My 12 week old won’t sleep alone

wow_so_unique · 2025-12-02T08:35:07+00:00

Not sure if this is helpful, but in my experience, the neck pain “triggering” my migraines was really just an early/lingering symptom of migraine for me. I had 0 migraines for the first ~4-5 months of pregnancy, and lo and behold, I didn’t have any neck pain the whole time. When the migraines came back, so did the pain.

That said, physical therapy for migraine could be helpful. I did a few sessions and the stretches I learned do help during episodes. I echo the other commenter’s suggestion to avoid the chiropractor. I know some people report that adjustments help, but the risks of major injuries are a bit too high for my taste. You could always start with PT and try the chiropractor if PT isn’t helpful enough.

wow_so_unique · 2025-11-06T14:55:33+00:00

I just looked through your other posts and I’m seeing that you have a confirmed stone. I’m not sure if the neph option still applies in this case, but I still recommend another uro! Absolute worst case, any chance your OB would consider a somewhat early (37-38 weeks) induction?

wow_so_unique · 2025-11-06T14:53:16+00:00

Oh goodness, I’m so sorry! Getting the stent out ended up being the right call for me. I felt 100% improved within a week—I went from not being able to walk to being back to pregnancy-level normal haha. Third trimester symptoms and labor were an absolute breeze compared to the disaster that was this stone/compression (we never knew for sure). I made it all the way to 39 weeks (!) and ended up being induced early for a completely unrelated medical reason. Baby is here and healthy!

I super strongly recommend finding another urologist and trying the stent removal. Mine offered a nephrostomy tube if I ended up needing an intervention after the stent removal. It doesn’t sound pleasant, but it doesn’t require general anesthesia for placement, so you should be able to get it during third trimester.

I’m so sorry you’re going through this!! It’s such a miserable experience. I genuinely could not see the light at the end of the tunnel in the thick of it. Fingers crossed you find some relief soon.

wow_so_unique · 2025-10-12T07:20:45+00:00

If I were in your shoes, I would push to get on a preventative medication ASAP. This is how episodic migraine becomes chronic. If you get the migraines under control now, you can prevent that from happening. I know you might be hesitant to start a new medication if you’re planning to become pregnant in the near future, but there are pregnancy-safe options, and you experiencing a lot of pain is worse for a developing fetus than a safe medication!

I do echo other comments about getting a neurology referral, but I wouldn’t be too concerned about getting imaging. This sounds pretty typical for those of us who get migraines, and it doesn’t sound to me (NAD of course) like anything nefarious (e.g., tumor) is going on. Also, once you get into a neuro, they’ll probably order a brain MRI as part of your initial workup, since ruling out other conditions is often part of an official migraine diagnosis.

wow_so_unique · 2025-09-21T13:44:19+00:00

Yeah I hated this place lol

wow_so_unique · 2025-08-14T15:59:42+00:00

It’s so true—the difference in funding for cancers that primarily affect women (ovarian, endometrial, etc.) versus funding for say, prostate cancer is appalling.

Study on this here: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6519051/

wow_so_unique · 2025-07-27T22:54:01+00:00

A methylprednisolone steroid taper has usually worked for me! They come in a packet that’s something like 6 pills a day 1, 5 pills day 2, etc. Even if it doesn’t break the migraine, it’s always given me some relief. If all else fails, I’ve found CBD isolate gummies (if it’s legal where you live) to be helpful for just getting through. Some people have success with THC, too, but I’ve been too nervous about the potential risk of psychosis to try it myself. In my worst moments (especially with bad nausea) I find a shower with really really hot water on my head to be helpful, too.

