Wear My Ring Around Your Neck

I sat alone in the cold confines of the darkened cellar.  My hands were frozen, the blue liquid burned  as I tried to remove the curse one last time.  "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them." I screamed in exhausted defeat.

Okay that's a slight exaggeration.  Believe it or not I've never been locked in the basement*, nor have I ever been a character in Lord of the Rings, but if I was I'd be Gimli the Dwarf.** 

Baby Gimli the Dwarf: Photo Courtesy of goingonsix

If you are pregnant, or if you find yourself pregnant and you wear rings, do yourself a favour, mark on  a calendar, or set up an outlook or Google appointment or whatever you kids do these days to take off your rings at around week 30 of succubus (or incubus) gestation.  Don't arrogantly say, "My hands aren't swollen, I'll take the rings off a week or two before my due date."  Summer swelling was not kind to my fingers, then at our presurgery appointment I was told that I would need to remove the rings from my hand, because some jewelry and body piercings increase your risk of burns from surgical equipment.  In my horomone filled mind I envisioned something similar to when a vampire walks into the sunlight.***

So after this consultation just two weeks before surgery I began my quest to remove my wedding and engagement rings.  The worst part about trying to get rings off of a swollen finger is that the more that you pull, the more that it swells.

I began to panick as I searched for answers...Here's what I tried, while I sat in our basement trying to stay cool in the July heat while watching episodes of Make Room for Multiples.  I spent about an hour on this every morning before the heat and gravity set in for the day making the rings impossible to move.

Here's what I tried:

• Windex and Floss Method
• Soaking my hands in ice to reduce swelling
• Plastic Wrap
• Wrapping tape around your finger
• Soap
• Vaseline

What worked:

Ice, Windex, scotch tape and an hour of prying worked to remove my wedding band, but no matter what I tried my engagement ring wouldn't budge.  MacGyver fail.  In fact the attempted removal started to cut up and irritate my pudgy swollen hand.****  One evening I tried to convince Chris that he'd have to take me to a jeweller and, "Cut it off, Cut it off now!"  He laughed at me and insisted that we wait until surgery day to see what the surgeon said.  I reluctantly agreed.

The ring was never removed from my finger.  They simply put some surgical tape around it after they tried to remove it with soap and it wouldn't budge.  If I was burned during surgery I never felt it, likely because I had spent the last week pickling my hand in Windex.

Lesson learned, in the last trimester of pregnancy be less like Gimli, more like Frodo.  Wear the ring around your neck!

Want Multiple Momstrosity updates on Facebook click here?

*Our basement doesn't even have a door.  A baby-gate yes, but no door.
**I'd like to be Sam because I'm so kind and pure of heart, or Gandolf because I am so wise or even Arwen because of my beauty, but let's get real, I'm small but mighty and filled with rage.
***A real vampire, not Edward Cullen.
****I'm sure the insane amounts of Windex I was pouring on it couldn't have been good by the way it was beginning to burn.