To have and to hold... with or without the rings!

You may recall my last pregnancy... I had a post called 'And the rings come off' - well its that time of the pregnancy again - but this time my rings were officially stuck on my finger as of last night.

What an ordeal taking, budging, ripping my rings off. My poor poor POOR finger.

I wore my rings to the cottage but didn't really wear them while I was there... I may have had them on the first two days, but with swimming and applying suntan lotion all. the. time. I just put them in my purse and forgot about them until the final day. When I was packing up, I remembered them and tried to put them on but with little success. I commented that, its that time again - bye bye rings.

However, come Tuesday morning, out of habit, I tried them on again, and while they didn't slide right on, I was able to use a little a lot of force to get them on. And ON they stayed... as the day heated up, so did my body temperature. When I got home from work, I looked down and my rings looked like they were forced on an overweight marshmallow. Not cool. I tried to take them off, but with no such luck.

I had a little meltdown... okay, I cried a little, and swore A LOT - then I pulled myself together and did the logical thing - Google'd 'How to get rings off a swollen finger'.

Luckily there are TONS of options, none of which really work, but a couple which I was willing to try - including taping my swollen finger up for an hour on ice... using saran wrap and windex (don't ask)... and going between heat and ice for 30 minutes.

Finally, last night, I used a combo of baby oil and soap and warm water and 35 minutes later I managed to get my engagement ring off. I did a little happy dance... until I looked down at my poor little finger and saw my wedding band still on there, and I remembered that my other band was a half size smaller than my engagement ring.

Can you say '#$%@ @#$%, &%#@, !@#$, &%#$"

Ya... I did.

I thought... just calm down, give it a half hour and try again, but an hour later, my finger was throbbing, and tingling. By the time PC got in from hockey, I said to him 'Would you be mad if I got my wedding band cut off?'

His immediate reaction was 'You can't, its platinum'.

Apparently, platinum is hard to cut or dangerous as you can lose your finger - either way, I am thinking, I am going to lose my finger if I don't get this sucker off.

I questioned PC a little more 'Are you sure you went with platinum and not white gold' to which he assured me, as per the insurance appraisal that IT IS PLATINUM.

So, I decided to ice it for a bit, wrap my finger up with tape as per Google's advice... and sleep on it. During the night, I woke up about 3 times with my finger tingling, and my arm half asleep. This morning, the swelling was down, but the ring still would not budge. I showered and moved the ring a bit, but not enough to get over my hippo knuckle.

I starting praying ... 'please lord, let me have a SKINNY day... PLEASE'.

However, after consulting a friend who consulted a friend of hers, she told me to drink a lot of water to bring the retention down, so I went to town chugging water all morning, and when I got home today my finger seemed skinnier! I ran warm water ... used the old baby oil and a lot of soap and after another 20 minutes of cursing and forcing the ring, I finally got it off.

You can only imagine the celebration that follow... WHOOO-HOOO!

What a relief... I honestly thought I was going to lose my finger.

The lesson... and my advice to all pregnant women out there is if you force the rings on.... its gonna take double the force and few hell mary's to get those puppies off. Bottom line, its not worth the pain and agony - trust me!

Any one else out there ever have to force your rings off due to pregnancy or any other reason? Do you have any secret solutions for any one suffering from swollen ring-gers!!!