**The first few paragraphs of this months old entry contain what they call foreshadowing. Sorry I have been remiss in my blogging duties, but I promise to have a GREAT excuse. To be continued... (sooner hopefully rather than months later).**
1-19-10
“You’re like a ticking time bomb,” my yoga pal says as we tug on yoga pants, mine barely fitting over the increased thigh-ass-belly area that is my own personal Bermuda Triangle.
“I know. I could pop at any moment.” I say. A fact that has started to worm its way into my brain. As Purvis will be my first trip to the birthing unit, I had assumed that she would be late. I was 7 days overdue. Or as Mr. Crud says, the due date was 7 days early. He is correct. Due dates are at best guesstimates.
Sunday night I lay in bed contemplating the tightness in my belly. Another Braxton Hicks (a.k.a. practice contraction) or is this the contraction that gets the party started? Oh shit. I am so not ready. My mind races to work and all the piles of unfiled papers, the documents on my computer that I’ve yet to transfer to a disc for my replacement, the snack drawer that needs cleaning, and on and on. I make mental to-do lists. I vow to at least get my affairs in order enough so that if Purvis makes his grand debut earlier than guesstimated, my office will not go totally off the rails. Fretting over work is so much easier than all the other great unknowns. Will Purvis be healthy? Did any of the genetic diseases we tested for sneak by the blood work and ultrasounds? Am I really the tough guy I think I am? Can I handle birth? Dang, we should have taken an infant CPR class before now. I don’t know how to use the car seat yet. How is this 8-pound thing in my belly going to fit through my innocent (well, relatively speaking) vagina? Ack! We don’t have crib sheets or diaper covers or breast pads or burp cloths! How can we take care of a tiny baby without a brother or sister-in-law to hand him to when diaper changing time comes around?
I toss. I turn. I kick Mr. Crud when he snores. How can he sleep at a time like this? I feel my belly tighten again before Purvis lodges himself under my right rib and wiggles. I contemplate what Purvis knows, what her consciousness is like right now as she curls into her favorite spot: head in pelvis, legs and feet tucked into my right ribs and hips. When I poke at him, he sometimes pokes back or at least wiggles around as if to say “Off my ding, lady.”
The first part of our weekend was more baby lessons. Mr. Crud and I arrive early and take seats in the back. One seat is covered with a thin pillow; the other with a blue-eyed plastic doll swaddled in a blanket. I move the baby to the floor. The blond woman in front of us looks familiar. She says over her shoulder, “I don’t feel right putting this under the chair.”
“Yeah, I guess you can’t do that with the real thing,” I say.
Where do I know her from? Then it hits me. Sara, our genetic counselor from the days of Primo and Dewey. She had the misfortune of counseling us for our two miscarriages, but somehow wasn’t in the office for our one success. Wow. This really is a walk down memory lane.
I lean forward. “Do you work as a genetic counselor?”
She turns to face me. “Yes.”
Recognition. “You were our genetic counselor. Last year. I’m Kt Crud.”
“Hi! Wow! It’s great to see you here.”
“We made it,” I say. Tears start to come to my eyes as I remember the last time we saw her, the box of environmentally friendly tissues she gave us to accompany us to our next stop to have blood drawn in preparation for my second D & C.
Mr. Crud returns and conversation shifts to our upcoming babies, the familiar laments about all the gear there is available and how we’re really not ready. The other couples filter in, most of them are from last week’s childbirth classes. Today’s mood is lighter, more optimistic. We’ve symbolically moved through the pain of childbirth and are on to the world of purple-faced wailing infants beyond. The fellows pick up the dolls and hold them in the crook of their arms while pregnant partners take the pillow seats.
The jinxing thought has the audacity to cross my mind: no Hamim and Azana. today. Right on cue, they shuffle into the room, taking the last seats as our teacher continues her introductory spiel about the benefits of breastfeeding. Mr. Crud and I exchange a look. Oh well. Here we go.
We watch videos of breastfeeding mothers and silently cheer when the babies successfully latch on. I am 100% pro-breastfeeding but my prudish side gets squirmy when I think of how my boobs will go public in the coming months. How will it feel to whip out a tit with my mom in the same room? Not to mention my father-in-law. My friends and sister-in-law breastfed with such aplomb and style that I feel I will be imitating them in the early days, faking it until I make it as the personal motivators say. How big will they get anyway? I’m still reeling from my first official bra fitting when the perky clerk hauled out the 38DDs. Moi?
The teacher warns us of growth when the milk comes in. “One guy said he went to bed with his wife and woke up with a porn star.”
A leaky porn star who had no interest in sex, but I get the idea.
We break for lunch. Cautiously I peer into the break room adjoining the conference room. No Hamim and Azana. Not that they aren’t nice people and all that, but it would be tempting to kindly request that they read a few pregnancy books and maybe not rely on the hearsay of their friends so much. Most of Azana’s questions begin with “My friend tells me…” and end with some claim about babies crying for 12 hours straight. “This is normal?”
Rachel and James, the couple Mr. Crud and I identified as people we’d most likely know otherwise in the class, invite us to join them. Rachel is high-risk. She knows her due date because she has a scheduled c-section. I am curious but I let it be. Are they fellow travelers in Miscarriage World? I’ll let that bummer ride for now. Now is the time to talk about crazy family invasions and incomplete nurseries and more wide-eyed holy shit moments. I jump the gun and imagine us as new parent friends. Rachel and I would meet for tea while our babies snoozed on our chests. Mr. Crud and James would exchange dude tips about supporting their ladies during the hellish first 2 weeks when a baby must feed every 2-3 hours. (“You mean we have to wake them up to feed them even if they’re sleeping?” a classmate asks. The teacher nods with curled lip. “Yep.”) At the end of the day I will trail Rachel and James to the elevator, wondering if I should ask them for their phone number and try to extend our birthing class comradery. We reach the elevator. Rachel veers off to the bathroom. James takes a seat and looks out the window at the foggy afternoon.
“Good luck,” Mr. Crud says.
James nods. “You too.”
If Purvis is a week late we may see them again. Guess we’ll be letting the chips fall where they may.
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Showing posts with label friends. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
I'm Coming Out
10-8-09
She extends her manicured hand, “Hi, I’m Lisa. Due February 20th. Girl.”
I shake. “Hi. Kt. Due February 1st. Don’t know.” I stumble over my tale of the magic envelope which still remains on my desk, which could at any moment, at the slightest tear, unlock Purvis’ gender mystery.
We go around the circle of 4, giving our preg-stats before our pre-natal Pilates teacher arrives.
I am the most pregnant here date-wise, but Lisa looks months more pregnant than me. She has the smooth round bump that I covet and the accompanying sway-back that I don’t. Lisa is the most Sex and the City of the women in class, this my first formal entrance into the pregnancy industrial complex. The other 2 women are low-key semi-hippie Southeast ladies who—gasp—look my age or—gasp—a year or 2 my senior. Before attending this class, I hadn’t considered that I might be the elder of the group, but now that I am here, I feel a slight relief that I am not doing kegels among the young and bouncy. Mr. Crud points out that the spa where I’m taking the class isn’t exactly targeted at the young and bouncy.
I start to contemplate further adventures in preg-land. All my books tell me that each new pregnancy class, be it yoga or childbirth preparation brings opportunities for new friendships. As we leg lift our saddlebags away in Pilates, I wonder if any of these women will become partners-in-pregnancy and newborn commiseration. Lisa is not likely. She reminds me too much of the popular girls from middle school. Nice to your face, but behind closed doors let the cutting begin. Women like Lisa simultaneously scare me and make me want to please them just so that I will be the one to bask in the glory of their snarky light. The hippie-ish women don’t seem quite my speed either though maybe they are just shy. Where are my aging rockers? My ladies of the wine glass? A lot of pressure for a mere pre-natal Pilates class, I know.
In a way I look forward to being with other pregnant ladies, to sharing rolled eyes at the constant fucking heartburn and midnight trips to the bathroom. (My trip is currently a long haul to the basement while our bathroom is being remodeled. What I do so that Purvis will never know the horror of the previous owner’s penchant for peeling linoleum and inability to do any home improvement project that exceeds the half-assed benchmark.) But I’m a terrible joiner. Even when it’s an activity like writing or yoga or feminism that I love and truly believe in. Witness Wordstock, a local literary extravaganza held a few minutes from my humble abode. Writers and enthusiastic readers converge on the Portland Convention Center for 2 days of readings, workshops, and an endless line of literature-related booths. And will I attend this event so custom-made for a writer like me? No way. Why? I have a hard time explaining. On one hand I get depressed being around so many aspiring writers. There are millions of us. I am deluding myself if I ever think that I’ll get published and make any sort of living out of this writing game. On the other hand, I am snobby: so pathetic are all the yearning smiles, all the small talk and name dropping of publications. (Perhaps if I had my own record of publication to name drop, I’d be a bit more amenable.) I don’t like to stick out, but I do like to feel unique and joining these groups based on writing or pregnancy make me feel alienated if I don’t immediately feel a sense of kinship and belonging, a feeling which usually only comes quickly after a martini or two. (Oh martinis, how I miss thee.)
So, per usual, I will bring more drama to my Pilates class than the average bear.
Yesterday in the locker room one of my buddies turns to me. “You’re looking more round than the last time I saw you,” says BJ, the 70-something swimmer who gives me hope for an active old lady-hood.
“That’s because I’m pregnant,” I say.
The other buddies offer their congrats and pepper me with questions about whether I am feeling sick (“Nope, I’m past that stage now.”) and craving pickles and ice cream (“Nope, just normal food and a lot of it.”).
I tell Mr. Crud. “I was outed.”
“Me too. In the main office. My boss said something.”
“Everyone was cool, right?” I ask.
