Have a good day; call me if you're having the baby

That's how Brian said goodbye to me yesterday morning.

Just a couple of notes to report: I've been yawning a lot more since last Saturday, so I think the fatigue may be returning, and today my lower back starting aching a bit on the right side. I've still been staying up until 10 or 11 each night and the back wasn't killing me, so we'll see how these symptoms progress over the coming days.

Oh, and our anesthesia class on Tuesday was informative. Not grounds for any hard-and-fast decisions (other than avoiding opioid Stadol), but worth the hour spent listening to and asking questions of Dr. Po, one of Hershey's anesthesiologists. There were only two other couples in attendance, so it was a nice, small group. Although the other two pregnant ladies were clearly approaching labor from an "I'll take the epidural as soon as I walk in the door, please" perspective, rather than one of meds as a latter resort of pain management.

But the information about spinal headaches associated with epidurals did make me a little nervous. Dr. Po said instances of puncturing the dura, therefore causing spinal fluid to leak and spark incapacitating headaches for up to a week after labor, "are not common, but they're not rare, either." Yikes. But if I make it to transition med-free, as I hope to, the spinal and the epidural/spinal combo they prefer to do both use a smaller needle to intentionally puncture the dura, so the fluid leakage isn't typically an issue.