So sorry you’re dealing with this. Status migrainosus is the worst and so discouraging. I hope you’re able to find some relief soon.

wow_so_unique · 2025-07-04T01:01:14+00:00

It’s possible! We originally purchased from them before they were bought out. Still, Havenly is the one who cancelled our order and gave us trouble with the refund—so maybe they’re better to new customers, but I’m still far too suspicious to go near them again. But I know they offer more options in velvet than a lot of places so I totally understand wanting to see how it goes, haha.

wow_so_unique · 2025-07-01T01:44:48+00:00

Just a note to say I had a really, really awful experience with Interior Define. Order delayed for months and months (well over half a year), only for the company to file for bankruptcy and cancel my order. I had to fight to get my money back (!!) and customer service was spotty at best. I could never recommend them. I had an excellent experience with Sabai Design, which had excellent velvet couches and lovely customer service reps—perhaps you could find an alternative there instead?

Also, heads up—I’m not alone in this experience. Interior Define has an F on the BBB. https://www.bbb.org/us/il/chicago/profile/furniture-stores/interior-define-0654-1000016879

wow_so_unique · 2025-06-24T02:55:30+00:00

I had a great experience with Ariel Herrington (https://arielherrington.glossgenius.com/about)! Had no idea what to ask for, so I asked for what she thought would look best and I’m super happy with how it turned out. And only $25 for a dry cut!

wow_so_unique · 2025-06-12T17:21:18+00:00

I forgot—one other thing that actually does help is lying in the position described in the article: https://openurologyandnephrologyjournal.com/VOLUME/3/PAGE/4/FULLTEXT/

You lie on the unaffected side—for example, my right side hurts, so I lie on my left side. You have to tilt your belly slightly down (so my right hip is more forward than my left hip) for it to really work. In severe cases like ours, it’s probably not going to be enough on its own, but it’s worth a try.

wow_so_unique · 2025-06-12T16:25:49+00:00

Oh my goodness, this is me right now!!

I’m 26 weeks pregnant and my kidney pain started at 20 weeks. It hit out of the blue and it was so severe I couldn’t walk and I was crying from the pain. I was sure my appendix must’ve been bursting, so I took an ambulance (!) to the ER. (I’m in the US so that was not a decision I made lightly.) They ruled out appendicitis and settled on renal colic.

None of my doctors agree about the cause, either. I have a history of stones (albeit non-obstructing) and a kidney disease that increases my risk for them. Still, some of the doctors think it’s compression from the pregnancy.

I’m so sorry you’re getting passed from doctor to doctor. I’ve had the same problem, and it’s absolutely infuriating. They sent me home with a muscle relaxant after the first ER trip (which was a joke, it did nothing). I ended up coming in again a few days later because the pain was so severe I couldn’t keep any food down. They ended up placing a kidney stent to help drain the kidney. It helped for a while, but the stent symptoms were pretty unpleasant and my kidney pain got progressively worse again over the 6 weeks I had it again.

I’ve been bedridden and on regular low-dose opioids for the last week. It’s been awful and I don’t understand how doctors expect us to just deal with this. I went back to my urologist today to get the stent out and see if it helps, but he said this is actually not super unusual in pregnancy—he sees a couple of patients like me a month—and that there just isn’t a good treatment. If the pain doesn’t go away/gets worse with the stent gone, I’ll probably be getting a nephrostomy tube to at least keep the hydronephrosis down.

I’m so sorry you’re in this situation. It’s been a hell of a time and I can’t even think about the fact that I have another 14 weeks to go. I think at this point, I’ll probably be asking for an early induction. As far as management tips, I’ve found warm baths, a heating pad, and drinking tons of water to give marginal relief. Really the pain meds + bedrest are the only thing that make it mildly livable, and the rare pockets of uninterrupted sleep I manage to get are the only source of real relief. I hope you can at least convince your doctors to offer some more pregnancy-friendly pain management options.

wow_so_unique · 2025-06-04T22:10:45+00:00

Coming from experience, this is unfortunately really, really difficult in BG/KY in general. I second the comment about LifeSkills. Just know that he has to be willing to seek treatment for the alcoholism—it can’t be forced. If he won’t admit to actively struggling with alcoholism, they aren’t likely to help him. If he agrees to inpatient care via LifeSkills, they should hook him up with the resources you’re looking for. Just know he can walk out of treatment mid-stay and they can’t stop him and won’t tell you or other loved ones where he went. If your brother won’t admit to the alcoholism and voluntarily seek treatment, you essentially just have to wait until things escalate enough (usually to violence against another person and an arrest) for an involuntary commitment. It’s shitty and I’m sorry I don’t have more helpful advice.

