Bed rest - how do you keep your sanity?

[itwillhappen]

For those of you that for a reason or another are restricted to bed rest, the question is: how do YOU keep your sanity? What do you do or tell yourself that keeps you uplifted?

For me - what keeps my mind busy:
- I am fortunate to work from home, so about 8h I am busy and somehow connected with other people. But still in bed and by myself
- some other things that kept me busy was building the baby registry, creating the guest list for the baby shower and the e-invitations, plus other details about the baby shower (this will happen in about a month)
- being a FTM, I am using this time to learn as much as possible about things like breast feeding, cloth diapering, baby sign language, baby safety, baby massage, baby food and any other things that come in my mind. I rented DVDs with such information from the library to make it up for the classes that the hospital offers free and that I can't attend.

What brings me down:
- I'm missing moving freely wherever I want, whenever I want. Cooking, cleaning (not that I love cleaning too much, but I would've liked to be able to clean and help, because when only one person is doing everything, cleaning is not top priority), going in stores and shop or simply checking on products for our baby and us.
- I don't have family in here so my husband it's my main helper. We do receive 2x/week meals from church from members that volunteered DH works midnights and gets about 3h sleep when he gets home and about 2.5-3h in the evening before going to work. There are so many things to take care of in the remaining hours that he is simply getting "fried" trying to handle everything. Plus he's not eating well and all of these things are adding up. So I am getting stressed thinking of all these. Sometimes we get disconnected and there's a tension building up.

A few things about my situation: incompetent cervix with funneling at 22 weeks - cervix cerclage. Currently 26 weeks so I have a month of bed rest and don't quite want to think of how many left. I do pray for baby to be born at term. So it is what it is.

Things to look forward for: DH working on preparing the nursery, baby shower...hoping unpacking the gifts and finish shopping for remaining necessary items.

So this is me. What it's your story and how do you handle things?

 

[MgreenM]

I am not on bedrest, but my mom sure was! Anyways, I am an occupational therapist and have done a little bit with bedrest moms. The biggest thing is leisure activities. Some of the ideas we would give our bedrest moms are:
make a scrapbook, keep a journal, take up knitting/crocheting, some other craft, read, blog, word puzzles, jigsaw puzzles. Somewhere I should have an activity checklist kind of thing but it has been over 5 years since I was at the hospital that had the program and I am not sure where I would find it. Also, it is important to do gentle range of motion exercises to keep your joints loose and blood flowing (pump your ankles up and down, bend/straighten your knees, raise your arms up and down, bend your elbows and touch your shoulders. Basically you want to move all your joints and do 10 repetitions a few times a day). If you are on "STRICT BEDREST" check with your doctor on doing the range of motion exercises. But these are things that we would typically instruct our patients to do.

 

[LoveCakes]

Weirdly knitting for me as I'm a complete beginner and it took a lot of concentration!

I had 2 weeks of bed rest at 10 weeks due to bleeding but I was so bored! I was scared to do baby stuff so watched films and read books but I can't give much advice. Oh except get dressed every day even if it's just a track suit, 24 hour pajamas made me feel 'sick'. Good luck with the rest of your pregnancy

 

[itwillhappen]

Thank you!

Fortunately I am not on strict bed rest and I move from one side to another, bend my knees, go often to the bathroom. And since I work from home and use a laptop with an added keyboard I do use my arms. Occasionally I would fold some clothes while in bed.

I would say that I mange to keep myself pretty busy. All the activities mentioned are good to have time pass by. However I do get sometimes to a point where nothing is apealing anymore. That it's a tuff stage.

Right the night I posted my message, DH sent me this long text message where he was expressing pretty much the same things - and how much he missed me in being a team and my help.

I was hoping to share more thoughts with other women in the same situation. Maybe I didn't post it on the right place. I do appreciate all comments and maybe others also can share experiences that they heard of...

