11-5-09
When I was a kid I got a case of the nerves before doctor’s appointments. Would I have to get a shot? Would I (again) be told that I might want to lose a few? Would the doctor x-ray my stomach and discover the cache of boogers piling up from all that illicit snot munching? (I imagined them in a gooey, green pyramid.) Now I have new reasons. Is everything okay with Purvis? Is she kicking enough? Is my stomach too small for being 6 months pregnant? Wait, was that stitch in my side technically a cramp?
As all the preg-sites warn, pregnancy can turn even the calmest lady into a—and I quote—“worrywart.” What of the chronic worrywarts such as myself? I must move up a notch to hysteric. Well, I would if not for the magic of yoga, which I’m still somehow limping through despite feeling weighed down with 20 extra pounds of thigh, hips and stomach. But mainly thigh and hips although stomach is catching up.
The week before a doctor’s appointment I default to worrywart. I start to question everything, but mostly myself. Maybe the sensations I thought were Purvis kicks are actually gas or some shifting of the bowels that feels different due to my enlarged uterus. Then I feel what is definitely a kick…or is that a muscle spasm?
When I feel kicks, what I know for sure to be kicks, I whisper, “Thank you, Purvis. Your mama was worrying.” (On the plus side I am getting used to the M-word.) And then I pray for another one just like the other one. “One more, Purvis. Show me that you’re in there.”
I am no longer haunted by a blank ultrasound screen but by a screen with the image of a tiny floating dead fetus. What if all that I’m feeling in my gut region is just Purvis’ body bobbing around in amniotic fluid?
I know these are only fears. “This is what fear feels like,” I say to myself. Another handy dandy yoga phrase that has gotten me through bumpy flights and late nights waiting for Mr. Crud to return from band practice after I’ve convinced myself that he’s—a phrase my mom so kindly passed on to me—dead in a ditch somewhere.
I talk out the fears with Mr. Crud.
“But have you been feeling Purvis moving?” He asks.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I have. Yes. Yes, I have. Actually he was kicking around a lot today.”
“That’s good.”
“I know, but still…”
Mr. Crud takes our fears to the professional, his awesome counselor, who reminds him that we have every right to be afraid. We got bad news at a past appointment so there will likely be some level of anxiety in approaching any appointment.
“He says we should probably get used to it.” Mr. Crud says.
“That’s what I thought. Dang.”
Today the anxiety is less. After a quiet morning, which put me on edge, Purvis has found his groove this afternoon. The big minus is she has located my bladder and seems to be doing some sort of tap dance upon it. My doctor’s appointment is tomorrow afternoon. I already can’t wait to hear the heartbeat, which is my cue to relax and get teary-eyed with relief.
Tomorrow I take my Glucose Tolerance Test to see if I am at risk for gestational diabetes. Truthfully, I have put this test off to the last minute in case I have it and must immediately de-sugarify my diet. (Please oh please no! You’ve taken my wine, my martinis, my sushi. Please do not take my sweets!!)
In H1N1 vaccine news, there is no real news. I am feeling better about the whole flu shebang. My doula and acupuncturist assure me that I am a healthy lady with a healthy immune system. For an afternoon, I considered not getting the vaccine at all after reading some anti-vax websites (I know, I know), but my new plan is to do what I can to get it, but not stress out.
Last night I say to Mr. Crud, “I kinda preferred worrying about the swine flu. That felt better.”
“Really?”
As the oracle of my youth, the Lucky 8 Ball, once said: Ask Again Later.
Showing posts with label tests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tests. Show all posts
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
20 Down, 20 To Go
9-14-09
A lovely vacation and the subsequent work and life catch-up has kept me from the exhaustive (exhausting?) chronicling of pregnancy, but I’ll do my best to catch up and get back on track in this one mere mortal post. Wish me luck.
First of all, I just stepped over the 20-week threshold today. Halfway there! Also no longer in the miscarriage zone.
Last night as Mr. Crud and I chat before bed I say, “As of tomorrow I can no longer have a miscarriage.”
“Really?’ he asks, sitting up a bit.
“Yeah, from here on out it would be considered a stillbirth,” I say.
He slumps. “Oh. Great?”
Yeah, not so great, but still something. A friend of mine experienced a stillbirth and in my miscarriage research I’ve read heartbreaking stories of stillbirth, but they are far less common than miscarriage. I take my comfort where I can get it. Right now after having a good anatomy screen ultrasound (I marvel at the technician’s skill. How does that blob look like a kidney to you? And that hole an eye? The ultrasound was pretty cool, but I did not find myself cooing over how cute a 19-week old Purvis is. No, s/he looked more like a dinosaur to me.) and an all-signs-point-to-yes doctor’s appointment, I’ve got a spring in my step. Post-ultrasound I awoke in the middle of the night—got the midnight pee breaks down to one, yahoo!—and couldn’t get back to sleep out of excitement. This is really happening! I can start telling people I’m pregnant without that “but…” clogging my throat. I finally settled down enough to get a few more zzz-s, but the giddiness and sweet feeling of calm and well-being persists. (Probably the reason I’m not ripping my hair out because of a recent possibly pregnancy-related back injury. Thank you, hormones.)
Now our attention has turned to more important matters like what in the heck are we going to name Purvis? We did not find out the sex during the ultrasound. Well, we sort of didn’t find out the sex. After much deliberation and listing of pros and cons, Mr. Crud and I concluded that we definitely weren’t sure if we wanted to know the sex before Purvis’ birth. My compromise was to have the technician—not Super Tall Ultrasound Dude this time, but smiley young lady technician—write down the sex on a piece of paper. She went an extra step, aiding and abetting our indecision, by writing it on a post-it then covering that post-it with another post-it with “Answer inside” written on it, then sealing it in an envelope. An envelope. which beckons to me from the center of my desk.
“So when are you going to open it?” My doula asks.
“I don’t know. Mr. Crud’s new plan is to bring the envelope with us to the hospital and open it right before I give birth.”
“Great idea!”
I am the main proponent of not wanting to find out. I like the mystery. I like creating long lists of baby names for both sexes and not knowing which of them will get a chance at bat. On a more practical level, I want to avoid receiving a mountain of pink or blue baby things as much as possible. (Oh the assumptions I make about all the friends I’ve been neglecting the last few months. I’ll be lucky if we get a card.) I can be a bit sensitive about gender issues, but who knows what cues set into motion the masculine/feminine cage? A pink booty might just get us off on the wrong foot, sending Purvis into a princess spiral from which we’ll never recover.
Mr. Crud’s reasons for wanting to know are more practical: if it’s a boy we’ll need to plan a bris; we can be more targeted in our hunt for the perfect name; and the myriad of planning issues that come into play. Still, he kind of relishes the mystery too.
So our hunt for the perfect name of both sexes continues. Criteria:
• Must be unique but not too unique, i.e. no funny spellings of common names;
• Must have lots of nickname possibilities (as a person whose had 2 names all my life, I want to share a nickname-able moniker with my offspring.);
• Must be easy to spell (As a person whose name can be spelled many different ways, I want to spare Purvis the same fate):
• Must have a good song (All I have is the “Ballad of Katie” by the Hothouse Flowers, a horror that I have to live with every day of my life.)
We’ve come up with a ton of girl’s names that fit the criteria, but no real strong boy contenders, which is a bit of a problem because my spidey sense tells me that Purvis is a boy. (Also my mom dreamed I had a boy so what more proof do you need?) We have begun consulting websites, but still no clear leaders. Suggestions?
Next on our list of concerns is childbirth classes. So far I’ve found a good yoga for birth one, and a basic class offered by the hospital, but we can’t decide what more we need. Lamaze? The Bradley Method? Birthing from Within? (Actually we have decided against Birthing from Within on the advice of our doula. It sounds like it doesn’t match our personalities. We strive not to be cynical dicks who ruin the party for everyone else when possible.) I can’t quite believe that I’m at the point where I need to sign up for a class. Part of me still feels like I am jinxing something to sign up, but that kind of thinking will leave us class-less and clueless. Mr. Crud on the other hand wants to be signed up now, now, now. Somewhere between his urgency and my reticence, I hope we will meet and find something that will tell us what the heck exactly is going to be happening to my body in another 20 weeks or so. And I sure hope the birth experience is nothing like the scene I watched on last night’s Mad Men where Betty was so drugged, she didn’t know she’d had a baby until she awoke from a Demerol haze with a bundle in her arms. Throughout the episode Mr. Crud grabbed my hand and assured me that this wasn’t how it would be for us. I know that, but it’s still freaky to think that there was a time when a woman was whisked away while the father sat in a waiting room sipping whiskey and hoping for the best. I think I would like to be the one sipping whiskey. That really should be a service for pregnant women. I’m pretty impervious to pain when I’m drunk. How about it, medical science?
Miscarriage (sort of) in Pop Culture
I want badly to like the new series Glee. So far I’m semi-interested mainly due to the comic genius of Jane Lynch. But last week’s show left me pissed. A character, the wife of the main character, who we are clearly supposed to hate went in for an ultrasound. As she rattled on about all the tests she wanted, the doctor shook his head and removed the ultrasound wand.
“So what is it?” She asked. “Boy or girl?”
“It’s nothing,” he said snarkily and then made some crack about how her pregnancy was all in her head and the weight she had gained was from a chicken bone.
Seriously? Is this guy running for worst TV doctor in the world? I can’t imagine if either of my miscarriages had been broken to me with some sort of glib comment about how there is “nothing” in there. Mr. Crud and I stared at each other, momentarily struck dumb by the trivializing of the character’s “hysterical pregnancy.” (That may not even be the medical term for it anymore as the docs strive to be a tad more sensitive these days.)
“What the fuck?” We said practically in unison.
The fact that the woman believes herself to be pregnant while not being pregnant is played for laughs and ridicule. How stupid she is! This whole pregnancy thing is a ruse to keep her man. Selfish bitch.
We’ve both started to notice glaring errors in how pregnancy is represented in popular culture. Example: in the movies—such as Juno--women go in for their anatomy scan ultrasounds with hugely pregnant bellies while in reality, most women have this appointment around their 20th week when most first time mothers are still barely showing. (Well, at least I’m barely showing. Although Mr. Crud claims I look pretty and pregnant, I still feel like my bump could be mistaken for a nacho habit.)
“How pregnancy works isn’t some big mystery,” Mr. Crud says. “People could research how things really go.”
I agree. And they could also stop using miscarriage and hysterical pregnancy as some sort of character cue and punishment.
Consider yourself updated.
A lovely vacation and the subsequent work and life catch-up has kept me from the exhaustive (exhausting?) chronicling of pregnancy, but I’ll do my best to catch up and get back on track in this one mere mortal post. Wish me luck.
First of all, I just stepped over the 20-week threshold today. Halfway there! Also no longer in the miscarriage zone.
Last night as Mr. Crud and I chat before bed I say, “As of tomorrow I can no longer have a miscarriage.”
“Really?’ he asks, sitting up a bit.
“Yeah, from here on out it would be considered a stillbirth,” I say.
He slumps. “Oh. Great?”
Yeah, not so great, but still something. A friend of mine experienced a stillbirth and in my miscarriage research I’ve read heartbreaking stories of stillbirth, but they are far less common than miscarriage. I take my comfort where I can get it. Right now after having a good anatomy screen ultrasound (I marvel at the technician’s skill. How does that blob look like a kidney to you? And that hole an eye? The ultrasound was pretty cool, but I did not find myself cooing over how cute a 19-week old Purvis is. No, s/he looked more like a dinosaur to me.) and an all-signs-point-to-yes doctor’s appointment, I’ve got a spring in my step. Post-ultrasound I awoke in the middle of the night—got the midnight pee breaks down to one, yahoo!—and couldn’t get back to sleep out of excitement. This is really happening! I can start telling people I’m pregnant without that “but…” clogging my throat. I finally settled down enough to get a few more zzz-s, but the giddiness and sweet feeling of calm and well-being persists. (Probably the reason I’m not ripping my hair out because of a recent possibly pregnancy-related back injury. Thank you, hormones.)
Now our attention has turned to more important matters like what in the heck are we going to name Purvis? We did not find out the sex during the ultrasound. Well, we sort of didn’t find out the sex. After much deliberation and listing of pros and cons, Mr. Crud and I concluded that we definitely weren’t sure if we wanted to know the sex before Purvis’ birth. My compromise was to have the technician—not Super Tall Ultrasound Dude this time, but smiley young lady technician—write down the sex on a piece of paper. She went an extra step, aiding and abetting our indecision, by writing it on a post-it then covering that post-it with another post-it with “Answer inside” written on it, then sealing it in an envelope. An envelope. which beckons to me from the center of my desk.
