Relieving Bed Rest Boredom

Make yourself comfortable

For me, one of the most irritating things about being on bed rest at home was not having everything at hand. I would just have settled into reading my book or watching a dvd when the phone would ring in the lounge and I’d have to haul my by then considerable frame out of bed to answer it. Getting up to make a cup of tea or plodding to answer the door intercom were also little inconveniences that could have been avoided had I prepared properly and made sure everything was available at my bedside.

Think about the things you could you do to prepare so that everything you need is at arm’s length. Make a list of the things you need with you all the time. I even read recently about a woman who had a kettle and a mini fridge next to her bed so that she didn’t have to get up to make herself something to eat or drink.

Read

Yes, to a certain extent, bed rest is about catching up on reading. But it needn’t be novels or non-fiction. You might prefer magazines or the newspaper. What about work reading material that you never got to? Or school letters that you usually ignore? This is the perfect time for catching up on all kinds of reading.

Read out loud

Studies show that babies start to hear at around 24 weeks. This might sound insane, and I never did it when there were people around, but I took this to heart and started reading aloud to James in my second trimester. I read everything from the novel I was reading at the time to the phone bill to Dr Seuss. It passed the time and it helped me feel as though I was actually doing something constructive.

Get crafty

If you’re groaning at the very thought of the word “crafty”, then avert your eyes during this section.

Wait, actually don’t, because craftiness needn't be all bad: I’ve never been the archetypal mom – I’m more of the atypical mom: I can’t cook very well, I can’t sew for anything and the extent of my “craftiness” extends about as far as making very amateur-looking children’s birthday cards. However, the boredom became so much during the extended bed rest of my first pregnancy that I taught myself to knit. Not very well, mind you, but nevertheless, learning a new skill helped stimulate my brain and it was actually fun. I made a cardigan for the baby and a pullover for my husband.

I also made bibs and embroidered little pictures on them – again, not very well, but nobody cared. During my second pregnancy bed rest, a friend brought me cross stitch, which I grew to love and which saw me through the first week of Hannah’s life while I waited for her to gain weight and grow strong enough to leave the hospital.

Chat with others

This is an obvious one, because what else can you do but talk to other people while you’re on bed rest, right? But here’s an angle you probably hadn’t thought about: while I was on hospital bed rest, I took brief walks around the antenatal wards and chatted to the other moms on bed rest. Not only did our chats relieve the boredom and encourage me, but they also gave me enough material to be able to publish a magazine article when I left the hospital.

Surf

You’re probably already doing this, so I’ll keep this one short. Blogs, ezines and infertility, pregnancy and parenting forums are all great ways of passing the time while getting educated about parenting and bed rest. Use the time to try to connect with other moms in the same situation, or to find those who’ve been through this before and have emerged (relatively) sane.