 

[Rel]

I am not on bedrest this time but I was for a month durng my previous pregnancy.
I know how you feel, and I'm afraid I cannot tell you much more than the previous posters on what to do to keep you busy. I read a lot, watched TV... but it gets boring quite quickly. If it happened this time round (I hope not, as I have been off work for a long time and I am trying to take it easy-ish) Iwould maybe try to do different things on different days in order notto feel as if every day is the same...
Other than that, I possibly had one thing that made it both better and worse, as I already had a 2 year old, so looking after him was not easy and I couldn't play with him much but he also kept me occupied.
Just keep reminding yourself why you have to do it, because it's all worth it in the end.
I remember I LOVED being able to empty the dishwasher... when I was eventually allowed to get uptoward the end of my pregnancy. My daughter was born just a few days after, though, so it is really worth putting up with it!
Good luck!

 

[Brieanna]

Thank you!


I was hoping to share more thoughts with other women in the same situation. Maybe I didn't post it on the right place. I do appreciate all comments and maybe others also can share experiences that they heard of...

Maybe post in the gestational complications or in the individual trimesters? I know that each trimester usually has several hundred people viewing it at any one time so maybe you will find more people in your situation. I am not sure how many people are in the gestational complication section.

Good luck!

 

[itwillhappen]

You're right. I thought of the same thing but after I posted... Can a topic be moved?

 

[calm]

I can move it for you, where do you want it?

 

[itwillhappen]

Thank you. Probably gestational complications would be more appropriate.

 

[calm]

Moved for you

 

[LoveCakes]

I remember arguing with hubby about going up and down the stairs. I hated feeling so useless and seeing him have to do everything while I just sat there. It is tough but not forever thankfully!

 

[itwillhappen]

Thank you very much

 

[Yo_Yo]

I'm on bed rest. It's getting so boring and hard now! and I've only been on it 5 days!

 

[itwillhappen]

Sorry to hear that. Overall it's for the baby's sake.
Did the dr say for how long you'll have to be?

I have 6 weeks so far and about 3 more months more. Most of the time I don't like to think of how much is left. Funny, sometimes I don't think it's enough because there are so many things to do/take care of...

DH it's like in a swirl just spinning between things that needs to be taken care of...it's like never ending. And would like to help, but... At the begging things were good, now I think he had enough and is not as willing to handle everything. It's weird because he now realized how much he's missing "my side of the team".

All I can think is "it's temporary", it's not forever. Yeah, we get upset one at each other, get grumpy, annoyed but at the end it's all good so we can have a healthy baby and we would be well.

Wish you the best and if you ever feel like going crazy, come back and write some more

 

[Miwi]

Hi ladies! I'm new to this, I was put on bedrest yesterday so I thought I may introduce myself. Already starting to feel a tad useless! I have a one year old so I'm not sure now this is going to work right now my other half is off work to take care of things! I have an appointment with my dr a week tomorrow to check my cervix / possibly reassess the situation so I'm keeping everything crossed this is only temporary! Nice to meet you all

 

[rajnin]

Hi Ladies,

I was on hospital bed rest for 7.5 weeks.

I read, watched tv, movies, wrote a diary. I had days which just flew by and days I cried like crazy. I had to keep telling myself why I was on bed rest & the longer I stayed on bed rest the bigger & stronger my lil baby would grow!

Once my baby was born, as soon as I came home after 8 weeks, I can tell you, you will completely forget about how hard being on bed rest was. You will look at your baby and be pleased it was all worth it.

 

[hmommy219]

Hi girls! Fellow bed rester here! Lol... I've been on it now for 3 months and it stinks for sure!

I'm also a FTM so I spend my days planning the nursery, I've painted some art for the nursery, spent too much money shopping online and basically watch HGTV all day. Yep... It's tedious but so worth it to get the end result.

My biggest issue is that due to total lack of physical activity during the day, I have awful insomnia every night. . I also feel guilty about all the extra work my hubby is having to do.

I have about 3 months to go... Hoping it flies by.

 

[Rel]

That's it. I' m on bed rest again. And it is going to be for a month..
With 2 kids instead of 1 I am finding it very frustrating but for the good side of things I can sometimes ask them for stuff instead of my husband.