“So when are you going to open it?” My doula asks.
“I don’t know. Mr. Crud’s new plan is to bring the envelope with us to the hospital and open it right before I give birth.”
“Great idea!”
I am the main proponent of not wanting to find out. I like the mystery. I like creating long lists of baby names for both sexes and not knowing which of them will get a chance at bat. On a more practical level, I want to avoid receiving a mountain of pink or blue baby things as much as possible. (Oh the assumptions I make about all the friends I’ve been neglecting the last few months. I’ll be lucky if we get a card.) I can be a bit sensitive about gender issues, but who knows what cues set into motion the masculine/feminine cage? A pink booty might just get us off on the wrong foot, sending Purvis into a princess spiral from which we’ll never recover.
Mr. Crud’s reasons for wanting to know are more practical: if it’s a boy we’ll need to plan a bris; we can be more targeted in our hunt for the perfect name; and the myriad of planning issues that come into play. Still, he kind of relishes the mystery too.
So our hunt for the perfect name of both sexes continues. Criteria:
• Must be unique but not too unique, i.e. no funny spellings of common names;
• Must have lots of nickname possibilities (as a person whose had 2 names all my life, I want to share a nickname-able moniker with my offspring.);
• Must be easy to spell (As a person whose name can be spelled many different ways, I want to spare Purvis the same fate):
• Must have a good song (All I have is the “Ballad of Katie” by the Hothouse Flowers, a horror that I have to live with every day of my life.)
We’ve come up with a ton of girl’s names that fit the criteria, but no real strong boy contenders, which is a bit of a problem because my spidey sense tells me that Purvis is a boy. (Also my mom dreamed I had a boy so what more proof do you need?) We have begun consulting websites, but still no clear leaders. Suggestions?
Next on our list of concerns is childbirth classes. So far I’ve found a good yoga for birth one, and a basic class offered by the hospital, but we can’t decide what more we need. Lamaze? The Bradley Method? Birthing from Within? (Actually we have decided against Birthing from Within on the advice of our doula. It sounds like it doesn’t match our personalities. We strive not to be cynical dicks who ruin the party for everyone else when possible.) I can’t quite believe that I’m at the point where I need to sign up for a class. Part of me still feels like I am jinxing something to sign up, but that kind of thinking will leave us class-less and clueless. Mr. Crud on the other hand wants to be signed up now, now, now. Somewhere between his urgency and my reticence, I hope we will meet and find something that will tell us what the heck exactly is going to be happening to my body in another 20 weeks or so. And I sure hope the birth experience is nothing like the scene I watched on last night’s Mad Men where Betty was so drugged, she didn’t know she’d had a baby until she awoke from a Demerol haze with a bundle in her arms. Throughout the episode Mr. Crud grabbed my hand and assured me that this wasn’t how it would be for us. I know that, but it’s still freaky to think that there was a time when a woman was whisked away while the father sat in a waiting room sipping whiskey and hoping for the best. I think I would like to be the one sipping whiskey. That really should be a service for pregnant women. I’m pretty impervious to pain when I’m drunk. How about it, medical science?
Miscarriage (sort of) in Pop Culture
I want badly to like the new series Glee. So far I’m semi-interested mainly due to the comic genius of Jane Lynch. But last week’s show left me pissed. A character, the wife of the main character, who we are clearly supposed to hate went in for an ultrasound. As she rattled on about all the tests she wanted, the doctor shook his head and removed the ultrasound wand.
“So what is it?” She asked. “Boy or girl?”
“It’s nothing,” he said snarkily and then made some crack about how her pregnancy was all in her head and the weight she had gained was from a chicken bone.
Seriously? Is this guy running for worst TV doctor in the world? I can’t imagine if either of my miscarriages had been broken to me with some sort of glib comment about how there is “nothing” in there. Mr. Crud and I stared at each other, momentarily struck dumb by the trivializing of the character’s “hysterical pregnancy.” (That may not even be the medical term for it anymore as the docs strive to be a tad more sensitive these days.)
“What the fuck?” We said practically in unison.
The fact that the woman believes herself to be pregnant while not being pregnant is played for laughs and ridicule. How stupid she is! This whole pregnancy thing is a ruse to keep her man. Selfish bitch.
We’ve both started to notice glaring errors in how pregnancy is represented in popular culture. Example: in the movies—such as Juno--women go in for their anatomy scan ultrasounds with hugely pregnant bellies while in reality, most women have this appointment around their 20th week when most first time mothers are still barely showing. (Well, at least I’m barely showing. Although Mr. Crud claims I look pretty and pregnant, I still feel like my bump could be mistaken for a nacho habit.)
“How pregnancy works isn’t some big mystery,” Mr. Crud says. “People could research how things really go.”
I agree. And they could also stop using miscarriage and hysterical pregnancy as some sort of character cue and punishment.
Consider yourself updated.
To Amnio or Not to Amnio
8-25-09
Before getting the most recent test results from the sequential screen—which I am still enjoying and feeling confident about surprisingly enough—I was almost sure that I would undergo amnio. I’d recently read Ayelett Waldman’s Bad Mother where she wrote about choosing amnio because of her belief in her own bad luck. Before Miscarriage World, I was her opposite. I know that shit happens to everyone. It’s certainly happened to me, but for the most part I feel content and lucky for my life. During my first pregnancy I had the typical worries, but was confident that my body knew what it was doing, that every little thing would be alright. I was wrong. And I was wrong again. My faith in my body and my ability to trust my body was shaken to the core. Apparently I didn’t feel a tremor in the force when both of my embryos died. I felt nothing. I kept slogging through my first trimesters until they ended with the ultrasounds of doom.
So when the question of amnio arose this time around, I was feeling more Ayelet Waldman than cockeyed optimist. I oscillated wildly (and not in an instrumental Smiths way).
One moment I was sure I’d do it. “I mean it’s only a 1 in 400 chance of miscarriage and even then they aren’t sure if that would be the same rate of miscarriage without amnio,” I told Mr. Crud during the great amnio deliberations.
He nodded thoughtfully. “It’s still scary.”
Agreed. The thought of causing another miscarriage just because I had to know with 99% certainty that Purvis was genetically okay terrified me. Then I wouldn’t be able to curse fate and the universe. Well, I still could shake my fist at the random injustice but there would be an image of me thrown into the mix. Me doing something out of fear, which is an emotion that I’m always telling others isn’t a wise basis for decision-making.
We got the first round of test results that showed Purvis’ chances for genetic problems were less than my age indicated and my amnio confidence showed hairline fractures.
“Maybe we shouldn’t. I mean what’s the percentage on that? It’s tiny.”
Mr. Crud agreed. He did the math. “Let’s wait for the other results.”
Through all of the deliberations the underlying question troubled me the most. What did it say about me that I was willing to consider terminating a pregnancy if Purvis did have genetic defects? When I encountered a woman who works on campus who has Down’s Syndrome, I silently apologized to her: it’s not you, it’s me. I’m not strong enough. In fact whenever I saw any folks who appeared to have the symptoms of the genetic defects I’d read about I felt ashamed. Who am I to decide?
I acknowledge that I can be selfish. I look out for number one although I try not to let that be the guiding impulse of my life. I imagined raising a child with special needs. Would I feel embarrassed of him or her? Would I feel a tug of longing every time I saw my fabulous nieces and nephew? Why not me? Why does my kid have to be the special one? Questions multiplied while answers hid. Every decision I made, everything I thought I knew could be reversed by a google search or a conversation or a quote from one of my pregnancy books. I found myself wishing for questionable blood test results just so that we didn’t have to make the decision about the test.
Finally the day came. And the results were better than I thought they could be. The same risk as someone half my age for Down’s Syndrome, lower than that for the other genetic problems. I was shocked to feel how quickly my desire for amnio evaporated. Mr. Crud said we should take the weekend to decide. I agreed. But we spent maybe one short conversation on the whole issue. “I don’t think we should do it,” I said.
“Neither do I.”
Mr. Crud didn’t even call back the genetic counselor to see what she meant exactly by amnio being “not recommended.” He let it go. We let it go. And now I feel more so than ever like I’m actually enjoying this pregnancy, that I’m 100% pregnant without qualification.
Not that I still don’t have moments of doubt. (Please pry me from the internet and never let me google again.) Nor have the flashes of worry that all is not well down there in Purvis world disappeared, but when we met with our doula-to-be last weekend, she asked me about my main thoughts and concerns at this time. “Um, where can I find decent maternity clothes for tall ladies?” (Eileen Fisher can only take me so far.)
Now I’m looking ahead to the next benchmarks: my pot belly transforming into a pregnant belly, feeling Purvis kick (felt something kick-like during a quiet moment of yoga that Sunday but I can’t confirm), and our anatomy scan ultrasound when we get back from vacation in a few weeks.
In the meantime, I look forward to chasing my 14-month-old niece around and introducing her to a potbelly named Purvis. Happy vacation!
RANDOM: Come on, Mad Men, Betty Draper doesn’t even walk like she’s pregnant in the least. I find myself jealous of her blissful ignorance while she puffs away, wine glass in hand.
*I meant to post this pre-vacation...but I didn't.
Before getting the most recent test results from the sequential screen—which I am still enjoying and feeling confident about surprisingly enough—I was almost sure that I would undergo amnio. I’d recently read Ayelett Waldman’s Bad Mother where she wrote about choosing amnio because of her belief in her own bad luck. Before Miscarriage World, I was her opposite. I know that shit happens to everyone. It’s certainly happened to me, but for the most part I feel content and lucky for my life. During my first pregnancy I had the typical worries, but was confident that my body knew what it was doing, that every little thing would be alright. I was wrong. And I was wrong again. My faith in my body and my ability to trust my body was shaken to the core. Apparently I didn’t feel a tremor in the force when both of my embryos died. I felt nothing. I kept slogging through my first trimesters until they ended with the ultrasounds of doom.
So when the question of amnio arose this time around, I was feeling more Ayelet Waldman than cockeyed optimist. I oscillated wildly (and not in an instrumental Smiths way).
One moment I was sure I’d do it. “I mean it’s only a 1 in 400 chance of miscarriage and even then they aren’t sure if that would be the same rate of miscarriage without amnio,” I told Mr. Crud during the great amnio deliberations.
He nodded thoughtfully. “It’s still scary.”
Agreed. The thought of causing another miscarriage just because I had to know with 99% certainty that Purvis was genetically okay terrified me. Then I wouldn’t be able to curse fate and the universe. Well, I still could shake my fist at the random injustice but there would be an image of me thrown into the mix. Me doing something out of fear, which is an emotion that I’m always telling others isn’t a wise basis for decision-making.
We got the first round of test results that showed Purvis’ chances for genetic problems were less than my age indicated and my amnio confidence showed hairline fractures.
“Maybe we shouldn’t. I mean what’s the percentage on that? It’s tiny.”
Mr. Crud agreed. He did the math. “Let’s wait for the other results.”
Through all of the deliberations the underlying question troubled me the most. What did it say about me that I was willing to consider terminating a pregnancy if Purvis did have genetic defects? When I encountered a woman who works on campus who has Down’s Syndrome, I silently apologized to her: it’s not you, it’s me. I’m not strong enough. In fact whenever I saw any folks who appeared to have the symptoms of the genetic defects I’d read about I felt ashamed. Who am I to decide?
I acknowledge that I can be selfish. I look out for number one although I try not to let that be the guiding impulse of my life. I imagined raising a child with special needs. Would I feel embarrassed of him or her? Would I feel a tug of longing every time I saw my fabulous nieces and nephew? Why not me? Why does my kid have to be the special one? Questions multiplied while answers hid. Every decision I made, everything I thought I knew could be reversed by a google search or a conversation or a quote from one of my pregnancy books. I found myself wishing for questionable blood test results just so that we didn’t have to make the decision about the test.
Finally the day came. And the results were better than I thought they could be. The same risk as someone half my age for Down’s Syndrome, lower than that for the other genetic problems. I was shocked to feel how quickly my desire for amnio evaporated. Mr. Crud said we should take the weekend to decide. I agreed. But we spent maybe one short conversation on the whole issue. “I don’t think we should do it,” I said.
“Neither do I.”
Mr. Crud didn’t even call back the genetic counselor to see what she meant exactly by amnio being “not recommended.” He let it go. We let it go. And now I feel more so than ever like I’m actually enjoying this pregnancy, that I’m 100% pregnant without qualification.
