Take 2?

July 2008

This month Mr. Crud and I officially revved our engines and returned to the TTC* path. Last month was more of a dare: let’s see if we can knock me up without trying or me acting like a pregnant woman should. This month, we got serious even though we are both terrified. It was easy enough. I input my menstrual period date into a couple of websites, came up with conflicting answers as to when I’d be ovulating so I decided to cast a wide net. Neither Mr. Crud nor I minded. Sex is pretty darn fun if you can keep yourself from getting too tired to do it.

So we did it. I returned to my cervical fluid scrutinizing ways and we did it. That was 2 weeks ago.

I quit smoking during the doing-it phase. Might as well do it right this time, I reasoned. I finished my (supposed) last glass of wine and puffed my last puff and was a good girl for a whole week. Then the mental gymnastics set in. This might be your very last chance to be able to smoke and drink for over a year! Get going, lady. The timing was too perfect. Last Wednesday Mr. Crud had an early drum practice. We dined a half hour early and he set off for a night’s worth of drumming. Minutes after he slammed the door closed, I was out the door and marching to the Plaid Pantry three blocks away. Cigarettes: check! I was relieved to find that they also had wine and not the terrible Boones Farm-Thunderbird selection that I feared. My quitting quitting would not force me to walk 5 more blocks to the grocery store. It almost seemed meant to be (a phrase that I am especially hostile to at the moment): I am meant to smoke a cigarette and drink wine!

At home I thoroughly enjoyed my vices. I told myself that I probably wasn’t pregnant because I hadn’t been feeling odd like I had the first time around. No sudden moments of weird smells, no cramping, no queasy waves.

I spent my free time at work scouring the internet for early pregnancy symptoms. I know them by heart: tender breasts, mild cramping (which are both also premenstrual symptoms as well—way to go Intelligent Design), fatigue, nausea. I don’t exactly know what I was looking for aside from some super secret way to find out if you’re pregnant a week after having sex.

Let the body scrutiny begin! Were those mild cramps due to a fertilized embryo implanting in my uterus or just an extension of my recent bout of digestive distress.

“Well, I’ve had diarrhea the past few days,” I said to Mr. Crud, “so I’m probably not pregnant.”

“Uh. I don’t think those have anything to do with each other.”

Are my boobs tender because of pregnancy or because I’m poking them all the time?
“Do my boobs look bigger to you?” I asked Mr. Crud after cupping them, staring at them, taking a profile view in the bathroom mirror.

“I don’t know.”

Is my hair falling out less? I watch the comb in the shower and remind myself that the previous month I had also believed my normal hair loss to have halted.

(Aside: Because I have a weird feeling that I am destined for 2 miscarriages, I have decided that I was indeed pregnant last month but that all my drinking, smoking, sauna-ing caused me to miscarry. I really did think I was pregnant last month. I felt a tingling in my lady regions, which ended with the big tingle in the form of cramps and heavy flow. Sound reasonable to you?)

Am I tired because work is tiring or is this a return to the exhaustion level of tired from the pg times?

Last night I awoke three times to pee in the middle of the night. I have not had such heavy midnight bathroom activity since I was pregnant. Or maybe I was just anxious and getting up to pee was a way to release the tension (in the form of urine? Uh maybe.).

Each mention of potential symptoms turns Mr. Crud edgy. During the first go-round my mention of symptoms made us both shriek “Eeeeee!” but this time we hug each other and reassure each other that no matter what happens, we’ll be okay. After learning about the first pregnancy, we grappled with issues of are we ready to be parents? Do we really want to be parents? Now, we know that we want to be parents. We know that we switched into the roles of future parents with relative ease. Now we also know how much there is to lose, which is the root of our anxiety. I try to imagine how it will feel if the pregnancy test that I take in three days—assuming I haven’t gotten my period by that time—is positive. The fear and joy are intertwined. As much as I tell myself that the odds are with me to have a normal, healthy pregnancy and a normal, healthy baby, I can’t shake the memory of the ultrasound room or imagine a new venue for bad news. “I’m not expecting what I’m seeing here. I should get the doctor.” The fear and joy are the creepy twin girls from The Shining. They hold hands and stare at me, mute and impassive, as blood rushes around us.

“I’m sorry I keep putting you on a rollercoaster,” I tell Mr. Crud after he gives me a frightened look at the mention of a brief moment of nausea.

“It’s okay. You should be able to share this with me. I’m just scared,” he says.

We hug. We hold each other and wonder if we are still alone in this thing or if some combination of us bumps around inside my uterus, a mess of dividing cells, which G-d willing, will keep on dividing.

* TTC means "Trying to Conceive" to those of you not schooled in the online pregnancy lingo.

Introducing Peabody 2

The Peabody Project Chronicles was my blog-to-be about my first pregnancy. Sadly this pregnancy ended in miscarriage—technically a “missed abortion—on that most foolish of days, April 1, and I never published a word of the 60 pages I’d written. Losing the pregnancy was devastating, an experience that changed me, and the way I view my body and the world profoundly. Mr. Crud, my husband’s nom de blog, and I knew that we would try again, that the odds were in our favor for a successful pregnancy, and so after waiting the suggested three months, we did.

When I received a positive pregnancy test August 9, 2008, 8 months after the first positive pregnancy test, I was not overcome with joy or relief, but fear. Shit. What if it happens all over again? What have we gotten ourselves into this time? Shit fuck shit. The easy optimism of my first pregnancy vanished with the miscarriage. As much as I assured myself with statistics and the fact that I had no control over whether this pregnancy would end in miscarriage, my fingers went cold with terror.

During the early days of the miscarriage I found solace in hearing the voices of other women who had been through a similar experience. I emailed family members and friends who shared their experiences. I read books. I spent a lot of time googling “miscarriage” and “missed abortion” and “pregnancy after miscarriage.” I still google.

Now I feel like it is time to add my voice to the chorus by sharing my experiences with pregnancy after miscarriage. Unlike the first time, I have not waited the recommended 3 months to tell people about my pregnancy. I ended up telling everyone about my miscarriage anyway, so why hold back? Please don’t feel like you should hold back either. Comments are welcome and encouraged. The blog is about 2 months behind where I am now—about 9 weeks pregnant—as I started writing immediately upon learning I was pregnant but have been too busy to get the blog off the ground until now.

Peabody was the joke name that Mr. Crud and I gave the child we hoped to have. After the miscarriage, we soul searched to a seemingly ridiculous degree about whether the name Peabody died with the first embryo. We never really decided one way or another, but soon started using Peabody again. The name embodies the child we hoped to have and because that hope did not die, the name didn't either. I have named the miscarried soul, Primo, the Italian word for first.

Thanks to all the friends, old and new, who have shared their experiences with me.