5-18-09
(WARNING: Spoilers of the season finale of The Office ahead.)
OMG! Pam is pregnant! Mr. Crud and I are watching the season finale of our beloved Office. The always adorable Pam hurts her leg. Jim takes her to the hospital. As the nurse wheels Pam into X-Ray, she asks Pam if she’s pregnant. Mr. Crud throws a knowing look. I wonder if it is a bit of misdirection to get us hanging viewers going down a blind pregnant alley. But no. A few minutes later Jim is called into the examination room for the results of Pam’s x-rays. Instead of a frantic rush to get her back on her feet so as to defeat the evil NY branch of Dunder-Mifflin, we see his face morph from shock to joy. They hug. He runs outside to tell his coworkers to “send in the subs” before returning to Pam for more celebrating.
(If I may poop on this sitcom parade, how exactly did this work? The nurse asks Pam if she’s pregnant on the way into the x-ray because x-raying pregnant women isn’t the greatest of ideas. Pam says no…so the nurse gives her a pregnancy test anyway? Are pregnancy tests standard when a woman of child-bearing age goes to the hospital after twisting her ankle? Did they x-ray her ankle and somehow tilt the machine up to catch an image of her uterus? In the parlance of the 30 Rock episode which followed: All these inconsistencies? Dealbreaker!)
And now back to our regularly scheduled blog entry about how my first thought after thinking the pregnancy development was kinda sweet (I’m surprised at how much I enjoy Pam and Jim’s cute premarital bliss.) was Pam is totally not going to have a miscarriage. A miscarriage scare so that she and Jim can know for sure for sure that they really want and love this baby? Sure. Everybody does that. But no miscarriage. Miscarriages in popular culture follow a few narratives:
• Bad woman gets knocked up and at the moment she decides she will change her evil ways to be a mother to this fetus inside of her, she has a miscarriage to punish her past misdeeds.
• Woman plans on having an abortion, but chicken-shit TV executives fear the wrath of the anti-choicers, thus have her cancel her abortion and allow her to have a miscarriage soon thereafter. Phew!
• Perfect cute couple are so in love and she gets pregnant and the birds are singing, but then she gets kicked in the stomach/has a car accident/falls down the stairs and she has a miscarriage. This technique is more common to Lifetime and weepy movies of the week.
My future master’s thesis in sociology/woman’s studies: Representations of Miscarriage in Popular Culture. (Please feel free to steal that. I’m more curious to find out the results than to do the dreaded research myself, although watching crappy TV in the name of research does have a certain appeal.)
The credits roll.
“She won’t have a miscarriage,” I say to Mr. Crud.
“Nope. It is a sitcom.”
I think about Jenna Fisher, the actress who plays Pam. She is hitting her mid-thirties sans baby bump. Does she want her own Peabody? Is playing pregnant a daily reminder of all that she is missing (or has lost—you never know a member of the miscarriage sisterhood from appearances) or a reaffirmation of her decision not to procreate? Or maybe she’s just doing her job.
As for me? We’re on the final week of the current TTC cycle. Either my period or a pregnancy test awaits this weekend. I have not the first clue as to whether magic happened this time around or if it is back to the drawing board. I have (mostly) stopped trying to guess. I don’t check on potential due dates or let myself get tangled in the superstition game. However I am looking at my boobs more than usual. Do they look bigger to you?
Showing posts with label TTC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TTC. Show all posts
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Friday, May 29, 2009
Word to Your Mother's Day
5-11-09
What could be a more wholesome, uncomplicated celebration than Mother’s Day? At least this is what I used to think. Mother’s Day = flowers, cute kid-made cards, champagne brunches (that’s my kinda motherhood), and burnt toast breakfast attempts by tow-headed kindergartners with gap-toothed smiles. Now I’m more in tune to the complications. Mr. Crud is more bummed about it than me. Throughout the day I catch a glum expression on his mug.
“You okay?” I expect it to be an early onset case of the Sundays.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It just feels weird.”
“That I’m not a mother?”
“Yeah.”
I chalk up my lack of reaction to the holiday as minor denial combined with minor hope. Maybe next year I will be a mother to a real live crying, pooping baby instead of an idea. Wouldn’t that be something.
Per usual, Facebook shakes me out of my denial with the flood of Mother’s Day-related status updates. All the mothers that I know had lovely days with their kids. Precious moments a-plenty. I feel the now-routine dip into contradiction: Good for you. Why not me?
Mr. Crud and I head to yoga class. “Happy Mother’s Day!” says our teacher as a welcome.
I know that she isn’t herself a mother so somehow this greeting feels okay. “And to you,” I say.
I pat Mr. Crud on the back. I hope I’m pregnant by Father’s Day. I already have a complicated enough Father’s Day what with my dad being dead and all.
We find our places among the yogis and wait for class to begin. Our teacher hands out slips of paper with a chant to honor Krishna’s mother. We clap to a beat. We chant. I know that Mr. Crud enjoys the clapping, that he can lose himself in the rhythm. As we clap I think of the other women and men of the world who may not be lost in the lavender-scented wholesomeness: The other wannabe parents like us who struggle with infertility and miscarriage; the parents of dead children with their wounded hearts; the children of incarcerated women, of abusive mothers, of dead, beloved or hated mothers; and simply those people who have complicated relationships with their mothers. I keep clapping. My wishes are for you, my complicated Mother’s Day compatriots, to find peace today. Just a little, whatever you can handle.
After class, Mr. Crud and I walk on sore, warriored-out legs back home. “Mother’s Day isn’t as simple as it seems,” Mr. Crud says.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I keep wondering what next Mother’s Day will be like,” he says.
“Yeah, me too.” I wonder if we’ll be able to gross out Peabody with the story of how she was conceived on a Mother’s Day a lot like this one. I hope so.
What could be a more wholesome, uncomplicated celebration than Mother’s Day? At least this is what I used to think. Mother’s Day = flowers, cute kid-made cards, champagne brunches (that’s my kinda motherhood), and burnt toast breakfast attempts by tow-headed kindergartners with gap-toothed smiles. Now I’m more in tune to the complications. Mr. Crud is more bummed about it than me. Throughout the day I catch a glum expression on his mug.
“You okay?” I expect it to be an early onset case of the Sundays.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It just feels weird.”
“That I’m not a mother?”
“Yeah.”
I chalk up my lack of reaction to the holiday as minor denial combined with minor hope. Maybe next year I will be a mother to a real live crying, pooping baby instead of an idea. Wouldn’t that be something.
Per usual, Facebook shakes me out of my denial with the flood of Mother’s Day-related status updates. All the mothers that I know had lovely days with their kids. Precious moments a-plenty. I feel the now-routine dip into contradiction: Good for you. Why not me?
Mr. Crud and I head to yoga class. “Happy Mother’s Day!” says our teacher as a welcome.
I know that she isn’t herself a mother so somehow this greeting feels okay. “And to you,” I say.
I pat Mr. Crud on the back. I hope I’m pregnant by Father’s Day. I already have a complicated enough Father’s Day what with my dad being dead and all.
We find our places among the yogis and wait for class to begin. Our teacher hands out slips of paper with a chant to honor Krishna’s mother. We clap to a beat. We chant. I know that Mr. Crud enjoys the clapping, that he can lose himself in the rhythm. As we clap I think of the other women and men of the world who may not be lost in the lavender-scented wholesomeness: The other wannabe parents like us who struggle with infertility and miscarriage; the parents of dead children with their wounded hearts; the children of incarcerated women, of abusive mothers, of dead, beloved or hated mothers; and simply those people who have complicated relationships with their mothers. I keep clapping. My wishes are for you, my complicated Mother’s Day compatriots, to find peace today. Just a little, whatever you can handle.
After class, Mr. Crud and I walk on sore, warriored-out legs back home. “Mother’s Day isn’t as simple as it seems,” Mr. Crud says.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I keep wondering what next Mother’s Day will be like,” he says.
“Yeah, me too.” I wonder if we’ll be able to gross out Peabody with the story of how she was conceived on a Mother’s Day a lot like this one. I hope so.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Um...No
4-30-09
(Sorry for the cliff-hanger, folks.)
Saturday I awake with a rollercoaster tingle in my belly. Sure, it’s 2 days before the supposed arrival of my period, but I’ve been feeling all the symptoms: random nausea, weird bursts of energy, and haven’t my boobs been looking a little larger? Plus my dreams were all about Neal Pollack a.k.a. Alternadad. No interesting narrative arc to report. We were just hanging out, palling around, talking yoga and the like. But I associate him with fatherhood, and with this leap of faith that Mr. Crud and I have taken twice so far so this dream is Significant, right? Right? I whisper in Mr. Crud’s ear, “I gotta pee. I’ll be back in a sec,” lest he worry about my disappearance from our lazy Saturday morning in bed.
I walk to the bathroom. Each step is a change of heart: no, I should wait, it’ll just be a waste of pregnancy test. Why the hell not? I spend more on drinks that I don’t finish than I did for the pee stick. Nah, this is silly. Just wait. 2 more days. You can wait.
Even though I’m not sure I am knocked up, I’ve been acting like a preg. Friday I skipped the sauna and my weekly martini. All week I loaded up on sushi in preparation for a possible sushi drought. I even used my possible pregnancy as a bargaining chip for the last piece of Gonzo Roll, the favorite roll of Mr. Crud and I that is cut into 5 pieces, which necessitates an alternating extra piece rule.
“This may be the last time I can have this for a long time,” I say to Mr. Crud over our weekly Thursday night sushi binge.
He looks at me skeptically. “Maybe.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll give up my Gonzo rights for 2 weeks,” I say.
“Deal.”
In the bathroom I skim the side of the EPT box: detects pregnancy in 93 % of women 2 days before their period begins. Good enough.
I do the test like I’ve done before. As I wait the 3 minutes for the results, I realize that I’ve never gotten a negative result on a pregnancy test. Always 2 lines for me. I steal a glance at the stick. One line. The other one isn’t even faint. I zip back to check the microwave. 30 seconds until the results. My gut sinks. Negative. The microwave beeps. I pick up the stick and face the result window. Negative.
“Oh well,” I say and head back to bed.
Mr. Crud mumbles, “What took so long?”
“I took a pregnancy test,” I say.
“And?” He perks up a little.
“Negative.”
“I don’t even know how I feel about that.”
“Me neither.”
The cramps on Sunday and blood-streaked toilet paper on Monday confirm it. Not pregnant. Negative. All my inklings and stories were not intuition, just imagination. For the first time in the history of the Crud’s pregnancy attempts, we have not gotten pregnant our first month of trying. I tell myself that this is good. We are breaking the cycle of immediate impregnation and miscarriage. This time will be different. Third time is the charm.
“I feel both sad and relieved,” Mr. Crud says. “Is that weird?”
“Nope, that’s about how I feel.”
While I plot my week of pregnancy-less life—totally taking a Vicodin tonight, I think—I wonder if maybe my body has finally learned to tell the difference between a good egg and a bad one. Our timing was on. I felt ovulation cramps shortly after we, uh, you know. Maybe just maybe my uterus has learned discernment. (See, I knew that some part of my body was learning something from all that yoga.) For lack of finding any scientific reason for the miscarriages, I find myself tunneling deeper into superstition. I write and rewrite the story of conception, of the baby that I envision us holding one day.
Last night I tell Mr. Crud of my future fantasy that my niece Emma will one day come visit us all by herself. (No offense intended JADE, I just had this vision of Emma and me going about town on a niece-auntie mission for chocolate and costume jewelry.)
“By that time we might have a Peabody of our own,” he says. “That’ll change things.”
“If we don’t have a Peabody by then, then we’ll probably never have one,” I say.
“Yeah,” Mr. Crud says. “If that happens then we’ll have our house full of mangy cats.”
“And our well-groomed dog.”
Plan B is becoming the crazy cat and dog couple. For some reason the idea of having a lot of cats that we don’t treat well and a dog that we do cracks us up. Such is what passes for humor in Miscarriage World.
(Sorry for the cliff-hanger, folks.)