Not that I still don’t have moments of doubt. (Please pry me from the internet and never let me google again.) Nor have the flashes of worry that all is not well down there in Purvis world disappeared, but when we met with our doula-to-be last weekend, she asked me about my main thoughts and concerns at this time. “Um, where can I find decent maternity clothes for tall ladies?” (Eileen Fisher can only take me so far.)
Now I’m looking ahead to the next benchmarks: my pot belly transforming into a pregnant belly, feeling Purvis kick (felt something kick-like during a quiet moment of yoga that Sunday but I can’t confirm), and our anatomy scan ultrasound when we get back from vacation in a few weeks.
In the meantime, I look forward to chasing my 14-month-old niece around and introducing her to a potbelly named Purvis. Happy vacation!
RANDOM: Come on, Mad Men, Betty Draper doesn’t even walk like she’s pregnant in the least. I find myself jealous of her blissful ignorance while she puffs away, wine glass in hand.
*I meant to post this pre-vacation...but I didn't.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Have You Heard the Good News? Part Deux
8-20-09
My cell phone beep boop boops its disco ring from across my office. It’s gotta be them. Test results. Gulp.
“Good news! Your screen was negative, which is a convoluted way of saying that your chances for the genetic conditions we were testing for have gone way down,” says Genetic Counselor #3, whose name I’ve read on the website but is until this moment just a name on a website.
“That’s great!” I say, heartbeat in throat.
“Would you like me to go over the specific numbers with you?”
Oh hell yes.
They break down like this: Purvis’ chance of Down’s Syndrome is down from 1 in 130 to 1 in 1,300; Trisomy 18 is as low as it can go (1/10,000) and Spina Bifida is 1 in 6,000, six times lower than expected for my age. (Which will be 37 by the time Purvis meets us and is considered elderly in child-bearing world.)
“There is no recommended follow-up,” GC#3 says. “Congratulations!”
“I’m so glad you called. My husband and I have been talking a lot about amnio.”
“Of course you are always welcome to have amnio. It’s the only way to know for sure. But it’s not recommended with these results.”
I call Mr. Crud to share the good news. He takes a seat as I throw fractions at him with more gusto than any fraction I’ve ever talked about. Then he does what he does best—-tease apart the real meaning of what GC#3 said.
“By recommended does she mean not recommended in the neutral sense or that they don’t recommend that we have amnio?” He asks.
“Uh, I don’t know.” I scan my notes beside the numbers: bloodwork good, no follow-up.
“She probably means it in the neutral medical sense.” He says, slightly disappointed.
I am too. This whole process is nerve-wracking. Part of me wishes that we had gotten one of those infamous false positives so that amnio or whatever further testing there is to be done would be recommended and we wouldn’t have to decide for ourselves. Yes, I would really like to know 99.9% for sure that Purvis is—as I pray every morning despite it’s clunky language “developing normally”—but risking a miscarriage to get that information doesn’t feel right. At least at this moment of relief and yahoo-ness, it doesn’t. I might be waking up in the middle of the night after imagining Purvis’ tiny body twisted by some horrid genetic disorder and change my mind completely. But I don’t know. The more I think about the whole child-bearing enterprise, the more I come to terms with the fact—a fact of life that Mrs. Garrett should have included among lesser facts like don’t judge a book (or a fat girl) by its cover and Jo might not be a lesbian, just a tomboy—that life is uncertainty. Everything changes. Control is an illusion.
“I guess we should make a decision by the end of the weekend,” Mr. Crud says.
“That sounds fair.”
But I feel like I’m already leaving amnio behind, watching it get smaller in the rearview mirror as I look ahead to the next ultrasound in a few weeks, the anatomy scan that Doctor Awesome-in-Waiting (who will from here on out be known as Dr. Adorable because she looks like she’s 22, is petite of size, and very cute in addition to being a smart, reassuring doc) assures us will be fun. “You’ll get a cool 3-D picture to take home.”
We had our first meeting with Dr. Adorable last Friday. I spilled out my anxieties, which she carefully and gently countered with reality checks. (“Your chance of miscarriage have gone way down now that you’re in the second trimeter.”) We listened to Purvis’ galloping heartbeat and I felt a weeks worth of exhales pour forth. Unfortunately I did not feel such relief when seeing the number on the scale. Egads. Dr. Adorable said I was at the high end of normal, but I caught the drift that I might want to slow down the desert-fest. I knew I should have taken off my jacket before they weighed me! As long as the scale remains the most harrowing part of this pregnancy, I’m good. I’ve battled those numbers—and the impact on my self-esteem—before. I always thought that I’d be cool with getting fat when I got pregnant. Old habits die hard. Or as the yogis say, samskaras are a bitch. (The yogis don’t actually say that, but they might want to consider adding another sutra.)
My cell phone beep boop boops its disco ring from across my office. It’s gotta be them. Test results. Gulp.
“Good news! Your screen was negative, which is a convoluted way of saying that your chances for the genetic conditions we were testing for have gone way down,” says Genetic Counselor #3, whose name I’ve read on the website but is until this moment just a name on a website.
“That’s great!” I say, heartbeat in throat.
“Would you like me to go over the specific numbers with you?”
Oh hell yes.
They break down like this: Purvis’ chance of Down’s Syndrome is down from 1 in 130 to 1 in 1,300; Trisomy 18 is as low as it can go (1/10,000) and Spina Bifida is 1 in 6,000, six times lower than expected for my age. (Which will be 37 by the time Purvis meets us and is considered elderly in child-bearing world.)
“There is no recommended follow-up,” GC#3 says. “Congratulations!”
“I’m so glad you called. My husband and I have been talking a lot about amnio.”
“Of course you are always welcome to have amnio. It’s the only way to know for sure. But it’s not recommended with these results.”
I call Mr. Crud to share the good news. He takes a seat as I throw fractions at him with more gusto than any fraction I’ve ever talked about. Then he does what he does best—-tease apart the real meaning of what GC#3 said.
“By recommended does she mean not recommended in the neutral sense or that they don’t recommend that we have amnio?” He asks.
“Uh, I don’t know.” I scan my notes beside the numbers: bloodwork good, no follow-up.
“She probably means it in the neutral medical sense.” He says, slightly disappointed.
I am too. This whole process is nerve-wracking. Part of me wishes that we had gotten one of those infamous false positives so that amnio or whatever further testing there is to be done would be recommended and we wouldn’t have to decide for ourselves. Yes, I would really like to know 99.9% for sure that Purvis is—as I pray every morning despite it’s clunky language “developing normally”—but risking a miscarriage to get that information doesn’t feel right. At least at this moment of relief and yahoo-ness, it doesn’t. I might be waking up in the middle of the night after imagining Purvis’ tiny body twisted by some horrid genetic disorder and change my mind completely. But I don’t know. The more I think about the whole child-bearing enterprise, the more I come to terms with the fact—a fact of life that Mrs. Garrett should have included among lesser facts like don’t judge a book (or a fat girl) by its cover and Jo might not be a lesbian, just a tomboy—that life is uncertainty. Everything changes. Control is an illusion.
“I guess we should make a decision by the end of the weekend,” Mr. Crud says.
“That sounds fair.”
But I feel like I’m already leaving amnio behind, watching it get smaller in the rearview mirror as I look ahead to the next ultrasound in a few weeks, the anatomy scan that Doctor Awesome-in-Waiting (who will from here on out be known as Dr. Adorable because she looks like she’s 22, is petite of size, and very cute in addition to being a smart, reassuring doc) assures us will be fun. “You’ll get a cool 3-D picture to take home.”
We had our first meeting with Dr. Adorable last Friday. I spilled out my anxieties, which she carefully and gently countered with reality checks. (“Your chance of miscarriage have gone way down now that you’re in the second trimeter.”) We listened to Purvis’ galloping heartbeat and I felt a weeks worth of exhales pour forth. Unfortunately I did not feel such relief when seeing the number on the scale. Egads. Dr. Adorable said I was at the high end of normal, but I caught the drift that I might want to slow down the desert-fest. I knew I should have taken off my jacket before they weighed me! As long as the scale remains the most harrowing part of this pregnancy, I’m good. I’ve battled those numbers—and the impact on my self-esteem—before. I always thought that I’d be cool with getting fat when I got pregnant. Old habits die hard. Or as the yogis say, samskaras are a bitch. (The yogis don’t actually say that, but they might want to consider adding another sutra.)
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
What Dreams May Come
8-11-09
Ah dreams. The playground of the unconscious mind. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of free-range fear roaming around in my subconscious these days. Last night one facet of this dark diamond came out to play: I am sitting across the table from a close friend, telling her that I’ve had another miscarriage, my third.
“Well, at least it was pretty good timing. I was starting to eye Lucille Bluth’s martinis a bit too closely as of late,” Dream Me said, forcing a laugh. (We’ve been watching a lot of Arrested Development over the last few weeks, one of my “I’m pregnant, what the hell” purchases. My other AD-related dreams include one where David Cross and I became buddies and have a ball wisecracking and snarking about, and another where Will Arnett and I pal around. Please pardon this second dream digression. Other people’s dreams are about as interesting as…other people’s dreams.)
In my dream, I try to laugh off this miscarriage, performing an ill-considered “the funny thing about miscarriage” monologue while inside I am dying a little more with each lame joke. My friend sits there mute.
Cut to new dream scene where I sit alone, lamenting my membership in the 2% of women who have 3 miscarriages in a row. I am bereft, hopeless. What next? Adoption? Try again? The thought of trying again as I drag through week 15 sounds impossible. The fact that I’ve only been pregnant 15 weeks sounds even more impossible. When I wake up I keep turning this question over in my head. If necessary, could I really do this again?
I tell Mr. Crud of this latest manifestation of one of my greatest pregnancy fear.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he says.
“I don’t either.” I wish somebody would pep talk my subconscious.
“I really wish my doctor’s appointment hadn’t been cancelled,” I say.
“Me too.”
Monday, yesterday, was supposed to be my first meeting with Dr. Awesome’s replacement while she’s on maternity leave. Dr. Awesome-In-Waiting cancelled due to either illness or being “called to the hill.” I had been anticipating the appointment for weeks, needing a shot of reassurance in the form of hearing Purvis’ heartbeat. Much like my last petit panic, I decided to wait this one out since, again, there’s not really anything that can be done either way. Plus I’m trying to reserve my freak-outs for later in the pregnancy. I don’t want to cash in my chips too soon.
My new favorite fear, third only to miscarriage and genetic abnormalities* is the swine flu. Everyday I ride home from work and am greeted by a new story on NPR detailing how harmful this new flu is to pregnant women and their babies. Fucking great. My miscarriage outrage is renewed. If just one of my previous pregnancies had come to term, we’d have missed the pregnancy-swine flu scare. Then I wonder how soon I can get the shot because oh yes, I will get the shot. I do not buy into the unproven fears that autism has anything to do with vaccinations or thimerosal. I hope the reassuring CDC rep isn’t steering me wrong with her claims that the shot is likely safe for the preg ladies. Or maybe I’ll just lock myself in my room for a few months and cover myself in duct tape. (‘Twas supposed to save us all from a terrorist gas attack, right?)
* I’m starting to lean towards doing amnio but am torn. I want the info, but fear the small chance of miscarriage. Another topic I hope Dr. Awesome-In-Waiting is prepared to tackle when we see her later this week.
Ah dreams. The playground of the unconscious mind. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot of free-range fear roaming around in my subconscious these days. Last night one facet of this dark diamond came out to play: I am sitting across the table from a close friend, telling her that I’ve had another miscarriage, my third.
“Well, at least it was pretty good timing. I was starting to eye Lucille Bluth’s martinis a bit too closely as of late,” Dream Me said, forcing a laugh. (We’ve been watching a lot of Arrested Development over the last few weeks, one of my “I’m pregnant, what the hell” purchases. My other AD-related dreams include one where David Cross and I became buddies and have a ball wisecracking and snarking about, and another where Will Arnett and I pal around. Please pardon this second dream digression. Other people’s dreams are about as interesting as…other people’s dreams.)
In my dream, I try to laugh off this miscarriage, performing an ill-considered “the funny thing about miscarriage” monologue while inside I am dying a little more with each lame joke. My friend sits there mute.
Cut to new dream scene where I sit alone, lamenting my membership in the 2% of women who have 3 miscarriages in a row. I am bereft, hopeless. What next? Adoption? Try again? The thought of trying again as I drag through week 15 sounds impossible. The fact that I’ve only been pregnant 15 weeks sounds even more impossible. When I wake up I keep turning this question over in my head. If necessary, could I really do this again?