“Yeah, everyone was really nice. I don’t know why I still feel weird about it.”
“I do too.”
I am getting more comfortable with being pregnant and coming to terms with the fact that I am starting to look pregnant, but still there’s the nagging fear that spreading the news will jinx us. Sometimes I tell somebody of my pregnancy and immediately imagine telling them that we’ve had a miscarriage—technically a stillbirth at this stage in the game. The thought doesn’t instantly send me into a terror spiral. It’s more like a snag in a sweater. Plus there’s the added dimension of having to talk about it with people I don’t know that well. Since I announced my pregnancy at work, various coworkers have come to my window. “How are you doing?”
“Well, thanks. And you?”
“I mean with your—“ they point to my belly or create a phantom belly by rounding their hand over their midsections.
“Oh good thanks. So far so good.”
“You feeling sick?”
“Nope, I’m past that already.”
Something in my brisk tone tells them to drop it and most do. I change the subject with work-related inquiries. How are classes going? Good students this term? Maybe I’m just afraid that I will quickly detour into the well-traveled land of TMI. (“Well, I’m doing pretty well today. I could actually take a shit that didn’t leave me howling in pain. A pleasant change.”)
There’s always the shared terror of the Swine Flu to provide conversational fodder. Yes, I’ve read the pros and cons and I’m going for the vaccine, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories be damned.
And Purvis? She’s still kicking away. No pattern yet so he keeps me on my toes and gives me the occasional fright when a few hours have passed without a jab in the gut. Tomorrow we see Dr. Adorable for a (hopeful) dose of well-being. I look forward to the relieved exhale and weeklong sense of confident well-being when we hear the heartbeat.
RANDOM: A middle finger to Nicole Richie and her fashion line for the pregnant ladies whose upper size limit is 12. Really didn't need to be made to feel like an outcast while in preg-land. May your lack of consideration for the regular-sized women of the world doom your flowy dresses to failure.
She extends her manicured hand, “Hi, I’m Lisa. Due February 20th. Girl.”
I shake. “Hi. Kt. Due February 1st. Don’t know.” I stumble over my tale of the magic envelope which still remains on my desk, which could at any moment, at the slightest tear, unlock Purvis’ gender mystery.
We go around the circle of 4, giving our preg-stats before our pre-natal Pilates teacher arrives.
I am the most pregnant here date-wise, but Lisa looks months more pregnant than me. She has the smooth round bump that I covet and the accompanying sway-back that I don’t. Lisa is the most Sex and the City of the women in class, this my first formal entrance into the pregnancy industrial complex. The other 2 women are low-key semi-hippie Southeast ladies who—gasp—look my age or—gasp—a year or 2 my senior. Before attending this class, I hadn’t considered that I might be the elder of the group, but now that I am here, I feel a slight relief that I am not doing kegels among the young and bouncy. Mr. Crud points out that the spa where I’m taking the class isn’t exactly targeted at the young and bouncy.
I start to contemplate further adventures in preg-land. All my books tell me that each new pregnancy class, be it yoga or childbirth preparation brings opportunities for new friendships. As we leg lift our saddlebags away in Pilates, I wonder if any of these women will become partners-in-pregnancy and newborn commiseration. Lisa is not likely. She reminds me too much of the popular girls from middle school. Nice to your face, but behind closed doors let the cutting begin. Women like Lisa simultaneously scare me and make me want to please them just so that I will be the one to bask in the glory of their snarky light. The hippie-ish women don’t seem quite my speed either though maybe they are just shy. Where are my aging rockers? My ladies of the wine glass? A lot of pressure for a mere pre-natal Pilates class, I know.
In a way I look forward to being with other pregnant ladies, to sharing rolled eyes at the constant fucking heartburn and midnight trips to the bathroom. (My trip is currently a long haul to the basement while our bathroom is being remodeled. What I do so that Purvis will never know the horror of the previous owner’s penchant for peeling linoleum and inability to do any home improvement project that exceeds the half-assed benchmark.) But I’m a terrible joiner. Even when it’s an activity like writing or yoga or feminism that I love and truly believe in. Witness Wordstock, a local literary extravaganza held a few minutes from my humble abode. Writers and enthusiastic readers converge on the Portland Convention Center for 2 days of readings, workshops, and an endless line of literature-related booths. And will I attend this event so custom-made for a writer like me? No way. Why? I have a hard time explaining. On one hand I get depressed being around so many aspiring writers. There are millions of us. I am deluding myself if I ever think that I’ll get published and make any sort of living out of this writing game. On the other hand, I am snobby: so pathetic are all the yearning smiles, all the small talk and name dropping of publications. (Perhaps if I had my own record of publication to name drop, I’d be a bit more amenable.) I don’t like to stick out, but I do like to feel unique and joining these groups based on writing or pregnancy make me feel alienated if I don’t immediately feel a sense of kinship and belonging, a feeling which usually only comes quickly after a martini or two. (Oh martinis, how I miss thee.)
So, per usual, I will bring more drama to my Pilates class than the average bear.
Yesterday in the locker room one of my buddies turns to me. “You’re looking more round than the last time I saw you,” says BJ, the 70-something swimmer who gives me hope for an active old lady-hood.
“That’s because I’m pregnant,” I say.
The other buddies offer their congrats and pepper me with questions about whether I am feeling sick (“Nope, I’m past that stage now.”) and craving pickles and ice cream (“Nope, just normal food and a lot of it.”).
I tell Mr. Crud. “I was outed.”
“Me too. In the main office. My boss said something.”
“Everyone was cool, right?” I ask.
“Yeah, everyone was really nice. I don’t know why I still feel weird about it.”
“I do too.”
I am getting more comfortable with being pregnant and coming to terms with the fact that I am starting to look pregnant, but still there’s the nagging fear that spreading the news will jinx us. Sometimes I tell somebody of my pregnancy and immediately imagine telling them that we’ve had a miscarriage—technically a stillbirth at this stage in the game. The thought doesn’t instantly send me into a terror spiral. It’s more like a snag in a sweater. Plus there’s the added dimension of having to talk about it with people I don’t know that well. Since I announced my pregnancy at work, various coworkers have come to my window. “How are you doing?”
“Well, thanks. And you?”
“I mean with your—“ they point to my belly or create a phantom belly by rounding their hand over their midsections.
“Oh good thanks. So far so good.”
“You feeling sick?”
“Nope, I’m past that already.”
Something in my brisk tone tells them to drop it and most do. I change the subject with work-related inquiries. How are classes going? Good students this term? Maybe I’m just afraid that I will quickly detour into the well-traveled land of TMI. (“Well, I’m doing pretty well today. I could actually take a shit that didn’t leave me howling in pain. A pleasant change.”)
There’s always the shared terror of the Swine Flu to provide conversational fodder. Yes, I’ve read the pros and cons and I’m going for the vaccine, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories be damned.
And Purvis? She’s still kicking away. No pattern yet so he keeps me on my toes and gives me the occasional fright when a few hours have passed without a jab in the gut. Tomorrow we see Dr. Adorable for a (hopeful) dose of well-being. I look forward to the relieved exhale and weeklong sense of confident well-being when we hear the heartbeat.
RANDOM: A middle finger to Nicole Richie and her fashion line for the pregnant ladies whose upper size limit is 12. Really didn't need to be made to feel like an outcast while in preg-land. May your lack of consideration for the regular-sized women of the world doom your flowy dresses to failure.
Friday, August 7, 2009
The Whole Truth
8-5-09
Mr. Crud and I take a much-needed jaunt to the coast courtesy of Kjirsten, girlfriend from way back when, whose folks own a house near Long Beach. Kjirsten and her fella have two adorable little ones and the other couple staying for the weekend have two of their own. We are the childless couple. I don’t feel weird about this fact thanks to my own houseguest a.k.a. Purvis. I enjoy watching the little ones frolic and non-sequitur and shine their cute lights for all to see.
When Mr. Crud and I are alone I say, “I can’t wait for it to be our turn to have the cute kid and to tell all the cute kid stories.”
“Me too.”
“I feel like we’ve done our time watching and listening. It’s our turn.” When talk turns to cute kid stuff, I have a wealth of stories to share courtesy of my nieces and nephews. Still, I feel left out.
Later that night after the booze starts flowing (but not pour moi bien sur), the adults are standing around the kitchen.
The lady half of the other couple smiles at us. “I’m so happy for you. It’s so great. I don’t know many people who are just starting to have kids right now.”
Mr. Crud and I exchange the ritual do-we-or-don’t-we look.
“Yeah, well, it’s kind of been a long road for us,” Mr. Crud says.
I nod. To bum out or not to bum out that is the question. Since the mood is light, we silently agree to let it go and accept her congratulations without too much explanation.
“Thank you. We’re really excited too.” I say, lustily eyeing the bottle of scotch on the counter. I don’t even like scotch. At least liquor is no longer repulsive to me. That’s a good thing, right?
One of the woman’s daughters runs into the room in full-on pout mode. She clings to her dad. “I hate Scotch*. I hate cupcakes.”
“If you don’t calm down and get to bed that’s what you’re eating when you wake up tomorrow,” the dad says.
She pouts. I smile. My kind of parenting.
Monday I go to yoga class with one of my new favorite teachers. I lurch around the edges of the reception area, waiting for a break in the flow of students. I have read every flyer twice already. I’ve told at least three people, that no, I’m not waiting for the bathroom, just loitering like a stalker. Finally I see my chance. I swoop in close.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m 14 weeks pregnant,” I say. I want to throw a second trimester gang sign. Does such a thing exist? I should get myself to a prenatal yoga class to find out. Of course the yogis call it a prenatal mudra.
