Diaries from Modified Bed Rest

About a week and a half ago, my doctor put me on modified bed rest. I won't get into the nitty gritty of pregnancy fun, but suffice it to say that there's a good possibility the baby will make an early appearance and keeping me as sedentary as possible is one way to try to stop that.

Before now, I hadn't really heard of "modified" bed rest. Apparently, it's like a slightly better form of traditional bed rest. Instead of being strapped to a bed or couch, with standing-up privileges reserved solely for using the bathroom, I can at least move around the house. I can shower, do "light" meal preparation (my own brain has translated this to "microwaves good, ovens bad"), and go up and down the stairs a limited amount of times a day. The list of things I can't do is far more impressive:

• Work outside of home (thank goodness for the Internet)
• Take the dog out, even to the backyard
• Do laundry
• Lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk
• Clean the house
• Cook real meals that don't consist of cereal, popcorn and/or ice cream bars
• Eat in a restaurant/go to the movies/go to a store/really see the light of day

It's a strange existence. I can count on one hand the amount of times I've left our property in the last 11 days and have enough fingers left over to make a peace sign: once for a doctor's appointment, once for this weekend's baby shower (we were able to pull the car up to the back door of the room where the shower was, so I literally walked about 15 steps), and once to accompany Matt to the grocery store. I stayed in the car in my pajamas while he bought ice cream. It was the highlight of my day.

Still, it's been kind of amusing. If you said this was how I'd have to live forever, I'd probably lose my mind. But we're all having fun coming up with ways to keep it interesting. Because of my intense fear of getting bored, I've become even more OCD, making daily to-do lists for myself that contain the limited amount of productive things I can do (Write thank you notes! Fold laundry! Upload photos to the computer!) and stupid things to make sure I don't look up at 8 p.m. and realize I spent the whole day watching reruns of American Horror Story. So thinks like "read" and "work on embroidery" somehow get the same billing as "pay cell phone bill." Whatever. Don't be jealous of my sweet to-do list.

My other unasked-for advice for anyone on modified bed rest is to get dressed in real, honest-to-goodness clothes every day. Being home and not seeing other people is a big motivation to wear pajamas 24/7, a reflex I fully understand. Normally, I'm in pjs within 10 minutes of getting home from work, and the only reason it takes me that long is because I have to take the dog out. But there's something about putting on real clothes that still allows me to feel like a functioning adult, even if my day's big event was scoring a 89-point word on Words with Friends. 

Be prepared for more messages from the homefront. I mean, "write blog" was No. 10 on today's list.