I tell Mr. Crud of this latest manifestation of one of my greatest pregnancy fear.
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he says.
“I don’t either.” I wish somebody would pep talk my subconscious.
“I really wish my doctor’s appointment hadn’t been cancelled,” I say.
“Me too.”
Monday, yesterday, was supposed to be my first meeting with Dr. Awesome’s replacement while she’s on maternity leave. Dr. Awesome-In-Waiting cancelled due to either illness or being “called to the hill.” I had been anticipating the appointment for weeks, needing a shot of reassurance in the form of hearing Purvis’ heartbeat. Much like my last petit panic, I decided to wait this one out since, again, there’s not really anything that can be done either way. Plus I’m trying to reserve my freak-outs for later in the pregnancy. I don’t want to cash in my chips too soon.
My new favorite fear, third only to miscarriage and genetic abnormalities* is the swine flu. Everyday I ride home from work and am greeted by a new story on NPR detailing how harmful this new flu is to pregnant women and their babies. Fucking great. My miscarriage outrage is renewed. If just one of my previous pregnancies had come to term, we’d have missed the pregnancy-swine flu scare. Then I wonder how soon I can get the shot because oh yes, I will get the shot. I do not buy into the unproven fears that autism has anything to do with vaccinations or thimerosal. I hope the reassuring CDC rep isn’t steering me wrong with her claims that the shot is likely safe for the preg ladies. Or maybe I’ll just lock myself in my room for a few months and cover myself in duct tape. (‘Twas supposed to save us all from a terrorist gas attack, right?)
* I’m starting to lean towards doing amnio but am torn. I want the info, but fear the small chance of miscarriage. Another topic I hope Dr. Awesome-In-Waiting is prepared to tackle when we see her later this week.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Phew 2: Ultrasound Boogaloo
7-17-09
I awake at 3:50 a.m. for the last of my three middle-o’-the-night potty breaks. (After traversing the length of the house in the dead of night thrice nightly, I now appreciate why a bathroom in the master bed is a smashing idea.) I return to bed and assume my favored and short-lived sleeping position, on my stomach. I close my eyes and there he is: Dr. #2 in the Audrey Hepburn ultrasound room, “I’m sorry, things are not going well.” Shit. The ghosts of ultrasounds past have been visiting me the past few days and this morning they are relentless. I flip over and breathe into my belly (Yoga breathing! Yoga breathing!!), but it’s no use. I’m awake. Thank g-d I only have another hour to wait until the alarm sounds.
Then yoga, which pushes back the clamoring thoughts. Lucky for me my yoga teacher decides today is the day that he’ll focus in on the weaknesses in my chaturanga dandasana to upward dog transition. Yay? At least his focus on my asanas lets my mind go to the “please leave me alone, hard yoga teacher” place instead of thinking of the doomed scenarios that could result from this afternoon’s ultrasound. When I say good-bye to my teacher and yoga pals, I leave out my usual “See you tomorrow” in case I don’t.
Work carries me along on its tide of to-dos although I can barely concentrate. I surf the web in search of distraction. Thank you, dlisted.com. I lunch with my pal, Naomi, and am so so happy to talk about the happenings in her life instead of mine. I sum up my day with, “It’s nerve-wracking and scary, but what can you do?”
2:30 rolls around. I go to unlock my bike and find that another bike is wedged in against mine, making it impossible to remove my bike without some serious wrangling. “Thanks, asshole. Maybe try not being a total fuckwad next time,” I say loudly. I glance at the parking attendant’s station. Not there. Good. I’ll be the crazy lady who talks to herself soon enough around these parts, but I try to keep a decent rep while I can. Finally I extract my bike, reconnect my brake cable, which my removal gymnastics had pulled loose, and kick the tire of the offending bike. “Fucker.” Misplaced aggression anyone?
Mr. Crud rolls into the loading lane and packs me and my banged up chariot into the car.
“You okay?” He asks.
“I think so.”
We kiss and head up to the Perinatology Center on the hill.
“I wonder if they brought Audrey with them from the other office,” I say.
“I hope not.”
After a short wait, Super Tall Ultrasound Dude (STUD) from our first ultrasound of doom appears in the door. “Katherine?” (I do mean super tall—he’s easily 6’6”*.)
We stand up. Shit. Did it have to be him again? I wonder if he is praying almost as hard as we are that everything is normal, that he doesn’t have to use his prepared bad news speech (“I’m not seeing what I expect here. I’ll be back with the doctor.”) a second time.
“How are things going?” He asks as I lay down on the table.
“So far so good,” I say.
“We met about a year ago, right?” He says.
“Yep,” I say, fighting the urge to add “on one of the worst days of my life in fact.”
“You’ve had 2 losses, correct?” He says as he flips on the machine and grabs the warm goo for my belly.
“Yes.”
“I bet you’re feeling pretty anxious.”
“Oh yes,” I say. Understatement of the year. I’m surprised that I haven’t crapped my pants to be honest.
I roll down the waistband of my pants. He tucks in the towel and covers my potbelly with goo. This time I don’t look away from the screen but stare head-on. Come on, Purvis. You were here just 2 weeks ago. Don’t let me down.
He rubs the sensor over my belly and finds what he’s looking for. “Things look good,” he says quickly.
“Thank you,” I say.
As he moves the sensor around, finding Purvis’ body: arms, legs (crossed at the ankle), head, heartbeat and various markers of an 11-week ultrasound, he clicks pictures and reassures me. “Everything looks normal.”
“Thank you,” I say every time. Thank you, G-d. Thank you, STUD, for telling me over and over again and not letting me stew in my fear.
With each new find, he says “This is your baby’s head. This is your baby’s heart. This is your baby’s arms.” The phrase “your baby” somehow makes me feel warm and happy and freaked out. Purvis is a baby now. Not an embryo or fetus. Baby. I feel like I am entering dangerous territory: hope, attachment, and love.
“I need to shift your position. Your baby isn’t in a good position for me to get the measurement we need.” STUD says. He tilts the bed down.
“I do yoga. I can go upside down if you need.” Finally a chance to use my yoga powers in public!
He laughs. “I think this ought to do it.”
It doesn’t. He puts me on my side, jiggles the wand around in my pelvis. “Nope, your baby is happy where he is.”
The fear creeps back in. Why isn’t he doing what STUD wants? Is something wrong? STUD senses my freak out to be and says, “Everything looks normal. I’m just trying to get a better picture for the measurement that we need.”
He leaves Mr. Crud and I alone to wait for the doctor and to see if Purvis will get into the necessary position if I rest on my side a moment.
“I wonder if it will be one of the previous doctors,” I say.
“Accent Man or Nice Jewish Lady?” Mr. Crud asks.
“They were both good,” I say.
A new doctor whose name is also Kt enters and gives us the lowdown. Everything looks good and normal, all the markers check out. The measurement that they got of Purvis’ neck is normal too and when the results of my blood test come back, we’ll have an even better idea of our chances for genetic abnormalities. I feel weird doing these tests although I was sure from the get-go that I wanted them. I don’t know what we’ll do if we are faced with a genetically abnormal baby. I used to think that I knew, but I know enough now to know what I don’t know. (A tongue twister to keep things light, alright?) For now we will wait for the blood test results before deciding if we’ll do further diagnostic testing such as amniocentesis, which carries a small risk of miscarriage. Dr. Kt says this is what most couples do.
Again she tries to coax Purvis into a more photogenic position and again she fails so the dreaded transvaginal ultrasound is invoked.
“I’d hoped to avoid this, but I guess that’s how it goes,” I say.
Dr. Kt leaves the room and I strip from the waist down.
“Does that include my shoes?” I ask Mr. Crud. “I never know if I should leave my shoes on.”
“She said waist down.” He says with a shrug.
Dr. Kt and STUD return. This time they get the shot they need. Everything still looks good. I wonder if Purvis got his workout from my morning of yoga, if she is doing spins and turns along with me in the morning and this is her nap time.
STUD gives us a CD of some choice photos of Purvis and we are on our way.
“I’m not quite sure what to do with good news,” Mr. Crud says.
“I know. I had already starting preparing for the bad,” I say.
We are both exhausted, but not too tired to call the essential parties and share the news. Mr. Crud sends the best shot of Purvis to our close family members and we smile at their joyful replies.
“You’re not going to make that picture your wallpaper, are you?” I ask.
“No. Are you?”
“No. Something about that creeps me out,” I say.
“I wonder if I’ll be the type of person who has pictures of their kids on their wallpaper,” he says.
I know I’ve said some variation of this a gajillion times, but golly, I hope we find out.
* Did I just make the same error as Spinal Tap in the Stonehenge debacle?
I awake at 3:50 a.m. for the last of my three middle-o’-the-night potty breaks. (After traversing the length of the house in the dead of night thrice nightly, I now appreciate why a bathroom in the master bed is a smashing idea.) I return to bed and assume my favored and short-lived sleeping position, on my stomach. I close my eyes and there he is: Dr. #2 in the Audrey Hepburn ultrasound room, “I’m sorry, things are not going well.” Shit. The ghosts of ultrasounds past have been visiting me the past few days and this morning they are relentless. I flip over and breathe into my belly (Yoga breathing! Yoga breathing!!), but it’s no use. I’m awake. Thank g-d I only have another hour to wait until the alarm sounds.
Then yoga, which pushes back the clamoring thoughts. Lucky for me my yoga teacher decides today is the day that he’ll focus in on the weaknesses in my chaturanga dandasana to upward dog transition. Yay? At least his focus on my asanas lets my mind go to the “please leave me alone, hard yoga teacher” place instead of thinking of the doomed scenarios that could result from this afternoon’s ultrasound. When I say good-bye to my teacher and yoga pals, I leave out my usual “See you tomorrow” in case I don’t.
Work carries me along on its tide of to-dos although I can barely concentrate. I surf the web in search of distraction. Thank you, dlisted.com. I lunch with my pal, Naomi, and am so so happy to talk about the happenings in her life instead of mine. I sum up my day with, “It’s nerve-wracking and scary, but what can you do?”
2:30 rolls around. I go to unlock my bike and find that another bike is wedged in against mine, making it impossible to remove my bike without some serious wrangling. “Thanks, asshole. Maybe try not being a total fuckwad next time,” I say loudly. I glance at the parking attendant’s station. Not there. Good. I’ll be the crazy lady who talks to herself soon enough around these parts, but I try to keep a decent rep while I can. Finally I extract my bike, reconnect my brake cable, which my removal gymnastics had pulled loose, and kick the tire of the offending bike. “Fucker.” Misplaced aggression anyone?
Mr. Crud rolls into the loading lane and packs me and my banged up chariot into the car.
“You okay?” He asks.
“I think so.”
We kiss and head up to the Perinatology Center on the hill.
“I wonder if they brought Audrey with them from the other office,” I say.
“I hope not.”
After a short wait, Super Tall Ultrasound Dude (STUD) from our first ultrasound of doom appears in the door. “Katherine?” (I do mean super tall—he’s easily 6’6”*.)
We stand up. Shit. Did it have to be him again? I wonder if he is praying almost as hard as we are that everything is normal, that he doesn’t have to use his prepared bad news speech (“I’m not seeing what I expect here. I’ll be back with the doctor.”) a second time.
“How are things going?” He asks as I lay down on the table.
“So far so good,” I say.
“We met about a year ago, right?” He says.
“Yep,” I say, fighting the urge to add “on one of the worst days of my life in fact.”
“You’ve had 2 losses, correct?” He says as he flips on the machine and grabs the warm goo for my belly.
“Yes.”
“I bet you’re feeling pretty anxious.”
“Oh yes,” I say. Understatement of the year. I’m surprised that I haven’t crapped my pants to be honest.
I roll down the waistband of my pants. He tucks in the towel and covers my potbelly with goo. This time I don’t look away from the screen but stare head-on. Come on, Purvis. You were here just 2 weeks ago. Don’t let me down.
He rubs the sensor over my belly and finds what he’s looking for. “Things look good,” he says quickly.
“Thank you,” I say.
As he moves the sensor around, finding Purvis’ body: arms, legs (crossed at the ankle), head, heartbeat and various markers of an 11-week ultrasound, he clicks pictures and reassures me. “Everything looks normal.”
“Thank you,” I say every time. Thank you, G-d. Thank you, STUD, for telling me over and over again and not letting me stew in my fear.