The teacher claps. “Oh congratulations! That’s great!”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling suddenly bashful. I’m still getting used to accepting congrats on this account. I haven’t figured out how to do so without feeling embarrassed or like waving it away (“Aw, it’s no big deal.”)
“Is this your first?” She asks.
My mind skitters about. I hate this question. Well, yeah, sorta, I mean not my first pregnancy. Actually my third pregnancy but the first time we made it this far. First live child? Yeah, damn, I sure hope so. I feel compelled to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but whenever asked this question. For one, I want any fellow members of Miscarriage World to know that I’m down, I’ve been there, I feel your pain. For another, I feel weird acting like Purvis is my first houseguest like it dishonors the brief but powerful memories of the Peabodies: Primo and Dewey.
The question hangs. “Is this your first?”
I lean in closer. “Yes, well, we had some losses before but this is the first time we’ve made it this far.” Hmmm…that sounds suitably hopeful enough and not too convoluted, right?
The teacher doesn’t blink. “So there are some modifications…”
(G-d willing) this will become a more common occurrence as we start to spread the Purvis word far and wide. Maybe the dilemma will begin to fade. I will find ease in smiling and thanking people for their congratulations without the bummer-ness squeezing my insides. I am not alone in my dilemma. Ruby is right there with me. Another reminder that most joy does not come without complication.
Random
How many calories does giving birth burn? Now that I’m packing on some pounds and feeling chunky such questions plague my mind.
*No children were fed Scotch over the course of this family friendly weekend. I believe she hates Scotch on principle.
Mr. Crud and I take a much-needed jaunt to the coast courtesy of Kjirsten, girlfriend from way back when, whose folks own a house near Long Beach. Kjirsten and her fella have two adorable little ones and the other couple staying for the weekend have two of their own. We are the childless couple. I don’t feel weird about this fact thanks to my own houseguest a.k.a. Purvis. I enjoy watching the little ones frolic and non-sequitur and shine their cute lights for all to see.
When Mr. Crud and I are alone I say, “I can’t wait for it to be our turn to have the cute kid and to tell all the cute kid stories.”
“Me too.”
“I feel like we’ve done our time watching and listening. It’s our turn.” When talk turns to cute kid stuff, I have a wealth of stories to share courtesy of my nieces and nephews. Still, I feel left out.
Later that night after the booze starts flowing (but not pour moi bien sur), the adults are standing around the kitchen.
The lady half of the other couple smiles at us. “I’m so happy for you. It’s so great. I don’t know many people who are just starting to have kids right now.”
Mr. Crud and I exchange the ritual do-we-or-don’t-we look.
“Yeah, well, it’s kind of been a long road for us,” Mr. Crud says.
I nod. To bum out or not to bum out that is the question. Since the mood is light, we silently agree to let it go and accept her congratulations without too much explanation.
“Thank you. We’re really excited too.” I say, lustily eyeing the bottle of scotch on the counter. I don’t even like scotch. At least liquor is no longer repulsive to me. That’s a good thing, right?
One of the woman’s daughters runs into the room in full-on pout mode. She clings to her dad. “I hate Scotch*. I hate cupcakes.”
“If you don’t calm down and get to bed that’s what you’re eating when you wake up tomorrow,” the dad says.
She pouts. I smile. My kind of parenting.
Monday I go to yoga class with one of my new favorite teachers. I lurch around the edges of the reception area, waiting for a break in the flow of students. I have read every flyer twice already. I’ve told at least three people, that no, I’m not waiting for the bathroom, just loitering like a stalker. Finally I see my chance. I swoop in close.
“I just wanted to let you know that I’m 14 weeks pregnant,” I say. I want to throw a second trimester gang sign. Does such a thing exist? I should get myself to a prenatal yoga class to find out. Of course the yogis call it a prenatal mudra.
The teacher claps. “Oh congratulations! That’s great!”
“Thank you,” I say, feeling suddenly bashful. I’m still getting used to accepting congrats on this account. I haven’t figured out how to do so without feeling embarrassed or like waving it away (“Aw, it’s no big deal.”)
“Is this your first?” She asks.
My mind skitters about. I hate this question. Well, yeah, sorta, I mean not my first pregnancy. Actually my third pregnancy but the first time we made it this far. First live child? Yeah, damn, I sure hope so. I feel compelled to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but whenever asked this question. For one, I want any fellow members of Miscarriage World to know that I’m down, I’ve been there, I feel your pain. For another, I feel weird acting like Purvis is my first houseguest like it dishonors the brief but powerful memories of the Peabodies: Primo and Dewey.
The question hangs. “Is this your first?”
I lean in closer. “Yes, well, we had some losses before but this is the first time we’ve made it this far.” Hmmm…that sounds suitably hopeful enough and not too convoluted, right?
The teacher doesn’t blink. “So there are some modifications…”
(G-d willing) this will become a more common occurrence as we start to spread the Purvis word far and wide. Maybe the dilemma will begin to fade. I will find ease in smiling and thanking people for their congratulations without the bummer-ness squeezing my insides. I am not alone in my dilemma. Ruby is right there with me. Another reminder that most joy does not come without complication.
Random
How many calories does giving birth burn? Now that I’m packing on some pounds and feeling chunky such questions plague my mind.
*No children were fed Scotch over the course of this family friendly weekend. I believe she hates Scotch on principle.
Friday, July 31, 2009
My Darling Nausea
7-24-09
I awake to my alarm. 4:54 again. I push myself out of bed and it slaps me in the face: I only peed twice in the middle of the night last night. Panic. Are my symptoms subsiding? I haven’t been feeling as nauseous as I was either. As soon as I get to work I look up my latest pregnancy newsletter. Yes, phew, it says that symptoms can start diminishing as early as the 11th week. I’m well into week 12 so I can relax, right? I get an email from Ruby. She had a similar experience. Are we the only two women in the world praying for constant, nagging nausea?
Weird how I cling to symptoms like they are the baby itself. When else do nausea, frequent urination, and fatigue indicate that things are going well? Aside from a few pee sticks, journal entries, and medical bills, my symptoms (and now their memory) are all I have left from my first two pregnancies. Nausea and running to the bathroom are pregnancy to me. Until I get the belly, something to see and hold on to, I have nausea, dear nausea.
People told: My interim boss for the month of August. She is excited, kind, and low-key about the whole thing. Perfetto.
New Favorite Euphemism for Baby/Fetus/Purvis: Houseguest (courtesy of Trista)
I awake to my alarm. 4:54 again. I push myself out of bed and it slaps me in the face: I only peed twice in the middle of the night last night. Panic. Are my symptoms subsiding? I haven’t been feeling as nauseous as I was either. As soon as I get to work I look up my latest pregnancy newsletter. Yes, phew, it says that symptoms can start diminishing as early as the 11th week. I’m well into week 12 so I can relax, right? I get an email from Ruby. She had a similar experience. Are we the only two women in the world praying for constant, nagging nausea?
Weird how I cling to symptoms like they are the baby itself. When else do nausea, frequent urination, and fatigue indicate that things are going well? Aside from a few pee sticks, journal entries, and medical bills, my symptoms (and now their memory) are all I have left from my first two pregnancies. Nausea and running to the bathroom are pregnancy to me. Until I get the belly, something to see and hold on to, I have nausea, dear nausea.
People told: My interim boss for the month of August. She is excited, kind, and low-key about the whole thing. Perfetto.
New Favorite Euphemism for Baby/Fetus/Purvis: Houseguest (courtesy of Trista)
Friday, July 24, 2009
Don't Ask, Don't Tell
7-24-09
As the time approaches when we can theoretically start telling friends, family, coworkers, pals, chums, and random people on the street that I am knocked up, I find myself growing more reluctant to share the news. After each ultrasound I have sworn, “Okay, now I’ll tell my student worker I’m pregnant” so he knows why I look like creamed ass at the end of a work day and why my laziness has grown to gargantuan proportions.
“You print these out?” He asks me yesterday.
“Oh yeah, like 3 days ago,” I say.
He is the most fabulous of fabulous student workers so he smiles and hands me my forgotten printouts instead of throwing me a side-eye. Tell him, tell him, I think to myself all afternoon.
The other preg lady in the department pops by my window. “The ultrasound went okay?” she whispers.
I nod. “Everything looks good.”
She gives a silent cheer. Now would be an excellent time to tell him. The man has ears. He likely knows what an ultrasound is or at least that it’s connected to pregnancy. But my lips remain zipped.
Last weekend Mr. Crud and I are taking an afternoon stroll to the yummy vegan milkshake/smoothie stand. Across the street we spy our old friend and Mr. Crud’s ex-band mate.
“Let’s go say ‘hi,’” I say.
“Can we tell him?” Mr. Crud asks.
“No, let’s wait,” I say.
After a preg-free conversation, we go on our merry way. Mr. Crud says, “So when can we start telling people?”
“You can tell whoever you want to,” I say. “Well, except Eli when I’m with you.”
“Okay.”
“After 2 Sundays from now. That’s when the miscarriage chance officially goes way down.” I say.
“Okay, two Sundays.”
But even that makes my guts roil. What if we find out there’s some genetic problem with Purvis and (g-d forbid) have to terminate the pregnancy? That strikes me as being a hell of a lot harder to explain than a miscarriage. Then again the what-if rabbit hole in pregnancy is endless. For the sake of any other preg ladies who may be reading this, I’ll spare you the list, but in my last year of Miscarriage World membership I’ve learned a ton more than I ever wanted to know about all the things that can go wrong. During my first pregnancy I could avert my eyes and reassure myself “no, that won’t happen to you.” But I know all too well that yes, that can happen to me. Twice in fact.
Today I hear my cell phone ring from my bag. Even though my boss is in the next room I dash to pick it up. (Not that she cares, but I have some silly professional rule about not answering my cell at work.) It’s the genetic counselor.