Saturday I awake with a rollercoaster tingle in my belly. Sure, it’s 2 days before the supposed arrival of my period, but I’ve been feeling all the symptoms: random nausea, weird bursts of energy, and haven’t my boobs been looking a little larger? Plus my dreams were all about Neal Pollack a.k.a. Alternadad. No interesting narrative arc to report. We were just hanging out, palling around, talking yoga and the like. But I associate him with fatherhood, and with this leap of faith that Mr. Crud and I have taken twice so far so this dream is Significant, right? Right? I whisper in Mr. Crud’s ear, “I gotta pee. I’ll be back in a sec,” lest he worry about my disappearance from our lazy Saturday morning in bed.
I walk to the bathroom. Each step is a change of heart: no, I should wait, it’ll just be a waste of pregnancy test. Why the hell not? I spend more on drinks that I don’t finish than I did for the pee stick. Nah, this is silly. Just wait. 2 more days. You can wait.
Even though I’m not sure I am knocked up, I’ve been acting like a preg. Friday I skipped the sauna and my weekly martini. All week I loaded up on sushi in preparation for a possible sushi drought. I even used my possible pregnancy as a bargaining chip for the last piece of Gonzo Roll, the favorite roll of Mr. Crud and I that is cut into 5 pieces, which necessitates an alternating extra piece rule.
“This may be the last time I can have this for a long time,” I say to Mr. Crud over our weekly Thursday night sushi binge.
He looks at me skeptically. “Maybe.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll give up my Gonzo rights for 2 weeks,” I say.
“Deal.”
In the bathroom I skim the side of the EPT box: detects pregnancy in 93 % of women 2 days before their period begins. Good enough.
I do the test like I’ve done before. As I wait the 3 minutes for the results, I realize that I’ve never gotten a negative result on a pregnancy test. Always 2 lines for me. I steal a glance at the stick. One line. The other one isn’t even faint. I zip back to check the microwave. 30 seconds until the results. My gut sinks. Negative. The microwave beeps. I pick up the stick and face the result window. Negative.
“Oh well,” I say and head back to bed.
Mr. Crud mumbles, “What took so long?”
“I took a pregnancy test,” I say.
“And?” He perks up a little.
“Negative.”
“I don’t even know how I feel about that.”
“Me neither.”
The cramps on Sunday and blood-streaked toilet paper on Monday confirm it. Not pregnant. Negative. All my inklings and stories were not intuition, just imagination. For the first time in the history of the Crud’s pregnancy attempts, we have not gotten pregnant our first month of trying. I tell myself that this is good. We are breaking the cycle of immediate impregnation and miscarriage. This time will be different. Third time is the charm.
“I feel both sad and relieved,” Mr. Crud says. “Is that weird?”
“Nope, that’s about how I feel.”
While I plot my week of pregnancy-less life—totally taking a Vicodin tonight, I think—I wonder if maybe my body has finally learned to tell the difference between a good egg and a bad one. Our timing was on. I felt ovulation cramps shortly after we, uh, you know. Maybe just maybe my uterus has learned discernment. (See, I knew that some part of my body was learning something from all that yoga.) For lack of finding any scientific reason for the miscarriages, I find myself tunneling deeper into superstition. I write and rewrite the story of conception, of the baby that I envision us holding one day.
Last night I tell Mr. Crud of my future fantasy that my niece Emma will one day come visit us all by herself. (No offense intended JADE, I just had this vision of Emma and me going about town on a niece-auntie mission for chocolate and costume jewelry.)
“By that time we might have a Peabody of our own,” he says. “That’ll change things.”
“If we don’t have a Peabody by then, then we’ll probably never have one,” I say.
“Yeah,” Mr. Crud says. “If that happens then we’ll have our house full of mangy cats.”
“And our well-groomed dog.”
Plan B is becoming the crazy cat and dog couple. For some reason the idea of having a lot of cats that we don’t treat well and a dog that we do cracks us up. Such is what passes for humor in Miscarriage World.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Suspicious Minds
4-22-09
I spend the last three hours of my Monday night tossing and turning. Hello, Insomnia, I didn’t miss you one iota. As the numbers on my digital clock inch towards midnight I yank open my nightstand drawer. I admit it. I am powerless to defeat you insomnia. All my yoga breathing and mindfulness techniques and reassurances to myself that everything is fine, JUST FINE, are for naught. I need drugs and I need them now. I reach for my old buddy old friend, Alprazolam a.k.a. Xanax (which I will call it since it’s a delightful palindrome). Bleary-eyed I read the warning labels “Do not take if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or suspect you are pregnant.” I consider. I do suspect I am pregnant, but my suspicions are grounded in a few rumblings in my lower abdominals and a confidence in timing. What if the zygote hasn’t found a stretch of uterus to call its own? What if it’s one of those bad old lady eggs that every article about mothers over 35 howls about? What exactly constitutes suspicion?
The first time I was pregnant, I took a Xanax the night after I’d found out so freaked out was I. I had remembered that my previous doctor had said Xanax was okay for the pregnant. I took it out of desperation. There was no way that I’d be sleeping with the knowledge that a baby-parasite had taken up residence chez Kt without it. And I slept. And the next day I googled and commenced with freaking out. I wondered if my ex-doc had misunderstood my question or if I had employed some selective hearing. (“Oh yes, Kt, you can drink wine, eat sushi, smoke, dance until morning, sweat your ass off in yoga class, and take bucketfuls of Xanax without any worries.”) If only.
Tonight I go the safe route. I put down the Xanax almost apologetically. I’ll be back someday. I rummage around and find the Unisom, which is doctor approved for pregnancy. In fact it is recommended as a means of fighting off morning sickness when taken in conjunction with vitamin B6. I hate the way Unisom turns my mornings into a zombie zone, but I am at my wits end and I need sleep.
I eke out 4 hours and spare change of sleep. I zombie my way through the morning, feeling a facsimile of wakefulness only in the afternoon. Xanax doesn’t do this to me, I grumble.
In some respects I am walking the cautious path. I’ve cut out the alcohol, quit smoking (for good this time, I swear!), replaced the Advil with Tylenol, and am consciously avoiding the lunchtime smokers that clog the Portland streets.
In other respects, not so much: I am eating as much sushi as I want.
“Don’t get that Jeremy Piven disease,” Mr. Crud warns.
“You mean being a douchebag who will fuck anything that moves?” Zing!
I am working bean sprouts and soft, unpasteurized cheese into my diet as much as possible. I am enjoying sweaty times on the yoga mat, knowing that I might have to curb my vigorous practice as early as next week.
Or I won’t. Or I’ll wake up Monday morning with cramps, a spot of blood on the TP, and a craving for a dirty martini. I try to predict how I’ll feel pregnant or not. I try to prepare myself for either eventuality. Maybe it’s good if I don’t get pregnant right away. That happened the last 2 times…and we know what happened then. Maybe getting my period is a sign that my uterus has learned to discern a good houseguest from a freeloader.
Thankfully my obsession with knowing one way or the other is waning. I’ll be fine either way. I think. Now if you’ll pardon me, I have some reassuring Buddhist philosophy books to add to my library list just in case my bravado crumbles before next Monday.
I spend the last three hours of my Monday night tossing and turning. Hello, Insomnia, I didn’t miss you one iota. As the numbers on my digital clock inch towards midnight I yank open my nightstand drawer. I admit it. I am powerless to defeat you insomnia. All my yoga breathing and mindfulness techniques and reassurances to myself that everything is fine, JUST FINE, are for naught. I need drugs and I need them now. I reach for my old buddy old friend, Alprazolam a.k.a. Xanax (which I will call it since it’s a delightful palindrome). Bleary-eyed I read the warning labels “Do not take if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or suspect you are pregnant.” I consider. I do suspect I am pregnant, but my suspicions are grounded in a few rumblings in my lower abdominals and a confidence in timing. What if the zygote hasn’t found a stretch of uterus to call its own? What if it’s one of those bad old lady eggs that every article about mothers over 35 howls about? What exactly constitutes suspicion?
The first time I was pregnant, I took a Xanax the night after I’d found out so freaked out was I. I had remembered that my previous doctor had said Xanax was okay for the pregnant. I took it out of desperation. There was no way that I’d be sleeping with the knowledge that a baby-parasite had taken up residence chez Kt without it. And I slept. And the next day I googled and commenced with freaking out. I wondered if my ex-doc had misunderstood my question or if I had employed some selective hearing. (“Oh yes, Kt, you can drink wine, eat sushi, smoke, dance until morning, sweat your ass off in yoga class, and take bucketfuls of Xanax without any worries.”) If only.
Tonight I go the safe route. I put down the Xanax almost apologetically. I’ll be back someday. I rummage around and find the Unisom, which is doctor approved for pregnancy. In fact it is recommended as a means of fighting off morning sickness when taken in conjunction with vitamin B6. I hate the way Unisom turns my mornings into a zombie zone, but I am at my wits end and I need sleep.
I eke out 4 hours and spare change of sleep. I zombie my way through the morning, feeling a facsimile of wakefulness only in the afternoon. Xanax doesn’t do this to me, I grumble.
In some respects I am walking the cautious path. I’ve cut out the alcohol, quit smoking (for good this time, I swear!), replaced the Advil with Tylenol, and am consciously avoiding the lunchtime smokers that clog the Portland streets.
In other respects, not so much: I am eating as much sushi as I want.
“Don’t get that Jeremy Piven disease,” Mr. Crud warns.
“You mean being a douchebag who will fuck anything that moves?” Zing!
I am working bean sprouts and soft, unpasteurized cheese into my diet as much as possible. I am enjoying sweaty times on the yoga mat, knowing that I might have to curb my vigorous practice as early as next week.
Or I won’t. Or I’ll wake up Monday morning with cramps, a spot of blood on the TP, and a craving for a dirty martini. I try to predict how I’ll feel pregnant or not. I try to prepare myself for either eventuality. Maybe it’s good if I don’t get pregnant right away. That happened the last 2 times…and we know what happened then. Maybe getting my period is a sign that my uterus has learned to discern a good houseguest from a freeloader.
Thankfully my obsession with knowing one way or the other is waning. I’ll be fine either way. I think. Now if you’ll pardon me, I have some reassuring Buddhist philosophy books to add to my library list just in case my bravado crumbles before next Monday.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
"The Babies"
4-20-09
I open the can of worms. “I think I might be, you know,” I say to Mr. Crud.
Despite my assurances to myself that I would be cool about this whole “pregnancy bullshit”—as I’ve taken to calling it whenever I talk about going another round—andnot obsess over cervical fluid, pangs in the lower lady regions, and random appearances and disappearances of suspected preg-symptoms, I am about as far as one can get from cool. I’m hot. Burning. Hellfire hot.
“Really? How do you know? Really?” Mr. Crud asks, eyes wide.
“I’ve been feeling action in the lady parts. Cramps mainly. But it could just be gas,” I say.
“Don’t cramps mean--?”
“Not necessarily.” I decline to explain mittlelschmerz, the term for the slight, one-sided cramping that ladies can feel when ovulation begins, which I felt. At least I think I did.
After checking numerous fertility calculators, I compiled my data and found the fertile days. I tried not to talk up the days too much lest I scare Mr. Crud and lead to, ahem, other issues that may impede the making of a Peabody 3. Then I got to scrutinizing my fluids. We both decided that we wouldn’t put too much pressure on ourselves this month. No carpet-bombing, just leisurely good times with the one you love. Nonetheless a week ago as I lay in viparita karani in yoga class, I felt the slight cramping commence. We had some leisurely good times that morning so I wondered. Could it?
And for the last week, I did a pretty good job of letting it go. I told myself that I was quitting smoking (a-fucking-gain, I know) because smoking is dumb, all my friends are doing it, and I was tired of the extra phlegm in the morning. The quitting has nothing to do with Peabody.
Friday I almost surrendered my post-work week cocktail, but relented at the last moment. This could be the last cocktail I sip for a long, long time. Better to seize the day by the salt plum vodka martini than to lament what could have been the following Friday. I remembered my mantra: All or nothing. If this martini has any negative effect, it would be to hamper fertilization and/or implantation. I remind myself of all the times multiple doctors have assured me that nothing I ate, drank, or smoked during the first 4 weeks of pregnancy could have caused a miscarriage.
“So, when can you find out for sure?” Mr. Crud asks.
“Next weekend. Actually next Monday.”
“Oh. That’ll make for a long week.”
