My bunghole is much better, thank you for asking!

I know many of you have been logging on (no pun intended!) to check on me and my hemorrhoids and/or anal fissures and for that, I am eternally grateful.

If it was the ‘roids, the copious amounts of fiber I am taking seem to be helping.  If it was an anal fissure, it’s either the medicated, so humiliating-to-purchase medicated ass wipes that did the trick. That, or the caulking glue I shoved up there with a trowel, who’s to say?

Anyhoosies, moving on…

We took a two-day Hypnobirthing class over the weekend and it was AWESOME!

Totally San Francisco:  in a crazy converted old Victorian in the Mission District, we had to take our shoes off and sit on the floor. (I’m not sure how smart it is to have 10 pregnant ladies sit on the floor all day, but what the hell?) and no meat allowed! (‘Meat not welcome’ said the e-mail information we got before the class.)

There were a few married couples, a single lesbian woman whose sister is going to be her birth companion and then two unmarried, young couples who live together in some kind of mini-commune arrangement and are due within days of each other.  They are planning home births with a birthing tub and everything. (And yes, I imagine they will rinse it out between births but I was too afraid to ask. Far be it for me to judge.)

Everyone (every single person!) in the class brought those metal water bottle things with them and I was the asshole carrying the earth-killing, bisphenol A-leaching plastic water bottle. (But I’ll reuse it! I wanted to scream.)

It was a very cool course all about using self-hypnosis and other relaxation techniques to get through labor. And I know!  What in the H-E-L-L was I doing in a class all about natural child birth?!?  With TWINS on the way??

(You people always ask really good questions.  Really.)

Remember how I told you I’m just pretending I can give birth vaginally and avoid a c-section?  Well, this class was all part of my delusion plan.  My doctor wants me to have an epidural, so that if we need to do an emergency c-section for one or both of the babies I’m ready, and I’m not necessarily opposed to that. I just want to keep my options open, and if I can labor at least for a while without many (or any) interventions, that would be my ideal.

So the funky class was all part of my absurd campaign to pretend I’m not high risk and just mosey along for the next several weeks (!!!) in some kind of altered state where my grasp on reality is tenuous at best.  And it’s worked for me in the past, so who knows?

To be perfectly honest, my dream (if I hadn’t gone through five years of fucking hell trying to get pregnant and I wasn’t older than the hills and I was carrying a singleton) I would have wanted a home birth with a midwife and a birthing tub.  The problem would have been convincing someone to be there with me, because both BeBop and my sister would have been all HELLS NO you fricking FREAK and that would not have been the best situation in the world.

My Mom probably would have been game, but she would have wanted to bring along the dowser and various healing crystals and maybe stick me in a Life Pod or God knows what else.

I watched BeBop carefully when we were seeing a home birth video during the class and I could have predicted how he looked away when the money shot came:  a close up of the woman’s giant lady parts opening for the red, gooey baby that was emerging like something out of a science fiction movie. 

And although he did really well in the class and is very supportive of my birth rantings of a crazy person plan, I told him afterwards I want him to be a waist-up type of husband in the event we get our va-jay-jay birth.

"Don’t look DOWN THERE," I told him when we were walking back to the car after the first day of class.  "Seriously, even if they ask you if you want to see the baby crowning, say NO THANK YOU and DON’T LOOK, okay??"

He seemed fine with this plan.

In other news, I am finally posting some pictures, God help us all.

I briefly considered poaching Faith’s recent belly shots because she looks like a fricking model or something, but then I remembered how 1) most of you have seen my mug on YouTube and HOW could I possibly get so much better looking in the last few months, that seems impossible and 2) most of you read her blog too and like I said, you all are some smarty bears and I don’t think I could get away with a trick like that.

So here you go, proceed with caution:

How will I get out of this chair, you ask?

HAHAHAHAHAHA, I respond gaily, throwing my head back to emphasize my lack of concern.