“Your results look good. Your chance for Down’s Syndrome had dropped considerably as has the chance for Trisomy 18.”
She gives me the nitty gritty numbers and I jot them down to share with Mr. Crud. Now can I relax? Yeah, for about a half hour or so at least.
I call Mr. Crud and give him the good news. “Wow. Yay.” He says.
And then it comes up. “Now can we start telling people?”
“Sure. Maybe. How about after next Sunday?”
I guess I’m waiting for it to be obvious. I feel awkward sharing the news with people who don’t know of our miscarriage struggles, like I need to fill in the bad news after giving the good. A sort of “but don’t get too excited because it’s gotten fucked up before” coda to the joy. And then there’s the whole identity thing. Will people see me differently now that I’m pregnant? Will I no longer be privy to dirty jokes? Will people be afraid of offending my delicate sensibilities? Actually I’ve found that I’m a lot less delicate than usual. (Delicate being a relative term.) I hunger for murder mysteries, thrillers, tales of darkness, vampire books. My usual literary fiction-humorous memoir reading list has taken a decidedly bloody turn. And why not? Pregnancy and birth aren’t for wimps. Partly I like reading about others in dire straits so I can breathe a shallow sigh of relief, “At least my entire family wasn’t murdered while I watched.” I am reminded of our trek home last Christmas during Portland’s latest Storm of the Century. As Mr. Crud and I jammed onto a bus destined for the Portland Airport that would get us there a good 2 hours after our departure time but we had to go anyway just in case, we looked at each other and shook our heads. “At least we aren’t being hunted by Cylons.”
I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. My belly definitely protrudes, but not in an obviously pregnant way, just in a bloated belly way. Soon, I tell myself, soon there (g-d willing) won’t be any question about what I’ve been up to.
RANDOM: I want to start a heavy metal pregnancy-themed band called Chloasma. I’m pretty sure we could put some of those spooky death metal bands to shame. Does gore spill from their wieners? No, sir.
As the time approaches when we can theoretically start telling friends, family, coworkers, pals, chums, and random people on the street that I am knocked up, I find myself growing more reluctant to share the news. After each ultrasound I have sworn, “Okay, now I’ll tell my student worker I’m pregnant” so he knows why I look like creamed ass at the end of a work day and why my laziness has grown to gargantuan proportions.
“You print these out?” He asks me yesterday.
“Oh yeah, like 3 days ago,” I say.
He is the most fabulous of fabulous student workers so he smiles and hands me my forgotten printouts instead of throwing me a side-eye. Tell him, tell him, I think to myself all afternoon.
The other preg lady in the department pops by my window. “The ultrasound went okay?” she whispers.
I nod. “Everything looks good.”
She gives a silent cheer. Now would be an excellent time to tell him. The man has ears. He likely knows what an ultrasound is or at least that it’s connected to pregnancy. But my lips remain zipped.
Last weekend Mr. Crud and I are taking an afternoon stroll to the yummy vegan milkshake/smoothie stand. Across the street we spy our old friend and Mr. Crud’s ex-band mate.
“Let’s go say ‘hi,’” I say.
“Can we tell him?” Mr. Crud asks.
“No, let’s wait,” I say.
After a preg-free conversation, we go on our merry way. Mr. Crud says, “So when can we start telling people?”
“You can tell whoever you want to,” I say. “Well, except Eli when I’m with you.”
“Okay.”
“After 2 Sundays from now. That’s when the miscarriage chance officially goes way down.” I say.
“Okay, two Sundays.”
But even that makes my guts roil. What if we find out there’s some genetic problem with Purvis and (g-d forbid) have to terminate the pregnancy? That strikes me as being a hell of a lot harder to explain than a miscarriage. Then again the what-if rabbit hole in pregnancy is endless. For the sake of any other preg ladies who may be reading this, I’ll spare you the list, but in my last year of Miscarriage World membership I’ve learned a ton more than I ever wanted to know about all the things that can go wrong. During my first pregnancy I could avert my eyes and reassure myself “no, that won’t happen to you.” But I know all too well that yes, that can happen to me. Twice in fact.
Today I hear my cell phone ring from my bag. Even though my boss is in the next room I dash to pick it up. (Not that she cares, but I have some silly professional rule about not answering my cell at work.) It’s the genetic counselor.
“Your results look good. Your chance for Down’s Syndrome had dropped considerably as has the chance for Trisomy 18.”
She gives me the nitty gritty numbers and I jot them down to share with Mr. Crud. Now can I relax? Yeah, for about a half hour or so at least.
I call Mr. Crud and give him the good news. “Wow. Yay.” He says.
And then it comes up. “Now can we start telling people?”
“Sure. Maybe. How about after next Sunday?”
I guess I’m waiting for it to be obvious. I feel awkward sharing the news with people who don’t know of our miscarriage struggles, like I need to fill in the bad news after giving the good. A sort of “but don’t get too excited because it’s gotten fucked up before” coda to the joy. And then there’s the whole identity thing. Will people see me differently now that I’m pregnant? Will I no longer be privy to dirty jokes? Will people be afraid of offending my delicate sensibilities? Actually I’ve found that I’m a lot less delicate than usual. (Delicate being a relative term.) I hunger for murder mysteries, thrillers, tales of darkness, vampire books. My usual literary fiction-humorous memoir reading list has taken a decidedly bloody turn. And why not? Pregnancy and birth aren’t for wimps. Partly I like reading about others in dire straits so I can breathe a shallow sigh of relief, “At least my entire family wasn’t murdered while I watched.” I am reminded of our trek home last Christmas during Portland’s latest Storm of the Century. As Mr. Crud and I jammed onto a bus destined for the Portland Airport that would get us there a good 2 hours after our departure time but we had to go anyway just in case, we looked at each other and shook our heads. “At least we aren’t being hunted by Cylons.”
I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror. My belly definitely protrudes, but not in an obviously pregnant way, just in a bloated belly way. Soon, I tell myself, soon there (g-d willing) won’t be any question about what I’ve been up to.
RANDOM: I want to start a heavy metal pregnancy-themed band called Chloasma. I’m pretty sure we could put some of those spooky death metal bands to shame. Does gore spill from their wieners? No, sir.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
C-R-A-N-K-Y, I Ain't Got No Alibi
7-13-09
Cranky, ornery, stink-eye tossin’ motherflipper = me. Maybe it’s the cumulative effects of my body’s delicate ecosystem being thrown into turmoil the past 11 (well 7, let’s get real, the first 4 weeks don’t really count) weeks, but my usual (mostly) even keel has gotten decidedly rocky. I mutter under my breath. (Actually my mutters are turning to loud utters. Yesterday I yelled “Fuck you” and flashed a middle finger to a driver who didn’t yield the right of way to my pedestrian ass. Usually I just think those things. This is certainly behavior unbecoming to the pregnant. Sorry, ladies.) I roll my eyes. I curse out loud at emails from coworkers (“I don’t give a rat’s ass if there isn’t AC! You aren’t on contract thus are not my problem, lady!!”), and the thoughts that I think are decidedly un-yogic. And since you didn’t ask…the top 10 things that are pissing off this pregnant lady (today):
1. Cigarette smoke. Since the indoor smoking ban passed in Portland, the sidewalks have become everyone’s smoking lounge. My lunch hour walk is spent dodging and weaving the nasty habit of the workers of downtown Portland. Yes, I am practically jogging to get ahead of you because I don’t want to stroll in the wake of your stinky cigarette. Baby on board, motherfucker! The increased sensitivity to smell does not help one bit. I hold my breath when encountering the smokers of the world and try not to throw them too obvious a stink-eye because, as you may know, I counted myself among their ranks a mere 11 weeks ago. (Although I limited my smoking to my front porch and back yard for the most part.) On the up side, it looks like my attempt at quitting smoking will stick around this time. Also, pick up your butts, people. I don’t give a shit if “they’re biodegradable.” Ahh, the perfect union of self-righteousness: ex-smoker meets pregnant lady.
2. Anyone who has the gall to arrive at the coffee shop before me, thus being in line ahead of me. The nerve!
3. I see my friend as I swoop in for my morning coffee at the local chain. “You’re not drinking coffee, are you?” She asks, horrified. “Oh yes, I am.” I know that she is only thinking of Purvis, but my ire is raised. I stutter out some explanation of how a little caffeine is not thought to be harmful (below 200 ml, FYI) and that I don’t even get close to that limit with my morning latte. As is the case with many preg-related tidbits, people who aren’t pregnant don’t read the fine print, they only hear the grand strokes. When people question my behavior be it coffee consumption or yoga, I automatically go to a dark place: they obviously think that I DID cause my last 2 miscarriages. It was my fault. I try to keep perspective. They didn’t say that or mean any harm.
4. Overuse of debit cards. See? There’s this amazing thing called cash, which works oh so well for purchasing the smaller things in life. Like coffee. (Notice a theme here? Don’t mess with me pre-latte.) I waited behind a long succession of 20-somethings and teens who paid for their $3 Caramel Whipped Nonfat Kremekulattes with a swipe of the debit card. Wastes paper and takes longer. Well-done, youth of today.
5. The freaking Greenpeace/Save the Children/Cause of the Day people who haunt the corners of downtown Portland. No, I will never ever in a million years have a minute for the environment. I am a selfish asshat. Now stop extending your hand to me. I do not feel guilty breezing by you, not turning off my iPod and saying the most insincere “Have a nice day” ever uttered in the history of speech. I know you have a shitty job, a job where idealism goes to die, and I try to have compassion…but I fail. Regularly.
6. My clothes are getting tight and I have convinced myself that it has nothing to do with pregnancy. I am merely getting fat from my relaxed eating standards. See, Mr. Crud? That one scoop of Willie Nelson’s Peach Cobbler has turned me into Hambone!
