book review tinterwined w/a vertical incision meaning

So i realized shortly after publishing my last post that i didnt explain why a vertical incision presents problems for subsequent pregnancies and why it was not advised to have more children. this would help you understand it all right ???? ok silly me. I dont recall which doc explained it to me this way, but it really stuck, because its lamens terms! whomever it was, brilliant to explain it this way! and so ill pass it on in these terms ...


this is a depiction of muscle tissue up close. a uterus is a muscle as most of us know. its also an organ, some say it functions like muscle but is an organ. but really its a smooth muscle organ. regardless this is the best way to explain. so ... check out this depiction, see how the muscle tissue has grain and it runs for the most horizontally? well similar to a uterus, much like a stretch mark developing in skin in the direction that will most allow the skin to stretch, creating an incision on the uterus with the grain or stretchable lines is the best incision to have, it will allow the "muscle" to more safely stretch in the future should needs be. This is the kind of incision most commonly done during a c-section. So my incision would be like cutting this depiction down the very center vertically, in a manner that is not conducive to stretching. I am sure you can conclude that this presents risk in pregnancy. Its not only fetal surgery moms who have this type of incision, in fact some are lucky enough to get a hori incision, but there are many women who have it, yet making up a small % of the child bearing population. these incisions occur for a variety of reasons but all are out of the norm of a healthy not complicated pregnancy. It occurs when serious complications and specific needs arise.

many of our family and friends in short have just thought we couldnt have anymore or have concluded that we couldnt get pregnant. {though we do have fertility problems .. more on that later, that wasnt the reason for our fear}. When indeed its not conception that is affected or even early pregnancy {though the nasty scar tissue has presented problems already}, the problem occurs when the uterus begins to stretch beyond what that incision is capable of holding, putting both the mother and baby at grave risk. Often times this happens very early in pregnancy.

with saylor the incision only held to 28.5 weeks. But it was also a fresh and healing incision. We have high hopes that we will advance further in gestation than that after 8 years of healing and what seems to amount to a lot of scar tissue. But we also know that a full term baby is not worth the risk to any of the docs taking care of us. {nor to us} Keeping my uterus stable, happy, and quiet so to speak will at some point {likely 25 weeks or so} begin to be high priority.

So onto my book review ... and i know your still wondering how i ended up being pregnant .... this story skips around a lot. but its fun right?


I recently finished this amazing, beautiful, book! Much of how i feel about myself and my body comes as a result of the extremely graphic incision on my stomach and the odd shape it makes my stomach as well as the muscular changes it creates. It seems that no matter how fit i am nor how many sit ups i do ... my stomach will never be what it was. Interestingly enough i have come to discover that its one of the things nate loves about me. A symbol of why he loves me i suppose. When i wanted to have it removed and surgically repaired, he wouldnt even let me entertain the idea. So in some ways this book does intertwine with my earlier words but i dont desire to dwell on that for long, its more honestly intertwined with just how i feel about my body in general.

I recently have really grappled with not being my best self. being pregnant accompanies an ever changing body and in my case or rather perception not for the better. my belly wont turn out to be a cute and round one. it will take on some odd shape molded by scars and tissue, and my much older now body will begin to distort. all worth it of course, but hard on the self esteem. I have become a bit more emotional and assumptive in how others perceive this less then best audrey, especially my husband. It has created many likely not necessary fears. This sort of all came to a head when i recently went to palm springs, where i had a fantastic and relaxing vacation but also was surrounded by mirrors, the one downfall to my fathers vacation home. By the end of the trip i was emotionally and yes a bit mentally unraveled. After a big meltdown i found my sane self again but none the less felt most damaged and unattractive.

I have this stack of books to be read. I am a big book DI book shopper, because i am a big reader, much more affordable endeavor then barns n noble. I needed a new book to escape a little so i recently went to my drawer of too-be-read and of the 15 or so books in it, i decided on this one. it almost reached for me, felt so meant to be like the timing of it was clear and strong screaming read me NOW ill help you.

to save time and writing here is the basis of this novel from amazon ...

