Silent labor

Well Maya is still in utero. Naomi is a medical puzzle, one Midwife Kathy has never met the likes of. The other night at "Meet the Midwives", Naomi listened to each one's spiel and made decisions whether she liked them or not. She liked Kathy the best except for Heather whom she sees. Kathy is a redhead who rides a Harley to work as UM does not charge for motorcycles but charges its employees' cars an arm and a leg to park. She seems a no nonsense type of woman with no make-up and does not fuss one minute with her hair.

We waited a long time in triage as they we were busy. Finally she was hooked up to a monitor. Strong contractions every 3 minutes, at 5 cm with a bulging bag of waters pushing through the cervix (no it didn't break): all the classic signs of active labor except one: the patient feels nothing. She lay through contractions giggling and continued to talk to the midwife without taking a breath. Does she have unusual pain tolerance? HA!!! Ms. Everything is a Ten. Menstrual cramps feel like end stage labor to her. I got her birth control pills in part to see if the menstrual cramps would ease..fat lotta good they did. Cramps and PREGNANT. Of course there was some issue with compliance.

So we had a dilemma: she could be admitted but would be encouraged to walk until something happened (by then it was close to midnight) or she could go home if we lived close (which we do) and she could rest. She was sure Naomi would be back in a few hours but she was wrong. I suspect this labor has been silently going on for sometime (like the past 2 weeks). I drove Don'tae back to his apartment and made a midnight dinner for Naomi who said she was starving but ate about a cupful and was full. Steve was nervous that Naomi would just silently have the baby in bed and we'd wake up to a mess. I noticed a light on at 5am and found her on the computer. She had one painful contraction at 4:40 am but nothing more painful. Her back hurts. I hear her downstairs snarfing down cereal. When I get dressed, we will walk and walk.

Meanwhile we have our tiny post-surgical patient. She was very groggy yesterday and threw-up several times. She had her first accident since she moved here a week ago or so. She slept quietly in the crate near our bed but when I got up to check on Naomi, she got up too wanting to eat and go outside. So she seems to be healing. The vet called to give me the sad story about her leg. A  months ago or so, she landed on it strangely (on carpet jumping off a bed, not a huge distance) and began to limp. She didn't seem to be in pain beyond the first day (lets you touch the leg without biting). I assumed she sprained it (in contrast, Sunny misjudged something and ended up landing 6 feet down on cement-yelped and limped for a day and then was fine as a pup). Dakota used the back leg only occasionally for a while and now one leg is noticeably bigger than the other. For the intake physical for the spaying, they didn't think it was broken but just atrophied due to little use but yesterday she was x-rayed while she was under. There had been a break of the femur head and now the hip socket has degenerated. If we were 'good' dog parents, we would get a hip replacement or maybe even an amputation. She said the leg would not heal correctly and even though she is in no pain now, might become in pain down the road when she's older. There was also the possiblility of the hip socket already degenerated due to Legg-Perthe-Calves disease but how was I to know it? The dog was not in pain. We have this in writing from the vet.

But this will have to wait.

We have a baby to entice out.