7. The Gauntlet of Stink. Every morning I must traverse a smelly minefield en route from coffee shop to office on an empty stomach. First I pass by the pizza shop, then the pizza shop’s dumpster where I, more often than not, fail to keep my gag reflex in check. I have a moment to catch my breath at the crosswalk then head down by the Catholic church, which serves food to the homeless (which is awesome.) Not so awesome is that many of these folks smoke so again I must stifle gags before rushing across the street to the safety and relative pleasant smell of my humble cubicle. I am so ready to relinquish my powers of super smell.
8. Against my better judgment I subscribed to several pregnancy tracker email updates. The the just-us-girlfriends feel and infantilizing tone grates. But I can’t unsubscribe, for how will I pass all the annoying time at work if not reading about the (hopeful) progression of my pregnancy?
9. The extensive list of foods I can’t eat is all that I want to eat. Prosciutto, smoked salmon, sushi (oh Gonzo Roll, how you taunt me), dirty martinis, blue cheese call to me with their siren song. Sometimes I almost give in then I imagine my sleepless night wondering if I blew it over a bit of (delicious, smoky) sliced ham.
10. My social life is reading books and watching TV. At first I surrendered and enjoyed my quiet time, but after 7 weeks, it’s getting old. We plowed through Season 3 of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and I’m keeping up on my “My Life on the D-List” with scary regularity when I’d much rather be seeing friends, basking in the glory of the long Portland summer nights, and taking long walks in the afternoon sun. Mr. Crud tries to put some pep in my step. “Wanna go couch shopping? Up for a trip to Target?” But no, it all sounds like running a marathon to me. So I curl up with my book and throw a frown. “Sorry, hon. Too pooped.” I’m the energetic one in this relationship, g-ddamnit! At least I used to be.
Still reading or do you find me an unthankful shrew yet? After my scary week of lessened pregnancy symptoms, I am grateful that they are still here, reminding me that things are (hopefully) a-brewing in my lady parts. We have our first genetic counseling appointment on Thursday, which has been the appointment of doom for the last 2 pregnancies. The closer we get to the big day, the more I flashback to both times in the darkened ultrasound room. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’ve had what’s called a missed abortion,” said Dr. #1. “I’m sorry. Things are not going well,” said Dr. #2. I fortify myself with Dr. Awesome’s words of a week and a half ago “This is very good. Your chances of having a miscarriage are very small.” I look at our grainy photos of the tiny tadpole and say a hopeful hello to whoever is in there every morning after I’m done meditating. And I try to remember compassion for me and everyone else who is currently annoying me.
Dreaming is free:
I had my first dream where I was pregnant. When I felt my round belly it felt exactly like the times in my youth when I shoved a basketball up my shirt and hollered to my friends, “Look y’all, I’m knocked up.” Hardy har har. I’m thinking that an actual pregnant belly doesn’t feel quite as light nor echoes when you tap it.
Wacky Preg-incidences:
Blogger and miscarriage world compadre, Ruby*, emails me to tell me she too is knocked up again. Celebrate good times! Then we compare due dates: hers is one day after mine. Trippy. Keep your fingers crossed for the both of us.
*Names changed to protect the pregnant.
Cranky, ornery, stink-eye tossin’ motherflipper = me. Maybe it’s the cumulative effects of my body’s delicate ecosystem being thrown into turmoil the past 11 (well 7, let’s get real, the first 4 weeks don’t really count) weeks, but my usual (mostly) even keel has gotten decidedly rocky. I mutter under my breath. (Actually my mutters are turning to loud utters. Yesterday I yelled “Fuck you” and flashed a middle finger to a driver who didn’t yield the right of way to my pedestrian ass. Usually I just think those things. This is certainly behavior unbecoming to the pregnant. Sorry, ladies.) I roll my eyes. I curse out loud at emails from coworkers (“I don’t give a rat’s ass if there isn’t AC! You aren’t on contract thus are not my problem, lady!!”), and the thoughts that I think are decidedly un-yogic. And since you didn’t ask…the top 10 things that are pissing off this pregnant lady (today):
1. Cigarette smoke. Since the indoor smoking ban passed in Portland, the sidewalks have become everyone’s smoking lounge. My lunch hour walk is spent dodging and weaving the nasty habit of the workers of downtown Portland. Yes, I am practically jogging to get ahead of you because I don’t want to stroll in the wake of your stinky cigarette. Baby on board, motherfucker! The increased sensitivity to smell does not help one bit. I hold my breath when encountering the smokers of the world and try not to throw them too obvious a stink-eye because, as you may know, I counted myself among their ranks a mere 11 weeks ago. (Although I limited my smoking to my front porch and back yard for the most part.) On the up side, it looks like my attempt at quitting smoking will stick around this time. Also, pick up your butts, people. I don’t give a shit if “they’re biodegradable.” Ahh, the perfect union of self-righteousness: ex-smoker meets pregnant lady.
2. Anyone who has the gall to arrive at the coffee shop before me, thus being in line ahead of me. The nerve!
3. I see my friend as I swoop in for my morning coffee at the local chain. “You’re not drinking coffee, are you?” She asks, horrified. “Oh yes, I am.” I know that she is only thinking of Purvis, but my ire is raised. I stutter out some explanation of how a little caffeine is not thought to be harmful (below 200 ml, FYI) and that I don’t even get close to that limit with my morning latte. As is the case with many preg-related tidbits, people who aren’t pregnant don’t read the fine print, they only hear the grand strokes. When people question my behavior be it coffee consumption or yoga, I automatically go to a dark place: they obviously think that I DID cause my last 2 miscarriages. It was my fault. I try to keep perspective. They didn’t say that or mean any harm.
4. Overuse of debit cards. See? There’s this amazing thing called cash, which works oh so well for purchasing the smaller things in life. Like coffee. (Notice a theme here? Don’t mess with me pre-latte.) I waited behind a long succession of 20-somethings and teens who paid for their $3 Caramel Whipped Nonfat Kremekulattes with a swipe of the debit card. Wastes paper and takes longer. Well-done, youth of today.
5. The freaking Greenpeace/Save the Children/Cause of the Day people who haunt the corners of downtown Portland. No, I will never ever in a million years have a minute for the environment. I am a selfish asshat. Now stop extending your hand to me. I do not feel guilty breezing by you, not turning off my iPod and saying the most insincere “Have a nice day” ever uttered in the history of speech. I know you have a shitty job, a job where idealism goes to die, and I try to have compassion…but I fail. Regularly.
6. My clothes are getting tight and I have convinced myself that it has nothing to do with pregnancy. I am merely getting fat from my relaxed eating standards. See, Mr. Crud? That one scoop of Willie Nelson’s Peach Cobbler has turned me into Hambone!
7. The Gauntlet of Stink. Every morning I must traverse a smelly minefield en route from coffee shop to office on an empty stomach. First I pass by the pizza shop, then the pizza shop’s dumpster where I, more often than not, fail to keep my gag reflex in check. I have a moment to catch my breath at the crosswalk then head down by the Catholic church, which serves food to the homeless (which is awesome.) Not so awesome is that many of these folks smoke so again I must stifle gags before rushing across the street to the safety and relative pleasant smell of my humble cubicle. I am so ready to relinquish my powers of super smell.
8. Against my better judgment I subscribed to several pregnancy tracker email updates. The the just-us-girlfriends feel and infantilizing tone grates. But I can’t unsubscribe, for how will I pass all the annoying time at work if not reading about the (hopeful) progression of my pregnancy?
9. The extensive list of foods I can’t eat is all that I want to eat. Prosciutto, smoked salmon, sushi (oh Gonzo Roll, how you taunt me), dirty martinis, blue cheese call to me with their siren song. Sometimes I almost give in then I imagine my sleepless night wondering if I blew it over a bit of (delicious, smoky) sliced ham.
10. My social life is reading books and watching TV. At first I surrendered and enjoyed my quiet time, but after 7 weeks, it’s getting old. We plowed through Season 3 of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” and I’m keeping up on my “My Life on the D-List” with scary regularity when I’d much rather be seeing friends, basking in the glory of the long Portland summer nights, and taking long walks in the afternoon sun. Mr. Crud tries to put some pep in my step. “Wanna go couch shopping? Up for a trip to Target?” But no, it all sounds like running a marathon to me. So I curl up with my book and throw a frown. “Sorry, hon. Too pooped.” I’m the energetic one in this relationship, g-ddamnit! At least I used to be.
Still reading or do you find me an unthankful shrew yet? After my scary week of lessened pregnancy symptoms, I am grateful that they are still here, reminding me that things are (hopefully) a-brewing in my lady parts. We have our first genetic counseling appointment on Thursday, which has been the appointment of doom for the last 2 pregnancies. The closer we get to the big day, the more I flashback to both times in the darkened ultrasound room. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’ve had what’s called a missed abortion,” said Dr. #1. “I’m sorry. Things are not going well,” said Dr. #2. I fortify myself with Dr. Awesome’s words of a week and a half ago “This is very good. Your chances of having a miscarriage are very small.” I look at our grainy photos of the tiny tadpole and say a hopeful hello to whoever is in there every morning after I’m done meditating. And I try to remember compassion for me and everyone else who is currently annoying me.
Dreaming is free:
I had my first dream where I was pregnant. When I felt my round belly it felt exactly like the times in my youth when I shoved a basketball up my shirt and hollered to my friends, “Look y’all, I’m knocked up.” Hardy har har. I’m thinking that an actual pregnant belly doesn’t feel quite as light nor echoes when you tap it.
Wacky Preg-incidences:
Blogger and miscarriage world compadre, Ruby*, emails me to tell me she too is knocked up again. Celebrate good times! Then we compare due dates: hers is one day after mine. Trippy. Keep your fingers crossed for the both of us.