I won’t.  I’ll spend the remainder of this pregnancy in my friend’s garden, surrounded by presents.  What could possibly be so bad about THAT??

Mmmmmmm…me hungry. 

Me giant Godzilla-like pregnant lady who will devour this cupcake in mere seconds.

MILK.  Bring me MILK you peasants. NOOOOOOWWWWWW!!!!

Beware miscreants. Mini-cupcakes today.  Your cities tomorrow.

And the peice-de-I-can’t-believe-she’s-posting-this-does-she-have-no-shame:

Twenty-nine weeks, people, twenty-nine weeks. How the HELL did this happen??

Oh.  That makes much more sense…

Actually, that whole thing will make much more sense in a minute or two.

But first.

Can I start by saying that I totally freaking cursed myself in my last post by saying I was feeling pretty good and that I wasn’t suffering from too many dreaded pregnancy symptoms?

And THEN I went on to say something stupid about pulling my head out of my ass, remember that?

Well, let’s say for the sake of argument that I really did have my head up my ass, and let’s also say I decided (for what reason I don’t know but just go with me on this for a sec) that I decided to take a looksy around, what do you think I would have seen??

I’ll give you a hint:  It starts with "H" and rhymes with emorrhoid.

Or, even better…an anal fissure.

Yes. You read that correctly. I actually wrote the words ‘anal’ and ‘fissure’ in a sentence.

(And you just read that sentence.  God help you if you recently ingested any food products!)

 

For a few days late last week, I was in hell.  It felt like I was crapping broken glass each time I used the facilities.

During most of the IF treatments I underwent and especially during my IVF cycle I stayed away from all things Google-related, choosing instead to put my fingers into my ears and sing LA LA LA This Will Work Despite The Statistics That Say Otherwise, but of course once I was faced with cornhole issues I sprinted to the computer and typed in ‘natural remedies for hemorrhoids’ and here’s what the oh-so-helpful Internet had to say:

Cranberry Poultice

For relief of hemorrhoids within an hour, here what you can do:

* Blend 3-4 tablespoons of raw cranberries

* Wrap a tablespoon of this blend in some cheesecloth

* Push it up against your anus and keep it there with some tight underwear

* After an hour or so replace it with a new batch of berries and cloth

Apply these berries twice and do it the next day if necessary.

Hmmmmmmm…this sounded a little too similar to a holiday-themed cranberry dip recipe I love, which I was sure I could never enjoy again after shoving a cheesecloth of smashed cranberries up my bunghole, so I moved on to the next suggestion:

In the book Heal.ing Visualiza.tions, the author suggests you close your eyes, breathe out three times and imagine that your hemorrhoids are puckering up like an old purse. Picture them shriveling and disappearing as the walls of the anus become pink and smooth.  He goes on to suggest you practice this imagery for one to two minutes of every waking hour, for up to 21 days, until the hemorrhoids fade.

Hmmmmmm…I thought again.  Imagining my hemorrhoids as an old purse just didn’t appeal to me either for some strange reason.  I mean, old lady purses smell funny and are filled with random objects like unwrapped mints, old, used hankies, and totally outdated pink lipstick and the like.  If he had suggested I envision my rear as a vintage Coach bag, well, then perhaps I could have gotten behind this plan. (BAH DAH BUM.)

I quickly realized I would have to abandon my plan of finding a good natural option and instead head to the local drugstore to purchase some over the counter medicated pads soaked in witch hazel.

And can I just say ahhhhhhhh THE RELIEF.  Thank God for the medicated hemorrhoid pads and I never in a million years thought I’d write a sentence like that.

And I’m also shoving ground flax seeds and prunes down my gullet like there’s no tomorrow and the whole combination seems to be working out for me.

But I did hit rock bottom for a while there. I was totally bummed out. I felt totally anal about finding some relief as soon as possible.  I just wanted to put the whole thing behind me.

Just like you probably feel about this post…