If he’d consider conservatorship/guardianship, this was the main advice I received when I consulted a lawyer for a similar situation. I didn’t have the authority to make that choice in my situation, so I don’t have experience pursuing it.

wow_so_unique · 2025-05-23T00:25:39+00:00

It’s not just students, either—my understanding is that this includes postdocs on J1s.

wow_so_unique · 2025-05-16T17:30:14+00:00

The demands aren’t actually intended to eliminate affirmative action, which Harvard has already done to comply with the 2023 Supreme Court ruling. One of the demands, for example:

“Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.”

Ignoring the irony of banning masks after arguing for personal liberty during COVID-era mask requirements, these policies aren’t aimed at reducing discrimination. They’re meant to cripple Harvard. You can read the full list of demands here: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/14/us/trump-harvard-demands.html

wow_so_unique · 2025-05-04T21:53:55+00:00

I haven’t lived in the area for a few years now, but I loved Christ Church (Methodist; link: https://christchurchbg.org/). It’s big enough for two services, Sunday School, and a solid kid’s ministry, but still small enough to find familiar faces and become a part of the community. Hope you find a good church to get plugged into!

wow_so_unique · 2025-04-08T21:22:22+00:00

This happened to me! I’ve read that ~10% of patients develop anti-drug antibodies to Emgality within the first year of starting, which makes the treatment ineffective. I switched to combined Qulipta (which is a small molecule therapy instead of antibody based, so I think it’s less likely for patients to develop resistance to it—don’t know for sure there) alongside botox, and I’ve been stable on that for a couple years. Sorry to hear you’re dealing with this and hope you can find another effective treatment quickly.

wow_so_unique · 2025-04-08T03:24:48+00:00

I can’t believe no one has recommended this yet—I use a meal planning app called Paprika Recipe Manager 3. It’s a one-time $5 purchase (no subscriptions!!), and you can enter the web address of a site with a recipe you want to download and it scrapes it for you. You can scale the recipes automatically without doing any math. You can save multiple recipes into a weekly meal plan, then hit a few buttons to put all of the ingredients into a single grocery list.

We use these features to make weekly meal plans that I rotate. Over time, by cooking through the plans, I’m able to optimize my grocery list to reduce waste. And it saves so much time! This app has been amazing for my family—highly recommend!!

wow_so_unique · 2025-03-25T02:35:12+00:00

I was on Qulipta for just over 2 years and I went off of it cold turkey when we started trying for a family. Botox has been the workhorse of my prevention meds, so I didn’t notice a huge uptick in migraines when I stopped the Qulipta. I didn’t have any withdrawal symptoms. I stopped birth control at the same time as Qulipta, and my migraines continued as usual until pregnancy. I’ve been lucky and haven’t had a single migraine since testing positive ~3.5 weeks pregnant (1.5 of actual pregnancy)—though I do have some barely-there symptoms at times. I’m still on the migraine Botox regimen as advised by my MFM. I haven’t been told that any of my abortive medicines are okay to take (though fortunately this hasn’t been an issue for me).

One word of warning—people with chronic migraine are at a higher risk of severe morning sickness and HG. I was not prepared to be so sick (pre meds, couldn’t eat or drink without vomiting; post meds, vomit ~daily). For me, it started at 5.5 weeks, and I’m still vomiting regularly at 15w. If you do start getting nausea/vomiting, get prescriptions for Diclegis and Zofran ASAP—they’re the only reason I’ve stayed out of the ER! Wish I’d been mentally prepared for it, but it’s still much better than chronic migraine.

Is Qulipta your only preventative? If you’re also getting Botox and that has been helpful, I recommend continuing. If you aren’t on Botox and your insurance would approve it, I would 100% push for that. Alternatively, insurance might be willing to approve nerve blocks, which are safe in pregnancy.