It already has for the both of us. Time drags. Each twinge I feel in my lower abdomen sets me spinning. I have dipped my toe back into the pregnancy and miscarriage website-a-palooza and swing between feeling comforted and totally freaked out. I allow myself to ponder the trajectory of my theoretical pregnancy, both the good outcomes (With a potential due date in early January there will be no hell trip through snowstorms for Christmas on the east coast!) and bad (If we get another ultrasound of doom, I’ll at least be evacuated of another dead baby by the 4th of July. Just in time to get shit-faced and take up smoking again!).
See what I mean? So not cool.
Last night Mr. Crud flops into bed and rolls over for a hug. “I got the super Sundays,” he says. “The Sundays” refers to the unsavory salad roll of mega dread of the week ahead and regret of the weekend promise left unfulfilled.
“Is it the Sundays plus the pregnancy bullshit?” I ask, pulling him in tight.
“Yeah.”
I thank G-d that when Mr. Crud is nervous and down, I feel okay, a shaky confidence that I will need to bolster in the coming months with large doses of Sylvia Boorstein and Buddhist philosophy.
“We need to come up with a word for this,” he says. “Like the Sundays.”
“How about ‘The Babies’?” I ask.
He considers. “Eh, it’ll do for now.”
I’m at work and going over the same Yoga Journal articles that I’ve read before, assuring myself that I don’t need to immediately halt my yoga practice on suspicion of pregnancy. I re-read an old miscarriage website that I can practically recite by heart. My eyes fall on a new (un-sourced) statistic: after 2 miscarriages, a person has a 40% chance of miscarrying again. Shit. I don’t remember that one. I feel whatever shaky confidence I had evaporate as I stare at the screen, scrolling and scrolling for source material. I try to remember all the stories of women who had multiple miscarriages and eventual successful pregnancies. I picture my yoga friend Jan who is so pregnant now that she looks on the verge of tipping over.
The phone rings. Mr. Crud. Good, I was just about to actually do some work to get my mind off of 40%. Wouldn’t want to do too much work at work.
“Hey hon, how you doing?” He asks.
“Oh okay,” I say in a tone that is clearly not okay. “I’m feeling a little scared, about, you know.”
“You got ‘the babies’?” He asks.
“Yeah, I do.”
But I can’t really talk now unless I want the collection of theater students sitting in the lobby to hear my tale of preg-scare woe.
He offers words of comfort and says, “We need to come up with a better word.”
“Agreed. It’ll do for now.”
Just like everything else.
I open the can of worms. “I think I might be, you know,” I say to Mr. Crud.
Despite my assurances to myself that I would be cool about this whole “pregnancy bullshit”—as I’ve taken to calling it whenever I talk about going another round—andnot obsess over cervical fluid, pangs in the lower lady regions, and random appearances and disappearances of suspected preg-symptoms, I am about as far as one can get from cool. I’m hot. Burning. Hellfire hot.
“Really? How do you know? Really?” Mr. Crud asks, eyes wide.
“I’ve been feeling action in the lady parts. Cramps mainly. But it could just be gas,” I say.
“Don’t cramps mean--?”
“Not necessarily.” I decline to explain mittlelschmerz, the term for the slight, one-sided cramping that ladies can feel when ovulation begins, which I felt. At least I think I did.
After checking numerous fertility calculators, I compiled my data and found the fertile days. I tried not to talk up the days too much lest I scare Mr. Crud and lead to, ahem, other issues that may impede the making of a Peabody 3. Then I got to scrutinizing my fluids. We both decided that we wouldn’t put too much pressure on ourselves this month. No carpet-bombing, just leisurely good times with the one you love. Nonetheless a week ago as I lay in viparita karani in yoga class, I felt the slight cramping commence. We had some leisurely good times that morning so I wondered. Could it?
And for the last week, I did a pretty good job of letting it go. I told myself that I was quitting smoking (a-fucking-gain, I know) because smoking is dumb, all my friends are doing it, and I was tired of the extra phlegm in the morning. The quitting has nothing to do with Peabody.
Friday I almost surrendered my post-work week cocktail, but relented at the last moment. This could be the last cocktail I sip for a long, long time. Better to seize the day by the salt plum vodka martini than to lament what could have been the following Friday. I remembered my mantra: All or nothing. If this martini has any negative effect, it would be to hamper fertilization and/or implantation. I remind myself of all the times multiple doctors have assured me that nothing I ate, drank, or smoked during the first 4 weeks of pregnancy could have caused a miscarriage.
“So, when can you find out for sure?” Mr. Crud asks.
“Next weekend. Actually next Monday.”
“Oh. That’ll make for a long week.”
It already has for the both of us. Time drags. Each twinge I feel in my lower abdomen sets me spinning. I have dipped my toe back into the pregnancy and miscarriage website-a-palooza and swing between feeling comforted and totally freaked out. I allow myself to ponder the trajectory of my theoretical pregnancy, both the good outcomes (With a potential due date in early January there will be no hell trip through snowstorms for Christmas on the east coast!) and bad (If we get another ultrasound of doom, I’ll at least be evacuated of another dead baby by the 4th of July. Just in time to get shit-faced and take up smoking again!).
See what I mean? So not cool.
Last night Mr. Crud flops into bed and rolls over for a hug. “I got the super Sundays,” he says. “The Sundays” refers to the unsavory salad roll of mega dread of the week ahead and regret of the weekend promise left unfulfilled.
“Is it the Sundays plus the pregnancy bullshit?” I ask, pulling him in tight.
“Yeah.”
I thank G-d that when Mr. Crud is nervous and down, I feel okay, a shaky confidence that I will need to bolster in the coming months with large doses of Sylvia Boorstein and Buddhist philosophy.
“We need to come up with a word for this,” he says. “Like the Sundays.”
“How about ‘The Babies’?” I ask.
He considers. “Eh, it’ll do for now.”
I’m at work and going over the same Yoga Journal articles that I’ve read before, assuring myself that I don’t need to immediately halt my yoga practice on suspicion of pregnancy. I re-read an old miscarriage website that I can practically recite by heart. My eyes fall on a new (un-sourced) statistic: after 2 miscarriages, a person has a 40% chance of miscarrying again. Shit. I don’t remember that one. I feel whatever shaky confidence I had evaporate as I stare at the screen, scrolling and scrolling for source material. I try to remember all the stories of women who had multiple miscarriages and eventual successful pregnancies. I picture my yoga friend Jan who is so pregnant now that she looks on the verge of tipping over.
The phone rings. Mr. Crud. Good, I was just about to actually do some work to get my mind off of 40%. Wouldn’t want to do too much work at work.
“Hey hon, how you doing?” He asks.
“Oh okay,” I say in a tone that is clearly not okay. “I’m feeling a little scared, about, you know.”
“You got ‘the babies’?” He asks.
“Yeah, I do.”
But I can’t really talk now unless I want the collection of theater students sitting in the lobby to hear my tale of preg-scare woe.
He offers words of comfort and says, “We need to come up with a better word.”
“Agreed. It’ll do for now.”
Just like everything else.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Everyone's Coming Up Pregnant
4-6-09
Mr. Crud and I are undulating through cat and cow poses in our usual Sunday afternoon yoga class. The teacher halts our arching and kicks things up a notch with some core work.
“The pregnant ladies may wish to skip this one,” she says.
Even as I tell myself to keep with my breath, to concentrate on my movement, my practice, I surreptitiously steal glances around the room, trying to suss out the pregnant among us. I spy with my little eye a swollen belly on the woman by the window who is doing her own modification. But my teacher said ladieS, plural. My gaze falls on Dr. Awesome, an occasional Sunday afternoon yoga compatriot. She is modifying too. Hmmm… Her shirt hangs baggy. Could it be? Yeah, could be. And so?
The teacher brings us to a cross-legged position for a few minutes of meditation. We do a leisurely twist. I steal more looks at Dr. Awesome’s midsection. Mid-twist I see it, the bump. Dr. Awesome is 4-5 months pregnant by my estimation. Shit. This is totally going to mess with my yoga class. I go through my now familiar “Wow she’s pregnant” stages. Anger, denial, acceptance and so on. I decide that it’s okay if Dr. Awesome is pregnant (how big of me) and that I will be okay with going to see her if/when I get pregnant again. I wonder if it will feel worse getting miscarriage news from a pregnant woman. Nah, probably not. Should that news come again, I doubt the pregnancy state of the bearer of more doom will occupy my mind much. I’ll be too busy rending garments and letting loose a stream of curse words. Also crying. Lots of crying.
After my dip into worst-case-scenario land, I return to the land of actual concerns. How long will Dr. Awesome’s maternity leave last? Does she have enough of a head start on me? Crap. I should have totally gotten knocked up at my first chance. I wonder if things will necessarily be weird after class. I have imaginary conversations in my head: “Hey Dr. Awesome. Congratulations! When are you due? Cool.”
Whenever someone knows of my miscarriage history I feel this need to be extra excited about their pregnancies as it to convince us both that I’m having no hard feelings about it. I remind myself that I did not come to yoga to contemplate my physician’s pregnancy, which quiets the voices for a little while, but every time I catch a glimpse of her swollen belly they kick back into gear.
After class Mr. Crud and I talk to the teacher about our recent travel adventures. Dr. Awesome sits on the bench stuffing her feet into boots. She sniffles.
“How are you?” I ask her.
“Oh good. Just getting over a little cold,” she says.
“It’s tough to get rid of them in this weather,” Mr. Crud says.
I try not to stare at her belly, the elephant in my room.
Mr. Crud and I head out into the rainy afternoon. After we are a block away, I say, “Dr. Awesome is totally pregnant.”
“Really? I didn’t notice.” He says.
“Yup. Really.”
“Huh.”
We go over the time line for our plans to step back in the pregnancy ring. “I might have to get another doctor. Maybe Dr. D & C? I like her.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Mr. Crud says.
Oh yeah. Right. I guess I need to get pregnant first.
Mr. Crud and I are undulating through cat and cow poses in our usual Sunday afternoon yoga class. The teacher halts our arching and kicks things up a notch with some core work.
“The pregnant ladies may wish to skip this one,” she says.
Even as I tell myself to keep with my breath, to concentrate on my movement, my practice, I surreptitiously steal glances around the room, trying to suss out the pregnant among us. I spy with my little eye a swollen belly on the woman by the window who is doing her own modification. But my teacher said ladieS, plural. My gaze falls on Dr. Awesome, an occasional Sunday afternoon yoga compatriot. She is modifying too. Hmmm… Her shirt hangs baggy. Could it be? Yeah, could be. And so?
The teacher brings us to a cross-legged position for a few minutes of meditation. We do a leisurely twist. I steal more looks at Dr. Awesome’s midsection. Mid-twist I see it, the bump. Dr. Awesome is 4-5 months pregnant by my estimation. Shit. This is totally going to mess with my yoga class. I go through my now familiar “Wow she’s pregnant” stages. Anger, denial, acceptance and so on. I decide that it’s okay if Dr. Awesome is pregnant (how big of me) and that I will be okay with going to see her if/when I get pregnant again. I wonder if it will feel worse getting miscarriage news from a pregnant woman. Nah, probably not. Should that news come again, I doubt the pregnancy state of the bearer of more doom will occupy my mind much. I’ll be too busy rending garments and letting loose a stream of curse words. Also crying. Lots of crying.
After my dip into worst-case-scenario land, I return to the land of actual concerns. How long will Dr. Awesome’s maternity leave last? Does she have enough of a head start on me? Crap. I should have totally gotten knocked up at my first chance. I wonder if things will necessarily be weird after class. I have imaginary conversations in my head: “Hey Dr. Awesome. Congratulations! When are you due? Cool.”
Whenever someone knows of my miscarriage history I feel this need to be extra excited about their pregnancies as it to convince us both that I’m having no hard feelings about it. I remind myself that I did not come to yoga to contemplate my physician’s pregnancy, which quiets the voices for a little while, but every time I catch a glimpse of her swollen belly they kick back into gear.
After class Mr. Crud and I talk to the teacher about our recent travel adventures. Dr. Awesome sits on the bench stuffing her feet into boots. She sniffles.
“How are you?” I ask her.
“Oh good. Just getting over a little cold,” she says.
“It’s tough to get rid of them in this weather,” Mr. Crud says.
I try not to stare at her belly, the elephant in my room.
