Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Baby Headaches

And by baby headache, I don’t mean a small headache. Have you ever had a bad headaches? Of course you have.

You know they start off slow.

The notion of an ache tickles down the nape of your neck. You try to shake it off, like a like that bad streak of cards at the weekly poker game.

But it won’t be shrugged off so easy.

Instead, the notion begins to pulse. Lightly. You rub gingerly where the neck bone connects with the back bone. This only seems to relocate the pulse. And strengthen it.

Now the pain (yes, it won’t be denied; it is an actual pain) has bullied its way to the spot where the neck bone meets the head bone and the jaw bone. Did I say pulse?

Throb is a better word.

And it’s radiating.

Your jaw rotates – open, close, open, close, side-to-side, side-to-side – as your wisdom teeth find the ache.

You’ve kept yourself busy with other thoughts; but it doesn’t work. Now your eye sockets, your sinuses, your tendons, jaw, teeth, joints, the synovial fluid between the joint; everything from the shoulders up hurts.

Not a migraine, but close. You tried acetaminophen; two, in fact. No good. Well, the answer is obvious.

Two ibuprofen.

For the right problem – specific types of headaches – ibuprofen is ambrosia. A nectar of the gods. But when you’re pregnant, you are denied ambrosia. While there have been no adequate studies of effects of ibuprofen in pregnant women, the ambrosia has been recently accused of causing birth defects in unborn children.

P.Pie has these headaches. They attack her without warning and with no specific time or duration. It might last 20 minutes, it might last 2 days.

Just one of the many changes that happen during pregnancy.

If you have a solution, I’d love to hear about it.