a round house kick to the head he would never have forgotten!Annnnnd, I had to suffer the embarassment of the snickers and whispers from almost the enire hospital staff (I was an ER/OR nurse there at the time) when they HAD to come see my self-inflicted, almost-episiotomy. It happened like this:I roll my fat blob self out of a water bed (??!!) on the morning of delivery with the tremendous urge to pee YET AGAIN..only to discover it was my water breaking…so I take a shower to get all April fresh or whatever…step out to dry myself off, swipe “down there” as best I could…what with a 400 pound baby inside me and a broken zyphoid process and all. I feel a searing pain…and draw back a bloody towel and figure I had just given birth but can’t find the baby.Nah, it seems I had given an extra vigorous drying to “sensitive tissues” with a towel that an errant sewing needle had nested into during the wash….and I ripped that sucker right thru the you-know-what!Yeah, that one was good for a few Nurse Lounge laughs.But I got revenge on all of them cause I had diarrhea with every labor pain and they had to take care of that. So there.
>Ahhh pregnancy….I think all pregnant woman should be forced to spend the last trimester in a spa-resort facility, where they will be forced to have their choice pleasing water births with pain, total pain free medicated births, or I don’t know, yoga births… Only spouses and specified visitors will be allowed to visit the camp. And everyone has to pretend that all of the weight gain is in the belly.
>I gained so much weight with #1 that I had my own gravitational field. LBC
>bearded clam stuffed with grapes– OH. MY. GAWD. Been there done that. I seriously think this one wins. Not only do you feel like your cooch is gonna burst due to the weight of a child’s head….but you have the bulging, blue, VERY PAINFUL vericose veins on it too!!!! Just for fun, let’s add the sexiness of support hose. Yeah, they’re cool!
>Um, well, I don’t think I can top yours, because the pain of a migraine is excruciating, especially considering the long list of other pregnancy-related woes. I will add, though, that three weeks before giving birth to my second child, I got a terrible sunburn on my shins at the beach. The agony of the sunburn was compounded by the pregnancy-induced swelling of my legs and feet. I seriously felt like my legs had been doused in lighter fluid and set aflame. A happy camper, I was not. (And stupid me, for not wearing sunblock. It was an agony that I deserved, and will never repeat again.)
>I think you have me beat. How frightening!But I will tell you my third trimester story with my first child anyway:I developed kidney stones, and they couldn’t treat them the conventional way because of the pregnancy. So, I spent 5 days in the hospital on IV medication, and had to have a tube inserted into my kidney which remined there until a few weeks after I had the baby. Talk about uncomfortable!
>I had kidney stones and Gestational diabetes. I was in the hostpital for a month away from my 1 year old. Then when I went to deliver by c-section they had to put me to sleep.Do I win?
>I’m a cyclist, and like runners, we have naturally, ahem, limber pelvic bones. Which explains how I got knocked up three weeks after a knee surgery that left me in a thigh to ankle cast.Aaaanyhow, the downer is that when I hit mid-second trimester where the pelvis starts to open up a bit, my hip and pelvic bones popped in and out of place with every, single step I took for 12 weeks. I spent the last 8 on crutches.Step, pop, grind, pulled-muscle feeling in my hip and crotch, then pop again. Repeat for next step. And then repeat for each step for 12 weeks.
>So THAT’s what they’re called.I have had them since I was a teenager and could never describe one decently to a doctor. I don’t get speech distubances, but I get the worn-out and the headache.I found this link, and that picture describes what I have:http://www.eyeguys.net/ocularmigraine.html
>I vote for #30!!!
>I vote for #30
>How about this one: my MIL was pregnant 35 yrs ago. with baby #4.She was gaining and gaining and gaining weight. Her doctor told her to lay off the food and she said she couldnt she was hungry all the time! She told me that she craved Choc cake and a large glass of milk! 🙂 Yum! So she is huge!!Her 9th month comes,she goes to the hospital to deliver, delivers baby and about 5 minutes later feels the urge to push again! She then delivered baby #2! She was not exspecting twins and her doctor could not believe it. Baby #2 is my husband! and to make matters worse they didnt have names for two babies so one of her nurses helped her out.Turned out the nurse was married to a twin and suggested those names for my husband and his brother! How would you like to plan for one baby and come home with two?