Mr. Crud and I head out into the rainy afternoon. After we are a block away, I say, “Dr. Awesome is totally pregnant.”
“Really? I didn’t notice.” He says.
“Yup. Really.”
“Huh.”
We go over the time line for our plans to step back in the pregnancy ring. “I might have to get another doctor. Maybe Dr. D & C? I like her.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Mr. Crud says.
Oh yeah. Right. I guess I need to get pregnant first.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
April Fools and Anniversaries
4-2-09
How does one mark the one-year anniversary of their initiation into Miscarriage World? I got my period, which seems pretty bloody appropriate (pun very intended and also protesting its use in the previous sentence). I thanked G-d that I wasn’t in the same place I was a year ago—devastated and terrified that I would die during my D & C. While smoking my first cigarette since my positive pregnancy test, I felt gripped by a fear that I was going to die--not just feel like I was dying--the next day. I made the decision that I wanted all my journals burned and told Mr. Crud as much.
“You’re not going to die,” he said.
“But if I do.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
From a year distance—and through the eyes of a D & C veteran—my hysterics seem melodramatic. I don’t view myself harshly. My whole world-view had been upended in the course of a single, sunny afternoon.
Last night after dinner Mr. Crud’s face fell into a frown.
“You thinking about--?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
It had been hard not to think about it since leaving for our annual spring break trip to Florida. The night we arrived I lay in my niece Emma’s bed tossing and turning as images from our previous trip zipped about my brain: Me going through maternity and baby clothes while Mr. Crud packed up the Pack ‘n Play and breast pump accessories. The terrible cold that kept me in bed for most of our visit since I couldn’t take any cold medicine. Even though I could have since my reason for abstaining was actually already deceased. Infuriating. For lack of anything more solid than Mother Nature to direct my anger, I get mad at my poor, dead collection of genetic material, Primo. Why the fuck couldn’t you have just rode the red menstrual tide instead of sticking around and stinking up my uterus with your baby-to-be-that-never-was death? I could have taken cold medicine. I could have tasted the delicious scallop dinner that I couldn’t eat because, lacking the ability to smell and taste due to my horrible cold, the texture was disgusting.
Because I wasn’t pregnant this time around, I popped a Xanax and eventually drifted off to sleep with visions of playing witches with my niece dancing in my head. She did not disappoint. Nor did her little bro, nephew Jonah. The chief recruiters did their job of kicking me back into the baby-making mode. Emma with her Lemony Snicket and Stephin Merritt obsessions (for real now, how cool is that for a 6-year-old?), and Jonah with his Caesar-style conquering of potty training--He came, he saw, he crapped, AND wiped—reminded me that the struggle is worth it. Well, unless it isn’t and the events of the past year repeat themselves and we end up sad, bleeding, and hating the g-ds. But what can you do? Hello, fertility calculators. Good-bye, cigarettes.
How does one mark the one-year anniversary of their initiation into Miscarriage World? I got my period, which seems pretty bloody appropriate (pun very intended and also protesting its use in the previous sentence). I thanked G-d that I wasn’t in the same place I was a year ago—devastated and terrified that I would die during my D & C. While smoking my first cigarette since my positive pregnancy test, I felt gripped by a fear that I was going to die--not just feel like I was dying--the next day. I made the decision that I wanted all my journals burned and told Mr. Crud as much.
“You’re not going to die,” he said.
“But if I do.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
From a year distance—and through the eyes of a D & C veteran—my hysterics seem melodramatic. I don’t view myself harshly. My whole world-view had been upended in the course of a single, sunny afternoon.
Last night after dinner Mr. Crud’s face fell into a frown.
“You thinking about--?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said.
It had been hard not to think about it since leaving for our annual spring break trip to Florida. The night we arrived I lay in my niece Emma’s bed tossing and turning as images from our previous trip zipped about my brain: Me going through maternity and baby clothes while Mr. Crud packed up the Pack ‘n Play and breast pump accessories. The terrible cold that kept me in bed for most of our visit since I couldn’t take any cold medicine. Even though I could have since my reason for abstaining was actually already deceased. Infuriating. For lack of anything more solid than Mother Nature to direct my anger, I get mad at my poor, dead collection of genetic material, Primo. Why the fuck couldn’t you have just rode the red menstrual tide instead of sticking around and stinking up my uterus with your baby-to-be-that-never-was death? I could have taken cold medicine. I could have tasted the delicious scallop dinner that I couldn’t eat because, lacking the ability to smell and taste due to my horrible cold, the texture was disgusting.
Because I wasn’t pregnant this time around, I popped a Xanax and eventually drifted off to sleep with visions of playing witches with my niece dancing in my head. She did not disappoint. Nor did her little bro, nephew Jonah. The chief recruiters did their job of kicking me back into the baby-making mode. Emma with her Lemony Snicket and Stephin Merritt obsessions (for real now, how cool is that for a 6-year-old?), and Jonah with his Caesar-style conquering of potty training--He came, he saw, he crapped, AND wiped—reminded me that the struggle is worth it. Well, unless it isn’t and the events of the past year repeat themselves and we end up sad, bleeding, and hating the g-ds. But what can you do? Hello, fertility calculators. Good-bye, cigarettes.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Riding a Bummer
3-17-09
Last night as we hunker down for a (hopefully) good night’s sleep, Mr. Crud says, “I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
“Is it like every anxiety you have is coming at you at once?” I ask.
“Yeah, like that.”
This morning I awake with a chip on my shoulder. I don’t want to go to work and deal with whining students. I don’t want to ride my bike through the rain. I don’t want to go to yoga and listen to myself criticize myself for not being thin/strong/skilled enough to get into mayurasana or bakasana B for that matter. I don’t want to make dinner. Whatever malaise infected Mr. Crud spread to me somewhere in our tossing and turning last night.
Get on my bike I do. Ride through rain I will. Talking like Yoda I will stop. I make it to yoga, lock my bike, and head inside to (hopefully) find my way back to feeling fine. Or at least make peace with my discomfort. I stand at the top of my mat in tadasana, hands together in prayer. “Surrender. Ease. Peace. Contentment,” I think. One of my yoga teachers says that we can become our mantras over time. Probably not in the white knuckle state of mind that I’m in right now, but you never know when grace steps in to give you a moment of joy.
I open my eyes and begin. Before I’m even done with my first sun salutation, the thought hits: The one-year anniversary of Primo’s miscarriage is on the horizon. April 1. Oh joy. I think back to my previous spring break trip to Florida. The innocence of packing up hand-me-down maternity clothes and a breast pump, baby clothes and the Pack-and-Play which we’ve since tucked into a corner of our basement. I think of the cards my niece Emma made congratulating me and Mr. Crud (although she wasn’t sure what role he had played in the baby-making enterprise). I remember how sick I was during our last spring break and how I didn’t take any medication lest I harm the unborn baby that was, at that point, already dead. Hmmm…maybe this spring break that I’ve been anticipating and counting down won’t be quite as simple as Cuban food and playing auntie. I worry that my niece, who forgot about my pregnancy, will somehow remember it upon seeing me.
“What happened to your baby, Aunt Kt?” she’ll ask.
“Uh, well, some babies aren’t ready to be born yet so they, uh, decide not to come out.”
I don’t know how honest I’m supposed to be, how much disillusionment a 6-year-old can handle.
In yoga class, I keep breathing and twisting myself into asanas as the miscarriage mist envelops me. I want to go home, bury my head in Mr. Crud’s chest, and cry.
One of my best friends from college sent news of the recent birth of her daughter yesterday. Quickly I replied with congratulations. I am happy for her. And I am sad for me.
How all of this fits into my current lack of desire to attempt pregnancy is unclear. I wanted at least one pregnancy-free vacation this year and my will shall be done in 5 days. At least there is that.
Last night as we hunker down for a (hopefully) good night’s sleep, Mr. Crud says, “I’m feeling overwhelmed.”
“Is it like every anxiety you have is coming at you at once?” I ask.
“Yeah, like that.”
This morning I awake with a chip on my shoulder. I don’t want to go to work and deal with whining students. I don’t want to ride my bike through the rain. I don’t want to go to yoga and listen to myself criticize myself for not being thin/strong/skilled enough to get into mayurasana or bakasana B for that matter. I don’t want to make dinner. Whatever malaise infected Mr. Crud spread to me somewhere in our tossing and turning last night.
Get on my bike I do. Ride through rain I will. Talking like Yoda I will stop. I make it to yoga, lock my bike, and head inside to (hopefully) find my way back to feeling fine. Or at least make peace with my discomfort. I stand at the top of my mat in tadasana, hands together in prayer. “Surrender. Ease. Peace. Contentment,” I think. One of my yoga teachers says that we can become our mantras over time. Probably not in the white knuckle state of mind that I’m in right now, but you never know when grace steps in to give you a moment of joy.
I open my eyes and begin. Before I’m even done with my first sun salutation, the thought hits: The one-year anniversary of Primo’s miscarriage is on the horizon. April 1. Oh joy. I think back to my previous spring break trip to Florida. The innocence of packing up hand-me-down maternity clothes and a breast pump, baby clothes and the Pack-and-Play which we’ve since tucked into a corner of our basement. I think of the cards my niece Emma made congratulating me and Mr. Crud (although she wasn’t sure what role he had played in the baby-making enterprise). I remember how sick I was during our last spring break and how I didn’t take any medication lest I harm the unborn baby that was, at that point, already dead. Hmmm…maybe this spring break that I’ve been anticipating and counting down won’t be quite as simple as Cuban food and playing auntie. I worry that my niece, who forgot about my pregnancy, will somehow remember it upon seeing me.
“What happened to your baby, Aunt Kt?” she’ll ask.
“Uh, well, some babies aren’t ready to be born yet so they, uh, decide not to come out.”
I don’t know how honest I’m supposed to be, how much disillusionment a 6-year-old can handle.
In yoga class, I keep breathing and twisting myself into asanas as the miscarriage mist envelops me. I want to go home, bury my head in Mr. Crud’s chest, and cry.
One of my best friends from college sent news of the recent birth of her daughter yesterday. Quickly I replied with congratulations. I am happy for her. And I am sad for me.
How all of this fits into my current lack of desire to attempt pregnancy is unclear. I wanted at least one pregnancy-free vacation this year and my will shall be done in 5 days. At least there is that.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Late!
3-13-09
I confirm and re-confirm the fertility calculator’s prediction of the first date of my period. I count the days in my date book. No denying it. March 5 was supposed to be the start of the next bloodbath. My gut aches. Shit. How could it? Could we really? I look back to our last, ahem, session of love, and shake my head. No. No way. It would have to be a miracle. Mr. Crud echoes the sentiment when I tell him of my pregnancy fears.
“That’s impossible,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll come.”
“I mean, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. It could have happened. It’s just highly highly unlikely that it did,” I say.
Friday night we go to the Savoy like we do every Friday night. I order my well-earned martini and settle back. March 6 and still no blood. All day I have been cramp-mining, hoping each rumbling in the lower abdominal area is the start of the latest round of crushing cramps.
“I’ve never really wished for cramps before,” I say to Mr. Crud and take a sip of martini. I nibble on the blue cheese-stuffed olives the bartender brought over for me to try. Oh the delights of forbidden foods are many. I wonder if I am nibbling my last bit of blue cheese and savoring my final martini.
Mr. Crud reaches across the table and pats my hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s just that I’m not ready, you know? I’m scared. I haven’t gotten my bravery up for another round.”
Mr. Crud goes into counselor mode. “What do you mean by scared?”
I spill the well-worn catalogue of fears and concerns: I don’t want to go through another miscarriage, another doomed ultrasound. Just picturing the ultrasound room is brining tears to my eyes.
“All of those things sound perfectly normal.” He says.
“Yeah, I know. I’m just not ready for it yet.”
Mr. Crud shrugs his shoulders. “Not really anything we can do about it now.”
“If I am pregnant, I’m totally getting an abortion,” I say.
We catch each other’s eyes and burst into hysterical laughter. We laugh until my stomach starts to ache—oh could it finally be the cramps I wished for upon a star—and tears are spilling from my eyes.
“That would sure surprise the doctors.”
“’No, we just decided we weren’t ready yet. This one is elective,’” I pretend explaining it to the doctor who has performed my D & C-s.
“I’m glad we can laugh about this stuff,” Mr. Crud says.