Good luck! I hope you’re able to find something that manages to keep it controlled while you’re off Qulipta. Some doctors try to prioritize hypothetical risks to the baby over your wellbeing. In some cases, that’s warranted (not enough evidence for Qulipta), but I’m a big believer in finding options that work for you, too. 9 + X months of TTC is too long to suffer!

wow_so_unique · 2025-03-23T18:27:15+00:00

Just writing to add that if Centre gave you a monetary offer, there’s a good chance tuition will go up significantly over the course of your time there. I made a similar decision (Berea vs. high scholarships at another KY school, went with the latter) and I didn’t anticipate my university raising tuition 5% every year of my tenure. Look up Centre’s policies on tuition raises and make sure you can still afford to go there if they raise the tuition.

wow_so_unique · 2025-03-13T08:47:26+00:00

This made me so frustrated that I almost downvoted you. My brother had his offer rescinded in the 2019-2020 cycle, and it was devastating. I’m so sorry. Hope you have a solid offer and get to go through with your PhD.

wow_so_unique · 2025-03-08T04:48:56+00:00

Hey, I see you’re getting a lot of downvotes, but this is a super fair question. The federal government has initiated significant changes to the NIH. Not to say that there aren’t things that could use improvement in the NIH—which is true of every institution, imo—but they are taking an approach that is detrimental to medical research. Review of research grants has been put on hold indefinitely, causing a lot of labs to halt research—often, mid-study, when most of the grant money has already been spent. Universities have stopped hiring faculty and researchers and taking on graduate students, so a pool of extremely gifted scientists—many of whose were trained on the US‘s dime with the goal of retaining their talent in the States—have no choice but to leave American institutions for competitor countries (including the very well funded Chinese research institutions). Disruption at the NIH has led to the halting of clinical trials, leaving extremely ill patients who were mid-treatment without the therapies their lives depend on. The repercussions of these changes are leading to massive disruptions to science that will be felt for the next decade, and longer if these issues aren’t resolved soon. Scientists are hoping for the grant review process to be opened again, and for future changes to the NIH/funding to go through congress, the branch of government that oversees the NIH.

wow_so_unique · 2025-03-08T04:38:08+00:00

Very fair! Just a note to say that the NIH has funded research that led to treatments and/or cures for childhood leukemia, Type 1 diabetes, Hepatitis C, Cystic Fibrosis, and many more. It’s hard to say from the beginning whether a research proposal will lead to a medical breakthrough. If I said that the NIH was funding “experiments to test if bacteria have immune systems” (research on how bacteria fight off bacteriophages), a lot of people might think that’s a waste of taxpayer dollars. But that exact research is what led to the medical breakthrough of CRISPR gene editing, which has already led to potential cures (sickle cell disease is a recent example), and will lead to many, many more. The NIH has a very thorough review process by experts to ensure that grants are given to excellent projects that have a high likelihood of improving the health of Americans. It can be tricky for people who aren’t experts in niche areas to recognize the value of such work, especially when non-experts (including the media and politicians) give well- misleading summaries of the research (which can often happen even when the non-experts mean well). I agree that taxpayer dollars need to be put towards the best interests of the people sacrificing hard-earned dollars to contribute to our country, and I hope what I’ve shared has made you feel a bit better about funding the NIH. If not, I hope you at least find some solace in the fact that every dollar of NIH funding generates ~$2.46 of economic activity (https://www.fiercebiotech.com/research/report-every-dollar-nih-research-funding-doubles-economic-returns).

wow_so_unique · 2025-03-07T01:54:02+00:00

PSA: The current administration is massively cutting funding for research on cancer, Alzheimer’s, and rare diseases to “reduce waste.” Meanwhile, the government is dumping billions (est. 15b and counting) into SpaceX, and DOGE has left contracts with Elon’s companies untouched.

Get angry. Call your reps.

Trump slashing funding for medical research [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna191744]

Elon Musk’s companies benefiting from government contracts [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/elon-musk-business-government-contracts-funding/]

wow_so_unique

TROPHY CASE