"Lanie Coates’s life is spinning out of control. She’s piled everything she owns into a U-Haul and driven with her husband, Peter, and their three little boys from their cozy Texas home to a multiflight walkup in the Northeast. She’s left behind family, friends, and a comfortable life–all so her husband can realize his dream of becoming a professional musician. But somewhere in the eye of her personal hurricane, it hits Lanie that she once had dreams too. If only she could remember what they were.

These days, Lanie always seems to rank herself dead last–and when another mom accidentally criticizes her appearance, it’s the final straw. Fifteen years, three babies, and more pounds than she’s willing to count since the day she said “I do,” Lanie longs desperately to feel like her old self again. It’s time to rise up, fish her moxie out of the diaper pail, and find the woman she was before motherhood capsized her entire existence.

Lanie sets change in motion–joining a gym, signing up for photography classes, and finding a new best friend. But she also creates waves that come to threaten her whole life. In the end, Lanie must figure out once and for all how to find herself without losing everything else in the process."

i cant begin to explain how closely i felt i could relate to the emotions of this women so candidly and elegantly written in this novel. At moments she might as well have been me describing my body and my emotions, my private moments, like this excerpt from the beginning of the book.

"in the dark, i ran my hands over my post-pregnancy belly, a warm, soft, gelatinous thing that had become a part of my life since having kids just as permanently as the kids themselves. I pressed on it and squeezed it. I had never anticipated how much pregnancy would age me. The stretch marks on my belly, the wrinkles on my face, the spider veins on my thighs. how had i changed so much so quickly?"

i realize that many of my friends & family arent struggling with this and whose bodies have not betrayed them. you likely would not connect to this book, no offense. But more often then those lucky few i suspect are us struggling mass.

it was so refreshing to be in the life of a character who was so raw and real about who she had become and how she was dealing with it, i felt connected to lanie and i needed someone to feel like this with me to get me passed and through the moment that seemed impossible to overcome.

You think you know where her self finding journey might lead her, and in fact the potential is there. But where it does lead her, lead me to tears.

SPOILER ALERT - IF YOU PLAN TO READ THIS BOOK DO NOT READ FURTHER!

i cant help myself but post a few very poignant paragraphs from the last page of this book. I realization of things i already know and have concluded but had lost for a time, a realization that I AM BEAUTIFUL.

"as for getting skinny, i never really made it. after all those months of working so hard to bring myself back into my body, after trying so relentlessly to recover that lost version of myself that i couldn't stop mourning, i finally found a stopping place - and settled out at a mom size. Not a high-school-girl size, not a college-girl size, but a mature woman's, now i-really-get-it size. I got stronger, and maybe trimmer, but i never actually returned - as i confess i had been hoping - to my pre-mom self. which made sense. because i was not that self anymore, and i was no longer even close to that self. In the end, that was a good thing."

"and here, after all that, is what i have come to believe about beauty: laughter is beautiful. kindness is beautiful. cellulite is beautiful. softness and plumpness is beautiful. its more important to be interesting, to be vivid, and to be adventurous, that to sit pretty for pictures. A woman's soft tummy is a miracle of nature. beauty comes from tenderness. beauty comes from variety, from specificity, from the fact that no person in the world looks exactly like anyone else. beauty comes from the tragedy that each persons life is destined to be lost to time. i believe women are too hard on themselves. i believe that when you love someone, she becomes beautiful to you. i believe the eyes see everything through the heart - and nothing in the world feels as good as resting them on someone you love...."

i sincerely believe all that too, though i tend to loose sight of that in myself from time to time. But i know and believe in the truth of this last paragraph. what it really did for me was remind me that my husband LOVES me, that he sees me far differently then i see myself and differently then i perceive that he must see me. that he thinks i am beautiful.