*Names changed to protect the pregnant.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Fool Me Once
6-12-09
"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
--Former (Thank f-ing G-d) President George W. Bush
When I think back on my first pregnancy, I tend to shudder at my optimism, my total trust in my body and the universe to do its thing and give me a healthy baby. I was such a fool. I can’t even read the first 70 or so pages of the Peabody Project Chronicles, a.k.a. the happy pre-miscarriage times, lest I start feeling a deep sadness at my blissful ignorance.
“G-d, I was so stupid,” I said at the time.
I felt so duped by my own belief that everything would turn out just fine for us, that my biggest worry was whether Peabody and I would share a birthday and if I would be in any shape to have some delicious cocktails by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. Who exactly was I?
This morning while in savasana I have the slightest inkling that every little thing is going to be alright. I even dare mentally talk to my embryo. “Hey in there. How’s it going? Are you making yourself comfortable?” I feel myself drifting off into doubt? Should I be doing this? Will talking to this embryo--who I’ve taken to calling Purvis for reasons I don’t fully understand—-make losing it all the more painful should such a thing come to pass? I remember an Ana Forrest answer in one of the Yoga Journal newsletters that fill my inbox to a query about teaching pregnant women. She urged teachers to encourage their pregnant students to relax and connect with the life growing inside of them. After MC #1, I thought of her answer and scoffed: What a load of naive bullshit.
Now I question why being cautious, bordering on worst-case scenario is somehow the wiser of the choices. If Purvis does grow into the adorable tow-headed lass or lad that appears in the hopeful visions in my head, I will have wasted so much time worrying about his or her possible demise. Not that I won’t allow myself the space to be afraid, to have those scary thoughts of the ultrasound room of doom because I know full well that denying them will only cause them to redouble their efforts. But can’t I just operate on the statistically supported assumption that all is well down below?
In savasana I take a deep breath and sigh to get out all the accumulated questions. (Yes, know, savasana is not supposed to be a time to work out all of life’s problems, but rather to just lie there and be. Totally working on it.) “Hey there Purvis. It’s me, the mom. Just wanted you to know that we’re pulling for you. Keep dividing those cells right, okay?”
In a way it’s like a parenting lesson that I’ll have to learn again when my theoretical child reaches teenage-hood and rolls eyes at the sight of me. I have no control—aside from not smoking, drinking, or eating delicious sushi—now as I will have very little then. I’m also reminded of something that my brother said after his daughter, Lyla, was born. “Getting them born safely is just the beginning.”
So it is. And so I go. Optimistic and wise, at least for today.
Symptoms: Oh dear lord, my boobs hurt. I must shield them in the shower lest the droplets of water send me into spasms of pain.
Nausea, oh nausea, rock on.
Aversions-r-us. Pizza and strawberries are the only foods that work for me. Not even sushi. Or French fries. Mr. Crud says, “Who are you?”
People told: My sweet pal, Nao.
Old high school acquaintance turning friend whose had her own tangles with child-bearing demons.
"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
--Former (Thank f-ing G-d) President George W. Bush
When I think back on my first pregnancy, I tend to shudder at my optimism, my total trust in my body and the universe to do its thing and give me a healthy baby. I was such a fool. I can’t even read the first 70 or so pages of the Peabody Project Chronicles, a.k.a. the happy pre-miscarriage times, lest I start feeling a deep sadness at my blissful ignorance.
“G-d, I was so stupid,” I said at the time.
I felt so duped by my own belief that everything would turn out just fine for us, that my biggest worry was whether Peabody and I would share a birthday and if I would be in any shape to have some delicious cocktails by the time Thanksgiving rolled around. Who exactly was I?
This morning while in savasana I have the slightest inkling that every little thing is going to be alright. I even dare mentally talk to my embryo. “Hey in there. How’s it going? Are you making yourself comfortable?” I feel myself drifting off into doubt? Should I be doing this? Will talking to this embryo--who I’ve taken to calling Purvis for reasons I don’t fully understand—-make losing it all the more painful should such a thing come to pass? I remember an Ana Forrest answer in one of the Yoga Journal newsletters that fill my inbox to a query about teaching pregnant women. She urged teachers to encourage their pregnant students to relax and connect with the life growing inside of them. After MC #1, I thought of her answer and scoffed: What a load of naive bullshit.
Now I question why being cautious, bordering on worst-case scenario is somehow the wiser of the choices. If Purvis does grow into the adorable tow-headed lass or lad that appears in the hopeful visions in my head, I will have wasted so much time worrying about his or her possible demise. Not that I won’t allow myself the space to be afraid, to have those scary thoughts of the ultrasound room of doom because I know full well that denying them will only cause them to redouble their efforts. But can’t I just operate on the statistically supported assumption that all is well down below?
In savasana I take a deep breath and sigh to get out all the accumulated questions. (Yes, know, savasana is not supposed to be a time to work out all of life’s problems, but rather to just lie there and be. Totally working on it.) “Hey there Purvis. It’s me, the mom. Just wanted you to know that we’re pulling for you. Keep dividing those cells right, okay?”
In a way it’s like a parenting lesson that I’ll have to learn again when my theoretical child reaches teenage-hood and rolls eyes at the sight of me. I have no control—aside from not smoking, drinking, or eating delicious sushi—now as I will have very little then. I’m also reminded of something that my brother said after his daughter, Lyla, was born. “Getting them born safely is just the beginning.”
So it is. And so I go. Optimistic and wise, at least for today.
Symptoms: Oh dear lord, my boobs hurt. I must shield them in the shower lest the droplets of water send me into spasms of pain.
Nausea, oh nausea, rock on.
Aversions-r-us. Pizza and strawberries are the only foods that work for me. Not even sushi. Or French fries. Mr. Crud says, “Who are you?”
People told: My sweet pal, Nao.
Old high school acquaintance turning friend whose had her own tangles with child-bearing demons.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Reality TV
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?
(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?
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.
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.
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.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Due
The due date for Primo was October 19, 2008. I remember finding it out via the Fertility Friend.com due date calculator. My first thought: that baby better not be born on my birthday! Then, oh sweet, our kiddo will be an October baby. One of a fine breed if you ask me. I wrote “Due Date!!!!” on my desk calendar and etched the number in my mind. October 19. Of course, after the first ultrasound of doom, the date took on a confused character. I scribbled out my exclamation points in my desk calendar, but wiping it from the brain proves more difficult. I had plans to do something special in honor of Primo on the 19th.
“Like go out for dinner?” Mr. Crud said, knowing that I am wont to mark any special date, positive or negative, with a dirty martini (so convenient how you can use drinking for celebrations or as an emotional crutch) and a plate of fried calamari and Piri Piri sauce at Lauro.
“Maybe. Or light a candle or something.” I said.
Mr. Crud and I intend to mark the loss of both our babies-to-be-that-never-were in some way, but haven’t stumbled on something that feels organic, that feels like us. Mr. Crud’s cousin remembered her first pregnancy loss by saying a prayer then releasing an apple into the river, waving good-bye as it floated away. I loved that image. We considered making a paper boat, the S.S. Primo, and sending it off into the Columbia during a visit to Astoria a month after MC #1, but it was too soon and we wanted a weekend away from thinking about the miscarriage after being immersed in it for so long.
On lazy Saturday mornings, the issue of how to remember Primo, and now Dewey, floats to the surface during our drowsy chats. We remain unable to commit. Probably on some level, reluctant to say good-bye, to invite that overwhelming sadness back in even as it runs strong through our veins.
Friday night I met up with my yoga buddy, Mirjana, to celebrate her upcoming trip to India to study yoga with the grandson of the guru of our style of yoga. Over glasses of rose, I lost track of Primo’s upcoming due date. My tongue loosened after a half of a bottle, I attempted to explain the difficulty of Miscarriage World, how—as an awesome reader and friend of crud pointed out—language is inadequate to talk about miscarriage. Is there a word for the shitty swamp that envelopes me whenever I read a Facebook status update about a friend’s excitement over her pregnancy? I love my friends. I am glad to the depths of my heart and soul that most have not been privy to the sadness of infertility or pregnancy loss. Still, I feel left out, wistful. When I found out about my second pregnancy I was so excited to be able to share my symptoms, joy, fear with my pregnant friends. Now I feel torn. Ripped, in fact, between wanting to be there with them and share in their experiences and wanting to pretend it isn’t happening, that I am not THAT friend, the unlucky one with the clingy uterus and failed eggs.
Of course I am far from alone. I list the names of the other women who have been through this, who are going through this in their own Miscarriage World sublets. I whisper their names when I see that another old friend is pregnant. A new form of affirmation to replace the twice failed “My baby is healthy and safe” that I once repeated daily after my yoga practice.
As we stumbled into the cool fall night, Mirjana told me that she was here for me, that she didn’t know what to say, but that she was here to listen and witness.
“That is totally enough,” I said.
On the up side, nobody has told me that this loss was “meant to be.” In part this is due to the fact that I haven’t shared the news with any of the past meant-to-be-ers. Meant-to-be speak is now an automatic disqualification. “It was G-d’s way” will also get you thrown out of the exclusive club of Crud pregnancy updates. Poor you.
All weekend I felt the loss bubbling beneath the surface. During my massage, tears sprung to my eyes. And then the dam broke.
Saturday night Mr. Crud and I went to a play courtesy of a coolio actor coworker who just happens to be part of the hot theatre company in town. Through a perfect storm of bad timing moments, I ended up in the bathroom when the doors closed and the performance began. Oblivious to this fact, I walked back to the door where I had entered the theatre, which also happened to be the door close to the stage. I pulled on the handle. A blonde woman flew from behind the folding table that served as the box office. She pushed the door shut, hissing, “What are you doing?”
