When September Ends and Why It's Important To Do Your Kegels...

I'm not a Green Day fan, but their song title "Wake Me Up When September Ends" was appropriate for me last month.
September is usually an interesting month anyways. Kids are heading back to school. The seasons start changing (maybe - in Michigan you never really know what it will be like.) It kind of feels like a time of beginnings with everything starting up again. It is also an emotional month for me.
This past September was especially exhausting. Noah started 4-year old kindergarten. I struggled with morning sickness, had a break at the end of the month and then Round 2 of morning sickness started up a week ago. I've never had that kind of experience before. With Noah my nausea stopped at 12 weeks exactly. Eleanor caused me to throw up every morning until I was 16 weeks along. With this one I never know if I'm going to throw up or not and two weeks ago I thought I was in the clear with it. What is going on inside that womb?
It was a rough month emotionally. A friend of mine miscarried September 12th at 14 weeks along. The next day was my sister and brother-in-law's 6th wedding anniversary, their daughter's 3rd birthday party and the first anniversary of their own miscarriage. Three days later on the 16th was the 5th anniversary of my miscarriage which was really hard for me this year, maybe because of everything else going on around me.
That week I also received word that a friend from college had thyroid cancer and a friend from our old church had a brain tumor (non-cancerous, thank God.) They both had surgeries the following week, my friend, Moriah, having her thyroid removed on Tuesday and Virginia having the tumor removed Thursday. Both went well, praise God.
The Ladies Bible Study at our church started the same week of the surgeries on that Wednesday. I am so thankful for it. I haven't been in one since the Moms Group a friend invited me to at her church when we lived in Grand Rapids. I was telling Tim the night before that I wonder if men really understand why we women need these kinds of things. He said he understood but probably only because he has seen firsthand the positive effect it has had on me. In GR, I joined it a few months after Noah was born and I was fighting postpartum unhappiness because new motherhood was NOT what I thought it would be. This new (to me) Bible Study is proving to be something that will challenge me, encourage me, hold me accountable, and love me. To be in a group of other women - with ages spanning those who are on their first baby to those who have great-grandchildren - is what every woman should have in her life. It is led by our pastor's wife and she is a strong, wise woman who isn't afraid to speak it like it is in the Bible. No sugar-coated Truth coming from her mouth. She is Spirit-filled and you can tell she spends a lot of time in prayer and in the Word.
The last weekend of the month was...eventful? You could say. Tim had spent the week working 12-14 hour days and had to work over the weekend as well so he was not home. The kids were bathed and just kind of hanging out playing and watching a movie while I cleaned up. I had spent the day cleaning the house, grocery shopping, etc. because I finally had my first burst of energy since entering my second trimester.
*If you are a man reading this - you may want to stop now. Just a warning.*
I went to the bathroom and while wiping thought something felt a little...wrong...down there. Out of curiousity, I put my hand down to feel a little more and there was definitely something hard coming out from between my legs. Quickly I washed my hands and ran upstairs, where I squatted over a mirror to see what was going on. I screamed after seeing something protruding between my legs.
I called Tim and told him I thought I might possibly be miscarrying. He asked if I was bleeding. No. Was I cramping? No. But there is definitely something coming out from a place only babies travel out of.
I then called my midwife/doctor's office, which was of course closed and wrote down the contact number for urgent questions for the on-call doctor. I called her, left a message with the nurse, and the doctor called me back soon after. She asked me what was wrong. The following is our conversation, not word-for-word, but you'll get the gist of it:
Me: I believe I am either miscarrying or delivering an alien baby.
Dr: I'm pretty sure you're not delivering an alien baby. Are you bleeding, cramping, in pain?
Me: No. What is going on? I have something coming out of me!
Dr: Can you describe it?
Me: Well, I guess it's kind of round, muscle-y looking maybe? Is the baby ok? Am I ok?
Dr: Well, it sounds like something that happens occasionally. Do you have kids already? Were they vaginal births?
Me: Yes, two of them.
Dr: Most likely - and this is not really common, but it's not uncommon either - your vaginal walls are caving in.
Silence.
Me: What?!
Dr: Talk to your doctor about it the next time you go in. There is no harm to you or the baby. Any other questions?
Me: Um, no, thanks. Bye.
Are there any other questions?! Yes! Like, why have I never heard of this before? Is my vagina always going to be falling out? When I joke around about all the pressure down there while I'm pregnant and say, "Oh, it feels like my crotch is falling out" I didn't really mean it literally!
My friend, Carrie, who was in town for the night came over shortly after to visit. She is a nurse and has worked the labor/delivery ward before. When I told her about it, she just stared at me and said, "Annie, I have never heard of that before."
Great.
So after she left and Tim was still not home yet, I did the next thing any curious and confused woman with no answers does. I googled, "mass protruding from between legs during pregnancy." That is when I came across multiple websites about uterine prolapse, which basically means the uterus is falling out. I should have stopped reading but instead was filled with the information of bedrest, preterm delivery, and hysterectomies being the only treatment for Stage 4 uterine prolapse, which, obviously, I had to have based on the fact stuff was coming out of me.
I went to bed unsettled and woke up with nothing coming out from between my legs anymore. Whew. I called my mom - which one should never really do before having concrete information about something - and told her my theory to which she of course freaked out. She already knew about uterine prolapse because my great-grandmother had it and was contantly having to go into the doctor in her old age to have her uterus put back in after it fell out. Oh, great. Not what I wanted to hear.
The next morning I called the office and got to meet the doctor that day. He is married to the midwife, who I saw the first time we went in. He asked a bunch of questions, did a pelvic exam and asked me to cough and then said, "Oh, yeah, I see what is going on."
Can I just break here and say how uncomfortable it is to be a woman and have your legs spread apart while you're laying on a table with a male OB/GYN you've never met before pretty much stating that it's obvious there is something wrong with your woman area. Anyways...
It turns out that, thankfully, it is not uterine prolapse, but cervical/vaginal prolapse. My uterus was at a size at the time where most of the weight was resting on my vaginal walls. Because my walls are weak from having those vaginal deliveries, not doing Kegels and the fact that everything else on me is weak so why not?, they were having trouble supporting the uterus and were caving in as a result. The good news is - and this has already happened - as the uterus grows, it rests on the pelvic bone and the weight is taken off the vaginal walls. The bad news is that at the end of the pregnancy when the baby's head drops down it will rest on those walls again and I will be in the same situation I was then.
"So what was actually coming out of me?" I asked him.
"Oh, that was your cervix. When you start to feel the pressure again, get off your feet as soon as possible."
"Why do pregnant women not talk about this? I'm pretty sure it's not in the pregnancy books, is it?"
"Well," he answered. "I think most women are embarassed by it. It's more common than you would think, however."
On a side note, everything is going well other than that with the pregnancy. My due date is actually April 1st, but we think he or she will make the appearance in late March.
So, ladies of childbearing age, I am here to tell you this story not to gross you out or make you afraid of having children, but to encourage you to do your Kegels.
And to not freak out if you're pregnant and something is protruding from your legs.
It's probably just your cervix.