With each new find, he says “This is your baby’s head. This is your baby’s heart. This is your baby’s arms.” The phrase “your baby” somehow makes me feel warm and happy and freaked out. Purvis is a baby now. Not an embryo or fetus. Baby. I feel like I am entering dangerous territory: hope, attachment, and love.
“I need to shift your position. Your baby isn’t in a good position for me to get the measurement we need.” STUD says. He tilts the bed down.
“I do yoga. I can go upside down if you need.” Finally a chance to use my yoga powers in public!
He laughs. “I think this ought to do it.”
It doesn’t. He puts me on my side, jiggles the wand around in my pelvis. “Nope, your baby is happy where he is.”
The fear creeps back in. Why isn’t he doing what STUD wants? Is something wrong? STUD senses my freak out to be and says, “Everything looks normal. I’m just trying to get a better picture for the measurement that we need.”
He leaves Mr. Crud and I alone to wait for the doctor and to see if Purvis will get into the necessary position if I rest on my side a moment.
“I wonder if it will be one of the previous doctors,” I say.
“Accent Man or Nice Jewish Lady?” Mr. Crud asks.
“They were both good,” I say.
A new doctor whose name is also Kt enters and gives us the lowdown. Everything looks good and normal, all the markers check out. The measurement that they got of Purvis’ neck is normal too and when the results of my blood test come back, we’ll have an even better idea of our chances for genetic abnormalities. I feel weird doing these tests although I was sure from the get-go that I wanted them. I don’t know what we’ll do if we are faced with a genetically abnormal baby. I used to think that I knew, but I know enough now to know what I don’t know. (A tongue twister to keep things light, alright?) For now we will wait for the blood test results before deciding if we’ll do further diagnostic testing such as amniocentesis, which carries a small risk of miscarriage. Dr. Kt says this is what most couples do.
Again she tries to coax Purvis into a more photogenic position and again she fails so the dreaded transvaginal ultrasound is invoked.
“I’d hoped to avoid this, but I guess that’s how it goes,” I say.
Dr. Kt leaves the room and I strip from the waist down.
“Does that include my shoes?” I ask Mr. Crud. “I never know if I should leave my shoes on.”
“She said waist down.” He says with a shrug.
Dr. Kt and STUD return. This time they get the shot they need. Everything still looks good. I wonder if Purvis got his workout from my morning of yoga, if she is doing spins and turns along with me in the morning and this is her nap time.
STUD gives us a CD of some choice photos of Purvis and we are on our way.
“I’m not quite sure what to do with good news,” Mr. Crud says.
“I know. I had already starting preparing for the bad,” I say.
We are both exhausted, but not too tired to call the essential parties and share the news. Mr. Crud sends the best shot of Purvis to our close family members and we smile at their joyful replies.
“You’re not going to make that picture your wallpaper, are you?” I ask.
“No. Are you?”
“No. Something about that creeps me out,” I say.
“I wonder if I’ll be the type of person who has pictures of their kids on their wallpaper,” he says.
I know I’ve said some variation of this a gajillion times, but golly, I hope we find out.
* Did I just make the same error as Spinal Tap in the Stonehenge debacle?
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Yup, Still Pregnant
5-29-09
The night before my Wednesday doctor’s appointment—and thank you to the fine Richmond Clinic folks who got me in so promptly—I awake at 1:33 to make my second middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom. I return to bed. I close my eyes. I open them. Dang. Thoughts of my appointment the next day crowd my brain. I try all my usual insomnia combating tricks. I breathe deeply into my belly. I relax each body part. I move to the couch to get out of the bed rut. I think of the next chapter in my novel and the wacky adventures awaiting my main character. No dice. I also notice that my throat is scratchier than usual. Sick? Great. The light in our bedroom goes on. Mr. Crud wanders out into the living room.
“Your alarm just went off.”
“Oh no.”
I stumble to the bathroom and realize there is no way I can make it through the day. I email in sick. I swallow a few more times to be sure that I am legit sick and not just playing it up. Nope. Still hurts. Good thing I have a doctor’s appointment.
I think that I am handling my 3-day-old knowledge of my pregnancy well, but the fear lurks. It rears its head again after we arrive at the clinic and I am alone in the bathroom, pee cup in hand. I turn on the water. I do some yoga breathing. I pull out all my techniques to counter pee fright and have about as much success as I did with the insomnia. Not my day. I hear the nurses outside, directing people to other bathrooms in the clinic. This doesn’t help. Finally I eek out the smallest of samples.
“Fucking great,” I mutter.
I flash back to Dr. Rathke’s office when I am 8 years old and trying to force myself to pee into a cup. My mom red-faced telling me to “just go already.” (Note to self: This does not help.) Oh pee shame, why must you follow me into adulthood? Eventually I was able to pee, but it involved a return trip to the office after collecting a sample at home. I bet my mom never imagined herself chauffeuring her daughter’s pee around, but such are the wonders of motherhood—or so I’ve heard.
The nurse intercepts me on my way back to the exam room. “I’ll take that,” he says.
I hand it to him sheepishly. “Is this enough?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
I tamp down the urge to spill my tale of pee woe and TMI myself onto some sort of Bad Patient list at the clinic. Mr. Crud looks up from the paper.
“You okay?”
“I think so.” But my stomach is dropping. I want to barf up the chicken noodle soup I just ate for lunch. I pound more water in case another pee test is in order. So much for staying cool.
Dr. Awesome enters, now about 7 months pregnant. “How are you? Are you excited?”
“Suddenly I’m afraid that I’m not actually pregnant.” I say. What if I hallucinated the line? What if it’s gone? What if I’m about to get my period right this moment?
“We’ll find out in a few minutes.”
Dr. Awesome lives up to her name. We craft a strategy to keep Mr. Crud and I sane over the next few months. I’ll have an ultrasound around 9 weeks, a bit later than the last time and after the point at which I lost Dewey.
“At that point we’ll be able to see more than just a heartbeat,” she says.
As part of my ritual, I confirm once again that it is okay to continue my yoga practice and to sweat as long as I’m feeling okay.
“Yes, yes it is. Don’t start doing anything new. Like don’t start doing like two hours of yoga a day 6 days a week.”
“I already do 2 hours of yoga 6 days a week,” I say, my heart skipping a bit.
“Then don’t do 4 hours.”
She tells me I can keep it up at the current level or back off a bit. I already have. No more jumping back for me. Uddiyana bandha? I’ll see you in February.
She urges us to keep busy, to let ourselves be excited about the pregnancy.
“I think it will be fine. The other two were caused by different things. There’s not a pattern.”
I think of the missed miscarriage message board that I looked at a few days ago and the varied tales of woe and confusion. “So many things can go wrong though.”
I vow to stay away from message boards.
“Am I considered high risk?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Well, you are considered elderly because of your age. But so am I. My due date is 2 weeks after I turn 35.”
“Elderly, eh? Nice choice of words.”
“I know, right?”
Dr. Awesome will be out on maternity leave for most of my (theoretical) second trimester but for the time being we plan to work with her when she returns. The thought of finding another doctor or midwife exhausts me. All the doctors we have worked with have been terrific, but I like that my doctor has a nose piercing and lives in my neighborhood and sometimes shows up at the same yoga class as us. My gut tells me that she is my doctor and in these cases I am trusting my gut.
Dr. Awesome has other patients to see. We ask all our questions. I get a prescription for pregnancy-safe anti-anxiety medication (thank you for existing, hydroxypam!) and we’re on our way.
Tonight we are going to a favorite restaurant to celebrate.
“You can get any sparkling water you want,” Mr. Crud says.
“Maybe I’ll get sparkling water and a cranberry juice,” I say.
Celebrate good times indeed.
People told: Dance professor in my office who is also pregnant—it just slipped out
Friend and confidante extraordinaire, Trista
BFF from the college years, E
The night before my Wednesday doctor’s appointment—and thank you to the fine Richmond Clinic folks who got me in so promptly—I awake at 1:33 to make my second middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom. I return to bed. I close my eyes. I open them. Dang. Thoughts of my appointment the next day crowd my brain. I try all my usual insomnia combating tricks. I breathe deeply into my belly. I relax each body part. I move to the couch to get out of the bed rut. I think of the next chapter in my novel and the wacky adventures awaiting my main character. No dice. I also notice that my throat is scratchier than usual. Sick? Great. The light in our bedroom goes on. Mr. Crud wanders out into the living room.
“Your alarm just went off.”
“Oh no.”
I stumble to the bathroom and realize there is no way I can make it through the day. I email in sick. I swallow a few more times to be sure that I am legit sick and not just playing it up. Nope. Still hurts. Good thing I have a doctor’s appointment.
I think that I am handling my 3-day-old knowledge of my pregnancy well, but the fear lurks. It rears its head again after we arrive at the clinic and I am alone in the bathroom, pee cup in hand. I turn on the water. I do some yoga breathing. I pull out all my techniques to counter pee fright and have about as much success as I did with the insomnia. Not my day. I hear the nurses outside, directing people to other bathrooms in the clinic. This doesn’t help. Finally I eek out the smallest of samples.
“Fucking great,” I mutter.
I flash back to Dr. Rathke’s office when I am 8 years old and trying to force myself to pee into a cup. My mom red-faced telling me to “just go already.” (Note to self: This does not help.) Oh pee shame, why must you follow me into adulthood? Eventually I was able to pee, but it involved a return trip to the office after collecting a sample at home. I bet my mom never imagined herself chauffeuring her daughter’s pee around, but such are the wonders of motherhood—or so I’ve heard.
The nurse intercepts me on my way back to the exam room. “I’ll take that,” he says.
I hand it to him sheepishly. “Is this enough?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
I tamp down the urge to spill my tale of pee woe and TMI myself onto some sort of Bad Patient list at the clinic. Mr. Crud looks up from the paper.
“You okay?”
“I think so.” But my stomach is dropping. I want to barf up the chicken noodle soup I just ate for lunch. I pound more water in case another pee test is in order. So much for staying cool.
Dr. Awesome enters, now about 7 months pregnant. “How are you? Are you excited?”
“Suddenly I’m afraid that I’m not actually pregnant.” I say. What if I hallucinated the line? What if it’s gone? What if I’m about to get my period right this moment?
“We’ll find out in a few minutes.”
Dr. Awesome lives up to her name. We craft a strategy to keep Mr. Crud and I sane over the next few months. I’ll have an ultrasound around 9 weeks, a bit later than the last time and after the point at which I lost Dewey.
“At that point we’ll be able to see more than just a heartbeat,” she says.
As part of my ritual, I confirm once again that it is okay to continue my yoga practice and to sweat as long as I’m feeling okay.
“Yes, yes it is. Don’t start doing anything new. Like don’t start doing like two hours of yoga a day 6 days a week.”
“I already do 2 hours of yoga 6 days a week,” I say, my heart skipping a bit.
“Then don’t do 4 hours.”
She tells me I can keep it up at the current level or back off a bit. I already have. No more jumping back for me. Uddiyana bandha? I’ll see you in February.
She urges us to keep busy, to let ourselves be excited about the pregnancy.
“I think it will be fine. The other two were caused by different things. There’s not a pattern.”
I think of the missed miscarriage message board that I looked at a few days ago and the varied tales of woe and confusion. “So many things can go wrong though.”
I vow to stay away from message boards.
“Am I considered high risk?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Well, you are considered elderly because of your age. But so am I. My due date is 2 weeks after I turn 35.”
“Elderly, eh? Nice choice of words.”
“I know, right?”
Dr. Awesome will be out on maternity leave for most of my (theoretical) second trimester but for the time being we plan to work with her when she returns. The thought of finding another doctor or midwife exhausts me. All the doctors we have worked with have been terrific, but I like that my doctor has a nose piercing and lives in my neighborhood and sometimes shows up at the same yoga class as us. My gut tells me that she is my doctor and in these cases I am trusting my gut.
Dr. Awesome has other patients to see. We ask all our questions. I get a prescription for pregnancy-safe anti-anxiety medication (thank you for existing, hydroxypam!) and we’re on our way.
Tonight we are going to a favorite restaurant to celebrate.
“You can get any sparkling water you want,” Mr. Crud says.
“Maybe I’ll get sparkling water and a cranberry juice,” I say.
Celebrate good times indeed.