“And how. Cheers.” I hold up my half-finished martini. Our salads arrive. I manage to forget the nagging what-ifs of the last few days.
Saturday I awake. Still no blood. Shit. I think back to the past month. A couple of nights of heavy drinking, the usual sushi parade, and a few half-tabs of Xanax. As I did in July, I conjure the too-tough-to-die baby fantasy. The baby that wants to live so badly that it was created on non-fertile days and survived all the vodka and puffs of cigarette that I threw at it. Then I worry. What if my carrying on has messed up another embryo? What if I am totally to blame this time? I remember my old mantra—all or nothing, all or nothing—and put the baby fears on hold.
That afternoon I pick up another package of pee sticks. I’ll be using them eventually. This seems to do the trick. When I return home from the store, the cramps kick in, then the bloody smears. Ahhh…sweet relief.
“We need to celebrate,” I tell Mr. Crud. “With liquor.”
I’m going to need some liquid courage if I’m going to make it through another first trimester. Guess I’ll have to front load it.
I confirm and re-confirm the fertility calculator’s prediction of the first date of my period. I count the days in my date book. No denying it. March 5 was supposed to be the start of the next bloodbath. My gut aches. Shit. How could it? Could we really? I look back to our last, ahem, session of love, and shake my head. No. No way. It would have to be a miracle. Mr. Crud echoes the sentiment when I tell him of my pregnancy fears.
“That’s impossible,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll come.”
“I mean, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. It could have happened. It’s just highly highly unlikely that it did,” I say.
Friday night we go to the Savoy like we do every Friday night. I order my well-earned martini and settle back. March 6 and still no blood. All day I have been cramp-mining, hoping each rumbling in the lower abdominal area is the start of the latest round of crushing cramps.
“I’ve never really wished for cramps before,” I say to Mr. Crud and take a sip of martini. I nibble on the blue cheese-stuffed olives the bartender brought over for me to try. Oh the delights of forbidden foods are many. I wonder if I am nibbling my last bit of blue cheese and savoring my final martini.
Mr. Crud reaches across the table and pats my hand. “Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s just that I’m not ready, you know? I’m scared. I haven’t gotten my bravery up for another round.”
Mr. Crud goes into counselor mode. “What do you mean by scared?”
I spill the well-worn catalogue of fears and concerns: I don’t want to go through another miscarriage, another doomed ultrasound. Just picturing the ultrasound room is brining tears to my eyes.
“All of those things sound perfectly normal.” He says.
“Yeah, I know. I’m just not ready for it yet.”
Mr. Crud shrugs his shoulders. “Not really anything we can do about it now.”
“If I am pregnant, I’m totally getting an abortion,” I say.
We catch each other’s eyes and burst into hysterical laughter. We laugh until my stomach starts to ache—oh could it finally be the cramps I wished for upon a star—and tears are spilling from my eyes.
“That would sure surprise the doctors.”
“’No, we just decided we weren’t ready yet. This one is elective,’” I pretend explaining it to the doctor who has performed my D & C-s.
“I’m glad we can laugh about this stuff,” Mr. Crud says.
“And how. Cheers.” I hold up my half-finished martini. Our salads arrive. I manage to forget the nagging what-ifs of the last few days.
Saturday I awake. Still no blood. Shit. I think back to the past month. A couple of nights of heavy drinking, the usual sushi parade, and a few half-tabs of Xanax. As I did in July, I conjure the too-tough-to-die baby fantasy. The baby that wants to live so badly that it was created on non-fertile days and survived all the vodka and puffs of cigarette that I threw at it. Then I worry. What if my carrying on has messed up another embryo? What if I am totally to blame this time? I remember my old mantra—all or nothing, all or nothing—and put the baby fears on hold.
That afternoon I pick up another package of pee sticks. I’ll be using them eventually. This seems to do the trick. When I return home from the store, the cramps kick in, then the bloody smears. Ahhh…sweet relief.
“We need to celebrate,” I tell Mr. Crud. “With liquor.”
I’m going to need some liquid courage if I’m going to make it through another first trimester. Guess I’ll have to front load it.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
What's a Pregnant Lady Like You Doing in a Place Like This?
2-27-2009
Is no place safe from pregnant women? Mr. Crud and I step into a basement cum barroom last Saturday. Our first party in months. Partly we sometimes have a hard time relating to folks who haven’t been briefed on our year of heartache. Mostly we are lazy. And in love with Battlestar Galactica and can’t imagine a finer evening than curling up on the couch and watching Lee Adama and Starbuck shoot each other simmering glances while saving humanity from the Cylons. But this special Saturday we decide to venture out into the world of band parties to catch my ex-Gollipopp bandmates do their thing.
One of Mr. Crud’s pals who he hasn’t seen in a few months steps up to our conversational plate.
“What’s new?” Mr. Crud asks.
“I’m going to be a dad in a few months,” Old Pal says and pivots to show his very pregnant wife standing behind him, chatting with friends.
“Hey, that’s great,” Mr. Crud says. We exchange glances. To bring it up or not to bring it up, that is the perpetual question. Is their a tactful way to say “Wow, I’m so happy for you. Kt here was pregnant too. Twice in fact! Twice in one year in fact!!! But you know, it didn’t work out.”
Nope. No tactful way in a basement lit by Christmas lights.
“So, what week are you in?” Mr. Crud asks, making me proud with his pregnancy conversational prowess.
“31. So about 9 weeks left,” he says.
“It’s about 40 weeks,” I say to Mr. Crud, wanting to demonstrate my own knowledge on the topic of human gestational periods.
I do the math. Old Pal’s wife is due a week after I would have (should have) had Dewey. In an alternate universe of perfectly replicating genes, Old Pal and Mr. Crud would have lots to discuss and a mutual back-slapping party of a time ahead of them. Instead, we fish for words as Mr. Crud and I continue to exchange “should we mention it?” looks.
No. We shouldn’t. No father of an about-to-pop pregnant lady wants to hear of a worst-case scenario come to life. He wants to be happy and to be reassured that he didn’t really need to sleep that much anyway.
I decide to excuse myself for a cigarette far far away from the pregnant. The first band starts. A 3-piece with—wouldn’t you know it—a pregnant lady taking lead vocals. Shouldn’t you people be at home gorging on ice cream and nesting or some shit like that? Can a girl even go to a band party without having to look in the mirror and see her failed uterus?
I turn to leave as another friend of Mr. Crud’s steps inside. The last time we saw her I was pregnant and about to have my second ultrasound of doom. She, on the other hand, had a gorgeous 8-month-old daughter whose smiling face made me hopeful that maybe this time things were okay. (Darn babies and their hope-inspiring faces.)
“So where’s the baby?” Mr. Crud asks after we’ve exchanged the requisite how’s it going-s with his friend.
“We have a system,” she says. “I get to party for the first hour while he sits in the van and watches her sleep. Then it’s his turn. And by the end of his hour, we’re usually ready to head home.”
“Ooo, good one,” I say.
I know that Mr. Crud and I will never be motivated to enact such a plan once we (hopefully) have a critter of our own. Plus I’m too prone to forgetting to look at my watch unless I’m having a bad time.
My ex-mates’ band starts up. Old Pal is the third member of the band. Mr. Crud pulls me to the front of the milling crowd where I, who have crossed over into the sleepy drunk zone, find a seat. A few feet away from me Old Pal’s wife records him on a small camcorder. A permanent wide smile settles on her face as her eyes flicker back and forth between Old Pal and the camera’s screen. I imagine myself as her, watching Mr. Crud bang the skins at what would probably be his final rock show before our theoretical baby comes. She smiles like she has a secret. You know, like a baby growing inside of her that is made of the two of them, a being founded in love and kisses and cells dividing at the right time. My eyes keep finding her and wondering if that will ever be me. Should we have tried again last month? Is it time? The longer we wait, the more I get used to sweaty yoga practices and Friday martinis and the fear that hums in the background of every discussion of maybe getting back into the TTC game.
I have secrets too. They just don’t make me smile knowingly.
Is no place safe from pregnant women? Mr. Crud and I step into a basement cum barroom last Saturday. Our first party in months. Partly we sometimes have a hard time relating to folks who haven’t been briefed on our year of heartache. Mostly we are lazy. And in love with Battlestar Galactica and can’t imagine a finer evening than curling up on the couch and watching Lee Adama and Starbuck shoot each other simmering glances while saving humanity from the Cylons. But this special Saturday we decide to venture out into the world of band parties to catch my ex-Gollipopp bandmates do their thing.
One of Mr. Crud’s pals who he hasn’t seen in a few months steps up to our conversational plate.
“What’s new?” Mr. Crud asks.
“I’m going to be a dad in a few months,” Old Pal says and pivots to show his very pregnant wife standing behind him, chatting with friends.
“Hey, that’s great,” Mr. Crud says. We exchange glances. To bring it up or not to bring it up, that is the perpetual question. Is their a tactful way to say “Wow, I’m so happy for you. Kt here was pregnant too. Twice in fact! Twice in one year in fact!!! But you know, it didn’t work out.”
Nope. No tactful way in a basement lit by Christmas lights.
“So, what week are you in?” Mr. Crud asks, making me proud with his pregnancy conversational prowess.
“31. So about 9 weeks left,” he says.
“It’s about 40 weeks,” I say to Mr. Crud, wanting to demonstrate my own knowledge on the topic of human gestational periods.
I do the math. Old Pal’s wife is due a week after I would have (should have) had Dewey. In an alternate universe of perfectly replicating genes, Old Pal and Mr. Crud would have lots to discuss and a mutual back-slapping party of a time ahead of them. Instead, we fish for words as Mr. Crud and I continue to exchange “should we mention it?” looks.
No. We shouldn’t. No father of an about-to-pop pregnant lady wants to hear of a worst-case scenario come to life. He wants to be happy and to be reassured that he didn’t really need to sleep that much anyway.
I decide to excuse myself for a cigarette far far away from the pregnant. The first band starts. A 3-piece with—wouldn’t you know it—a pregnant lady taking lead vocals. Shouldn’t you people be at home gorging on ice cream and nesting or some shit like that? Can a girl even go to a band party without having to look in the mirror and see her failed uterus?
I turn to leave as another friend of Mr. Crud’s steps inside. The last time we saw her I was pregnant and about to have my second ultrasound of doom. She, on the other hand, had a gorgeous 8-month-old daughter whose smiling face made me hopeful that maybe this time things were okay. (Darn babies and their hope-inspiring faces.)
“So where’s the baby?” Mr. Crud asks after we’ve exchanged the requisite how’s it going-s with his friend.
“We have a system,” she says. “I get to party for the first hour while he sits in the van and watches her sleep. Then it’s his turn. And by the end of his hour, we’re usually ready to head home.”
“Ooo, good one,” I say.
I know that Mr. Crud and I will never be motivated to enact such a plan once we (hopefully) have a critter of our own. Plus I’m too prone to forgetting to look at my watch unless I’m having a bad time.
My ex-mates’ band starts up. Old Pal is the third member of the band. Mr. Crud pulls me to the front of the milling crowd where I, who have crossed over into the sleepy drunk zone, find a seat. A few feet away from me Old Pal’s wife records him on a small camcorder. A permanent wide smile settles on her face as her eyes flicker back and forth between Old Pal and the camera’s screen. I imagine myself as her, watching Mr. Crud bang the skins at what would probably be his final rock show before our theoretical baby comes. She smiles like she has a secret. You know, like a baby growing inside of her that is made of the two of them, a being founded in love and kisses and cells dividing at the right time. My eyes keep finding her and wondering if that will ever be me. Should we have tried again last month? Is it time? The longer we wait, the more I get used to sweaty yoga practices and Friday martinis and the fear that hums in the background of every discussion of maybe getting back into the TTC game.
I have secrets too. They just don’t make me smile knowingly.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
"Normal"
2-16-09
The results are in: I am (mostly) normal in terms of my clotting abilities and thyroid. Dr. Awesome emails me the lab report, which sends me into AP Biology flashback tremors--A heterozygo-wha? Thankfully she also sends her translation from science to laywoman. Basically, I am normal. Except, possibly, for my homocysteine levels. I am a genetic carrier of a mutation, which does make me grip my chest and say “Oh my,” but this mutation isn’t anything cool like mind-reading powers or tongue tricks. No, it is possible but not likely that my homocysteine levels may lead me to have blood-clotting issues. I tell my mom this over the phone during the mandatory but strained miscarriage check-in part of the weekly conversation.