I felt like I had been punched. “I thought the play started at 8:00,” I said.
“No! 7:30.”
“Oh my G-d, I’m so sorry,” I said and skulked away, tears of shame burning my eyeballs. Guess I’ll be spending my night sobbing in the bathroom, I thought. At least until intermission.
The coolio actor coworker came up behind you. “It’s okay. She thought you were sneaking in. It’s fine. I’ll just let you in here.” He marched me up to the back entrance, opened the door, and I slipped down the aisle, taking my seat a minute into the play (or so I was assured by Mr. Crud, “You didn’t miss anything.”).
Around me people laughed at the brilliant dark comedy happening two rows in front of my hunched form. Try as I might to dam the tide, the tears flowed freely. I did my best to keep my gusher to myself. I waited for the big laughs to sniffle. I licked the snot that got away off the top of my lip. I dabbed my tears with my shawl. All in all, Mr. Crud rated my performance at pretending not to be totally weeping during a play to be top shelf. “I barely noticed,” he said.
The more I thought about the fact that I was crying my eyes out during a comedy, that the actors on stage might be able to see my tear-stained face, or catch a snippet of my sniffles made the tears fall even harder. I am an inappropriate weeper. It’s a blessing and a curse depending on the moment. A blessing because in theory I am letting the emotional rivers flow, letting go in a physical way. After a jag, I feel tired but clean. A curse because it can be damn embarrassing. Crying in front of a class full of people has happened at pretty much every age in my educational career. Not to mention the inevitable moment when I get all bubbly-eyed in front of my boss, which has happened with every boss I’ve ever had. Some roll with it better than others. Most are willing to trade my competence for a few uncomfortable moments. It doesn’t happen every time something doesn’t go my way but when I’m experiencing undercurrents of emotional craziness the tears are close to the surface. Pinch me and I bleed.
After intermission I stemmed the teary tide. Then came the late thirties female lead yelled, “I want a baby!” and a few more dribbled out.
Mr. Crud and I blasted out of the theater as soon as the play ended. Had I seen the hisser or my coolio coworker, I would have burst into tears afresh. We escaped without any further damage to my makeup job.
“The way I see it, you weren’t going to get out of there without crying,” Mr. Crud said.
“Good point.”
“I don’t think you were crying because that lady yelled at you,” he said.
We shared a laugh over the play, which though advertised as a comedy was most definitely not a comedy. More accurately it was a relationship drama about people who used comedy to keep from being sucked under by the tragedy.
“I felt very meta. I tried laughing to cover my crying while the characters were masking their own misery by laughing but then everyone ended up miserable.”
Sunday brought more reasons to be sad. A couple of weeks ago one of Mr. Crud’s colleagues committed suicide. She was a beautiful, smart, neato woman of our age. A wife, a mother to a five-year-old and someone I’d casually met at his office functions and the grocery store where we shared a laugh about how she, a feminist academic, was buying her daughter doll toys. Mr. Crud had interviewed her and her husband as part of his thesis research. It seemed totally inconceivable that she was dead and that she had made the decision to die.
Mr. Crud and I attended the memorial service at a retreat center in the Gorge. I was sniffing back tears as soon as I took a seat. Who am I crying for, I wondered. Is this for the tragedy that I saw in all the faces around me or for my own sadness? For Primo who was supposed to be born today? Am I piggybacking on someone else’s funeral? Several times during the shared remembrances, the reading of poems and music I had to restrain myself from breaking into hysterical sobs. Too much, too much, I kept thinking.
After the remembrances we moved outside. The air had turned chilly with a layer of fog resting on the evergreens across the gorge. The husband read a poem and then took a photo of Mr. Crud’s colleague and burned it over a bowl. He looked into her paper eyes and wept. I could only watch him for a second before turning away. Too much, too much. Was the burning cathartic? I had already thrown away the pee stick from Primo but still had an ultrasound photo and pee stick leftover from Dewey. Maybe burning is the way to go. A release.
I can imagine myself years from now pulling open a box filled with the paperwork from my D and C, the ultrasound photo, and other random effluvia of these two doomed pregnancies and crying more tears for my babies-to-be-that-never-were. My ghost children. Every morning I say a prayer for them, I wish them peace and imagine that my father and grandmother are watching over them. I think of the pregnancy loss counselor’s image of the babies-to-be-that-never-were being absorbed into the ocean of the universal consciousness. Maybe it is better to burn and let go than to keep objects to fondle in moments of future sadness.
I’m still figuring it out. And glad that due date #1 has come and gone. I have until April 17 to come up with my miscarried baby mourning system.
“Like go out for dinner?” Mr. Crud said, knowing that I am wont to mark any special date, positive or negative, with a dirty martini (so convenient how you can use drinking for celebrations or as an emotional crutch) and a plate of fried calamari and Piri Piri sauce at Lauro.
“Maybe. Or light a candle or something.” I said.
Mr. Crud and I intend to mark the loss of both our babies-to-be-that-never-were in some way, but haven’t stumbled on something that feels organic, that feels like us. Mr. Crud’s cousin remembered her first pregnancy loss by saying a prayer then releasing an apple into the river, waving good-bye as it floated away. I loved that image. We considered making a paper boat, the S.S. Primo, and sending it off into the Columbia during a visit to Astoria a month after MC #1, but it was too soon and we wanted a weekend away from thinking about the miscarriage after being immersed in it for so long.
On lazy Saturday mornings, the issue of how to remember Primo, and now Dewey, floats to the surface during our drowsy chats. We remain unable to commit. Probably on some level, reluctant to say good-bye, to invite that overwhelming sadness back in even as it runs strong through our veins.
Friday night I met up with my yoga buddy, Mirjana, to celebrate her upcoming trip to India to study yoga with the grandson of the guru of our style of yoga. Over glasses of rose, I lost track of Primo’s upcoming due date. My tongue loosened after a half of a bottle, I attempted to explain the difficulty of Miscarriage World, how—as an awesome reader and friend of crud pointed out—language is inadequate to talk about miscarriage. Is there a word for the shitty swamp that envelopes me whenever I read a Facebook status update about a friend’s excitement over her pregnancy? I love my friends. I am glad to the depths of my heart and soul that most have not been privy to the sadness of infertility or pregnancy loss. Still, I feel left out, wistful. When I found out about my second pregnancy I was so excited to be able to share my symptoms, joy, fear with my pregnant friends. Now I feel torn. Ripped, in fact, between wanting to be there with them and share in their experiences and wanting to pretend it isn’t happening, that I am not THAT friend, the unlucky one with the clingy uterus and failed eggs.
Of course I am far from alone. I list the names of the other women who have been through this, who are going through this in their own Miscarriage World sublets. I whisper their names when I see that another old friend is pregnant. A new form of affirmation to replace the twice failed “My baby is healthy and safe” that I once repeated daily after my yoga practice.
As we stumbled into the cool fall night, Mirjana told me that she was here for me, that she didn’t know what to say, but that she was here to listen and witness.
“That is totally enough,” I said.
On the up side, nobody has told me that this loss was “meant to be.” In part this is due to the fact that I haven’t shared the news with any of the past meant-to-be-ers. Meant-to-be speak is now an automatic disqualification. “It was G-d’s way” will also get you thrown out of the exclusive club of Crud pregnancy updates. Poor you.
All weekend I felt the loss bubbling beneath the surface. During my massage, tears sprung to my eyes. And then the dam broke.
Saturday night Mr. Crud and I went to a play courtesy of a coolio actor coworker who just happens to be part of the hot theatre company in town. Through a perfect storm of bad timing moments, I ended up in the bathroom when the doors closed and the performance began. Oblivious to this fact, I walked back to the door where I had entered the theatre, which also happened to be the door close to the stage. I pulled on the handle. A blonde woman flew from behind the folding table that served as the box office. She pushed the door shut, hissing, “What are you doing?”
I felt like I had been punched. “I thought the play started at 8:00,” I said.
“No! 7:30.”
“Oh my G-d, I’m so sorry,” I said and skulked away, tears of shame burning my eyeballs. Guess I’ll be spending my night sobbing in the bathroom, I thought. At least until intermission.
The coolio actor coworker came up behind you. “It’s okay. She thought you were sneaking in. It’s fine. I’ll just let you in here.” He marched me up to the back entrance, opened the door, and I slipped down the aisle, taking my seat a minute into the play (or so I was assured by Mr. Crud, “You didn’t miss anything.”).
Around me people laughed at the brilliant dark comedy happening two rows in front of my hunched form. Try as I might to dam the tide, the tears flowed freely. I did my best to keep my gusher to myself. I waited for the big laughs to sniffle. I licked the snot that got away off the top of my lip. I dabbed my tears with my shawl. All in all, Mr. Crud rated my performance at pretending not to be totally weeping during a play to be top shelf. “I barely noticed,” he said.
The more I thought about the fact that I was crying my eyes out during a comedy, that the actors on stage might be able to see my tear-stained face, or catch a snippet of my sniffles made the tears fall even harder. I am an inappropriate weeper. It’s a blessing and a curse depending on the moment. A blessing because in theory I am letting the emotional rivers flow, letting go in a physical way. After a jag, I feel tired but clean. A curse because it can be damn embarrassing. Crying in front of a class full of people has happened at pretty much every age in my educational career. Not to mention the inevitable moment when I get all bubbly-eyed in front of my boss, which has happened with every boss I’ve ever had. Some roll with it better than others. Most are willing to trade my competence for a few uncomfortable moments. It doesn’t happen every time something doesn’t go my way but when I’m experiencing undercurrents of emotional craziness the tears are close to the surface. Pinch me and I bleed.
After intermission I stemmed the teary tide. Then came the late thirties female lead yelled, “I want a baby!” and a few more dribbled out.