People told: Dance professor in my office who is also pregnant—it just slipped out
Friend and confidante extraordinaire, Trista
BFF from the college years, E
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
"Normal"
2-16-09
The results are in: I am (mostly) normal in terms of my clotting abilities and thyroid. Dr. Awesome emails me the lab report, which sends me into AP Biology flashback tremors--A heterozygo-wha? Thankfully she also sends her translation from science to laywoman. Basically, I am normal. Except, possibly, for my homocysteine levels. I am a genetic carrier of a mutation, which does make me grip my chest and say “Oh my,” but this mutation isn’t anything cool like mind-reading powers or tongue tricks. No, it is possible but not likely that my homocysteine levels may lead me to have blood-clotting issues. I tell my mom this over the phone during the mandatory but strained miscarriage check-in part of the weekly conversation.
“Well, your grandfather had problems with blood clots.”
Hmmm…could he be my homocysteine source? I rarely think about my grandfather until somebody asks about your first experience with death. He had the honor. He was 81, suffering from some kind of cancer. He was the type of grandpa who seemed impossibly old from the get-go: shiny bald, a chain-smoker with a permanent wheeze and hacking cough, and a Santa-like physique. Aside from our shared penchant for smoking, could we be joined by homocysteine?
Dr. Awesome says that we can get back in the pregnancy game unless we want to be sure about the homocysteine, in which case I can fast and then have my levels check. My first reaction: Fuck no! Fasting? Hell no!! We have a saying around our house: Don’t make Kt hungry, you wouldn’t like her when she’s hungry. Dr. Awesome goes on to say that the treatment for the unlikely case of high homocysteine levels is folic acid and B6 supplements. During both pregnancies I had been taking the recommended levels of folic acid, well-schooled am I in the effects of not enough folate on growing fetuses. B6 became part of my supplement regimen to quell the nausea. Does this mean we’re back where we started from?
I share the results with Mr. Crud. I also share my reluctance to undergo the homocysteine test. In addition to the whole fasting issue is the cost. Today we received our bill for the blood tests and saline sonogram. Over $2,000. Sure, insurance will pick up most of that, but still, it makes me wish they had found something wrong so I’d be getting my money’s worth.
“But you’ll do it, right? If Dr. Awesome says you should?” Mr. Crud asks. I realize what a huge wimp I am. I remember Jan and the ovary stress tests and hormone tests that she did in her quest for successful pregnancy. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.
“Yeah, I will. But what’s the point if the only treatment is taking vitamins that I’m already taking?”
“Good point.”
I email Dr. Awesome with this very question. She promises answers in a few days. It’s cool. I can wait. Since last month’s flurry of pregnancy desire, my levels have fallen off. I’m hitting the high fertility times and, at the moment, have zero desire to be knocked up. I’m liking my wine right now. My yoga practice is feeling great. My teacher even commented that some of the back issues, which have plagued me for the last 8 months, seem to have resolved themselves. My pants fit without the uncomfortable bulge over the waistband. Life is good.
Thanks to Facebook, I’m indulging in some nostalgia for the good old days of beer, rock shows on school nights, and viewing motherhood as just another form of patriarchical bondage. Seriously. In my early twenties, I took several writing classes with women who had children. Upon learning they were mothers, my first thought was always—and I’m not proud of this—why the hell would you do something like that? Now you’re just a mother. Oh the sweet assaholic twenties. I knew everything and was sure that I would never ever in a million years want to push a watermelon out of my lady parts. I had so much time and so many options.
I tell Mr. Crud of my swing back to the childless side of things. He’s cool.
“In other words Lyla wore off. I think our trip to visit Emma will cure that.” He’s got a point.
It would be nice to go on a vacation without being pregnant. All of my vacations last year coincided with the gnarly days of the first trimester. I think I’ll keep it in my pants—or at least protected—for another month.
Dirty martini, please.
The results are in: I am (mostly) normal in terms of my clotting abilities and thyroid. Dr. Awesome emails me the lab report, which sends me into AP Biology flashback tremors--A heterozygo-wha? Thankfully she also sends her translation from science to laywoman. Basically, I am normal. Except, possibly, for my homocysteine levels. I am a genetic carrier of a mutation, which does make me grip my chest and say “Oh my,” but this mutation isn’t anything cool like mind-reading powers or tongue tricks. No, it is possible but not likely that my homocysteine levels may lead me to have blood-clotting issues. I tell my mom this over the phone during the mandatory but strained miscarriage check-in part of the weekly conversation.
“Well, your grandfather had problems with blood clots.”
Hmmm…could he be my homocysteine source? I rarely think about my grandfather until somebody asks about your first experience with death. He had the honor. He was 81, suffering from some kind of cancer. He was the type of grandpa who seemed impossibly old from the get-go: shiny bald, a chain-smoker with a permanent wheeze and hacking cough, and a Santa-like physique. Aside from our shared penchant for smoking, could we be joined by homocysteine?
Dr. Awesome says that we can get back in the pregnancy game unless we want to be sure about the homocysteine, in which case I can fast and then have my levels check. My first reaction: Fuck no! Fasting? Hell no!! We have a saying around our house: Don’t make Kt hungry, you wouldn’t like her when she’s hungry. Dr. Awesome goes on to say that the treatment for the unlikely case of high homocysteine levels is folic acid and B6 supplements. During both pregnancies I had been taking the recommended levels of folic acid, well-schooled am I in the effects of not enough folate on growing fetuses. B6 became part of my supplement regimen to quell the nausea. Does this mean we’re back where we started from?
I share the results with Mr. Crud. I also share my reluctance to undergo the homocysteine test. In addition to the whole fasting issue is the cost. Today we received our bill for the blood tests and saline sonogram. Over $2,000. Sure, insurance will pick up most of that, but still, it makes me wish they had found something wrong so I’d be getting my money’s worth.
“But you’ll do it, right? If Dr. Awesome says you should?” Mr. Crud asks. I realize what a huge wimp I am. I remember Jan and the ovary stress tests and hormone tests that she did in her quest for successful pregnancy. Maybe I’m not cut out for this.
“Yeah, I will. But what’s the point if the only treatment is taking vitamins that I’m already taking?”
“Good point.”
I email Dr. Awesome with this very question. She promises answers in a few days. It’s cool. I can wait. Since last month’s flurry of pregnancy desire, my levels have fallen off. I’m hitting the high fertility times and, at the moment, have zero desire to be knocked up. I’m liking my wine right now. My yoga practice is feeling great. My teacher even commented that some of the back issues, which have plagued me for the last 8 months, seem to have resolved themselves. My pants fit without the uncomfortable bulge over the waistband. Life is good.
Thanks to Facebook, I’m indulging in some nostalgia for the good old days of beer, rock shows on school nights, and viewing motherhood as just another form of patriarchical bondage. Seriously. In my early twenties, I took several writing classes with women who had children. Upon learning they were mothers, my first thought was always—and I’m not proud of this—why the hell would you do something like that? Now you’re just a mother. Oh the sweet assaholic twenties. I knew everything and was sure that I would never ever in a million years want to push a watermelon out of my lady parts. I had so much time and so many options.
I tell Mr. Crud of my swing back to the childless side of things. He’s cool.
“In other words Lyla wore off. I think our trip to visit Emma will cure that.” He’s got a point.
It would be nice to go on a vacation without being pregnant. All of my vacations last year coincided with the gnarly days of the first trimester. I think I’ll keep it in my pants—or at least protected—for another month.
Dirty martini, please.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Fantastic Voyage
2-2-09
As Mr. Crud and I are driving to my latest appointment with the dreaded ultrasound machine I say, “You know, I haven’t even prepared myself for bad news. I’m not worried at all.”
“Can you ever really prepare yourself? Does worrying really prepare you for anything?”
“Nah I guess not.”
Mr. Crud turns the car, our family-perfect Subaru station wagon, onto the curving uphill road that improbably leads to the hospital where I hope to give birth someday. During the recent snow-fueled clusterfuck I frequently thought of the pregnant ladies destined to give birth at OHSU. Were they totally freaking?
“We should aim for a due date not during the winter,” I say. “This hill is outrageous.”
“We got a lot more important things to think about,” he says.
I sense that he’s felt the gravity of this appointment, which I have dubbed my uterus-scape, more than I. This morning I realized that I hadn’t even googled the procedure I was about to undergo. I’m getting soft.
As is our way, we are 25 minutes early for the appointment. We check in, peruse the Sam Adams sex scandal-laden paper and pretend that we aren’t dreading the dark room and the ultrasound screen with its Rorshach blobs.
In the tradition of our past ultrasound appointments, the doctors are running behind. We have some seriously bad ultrasound karma. More Sam Adams. More staring at the backwards baseball-capped guy with the “Ice Ice Baby” ringtone.
Once we get into the examination room and I am half-undressed and raring to go, my pulse rises. “God, I hate ultrasounds.”
“I hear that one good one erases the bad ones,” Mr. Crud says.
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh really?”
“Well not erase but fade.”
A perky blonde lab-coated lady does some preliminary ultrasounds, taking pics of my lovely uterus, my charming ovaries, and those devilish fallopian tubes. She says “Sorry” when the wand jammed up my hoo-ha needs to be rotated in weird contortions. I appreciate her care. The most painful part about the procedure is my trapped right leg. I feel like it may spasm and kick her so I concentrate my efforts on keeping it safely in the stirrup. I watch the blobs on the screen until I flashback to my first ultrasounds. I look away. I keep expecting her to read from the ultrasound technician’s script of bad news, “I’m not seeing what I expected. I need to get the doctor.”
She leaves without incident.
“At least there aren’t pictures of Audrey Hepburn and Julia Roberts up in here.” I say.
“Yeah, what IS up with that?” Mr. Crud says.
For my next ultrasound in that hated room in the Center for Sadness and Disappointment, I will uncover the mystery of the black-and-white photos of actresses. Bad news or good.
The red-haired, jean-skirted Dr. German—named for her accent, so clever—gives me the rundown of the procedure with all the risks. Perforating the uterus is on this list of risks too. I feel like a grizzled veteran, a stream of cigarette smoke seeping out my nose, “Perforated uterus? Yeah, I know from perforated uteruses.” Basically they’ll be injecting a balloon and a saline solution into my uterus via a catheter. It’s uncomfortable but not painful. If a doctor ever tells you something is going to be painful, run. Or demand good meds.
A second doctor with curly brown hair and a name neither the doctor nor the technician is sure how to pronounce enters the room. She is the HBIC. She shakes my hand and then Mr. Crud’s.
“Is there any way that you could be pregnant?” She asks. “I thought I saw something.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Mr. Crud and I look at each other. If I am pregnant, that sperm had some serious work ahead of it. Or else I am shitty at counting.
“When was your last period?”
I rattle off the date. I’ve grown accustomed to keeping track of my LMP. Guess-timation will no longer do.
“Okay, probably just a cyst then.” Dr. HBIC says. “Ready?”
Dang, another missed opportunity for an immaculate conception joke.
The room remains dark as the doctors and Ms. LabCoat crowd around my nether regions and inject the balloon and saline. Dr. German aims a flashlight between my legs and I so want to make a spelunking joke, but I resist. The urge to be inappropriate in these situations is so strong. I bite my tongue and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the next visit from the discomfort fairy. I don’t wait long. I feel a pinch inside me and then cramps.
Mr. Crud holds my hand. I listen to the doctors and try to decipher what their words mean, what the spaces between the words mean. Does “move to the right?” actually mean “something is totally fucked over there on the right. Shit, she doesn’t even have an ovary left.” Again I turn to the screen and try to make something familiar out of gray blobs. If someone had pointed at one of the blobs and told me it was a heartbeat, I would have nodded in agreement. Of course. I’ve never seen an ultrasound of my own that resembled anything but a bean. They inflate and deflate the balloon. Snap pictures. The cramping comes and goes.
Dr. German asks if I am hurting. “No, it’s okay. I’ve experienced much worse.”
Dr. HBIC looks me in the eye. “I know.”
I almost tear up at that. I feel that she does know, that she has read my story and understood it. I’m glad that I have dropped the cheery good patient façade for a moment of understanding.
Dr. HBIC removes the wand from my lady parts. She points to one of the square photos on the screen. “That’s your uterus. If there was a septum, it would be here.” She draws a pen along the center of the black blob. “But there isn’t.”
Mr. Crud and I exchange a glance before turning back to the screen. “Everything looks fine,” she says. “Your anatomy does not explain your loss.”
“That’s good, right?” I ask.
“I think it is. Sometimes we find things that aren’t so easy to correct.”
Mr. Crud asks a few more questions, logistical ones about if she’ll be doing anymore analysis, when we’ll hear more news. I feel relieved and glad that I didn’t waste any time fretting over this appointment.