“Well, your grandfather had problems with blood clots.”
Hmmm…could he be my homocysteine source? I rarely think about my grandfather until somebody asks about your first experience with death. He had the honor. He was 81, suffering from some kind of cancer. He was the type of grandpa who seemed impossibly old from the get-go: shiny bald, a chain-smoker with a permanent wheeze and hacking cough, and a Santa-like physique. Aside from our shared penchant for smoking, could we be joined by homocysteine?
Dr. Awesome says that we can get back in the pregnancy game unless we want to be sure about the homocysteine, in which case I can fast and then have my levels check. My first reaction: Fuck no! Fasting? Hell no!! We have a saying around our house: Don’t make Kt hungry, you wouldn’t like her when she’s hungry. Dr. Awesome goes on to say that the treatment for the unlikely case of high homocysteine levels is folic acid and B6 supplements. During both pregnancies I had been taking the recommended levels of folic acid, well-schooled am I in the effects of not enough folate on growing fetuses. B6 became part of my supplement regimen to quell the nausea. Does this mean we’re back where we started from?
I share the results with Mr. Crud. I also share my reluctance to undergo the homocysteine test. In addition to the whole fasting issue is the cost. Today we received our bill for the blood tests and saline sonogram. Over $2,000. Sure, insurance will pick up most of that, but still, it makes me wish they had found something wrong so I’d be getting my money’s worth.
“But you’ll do it, right? If Dr. Awesome says you should?” Mr. Crud asks. I realize what a huge wimp I am. I remember Jan and the ovary stress tests and hormone tests that she did in her quest for successful pregnancy. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.
“Yeah, I will. But what’s the point if the only treatment is taking vitamins that I’m already taking?”
“Good point.”
I email Dr. Awesome with this very question. She promises answers in a few days. It’s cool. I can wait. Since last month’s flurry of pregnancy desire, my levels have fallen off. I’m hitting the high fertility times and, at the moment, have zero desire to be knocked up. I’m liking my wine right now. My yoga practice is feeling great. My teacher even commented that some of the back issues, which have plagued me for the last 8 months, seem to have resolved themselves. My pants fit without the uncomfortable bulge over the waistband. Life is good.
Thanks to Facebook, I’m indulging in some nostalgia for the good old days of beer, rock shows on school nights, and viewing motherhood as just another form of patriarchical bondage. Seriously. In my early twenties, I took several writing classes with women who had children. Upon learning they were mothers, my first thought was always—and I’m not proud of this—why the hell would you do something like that? Now you’re just a mother. Oh the sweet assaholic twenties. I knew everything and was sure that I would never ever in a million years want to push a watermelon out of my lady parts. I had so much time and so many options.
I tell Mr. Crud of my swing back to the childless side of things. He’s cool.
“In other words Lyla wore off. I think our trip to visit Emma will cure that.” He’s got a point.
It would be nice to go on a vacation without being pregnant. All of my vacations last year coincided with the gnarly days of the first trimester. I think I’ll keep it in my pants—or at least protected—for another month.
Dirty martini, please.
The results are in: I am (mostly) normal in terms of my clotting abilities and thyroid. Dr. Awesome emails me the lab report, which sends me into AP Biology flashback tremors--A heterozygo-wha? Thankfully she also sends her translation from science to laywoman. Basically, I am normal. Except, possibly, for my homocysteine levels. I am a genetic carrier of a mutation, which does make me grip my chest and say “Oh my,” but this mutation isn’t anything cool like mind-reading powers or tongue tricks. No, it is possible but not likely that my homocysteine levels may lead me to have blood-clotting issues. I tell my mom this over the phone during the mandatory but strained miscarriage check-in part of the weekly conversation.
“Well, your grandfather had problems with blood clots.”
Hmmm…could he be my homocysteine source? I rarely think about my grandfather until somebody asks about your first experience with death. He had the honor. He was 81, suffering from some kind of cancer. He was the type of grandpa who seemed impossibly old from the get-go: shiny bald, a chain-smoker with a permanent wheeze and hacking cough, and a Santa-like physique. Aside from our shared penchant for smoking, could we be joined by homocysteine?
Dr. Awesome says that we can get back in the pregnancy game unless we want to be sure about the homocysteine, in which case I can fast and then have my levels check. My first reaction: Fuck no! Fasting? Hell no!! We have a saying around our house: Don’t make Kt hungry, you wouldn’t like her when she’s hungry. Dr. Awesome goes on to say that the treatment for the unlikely case of high homocysteine levels is folic acid and B6 supplements. During both pregnancies I had been taking the recommended levels of folic acid, well-schooled am I in the effects of not enough folate on growing fetuses. B6 became part of my supplement regimen to quell the nausea. Does this mean we’re back where we started from?
I share the results with Mr. Crud. I also share my reluctance to undergo the homocysteine test. In addition to the whole fasting issue is the cost. Today we received our bill for the blood tests and saline sonogram. Over $2,000. Sure, insurance will pick up most of that, but still, it makes me wish they had found something wrong so I’d be getting my money’s worth.
“But you’ll do it, right? If Dr. Awesome says you should?” Mr. Crud asks. I realize what a huge wimp I am. I remember Jan and the ovary stress tests and hormone tests that she did in her quest for successful pregnancy. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.
“Yeah, I will. But what’s the point if the only treatment is taking vitamins that I’m already taking?”
“Good point.”
I email Dr. Awesome with this very question. She promises answers in a few days. It’s cool. I can wait. Since last month’s flurry of pregnancy desire, my levels have fallen off. I’m hitting the high fertility times and, at the moment, have zero desire to be knocked up. I’m liking my wine right now. My yoga practice is feeling great. My teacher even commented that some of the back issues, which have plagued me for the last 8 months, seem to have resolved themselves. My pants fit without the uncomfortable bulge over the waistband. Life is good.
Thanks to Facebook, I’m indulging in some nostalgia for the good old days of beer, rock shows on school nights, and viewing motherhood as just another form of patriarchical bondage. Seriously. In my early twenties, I took several writing classes with women who had children. Upon learning they were mothers, my first thought was always—and I’m not proud of this—why the hell would you do something like that? Now you’re just a mother. Oh the sweet assaholic twenties. I knew everything and was sure that I would never ever in a million years want to push a watermelon out of my lady parts. I had so much time and so many options.
I tell Mr. Crud of my swing back to the childless side of things. He’s cool.
“In other words Lyla wore off. I think our trip to visit Emma will cure that.” He’s got a point.
It would be nice to go on a vacation without being pregnant. All of my vacations last year coincided with the gnarly days of the first trimester. I think I’ll keep it in my pants—or at least protected—for another month.
Dirty martini, please.
Friday, March 13, 2009
3 Down 2 To Go
2-12-2009
Recently 2 of my Facebook friends gave birth to their much status-updated about babies. To be accurate, Old High School friend revolved her status updates around the twins jousting in her belly. The other friend, who was aware of my miscarriages and the sender of several compassionate emails, was not ruled by the lovely baby girl rolling around inside of her. Every time I read an update not related to her pregnancy, I silently thanked her even as I felt compelled to respond to all the baby-related ones with joy. Do I sound like a jerk? Because I sure feel like one. In order to participate in happy baby-related chatter I separate myself, I wipe away the entirety of 2008 and become that hopeful-someday-maybe-mom-to-be.
Two nights ago I meet with my new writing group for the first time. My friend Trista has gathered 3 of the brightest writing minds of our generation—including moi--and I bring Naomi, a poet-playwright friend from my team.
The talk turns to the recent birth of a colleague of Trista and her friends.
“Oh, have you seen my grandson?” Adrian*, one of the women, asks. She whips out her cell phone and shows us the adorable 6-month-old smiling in a tiny car toy.
“Wow! He’s holding his head up.” Karen, another of Trista’s colleagues, says.
I feel the split. My smile dries as if molded from plaster. I wonder if Naomi and Trista are wondering if I am feeling sad at all the baby chatter, if I can only be reminded of what I have lost. At this moment, I am not. I trade tales of my niece Lyla and how much fun 6-month-old babies can be with all the changes and new smiles. I send mental phrases to Trista and Naomi: Don’t worry about me. I’m cool. It’s fine. I’m a pro.
I have acquired a certain amnesia about the whole thing. Since getting my period a few days ago the should-we-shouldn’t-we see-saw goes up and down.
Yes: Let’s give it another shot. What the hell? Only thing to fear but fear itself, right? You aren’t getting any younger you know.
No: But I’m just getting my body back to its game weight. I love sushi! I don’t want to be pregnant and first trimester-ing during our next trip to Florida. No, no, no. What of martinis? I should be mainlining martinis stat until peeing-on-stick time.
Later in the writing group night, after we have worked out the grand plan for our new group, we talk about what we are working on writing-wise, and who we are outside of the dynamite-stick word “writer.”
“Well, I wrote a novel that I’m trying to get published. Well, trying in the lazy sense of the word. And I do a blog, Crudbucket, and another blog about miscarriage.” I pause. I let my little time-bomb dangle. Who would write about miscarriage if it hadn’t happened to them? Maybe I’m some weirdo on a mission. I wonder what the 2 women who aren’t in on my membership in the miscarriage sisterhood are thinking. Maybe nothing. Maybe it just slides off their shoulders like I said my focus was knitting or oddly shaped dog crap.
I mentally sputter. Should I? No! You’ve just met them. Don’t bum everyone out. Come on, move on, talk about Crudbucket. Crudbucket will save you! Oh come now, be honest, it’ll come out eventually. You’re not ashamed. You’re the Miscarriage Avenger, remember?
I pipe up. “Well, I might as well say it. I had 2 miscarriages last year. I write about them on the blog and might be bringing stuff related to miscarriage. That’s what I’ve mainly been writing about.”
I pause and let it sink in. I wish I had some sort of miscarriage one-liner to pull out and ease the momentary tension. I cannot think of any one, two, or three liners where embryonic death is concerned. Maybe I could commission something from Margaret Cho.
“You really should check out the Peabody Project,” Trista says. Talk turns to web addresses and I frantically start to wonder if everyone thinks I’m a miscarriage-obsessed weirdo. If they’re making a mental note to not bring up childbirth or grandchildren or cute anecdotes about baby poop. (But I love poop talk!)
Trista says nice things about my blog—this here one that you’re treating your eyes to at this very moment—and I relax.
Nobody responds with any facile “It wasn’t meant to be. You can try again” answers. I relax even more.
I get home and tell Mr. Crud of the night’s writing group adventures. “I copped to the miscarriages. I hope it wasn’t weird for everyone.”
“I’m sure it was fine,” he says. He pauses and tilts his head. “I don’t even remember what it was like before. We were different people.”
“Yeah, who were we?”
“It all seems so happy and naïve,” he says.
I run through all the ways the miscarriages have changed me. I’m more sympathetic to health problems. I’m more skilled at responding to tales of sadness and tragedy. I realize that if things are meant to be, then it’s a fucked up world indeed. I let myself think of the reality of being pregnant again. What it would be like to see those two lines appear on the pee stick. I wonder at my reaction, a status update that hasn’t been sanitized for your protection. Or maybe I will become somebody’s Facebook glitch, a status update dripping with pregnant connotations that always reminds her of her alienation from the rest of the tribe. I sort of hope so.
* Names have been changed randomly and inconsistently. If any of you folks named here want a pseudonym, let me know.
Recently 2 of my Facebook friends gave birth to their much status-updated about babies. To be accurate, Old High School friend revolved her status updates around the twins jousting in her belly. The other friend, who was aware of my miscarriages and the sender of several compassionate emails, was not ruled by the lovely baby girl rolling around inside of her. Every time I read an update not related to her pregnancy, I silently thanked her even as I felt compelled to respond to all the baby-related ones with joy. Do I sound like a jerk? Because I sure feel like one. In order to participate in happy baby-related chatter I separate myself, I wipe away the entirety of 2008 and become that hopeful-someday-maybe-mom-to-be.
Two nights ago I meet with my new writing group for the first time. My friend Trista has gathered 3 of the brightest writing minds of our generation—including moi--and I bring Naomi, a poet-playwright friend from my team.