Mr. Crud and I blasted out of the theater as soon as the play ended. Had I seen the hisser or my coolio coworker, I would have burst into tears afresh. We escaped without any further damage to my makeup job.
“The way I see it, you weren’t going to get out of there without crying,” Mr. Crud said.
“Good point.”
“I don’t think you were crying because that lady yelled at you,” he said.
We shared a laugh over the play, which though advertised as a comedy was most definitely not a comedy. More accurately it was a relationship drama about people who used comedy to keep from being sucked under by the tragedy.
“I felt very meta. I tried laughing to cover my crying while the characters were masking their own misery by laughing but then everyone ended up miserable.”
Sunday brought more reasons to be sad. A couple of weeks ago one of Mr. Crud’s colleagues committed suicide. She was a beautiful, smart, neato woman of our age. A wife, a mother to a five-year-old and someone I’d casually met at his office functions and the grocery store where we shared a laugh about how she, a feminist academic, was buying her daughter doll toys. Mr. Crud had interviewed her and her husband as part of his thesis research. It seemed totally inconceivable that she was dead and that she had made the decision to die.
Mr. Crud and I attended the memorial service at a retreat center in the Gorge. I was sniffing back tears as soon as I took a seat. Who am I crying for, I wondered. Is this for the tragedy that I saw in all the faces around me or for my own sadness? For Primo who was supposed to be born today? Am I piggybacking on someone else’s funeral? Several times during the shared remembrances, the reading of poems and music I had to restrain myself from breaking into hysterical sobs. Too much, too much, I kept thinking.
After the remembrances we moved outside. The air had turned chilly with a layer of fog resting on the evergreens across the gorge. The husband read a poem and then took a photo of Mr. Crud’s colleague and burned it over a bowl. He looked into her paper eyes and wept. I could only watch him for a second before turning away. Too much, too much. Was the burning cathartic? I had already thrown away the pee stick from Primo but still had an ultrasound photo and pee stick leftover from Dewey. Maybe burning is the way to go. A release.
I can imagine myself years from now pulling open a box filled with the paperwork from my D and C, the ultrasound photo, and other random effluvia of these two doomed pregnancies and crying more tears for my babies-to-be-that-never-were. My ghost children. Every morning I say a prayer for them, I wish them peace and imagine that my father and grandmother are watching over them. I think of the pregnancy loss counselor’s image of the babies-to-be-that-never-were being absorbed into the ocean of the universal consciousness. Maybe it is better to burn and let go than to keep objects to fondle in moments of future sadness.
I’m still figuring it out. And glad that due date #1 has come and gone. I have until April 17 to come up with my miscarried baby mourning system.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Mystery Solved
I pick up the messages on my work voicemail. Message #1 is from Sara, genetic counselor. We have been playing phone tag despite my initial plan to not call her back right away.
“What? What does ‘you’ll call her back next week’ mean?” Mr. Crud asked me as we lay in bed last night.
“Next week is what it means.” I pulled the covers tighter around my chin.
“Not Monday?”
“I don’t want to talk about this right before bed,” I said.
The truth was that I had grown comfortable in the post-D and C world of not knowing. What if there was an answer? What if was my fault?
I called her back. She called me back on two different lines. Then she called Mr. Crud at home. The second voicemail message was from him.
“Good news, uh, sorta. The tests found a chromosomal abnormality so this miscarriage is unrelated to the first one.”
Yay? Chromosome 23 is the culprit. The miscarriage was destined to happen from the moment of conception. Embryos with this abnormality don’t make it past 11 weeks so there wasn’t any risk of Down’s Syndrome or the other feared conditions listed in Sara’s notebook. The chance of this happening was 1 in 149. Should we play the lottery?
Mr. Crud’s message continues. “Oh, they also found out that you aren’t a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis.”
Good news, of course, but I know Mr. Crud is a little bit disappointed. If I had been a carrier then they would have tested him too and all through both pregnancies, Mr. Crud has hungered to be tested for something. When the doctors tell us that only I need a blood draw, Mr. Crud face takes on a momentary “what-about-me” sadness.
His time has come! For the tests that they would like to run on us, to rule out more systematic chromosomal problems, both Mr. Crud and I will have blood drawn. Sara tells us that there is no rush. And I feel no rush to get back on the pregnancy train. I have been thoroughly enjoying dirty martinis, sushi, bean sprout-laden spring rolls, stinky, unpasteurized cheeses of all kinds, and a few cigarettes here and there. The cigarettes bother me the most. During the pregnant days, I liked the feeling that I had stepped off the cancer train. Self-righteousness is among my favorite natural highs and now when I partake of a smoke, I also trade in my well-worn high horse. Alas.
The only times I feel the pregnancy urgency return is when I hear about my friends getting pregnant, mostly through Facebook status updates. When I read that Old High School Friend is hunting for daycare for the twins she’s expecting, the tears well. Or New Adult Friend has learned the sex of her baby, I sigh. I get an email from Old College Friend who says all the right consolations about my miscarriage until I get to the next paragraph…she’s pregnant too. I feel genuinely happy for her.
And sad for me.
Our kids would have been born close together. We could have gone through their stages together, comparing notes on who is smiling, walking, babbling sounds that we swear sound like “Mom.” I mourn the experience of being pregnant with my friends. I mourn unmitigated joy when I read their preg-related status updates and emails. I am happy for them and glad that they have been spared this claustrophobic world of miscarriages. I am also sad for me, for Mr. Crud, for my yoga friend and her 2 miscarriages, for the band friends of Mr. Crud, Liz and Mark and their recent loss, for the woman who used to be my manager at my record store job years ago who found me on Facebook and shared her story of 2 miscarriages in a row. The loss of pregnancy innocence is another death that I revisit even as I had hoped to leave it behind after miscarriage #1.
In a conversation with my brother, he reminds me that fear during pregnancy is just the beginning. The other night my sister-in-law awoke to their child making weird snurfling noises and unable to make eye contact with either parent. They flew into a terrified frenzy that something was WRONG with their daughter. The doctor talked them down and advised them to feed their daughter, which was the trick that brought her back from whatever haze she had fallen into.
“I mean it’s easier because you can see them breathing and know what’s going on with them,” my brother says. “But birth is just the beginning of a-whole-nother world of worry.”
That’s what we have to look forward to?
“What? What does ‘you’ll call her back next week’ mean?” Mr. Crud asked me as we lay in bed last night.
“Next week is what it means.” I pulled the covers tighter around my chin.
“Not Monday?”
“I don’t want to talk about this right before bed,” I said.
The truth was that I had grown comfortable in the post-D and C world of not knowing. What if there was an answer? What if was my fault?
I called her back. She called me back on two different lines. Then she called Mr. Crud at home. The second voicemail message was from him.
“Good news, uh, sorta. The tests found a chromosomal abnormality so this miscarriage is unrelated to the first one.”
Yay? Chromosome 23 is the culprit. The miscarriage was destined to happen from the moment of conception. Embryos with this abnormality don’t make it past 11 weeks so there wasn’t any risk of Down’s Syndrome or the other feared conditions listed in Sara’s notebook. The chance of this happening was 1 in 149. Should we play the lottery?
Mr. Crud’s message continues. “Oh, they also found out that you aren’t a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis.”
Good news, of course, but I know Mr. Crud is a little bit disappointed. If I had been a carrier then they would have tested him too and all through both pregnancies, Mr. Crud has hungered to be tested for something. When the doctors tell us that only I need a blood draw, Mr. Crud face takes on a momentary “what-about-me” sadness.
His time has come! For the tests that they would like to run on us, to rule out more systematic chromosomal problems, both Mr. Crud and I will have blood drawn. Sara tells us that there is no rush. And I feel no rush to get back on the pregnancy train. I have been thoroughly enjoying dirty martinis, sushi, bean sprout-laden spring rolls, stinky, unpasteurized cheeses of all kinds, and a few cigarettes here and there. The cigarettes bother me the most. During the pregnant days, I liked the feeling that I had stepped off the cancer train. Self-righteousness is among my favorite natural highs and now when I partake of a smoke, I also trade in my well-worn high horse. Alas.
The only times I feel the pregnancy urgency return is when I hear about my friends getting pregnant, mostly through Facebook status updates. When I read that Old High School Friend is hunting for daycare for the twins she’s expecting, the tears well. Or New Adult Friend has learned the sex of her baby, I sigh. I get an email from Old College Friend who says all the right consolations about my miscarriage until I get to the next paragraph…she’s pregnant too. I feel genuinely happy for her.
And sad for me.
Our kids would have been born close together. We could have gone through their stages together, comparing notes on who is smiling, walking, babbling sounds that we swear sound like “Mom.” I mourn the experience of being pregnant with my friends. I mourn unmitigated joy when I read their preg-related status updates and emails. I am happy for them and glad that they have been spared this claustrophobic world of miscarriages. I am also sad for me, for Mr. Crud, for my yoga friend and her 2 miscarriages, for the band friends of Mr. Crud, Liz and Mark and their recent loss, for the woman who used to be my manager at my record store job years ago who found me on Facebook and shared her story of 2 miscarriages in a row. The loss of pregnancy innocence is another death that I revisit even as I had hoped to leave it behind after miscarriage #1.
In a conversation with my brother, he reminds me that fear during pregnancy is just the beginning. The other night my sister-in-law awoke to their child making weird snurfling noises and unable to make eye contact with either parent. They flew into a terrified frenzy that something was WRONG with their daughter. The doctor talked them down and advised them to feed their daughter, which was the trick that brought her back from whatever haze she had fallen into.
“I mean it’s easier because you can see them breathing and know what’s going on with them,” my brother says. “But birth is just the beginning of a-whole-nother world of worry.”
That’s what we have to look forward to?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