Dr. HBIC leaves us with a smile and handshake. “Good luck.”
Dr. German pauses at the foot of the gurney. “On a personal note, this happened to me and I now have two beautiful daughters.”
I tear up again as I do whenever I meet a sister-visitor to miscarriage world. Words get caught in my throat. “Thank you for telling me,” I say.
“It’s happened to a friend of mine. She has children now too. Just relax. It will be okay,” she says.
I feel like I want to say either too much or too little. Ask for every detail of her miscarriages or pull myself into a tight ball and mutter thank you. I thank her again. The perky technician closes the door behind Dr. German as they exit.
“Wow. That was really cool of her to share that.” I say, pulling on my pants.
On our way out the technician wishes us luck. My uterus is officially not funky. I feel ready to tackle the remaining tests so we head down to the Center for Sadness and Disappointment. I talk Superbowl with the phlebotomist while he fills at least 10 vials with my blood.
As Mr. Crud and I navigate through rush hour traffic, I feel my confidence returning again. It will work this time. I know it. But how do I know it and is that part that knows it the same part that detected nothing wrong the first two times?
The not-so-fantastic voyage continues.
As Mr. Crud and I are driving to my latest appointment with the dreaded ultrasound machine I say, “You know, I haven’t even prepared myself for bad news. I’m not worried at all.”
“Can you ever really prepare yourself? Does worrying really prepare you for anything?”
“Nah I guess not.”
Mr. Crud turns the car, our family-perfect Subaru station wagon, onto the curving uphill road that improbably leads to the hospital where I hope to give birth someday. During the recent snow-fueled clusterfuck I frequently thought of the pregnant ladies destined to give birth at OHSU. Were they totally freaking?
“We should aim for a due date not during the winter,” I say. “This hill is outrageous.”
“We got a lot more important things to think about,” he says.
I sense that he’s felt the gravity of this appointment, which I have dubbed my uterus-scape, more than I. This morning I realized that I hadn’t even googled the procedure I was about to undergo. I’m getting soft.
As is our way, we are 25 minutes early for the appointment. We check in, peruse the Sam Adams sex scandal-laden paper and pretend that we aren’t dreading the dark room and the ultrasound screen with its Rorshach blobs.
In the tradition of our past ultrasound appointments, the doctors are running behind. We have some seriously bad ultrasound karma. More Sam Adams. More staring at the backwards baseball-capped guy with the “Ice Ice Baby” ringtone.
Once we get into the examination room and I am half-undressed and raring to go, my pulse rises. “God, I hate ultrasounds.”
“I hear that one good one erases the bad ones,” Mr. Crud says.
I raise an eyebrow. “Oh really?”
“Well not erase but fade.”
A perky blonde lab-coated lady does some preliminary ultrasounds, taking pics of my lovely uterus, my charming ovaries, and those devilish fallopian tubes. She says “Sorry” when the wand jammed up my hoo-ha needs to be rotated in weird contortions. I appreciate her care. The most painful part about the procedure is my trapped right leg. I feel like it may spasm and kick her so I concentrate my efforts on keeping it safely in the stirrup. I watch the blobs on the screen until I flashback to my first ultrasounds. I look away. I keep expecting her to read from the ultrasound technician’s script of bad news, “I’m not seeing what I expected. I need to get the doctor.”
She leaves without incident.
“At least there aren’t pictures of Audrey Hepburn and Julia Roberts up in here.” I say.
“Yeah, what IS up with that?” Mr. Crud says.
For my next ultrasound in that hated room in the Center for Sadness and Disappointment, I will uncover the mystery of the black-and-white photos of actresses. Bad news or good.
The red-haired, jean-skirted Dr. German—named for her accent, so clever—gives me the rundown of the procedure with all the risks. Perforating the uterus is on this list of risks too. I feel like a grizzled veteran, a stream of cigarette smoke seeping out my nose, “Perforated uterus? Yeah, I know from perforated uteruses.” Basically they’ll be injecting a balloon and a saline solution into my uterus via a catheter. It’s uncomfortable but not painful. If a doctor ever tells you something is going to be painful, run. Or demand good meds.
A second doctor with curly brown hair and a name neither the doctor nor the technician is sure how to pronounce enters the room. She is the HBIC. She shakes my hand and then Mr. Crud’s.
“Is there any way that you could be pregnant?” She asks. “I thought I saw something.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Mr. Crud and I look at each other. If I am pregnant, that sperm had some serious work ahead of it. Or else I am shitty at counting.
“When was your last period?”
I rattle off the date. I’ve grown accustomed to keeping track of my LMP. Guess-timation will no longer do.
“Okay, probably just a cyst then.” Dr. HBIC says. “Ready?”
Dang, another missed opportunity for an immaculate conception joke.
The room remains dark as the doctors and Ms. LabCoat crowd around my nether regions and inject the balloon and saline. Dr. German aims a flashlight between my legs and I so want to make a spelunking joke, but I resist. The urge to be inappropriate in these situations is so strong. I bite my tongue and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the next visit from the discomfort fairy. I don’t wait long. I feel a pinch inside me and then cramps.
Mr. Crud holds my hand. I listen to the doctors and try to decipher what their words mean, what the spaces between the words mean. Does “move to the right?” actually mean “something is totally fucked over there on the right. Shit, she doesn’t even have an ovary left.” Again I turn to the screen and try to make something familiar out of gray blobs. If someone had pointed at one of the blobs and told me it was a heartbeat, I would have nodded in agreement. Of course. I’ve never seen an ultrasound of my own that resembled anything but a bean. They inflate and deflate the balloon. Snap pictures. The cramping comes and goes.
Dr. German asks if I am hurting. “No, it’s okay. I’ve experienced much worse.”
Dr. HBIC looks me in the eye. “I know.”
I almost tear up at that. I feel that she does know, that she has read my story and understood it. I’m glad that I have dropped the cheery good patient façade for a moment of understanding.
Dr. HBIC removes the wand from my lady parts. She points to one of the square photos on the screen. “That’s your uterus. If there was a septum, it would be here.” She draws a pen along the center of the black blob. “But there isn’t.”
Mr. Crud and I exchange a glance before turning back to the screen. “Everything looks fine,” she says. “Your anatomy does not explain your loss.”
“That’s good, right?” I ask.
“I think it is. Sometimes we find things that aren’t so easy to correct.”
Mr. Crud asks a few more questions, logistical ones about if she’ll be doing anymore analysis, when we’ll hear more news. I feel relieved and glad that I didn’t waste any time fretting over this appointment.
Dr. HBIC leaves us with a smile and handshake. “Good luck.”
Dr. German pauses at the foot of the gurney. “On a personal note, this happened to me and I now have two beautiful daughters.”
I tear up again as I do whenever I meet a sister-visitor to miscarriage world. Words get caught in my throat. “Thank you for telling me,” I say.
“It’s happened to a friend of mine. She has children now too. Just relax. It will be okay,” she says.
I feel like I want to say either too much or too little. Ask for every detail of her miscarriages or pull myself into a tight ball and mutter thank you. I thank her again. The perky technician closes the door behind Dr. German as they exit.
“Wow. That was really cool of her to share that.” I say, pulling on my pants.
On our way out the technician wishes us luck. My uterus is officially not funky. I feel ready to tackle the remaining tests so we head down to the Center for Sadness and Disappointment. I talk Superbowl with the phlebotomist while he fills at least 10 vials with my blood.
As Mr. Crud and I navigate through rush hour traffic, I feel my confidence returning again. It will work this time. I know it. But how do I know it and is that part that knows it the same part that detected nothing wrong the first two times?
The not-so-fantastic voyage continues.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Practice Makes Perfect
1-22-2009
I curl over the toilet seat for the third time in as many hours. 4:30 a.m. I am supposed to be sleeping. It is Mr. Crud’s birthday. We are supposed to be celebrating with meals at our favorite restaurants, martinis (for me), gin and tonics (for him), and all around good cheer. Instead I am puking my guts out and cursing shellfish.
I am dying.
I better lose some fucking weight if I don’t die.
I’m glad I’m not pregnant for this barf-storm.
I wonder if breastfeeding women must stop if they come down with the flu or, as in my case, food poisoning. Can the toxins be transmitted to the infant via breastmilk? I have my next random question for my doctor when I hear back from her.
Mr. Crud and I have decided to ditch the genetic tests for now and go with the ones recommended by Dr. Awesome: thyroid, thrombosis, and the saline sonogram. The sonogram will be a more detailed look at my uterus, a uterus-scape in fact, to see if I have any stray membranes that might have suckered an egg into attaching to it although it doesn’t have adequate blood flow. I look forward to regaling my visiting in-laws with tales of my uterus. I am the dark artist daughter-in-law. Also the potty-mouthed daughter-in-law as evidenced by my mother-in-law’s reluctance to speak of the copy of my zine I once gave her. I have a rep to uphold.
My plan to get blood drawn the next workday hits a snag thanks to the revenge of the paella that Mr. Crud and I are suffering. No matter. Throwing up the entirety of my being hasn’t left me feeling very sexy. Or in the mood to do something that will make me nauseous 24-7. We are recovering from our bout with food poisoning but still wary of food. I call Mr. Crud to make dinner plans.
“Let’s play it by ear. Like when you were pregnant,” he says.
“Guess we should start practicing.”
The post-food poisoning nausea is different from pregnancy nausea. When I was pregnant I felt like my gag reflex was on high alert. The slightest whiff of burnt beef from Chipotle sent me reeling. My current nausea flavor is more subtle, more of a burning in the gut.
My personal night of living vomit had me wondering if maybe, maybe, I could be pregnant, if this was a sign of things to come. (Dehydration has been known to play games with ones sanity.) Yoga buddy Jan mentioned that her current pregnancy felt different than the miscarried ones. Maybe that period that I got a few days ago was a hoax. That uterus of mine is tricky. She likes to prank.
When Mr. Crud came down with my symptoms, I knew for sure that this was all the fault of some rogue microorganism and not a miracle spermatozoa. I’m waiting for a more complete recovery before the hike down to the Center for Sadness and Disappointment for my blood draw. Mr. Crud is coming with me. At least our return trip won’t involve any horrible news. Yet.
I curl over the toilet seat for the third time in as many hours. 4:30 a.m. I am supposed to be sleeping. It is Mr. Crud’s birthday. We are supposed to be celebrating with meals at our favorite restaurants, martinis (for me), gin and tonics (for him), and all around good cheer. Instead I am puking my guts out and cursing shellfish.
I am dying.
I better lose some fucking weight if I don’t die.
I’m glad I’m not pregnant for this barf-storm.
I wonder if breastfeeding women must stop if they come down with the flu or, as in my case, food poisoning. Can the toxins be transmitted to the infant via breastmilk? I have my next random question for my doctor when I hear back from her.
Mr. Crud and I have decided to ditch the genetic tests for now and go with the ones recommended by Dr. Awesome: thyroid, thrombosis, and the saline sonogram. The sonogram will be a more detailed look at my uterus, a uterus-scape in fact, to see if I have any stray membranes that might have suckered an egg into attaching to it although it doesn’t have adequate blood flow. I look forward to regaling my visiting in-laws with tales of my uterus. I am the dark artist daughter-in-law. Also the potty-mouthed daughter-in-law as evidenced by my mother-in-law’s reluctance to speak of the copy of my zine I once gave her. I have a rep to uphold.
My plan to get blood drawn the next workday hits a snag thanks to the revenge of the paella that Mr. Crud and I are suffering. No matter. Throwing up the entirety of my being hasn’t left me feeling very sexy. Or in the mood to do something that will make me nauseous 24-7. We are recovering from our bout with food poisoning but still wary of food. I call Mr. Crud to make dinner plans.
“Let’s play it by ear. Like when you were pregnant,” he says.
“Guess we should start practicing.”
The post-food poisoning nausea is different from pregnancy nausea. When I was pregnant I felt like my gag reflex was on high alert. The slightest whiff of burnt beef from Chipotle sent me reeling. My current nausea flavor is more subtle, more of a burning in the gut.
My personal night of living vomit had me wondering if maybe, maybe, I could be pregnant, if this was a sign of things to come. (Dehydration has been known to play games with ones sanity.) Yoga buddy Jan mentioned that her current pregnancy felt different than the miscarried ones. Maybe that period that I got a few days ago was a hoax. That uterus of mine is tricky. She likes to prank.