The talk turns to the recent birth of a colleague of Trista and her friends.
“Oh, have you seen my grandson?” Adrian*, one of the women, asks. She whips out her cell phone and shows us the adorable 6-month-old smiling in a tiny car toy.
“Wow! He’s holding his head up.” Karen, another of Trista’s colleagues, says.
I feel the split. My smile dries as if molded from plaster. I wonder if Naomi and Trista are wondering if I am feeling sad at all the baby chatter, if I can only be reminded of what I have lost. At this moment, I am not. I trade tales of my niece Lyla and how much fun 6-month-old babies can be with all the changes and new smiles. I send mental phrases to Trista and Naomi: Don’t worry about me. I’m cool. It’s fine. I’m a pro.
I have acquired a certain amnesia about the whole thing. Since getting my period a few days ago the should-we-shouldn’t-we see-saw goes up and down.
Yes: Let’s give it another shot. What the hell? Only thing to fear but fear itself, right? You aren’t getting any younger you know.
No: But I’m just getting my body back to its game weight. I love sushi! I don’t want to be pregnant and first trimester-ing during our next trip to Florida. No, no, no. What of martinis? I should be mainlining martinis stat until peeing-on-stick time.
Later in the writing group night, after we have worked out the grand plan for our new group, we talk about what we are working on writing-wise, and who we are outside of the dynamite-stick word “writer.”
“Well, I wrote a novel that I’m trying to get published. Well, trying in the lazy sense of the word. And I do a blog, Crudbucket, and another blog about miscarriage.” I pause. I let my little time-bomb dangle. Who would write about miscarriage if it hadn’t happened to them? Maybe I’m some weirdo on a mission. I wonder what the 2 women who aren’t in on my membership in the miscarriage sisterhood are thinking. Maybe nothing. Maybe it just slides off their shoulders like I said my focus was knitting or oddly shaped dog crap.
I mentally sputter. Should I? No! You’ve just met them. Don’t bum everyone out. Come on, move on, talk about Crudbucket. Crudbucket will save you! Oh come now, be honest, it’ll come out eventually. You’re not ashamed. You’re the Miscarriage Avenger, remember?
I pipe up. “Well, I might as well say it. I had 2 miscarriages last year. I write about them on the blog and might be bringing stuff related to miscarriage. That’s what I’ve mainly been writing about.”
I pause and let it sink in. I wish I had some sort of miscarriage one-liner to pull out and ease the momentary tension. I cannot think of any one, two, or three liners where embryonic death is concerned. Maybe I could commission something from Margaret Cho.
“You really should check out the Peabody Project,” Trista says. Talk turns to web addresses and I frantically start to wonder if everyone thinks I’m a miscarriage-obsessed weirdo. If they’re making a mental note to not bring up childbirth or grandchildren or cute anecdotes about baby poop. (But I love poop talk!)
Trista says nice things about my blog—this here one that you’re treating your eyes to at this very moment—and I relax.
Nobody responds with any facile “It wasn’t meant to be. You can try again” answers. I relax even more.
I get home and tell Mr. Crud of the night’s writing group adventures. “I copped to the miscarriages. I hope it wasn’t weird for everyone.”
“I’m sure it was fine,” he says. He pauses and tilts his head. “I don’t even remember what it was like before. We were different people.”
“Yeah, who were we?”
“It all seems so happy and naïve,” he says.
I run through all the ways the miscarriages have changed me. I’m more sympathetic to health problems. I’m more skilled at responding to tales of sadness and tragedy. I realize that if things are meant to be, then it’s a fucked up world indeed. I let myself think of the reality of being pregnant again. What it would be like to see those two lines appear on the pee stick. I wonder at my reaction, a status update that hasn’t been sanitized for your protection. Or maybe I will become somebody’s Facebook glitch, a status update dripping with pregnant connotations that always reminds her of her alienation from the rest of the tribe. I sort of hope so.
* Names have been changed randomly and inconsistently. If any of you folks named here want a pseudonym, let me know.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Hurry!
1-15-09
The cramps began early this morning, awaking me from my dream where Max and Kathy Crud had recently welcomed their second child into the world, a cherubic boy named Purvis. I bounced Purvis on my knee, wondering even in dream-world if I would ever give birth to my own Purvis. (Who, for the record, I would not name Purvis.)
Over the last week my desire to “try this bullshit again” as I told, Kelley, my massage therapist and (fingers crossed) doula-to-be has gone from trickle to waterfall. Last Friday I had a moment to talk to Jan*, the pregnant yoga buddy who has endured 2 miscarriages, each about a month before mine. I dropped off my mat then stepped up to her office door.
“Congratulations,” I said, peeking around the corner.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “How are you?”
“I’m good, really good,” I said. “How are YOU?”
“I’m good too.”
She gave me the montage version of her miscarriages. The first came quickly after the positive pregnancy test. The second was an experience similar to mine—ultrasound of doom at 9 weeks after already having a positive ultrasound at 6 weeks. She and her husband did the full battery of tests: blood draws, an ovary stress test, sperm tests, the whole work-up. The news was mixed.
“We decided to give it one month, one more chance, before doing in vitro and—“ she cradles her belly. “I still don’t believe it, but it’s getting pretty hard to deny.” She laughs.
I ask her about the anxiety, if she can relax, why she stopped doing yoga for two months. The questions flow in a giddy rush. In part, I will be late for work if I chat too long, and in part, I need to hear good news, to pretend for just a moment that her experience will be mine.
“I am relaxing. We’re having a boy. After a positive ultrasound experience, I could relax,” she says.
She stopped the yoga on doctor’s orders after she started to bleed. “But the bleeding was probably caused by the ultrasound or the progesterone. They didn’t tell me that of course.” She snorts. “I had to stop longer than I wanted, but it was okay. I did hatha and it was fine. Of course I’m not where I used to be.”
But who is in ashtanga world? Sometimes it feels like we are in constant recovery from past injuries or keeping a wary eye on those creaky body parts for injuries on the horizon. Do I require drama in all aspects of my life? Even yoga?
“The doctors said that yoga wouldn’t cause a miscarriage.”
Every time I hear those words, I am almost rushing to hear them again. Like Lenny and his rabbits, I need to be told daily that nothing I did caused my miscarriages, especially not yoga.
“How about you?” Jan asks.
“We’re thinking about getting going again,” I say, tears glistening in my eyes. “I’m terrified, but what can you do?”
“I’m praying for you,” she says. We hug.
“But I won’t ask if you’re pregnant. You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll probably tell you first thing. I’ll need the support.”
Walking to my office, I feel lighter. The possibility of having a baby is no longer an impassible mountain.
I email my doctor with thanks for her calls, her card, and all her kindness. We set up a phone appointment for the following Monday. Then, Sunday, Mr. Crud and I stop by the bakery before yoga class. Seconds before walking in my spidey senses tingled. I dismissed my intuition as hopeful thinking.
I buy us bread—a 7-grain carrot roll for me, a short skinny for Mr. Crud—and we step towards the door. Dr. Awesome (her newly coined PPC2 name) spins around, her son on her hip.
“Hey!” We say in unison.
The woo-woo side of me goes into overdrive. Despite all my anti-meant-to-be propaganda, I still feel like coincidences are more than the sum of their parts. This is a sign! First Jan, now Dr. Awesome. We must skip yoga class and commence to making Peabody 3 despite the fact that I am a week past ovulation.
We chat, we meet Dr. Awesome’s hot-chocolate mustached son. “You growing a mustache?” Mr. Crud asks.
I smile at Dr. Awesome. Isn’t he good at this?
We confirm our phone appointment and head off to yoga class, my baby mania quelled by the promise of restorative poses.
“So, what are your questions?” Dr. Awesome asks the following Monday morning.
I shut my office door and tell my student worker that I’m going into brief seclusion. He can hear through the window that separates my office from the front reception era but I don’t care. I’m less and less worried about my coworkers knowing about MC#2 these days. They can know. I just don’t want to talk about it.
“Can you go over what happened one more time? I was kind of in a fog right after it happened.”
She consulted the genetic counselor before calling. MC#1 remains a mystery. MC#2 was caused by Trisomy 22. Trisomy 22 is the second leading cause of chromosomal miscarriages and has nothing to do with my old lady eggs or Mr. Crud’s sperm.
“It’s a sporadic variation. Something went wrong when the cells were dividing.”
I jump in, always ready to flog myself. “So could anything I was doing have interfered with normal cell division?”
“No. It’s a mystery why it happens. It just does.”
Ah, the double-edged sword of mystery talk. I wonder if Dewey’s cells were happily dividing when all of a sudden I swung into triangle pose, causing a chromosome to hop to another cell.
“So tell me about the tests.”
Genetic tests. “They can tell you if you are at a higher risk for this happening again, but they can be expensive and insurance might not cover them.”
Thyroid tests. “We sometimes don’t know if something is wrong with the thyroid. It’s not likely, but it’s good to be sure.”
Thrombosis test. “This will tell us if you have a clotting problem. It might explain your first miscarriage if this is the problem.”
Saline infused sonogram. Dr. Awesome needs to consult with the doc who performed my D and C to see what we can learn from this. “Likely it will tell us if the embryo is having a hard time attaching to your uterus because of fibroids.”
Dr. Awesome tells me that most of these situations are treatable. The thyroid with drugs; the clotting with baby aspirin. She and the genetic counselor agree that the genetic tests will likely turn up negative.
Now for my silly question. “Should we wait until we get the test results to start trying?”
“Probably, but if we find out the results early enough in your pregnancy then we can start treating you.”
I decide to consult with Mr. Crud before canceling the genetic tests. I know he will be disappointed. He’s been itching to get his blood drawn. I suspect he’d even be psyched to have to give a sperm sample.
I calculate the date of my expected period. Getting the test results before the fun times of fertile days will be a tight squeeze. I’m in a devil-may-care-fuck-it-let’s-try phase, but I’m alone. Mr. Crud still gets the jittery “eeeee” face when I bring up the possibility.
Purvis’ cousin-to-be will likely be on hold another month. At least.
* Not her real name.
The cramps began early this morning, awaking me from my dream where Max and Kathy Crud had recently welcomed their second child into the world, a cherubic boy named Purvis. I bounced Purvis on my knee, wondering even in dream-world if I would ever give birth to my own Purvis. (Who, for the record, I would not name Purvis.)
Over the last week my desire to “try this bullshit again” as I told, Kelley, my massage therapist and (fingers crossed) doula-to-be has gone from trickle to waterfall. Last Friday I had a moment to talk to Jan*, the pregnant yoga buddy who has endured 2 miscarriages, each about a month before mine. I dropped off my mat then stepped up to her office door.
“Congratulations,” I said, peeking around the corner.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “How are you?”
“I’m good, really good,” I said. “How are YOU?”
“I’m good too.”
She gave me the montage version of her miscarriages. The first came quickly after the positive pregnancy test. The second was an experience similar to mine—ultrasound of doom at 9 weeks after already having a positive ultrasound at 6 weeks. She and her husband did the full battery of tests: blood draws, an ovary stress test, sperm tests, the whole work-up. The news was mixed.
“We decided to give it one month, one more chance, before doing in vitro and—“ she cradles her belly. “I still don’t believe it, but it’s getting pretty hard to deny.” She laughs.
I ask her about the anxiety, if she can relax, why she stopped doing yoga for two months. The questions flow in a giddy rush. In part, I will be late for work if I chat too long, and in part, I need to hear good news, to pretend for just a moment that her experience will be mine.
“I am relaxing. We’re having a boy. After a positive ultrasound experience, I could relax,” she says.
She stopped the yoga on doctor’s orders after she started to bleed. “But the bleeding was probably caused by the ultrasound or the progesterone. They didn’t tell me that of course.” She snorts. “I had to stop longer than I wanted, but it was okay. I did hatha and it was fine. Of course I’m not where I used to be.”
But who is in ashtanga world? Sometimes it feels like we are in constant recovery from past injuries or keeping a wary eye on those creaky body parts for injuries on the horizon. Do I require drama in all aspects of my life? Even yoga?
“The doctors said that yoga wouldn’t cause a miscarriage.”
Every time I hear those words, I am almost rushing to hear them again. Like Lenny and his rabbits, I need to be told daily that nothing I did caused my miscarriages, especially not yoga.