When Mr. Crud came down with my symptoms, I knew for sure that this was all the fault of some rogue microorganism and not a miracle spermatozoa. I’m waiting for a more complete recovery before the hike down to the Center for Sadness and Disappointment for my blood draw. Mr. Crud is coming with me. At least our return trip won’t involve any horrible news. Yet.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Hurry!
1-15-09
The cramps began early this morning, awaking me from my dream where Max and Kathy Crud had recently welcomed their second child into the world, a cherubic boy named Purvis. I bounced Purvis on my knee, wondering even in dream-world if I would ever give birth to my own Purvis. (Who, for the record, I would not name Purvis.)
Over the last week my desire to “try this bullshit again” as I told, Kelley, my massage therapist and (fingers crossed) doula-to-be has gone from trickle to waterfall. Last Friday I had a moment to talk to Jan*, the pregnant yoga buddy who has endured 2 miscarriages, each about a month before mine. I dropped off my mat then stepped up to her office door.
“Congratulations,” I said, peeking around the corner.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “How are you?”
“I’m good, really good,” I said. “How are YOU?”
“I’m good too.”
She gave me the montage version of her miscarriages. The first came quickly after the positive pregnancy test. The second was an experience similar to mine—ultrasound of doom at 9 weeks after already having a positive ultrasound at 6 weeks. She and her husband did the full battery of tests: blood draws, an ovary stress test, sperm tests, the whole work-up. The news was mixed.
“We decided to give it one month, one more chance, before doing in vitro and—“ she cradles her belly. “I still don’t believe it, but it’s getting pretty hard to deny.” She laughs.
I ask her about the anxiety, if she can relax, why she stopped doing yoga for two months. The questions flow in a giddy rush. In part, I will be late for work if I chat too long, and in part, I need to hear good news, to pretend for just a moment that her experience will be mine.
“I am relaxing. We’re having a boy. After a positive ultrasound experience, I could relax,” she says.
She stopped the yoga on doctor’s orders after she started to bleed. “But the bleeding was probably caused by the ultrasound or the progesterone. They didn’t tell me that of course.” She snorts. “I had to stop longer than I wanted, but it was okay. I did hatha and it was fine. Of course I’m not where I used to be.”
But who is in ashtanga world? Sometimes it feels like we are in constant recovery from past injuries or keeping a wary eye on those creaky body parts for injuries on the horizon. Do I require drama in all aspects of my life? Even yoga?
“The doctors said that yoga wouldn’t cause a miscarriage.”
Every time I hear those words, I am almost rushing to hear them again. Like Lenny and his rabbits, I need to be told daily that nothing I did caused my miscarriages, especially not yoga.
“How about you?” Jan asks.
“We’re thinking about getting going again,” I say, tears glistening in my eyes. “I’m terrified, but what can you do?”
“I’m praying for you,” she says. We hug.
“But I won’t ask if you’re pregnant. You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll probably tell you first thing. I’ll need the support.”
Walking to my office, I feel lighter. The possibility of having a baby is no longer an impassible mountain.
I email my doctor with thanks for her calls, her card, and all her kindness. We set up a phone appointment for the following Monday. Then, Sunday, Mr. Crud and I stop by the bakery before yoga class. Seconds before walking in my spidey senses tingled. I dismissed my intuition as hopeful thinking.
I buy us bread—a 7-grain carrot roll for me, a short skinny for Mr. Crud—and we step towards the door. Dr. Awesome (her newly coined PPC2 name) spins around, her son on her hip.
“Hey!” We say in unison.
The woo-woo side of me goes into overdrive. Despite all my anti-meant-to-be propaganda, I still feel like coincidences are more than the sum of their parts. This is a sign! First Jan, now Dr. Awesome. We must skip yoga class and commence to making Peabody 3 despite the fact that I am a week past ovulation.
We chat, we meet Dr. Awesome’s hot-chocolate mustached son. “You growing a mustache?” Mr. Crud asks.
I smile at Dr. Awesome. Isn’t he good at this?
We confirm our phone appointment and head off to yoga class, my baby mania quelled by the promise of restorative poses.
“So, what are your questions?” Dr. Awesome asks the following Monday morning.
I shut my office door and tell my student worker that I’m going into brief seclusion. He can hear through the window that separates my office from the front reception era but I don’t care. I’m less and less worried about my coworkers knowing about MC#2 these days. They can know. I just don’t want to talk about it.
“Can you go over what happened one more time? I was kind of in a fog right after it happened.”
She consulted the genetic counselor before calling. MC#1 remains a mystery. MC#2 was caused by Trisomy 22. Trisomy 22 is the second leading cause of chromosomal miscarriages and has nothing to do with my old lady eggs or Mr. Crud’s sperm.
“It’s a sporadic variation. Something went wrong when the cells were dividing.”
I jump in, always ready to flog myself. “So could anything I was doing have interfered with normal cell division?”
“No. It’s a mystery why it happens. It just does.”
Ah, the double-edged sword of mystery talk. I wonder if Dewey’s cells were happily dividing when all of a sudden I swung into triangle pose, causing a chromosome to hop to another cell.
“So tell me about the tests.”
Genetic tests. “They can tell you if you are at a higher risk for this happening again, but they can be expensive and insurance might not cover them.”
Thyroid tests. “We sometimes don’t know if something is wrong with the thyroid. It’s not likely, but it’s good to be sure.”
Thrombosis test. “This will tell us if you have a clotting problem. It might explain your first miscarriage if this is the problem.”
Saline infused sonogram. Dr. Awesome needs to consult with the doc who performed my D and C to see what we can learn from this. “Likely it will tell us if the embryo is having a hard time attaching to your uterus because of fibroids.”
Dr. Awesome tells me that most of these situations are treatable. The thyroid with drugs; the clotting with baby aspirin. She and the genetic counselor agree that the genetic tests will likely turn up negative.
Now for my silly question. “Should we wait until we get the test results to start trying?”
“Probably, but if we find out the results early enough in your pregnancy then we can start treating you.”
I decide to consult with Mr. Crud before canceling the genetic tests. I know he will be disappointed. He’s been itching to get his blood drawn. I suspect he’d even be psyched to have to give a sperm sample.
I calculate the date of my expected period. Getting the test results before the fun times of fertile days will be a tight squeeze. I’m in a devil-may-care-fuck-it-let’s-try phase, but I’m alone. Mr. Crud still gets the jittery “eeeee” face when I bring up the possibility.
Purvis’ cousin-to-be will likely be on hold another month. At least.
* Not her real name.
The cramps began early this morning, awaking me from my dream where Max and Kathy Crud had recently welcomed their second child into the world, a cherubic boy named Purvis. I bounced Purvis on my knee, wondering even in dream-world if I would ever give birth to my own Purvis. (Who, for the record, I would not name Purvis.)
Over the last week my desire to “try this bullshit again” as I told, Kelley, my massage therapist and (fingers crossed) doula-to-be has gone from trickle to waterfall. Last Friday I had a moment to talk to Jan*, the pregnant yoga buddy who has endured 2 miscarriages, each about a month before mine. I dropped off my mat then stepped up to her office door.
“Congratulations,” I said, peeking around the corner.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “How are you?”
“I’m good, really good,” I said. “How are YOU?”
“I’m good too.”
She gave me the montage version of her miscarriages. The first came quickly after the positive pregnancy test. The second was an experience similar to mine—ultrasound of doom at 9 weeks after already having a positive ultrasound at 6 weeks. She and her husband did the full battery of tests: blood draws, an ovary stress test, sperm tests, the whole work-up. The news was mixed.
“We decided to give it one month, one more chance, before doing in vitro and—“ she cradles her belly. “I still don’t believe it, but it’s getting pretty hard to deny.” She laughs.
I ask her about the anxiety, if she can relax, why she stopped doing yoga for two months. The questions flow in a giddy rush. In part, I will be late for work if I chat too long, and in part, I need to hear good news, to pretend for just a moment that her experience will be mine.
“I am relaxing. We’re having a boy. After a positive ultrasound experience, I could relax,” she says.
She stopped the yoga on doctor’s orders after she started to bleed. “But the bleeding was probably caused by the ultrasound or the progesterone. They didn’t tell me that of course.” She snorts. “I had to stop longer than I wanted, but it was okay. I did hatha and it was fine. Of course I’m not where I used to be.”
But who is in ashtanga world? Sometimes it feels like we are in constant recovery from past injuries or keeping a wary eye on those creaky body parts for injuries on the horizon. Do I require drama in all aspects of my life? Even yoga?
“The doctors said that yoga wouldn’t cause a miscarriage.”
Every time I hear those words, I am almost rushing to hear them again. Like Lenny and his rabbits, I need to be told daily that nothing I did caused my miscarriages, especially not yoga.
“How about you?” Jan asks.
“We’re thinking about getting going again,” I say, tears glistening in my eyes. “I’m terrified, but what can you do?”
“I’m praying for you,” she says. We hug.
“But I won’t ask if you’re pregnant. You can tell me whenever you’re ready.”
“I’ll probably tell you first thing. I’ll need the support.”
Walking to my office, I feel lighter. The possibility of having a baby is no longer an impassible mountain.
I email my doctor with thanks for her calls, her card, and all her kindness. We set up a phone appointment for the following Monday. Then, Sunday, Mr. Crud and I stop by the bakery before yoga class. Seconds before walking in my spidey senses tingled. I dismissed my intuition as hopeful thinking.
I buy us bread—a 7-grain carrot roll for me, a short skinny for Mr. Crud—and we step towards the door. Dr. Awesome (her newly coined PPC2 name) spins around, her son on her hip.
“Hey!” We say in unison.
The woo-woo side of me goes into overdrive. Despite all my anti-meant-to-be propaganda, I still feel like coincidences are more than the sum of their parts. This is a sign! First Jan, now Dr. Awesome. We must skip yoga class and commence to making Peabody 3 despite the fact that I am a week past ovulation.
We chat, we meet Dr. Awesome’s hot-chocolate mustached son. “You growing a mustache?” Mr. Crud asks.
I smile at Dr. Awesome. Isn’t he good at this?
We confirm our phone appointment and head off to yoga class, my baby mania quelled by the promise of restorative poses.
“So, what are your questions?” Dr. Awesome asks the following Monday morning.
I shut my office door and tell my student worker that I’m going into brief seclusion. He can hear through the window that separates my office from the front reception era but I don’t care. I’m less and less worried about my coworkers knowing about MC#2 these days. They can know. I just don’t want to talk about it.
“Can you go over what happened one more time? I was kind of in a fog right after it happened.”
She consulted the genetic counselor before calling. MC#1 remains a mystery. MC#2 was caused by Trisomy 22. Trisomy 22 is the second leading cause of chromosomal miscarriages and has nothing to do with my old lady eggs or Mr. Crud’s sperm.
“It’s a sporadic variation. Something went wrong when the cells were dividing.”
I jump in, always ready to flog myself. “So could anything I was doing have interfered with normal cell division?”
“No. It’s a mystery why it happens. It just does.”
Ah, the double-edged sword of mystery talk. I wonder if Dewey’s cells were happily dividing when all of a sudden I swung into triangle pose, causing a chromosome to hop to another cell.
“So tell me about the tests.”
Genetic tests. “They can tell you if you are at a higher risk for this happening again, but they can be expensive and insurance might not cover them.”
Thyroid tests. “We sometimes don’t know if something is wrong with the thyroid. It’s not likely, but it’s good to be sure.”
Thrombosis test. “This will tell us if you have a clotting problem. It might explain your first miscarriage if this is the problem.”
Saline infused sonogram. Dr. Awesome needs to consult with the doc who performed my D and C to see what we can learn from this. “Likely it will tell us if the embryo is having a hard time attaching to your uterus because of fibroids.”
Dr. Awesome tells me that most of these situations are treatable. The thyroid with drugs; the clotting with baby aspirin. She and the genetic counselor agree that the genetic tests will likely turn up negative.
Now for my silly question. “Should we wait until we get the test results to start trying?”
“Probably, but if we find out the results early enough in your pregnancy then we can start treating you.”
I decide to consult with Mr. Crud before canceling the genetic tests. I know he will be disappointed. He’s been itching to get his blood drawn. I suspect he’d even be psyched to have to give a sperm sample.
I calculate the date of my expected period. Getting the test results before the fun times of fertile days will be a tight squeeze. I’m in a devil-may-care-fuck-it-let’s-try phase, but I’m alone. Mr. Crud still gets the jittery “eeeee” face when I bring up the possibility.
Purvis’ cousin-to-be will likely be on hold another month. At least.
* Not her real name.
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