“How about you?” Jan asks.
“We’re thinking about getting going again,” I say, tears glistening in my eyes. “I’m terrified, but what can you do?”
“I’m praying for you,” she says. We hug.
“But I won’t ask if you’re pregnant. You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll probably tell you first thing. I’ll need the support.”
Walking to my office, I feel lighter. The possibility of having a baby is no longer an impassible mountain.
I email my doctor with thanks for her calls, her card, and all her kindness. We set up a phone appointment for the following Monday. Then, Sunday, Mr. Crud and I stop by the bakery before yoga class. Seconds before walking in my spidey senses tingled. I dismissed my intuition as hopeful thinking.
I buy us bread—a 7-grain carrot roll for me, a short skinny for Mr. Crud—and we step towards the door. Dr. Awesome (her newly coined PPC2 name) spins around, her son on her hip.
“Hey!” We say in unison.
The woo-woo side of me goes into overdrive. Despite all my anti-meant-to-be propaganda, I still feel like coincidences are more than the sum of their parts. This is a sign! First Jan, now Dr. Awesome. We must skip yoga class and commence to making Peabody 3 despite the fact that I am a week past ovulation.
We chat, we meet Dr. Awesome’s hot-chocolate mustached son. “You growing a mustache?” Mr. Crud asks.
I smile at Dr. Awesome. Isn’t he good at this?
We confirm our phone appointment and head off to yoga class, my baby mania quelled by the promise of restorative poses.
“So, what are your questions?” Dr. Awesome asks the following Monday morning.
I shut my office door and tell my student worker that I’m going into brief seclusion. He can hear through the window that separates my office from the front reception era but I don’t care. I’m less and less worried about my coworkers knowing about MC#2 these days. They can know. I just don’t want to talk about it.
“Can you go over what happened one more time? I was kind of in a fog right after it happened.”
She consulted the genetic counselor before calling. MC#1 remains a mystery. MC#2 was caused by Trisomy 22. Trisomy 22 is the second leading cause of chromosomal miscarriages and has nothing to do with my old lady eggs or Mr. Crud’s sperm.
“It’s a sporadic variation. Something went wrong when the cells were dividing.”
I jump in, always ready to flog myself. “So could anything I was doing have interfered with normal cell division?”
“No. It’s a mystery why it happens. It just does.”
Ah, the double-edged sword of mystery talk. I wonder if Dewey’s cells were happily dividing when all of a sudden I swung into triangle pose, causing a chromosome to hop to another cell.
“So tell me about the tests.”
Genetic tests. “They can tell you if you are at a higher risk for this happening again, but they can be expensive and insurance might not cover them.”
Thyroid tests. “We sometimes don’t know if something is wrong with the thyroid. It’s not likely, but it’s good to be sure.”
Thrombosis test. “This will tell us if you have a clotting problem. It might explain your first miscarriage if this is the problem.”
Saline infused sonogram. Dr. Awesome needs to consult with the doc who performed my D and C to see what we can learn from this. “Likely it will tell us if the embryo is having a hard time attaching to your uterus because of fibroids.”
Dr. Awesome tells me that most of these situations are treatable. The thyroid with drugs; the clotting with baby aspirin. She and the genetic counselor agree that the genetic tests will likely turn up negative.
Now for my silly question. “Should we wait until we get the test results to start trying?”
“Probably, but if we find out the results early enough in your pregnancy then we can start treating you.”
I decide to consult with Mr. Crud before canceling the genetic tests. I know he will be disappointed. He’s been itching to get his blood drawn. I suspect he’d even be psyched to have to give a sperm sample.
I calculate the date of my expected period. Getting the test results before the fun times of fertile days will be a tight squeeze. I’m in a devil-may-care-fuck-it-let’s-try phase, but I’m alone. Mr. Crud still gets the jittery “eeeee” face when I bring up the possibility.
Purvis’ cousin-to-be will likely be on hold another month. At least.
* Not her real name.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Ready...Set?
December 5, 2008
This morning I awake grateful that I don’t have to make the three treks a night to the bathroom like I did when I was pregnant. That my bladder does not shriek at me every 5 minutes. Weird. I’ve been enjoying the luxury of not having to take bathroom breaks in the middle of the night for 2 months now. For some reason pregnant life has been coming back to me at odd moments. Yesterday a wave of nausea descended on me after yoga and I gagged just like the superfun happy days in preg-land. No way, I thought, it would have to be an immaculate conception because Mr. Crud and I are playing it safe these days.
“I’m not ready,” I say.
“Me neither.” He says.
“If I got pregnant, I’d have to get an abortion, I guess.”
Mr. Crud looks at me with furrowed brow.
“Kidding.”
Still, although my body has given me the go-ahead in the form of regular periods and bountiful cervical fluid (nice image, I know), my brain is still picking over such small details as will it fucking take next time? Can I handle another miscarriage? Another ultrasound of doom? Another abortion?
Yes, technically the procedure I’ve had is an abortion even though the critter they were taking out was no longer alive. In all the swirling debate about abortion rights—which I am more firmly in favor of than ever before due to my pregnancy experience—I wonder if the debate applies to me. Would the pro-lifers want me to keep lugging around a dead embryo until nature took its course and I had myself a nice, old-fashioned miscarriage? Would they endorse endangering my life and reproductive future in the name of making sure this was what their g-d wanted? Maybe not. Maybe I underestimate their compassion, their reasonableness. But if they can go hysterical about partial birth abortion—a procedure that does not medically exist—then I allow myself some hysteria in the opposite direction.
In all the literature I’ve read about miscarriage nobody ever speaks of the physical aftereffects. It is well-known that women’s bodies change after the birth of a child. My body had changed too even though my microscopic ones were never born. Specifically in the pooping arena.
(WARNING—if you are not a fan of poop talk or butts or hemorrhoids, perhaps call it a day on this blog post. Thanks for reading!)
Before my pregnancies, I took pride, private pride albeit but pride nonetheless, in my pooping prowess. I was a twice-a-day crapper and my BM-s were smooth and required minimal clean-up. Two wipes max, bitches. Pretty sweet. Thanks be to yoga and Dave’s Killer Blues bread.
During both pregnancies, the poop train slowed to a crawl. Constipation. Shits that vexed even the most powerful flushes and made me weep in pain. I remembered how when I was a kid, I’d pretend that I was giving birth when taking a particularly painful crap. My crush of the moment, Ralph Macchio for instance, would be my birth partner, chanting, “Breathe, breathe, you can do it, babe,” while I grunted and clawed at my thighs. Splash. Ahhh…another poo baby comes into the world. A precious moment indeed. But such heavy-duty stools take a toll on an asshole. Hemorrhoids flared. I no longer could skip to my loo without experiencing a minor sense of dread, a longing for the days of easy crapping.
After MC#1 and a month-long period of not being able to push with all my might because of the interaction of my D&C with my bowels—they are next door neighbors—things got back to normal. This time, not so lucky. Whenever folks ask how I am doing post-miscarriage, I give them some variation on the “Things have been rough, but I’m still standing” standard. Which is true. In the back of my mind ticks the phrase, “but it’s been hell on my pooper.”I don’t know if this problem is another one of my unique gifts or if other members of the miscarriage club have experienced the change in shitting patterns.
I hear the formerly pregnant—the kind holding swaddled babies in their arms—complain of the weight gain. I hear you, sister. I put on 10 pounds after MC#1, most of it bottles of wine and the snack food section of Trader Joe’s. I’d hoped to lose the extra pounds during pregnancy #2 as my wine consumption halted and snacking urge was greatly diminished by constant nausea. No dice. Maybe it’s my age and the attendant slow down of ye olde metabolisme. Dang.
Ever so slowly I am whittling away the extra poundage. Very slowly. Mostly in the name of fitting into my jean-and-cords uniform. The week after MC#2, my pants squeezed at my still enlarged uterus. Over time and many sweaty yoga sessions, the pressure has lessened. I wouldn’t have minded the weight gain so much if I had a squirming bundle of joy to show for it.
Do not quote me on that should I finally have a squirming bundle of joy and complain about my weight. I might be running on 1 hour sleep and come out swinging.
This morning I awake grateful that I don’t have to make the three treks a night to the bathroom like I did when I was pregnant. That my bladder does not shriek at me every 5 minutes. Weird. I’ve been enjoying the luxury of not having to take bathroom breaks in the middle of the night for 2 months now. For some reason pregnant life has been coming back to me at odd moments. Yesterday a wave of nausea descended on me after yoga and I gagged just like the superfun happy days in preg-land. No way, I thought, it would have to be an immaculate conception because Mr. Crud and I are playing it safe these days.
“I’m not ready,” I say.
“Me neither.” He says.
“If I got pregnant, I’d have to get an abortion, I guess.”
Mr. Crud looks at me with furrowed brow.
“Kidding.”
Still, although my body has given me the go-ahead in the form of regular periods and bountiful cervical fluid (nice image, I know), my brain is still picking over such small details as will it fucking take next time? Can I handle another miscarriage? Another ultrasound of doom? Another abortion?
Yes, technically the procedure I’ve had is an abortion even though the critter they were taking out was no longer alive. In all the swirling debate about abortion rights—which I am more firmly in favor of than ever before due to my pregnancy experience—I wonder if the debate applies to me. Would the pro-lifers want me to keep lugging around a dead embryo until nature took its course and I had myself a nice, old-fashioned miscarriage? Would they endorse endangering my life and reproductive future in the name of making sure this was what their g-d wanted? Maybe not. Maybe I underestimate their compassion, their reasonableness. But if they can go hysterical about partial birth abortion—a procedure that does not medically exist—then I allow myself some hysteria in the opposite direction.
In all the literature I’ve read about miscarriage nobody ever speaks of the physical aftereffects. It is well-known that women’s bodies change after the birth of a child. My body had changed too even though my microscopic ones were never born. Specifically in the pooping arena.
(WARNING—if you are not a fan of poop talk or butts or hemorrhoids, perhaps call it a day on this blog post. Thanks for reading!)
Before my pregnancies, I took pride, private pride albeit but pride nonetheless, in my pooping prowess. I was a twice-a-day crapper and my BM-s were smooth and required minimal clean-up. Two wipes max, bitches. Pretty sweet. Thanks be to yoga and Dave’s Killer Blues bread.
During both pregnancies, the poop train slowed to a crawl. Constipation. Shits that vexed even the most powerful flushes and made me weep in pain. I remembered how when I was a kid, I’d pretend that I was giving birth when taking a particularly painful crap. My crush of the moment, Ralph Macchio for instance, would be my birth partner, chanting, “Breathe, breathe, you can do it, babe,” while I grunted and clawed at my thighs. Splash. Ahhh…another poo baby comes into the world. A precious moment indeed. But such heavy-duty stools take a toll on an asshole. Hemorrhoids flared. I no longer could skip to my loo without experiencing a minor sense of dread, a longing for the days of easy crapping.
After MC#1 and a month-long period of not being able to push with all my might because of the interaction of my D&C with my bowels—they are next door neighbors—things got back to normal. This time, not so lucky. Whenever folks ask how I am doing post-miscarriage, I give them some variation on the “Things have been rough, but I’m still standing” standard. Which is true. In the back of my mind ticks the phrase, “but it’s been hell on my pooper.”I don’t know if this problem is another one of my unique gifts or if other members of the miscarriage club have experienced the change in shitting patterns.
I hear the formerly pregnant—the kind holding swaddled babies in their arms—complain of the weight gain. I hear you, sister. I put on 10 pounds after MC#1, most of it bottles of wine and the snack food section of Trader Joe’s. I’d hoped to lose the extra pounds during pregnancy #2 as my wine consumption halted and snacking urge was greatly diminished by constant nausea. No dice. Maybe it’s my age and the attendant slow down of ye olde metabolisme. Dang.
Ever so slowly I am whittling away the extra poundage. Very slowly. Mostly in the name of fitting into my jean-and-cords uniform. The week after MC#2, my pants squeezed at my still enlarged uterus. Over time and many sweaty yoga sessions, the pressure has lessened. I wouldn’t have minded the weight gain so much if I had a squirming bundle of joy to show for it.
Do not quote me on that should I finally have a squirming bundle of joy and complain about my weight. I might be running on 1 hour sleep and come out swinging.
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