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
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Trial Period**
5-26-09
By the end of last week I am convinced that there is no way I’m pregnant. Thursday brought cramps. Friday brought more cramps, but also a bit o’ nausea. I tell myself that my body is imitating pregnancy out of habit. It picked up a few things that it liked during the previous tangles with the knocked up life. Now when I feel hunger pangs, nausea will be their annoying sidekick. At least that’s my theory. Thanks again, body.
By Saturday I’m not so sure. My calendar is marked with one To-do: Period? Since MC #1, I’ve grown all too fond of the question mark. Instead of “End of first trimester” during the reign of Dewey, I added the question mark as insurance. Ditto for the due date. So what have we—we being my body and mind even though I know they are connected because I do yoga and shit-- learned? Nausea and question marks. Miscarriage really is the gift that keeps on giving.
The nausea persists on Saturday. I have a massage appointment with my hopeful-doula-to-be, Kelley. At my last appointment I regaled her with my suspicions.
“I mean I got a negative on my pregnancy test, but I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant,” I said.
She clapped her hands with excitement. “That’s so great.”
This time I return chastened. No special feelings or spidey senses tingling although you can set your calendar by my period. 26 days, baby. And I’m usually woken up by it. My 5:00 scrambles for Advil are legendary in the Crud household. Not today.
I tell Kelley my symptoms.
“Those could mean you’re pregnant or getting your period,” she says.
“Yeah, pretty smart system.”
(Later that day Mr. Crud chimes in with his favorite “Now that’s intelligent design for you!” when I tell him that pregnancy and period symptoms are identical.)
Kelley massages away the thoughts bumping around in my brain and for a blessed 60 minutes I feel relaxed. The cramps stop. I float away not caring one way or the other.
For dinner Mr. Crud calls for fancy tacos, which means Por Que No?!? I heed the call. And order a sangria. I told Kelley that one of the reasons I was holding off on the pee test was my desire to have a few drinks tonight. “That’s totally fine. Especially if it calms you down.” She’s a midwife-in-training so I order my sangria guilt-free.
“Could be the last one,” I say to Mr. Crud.
Instead of going to the party at a friend’s house or the Lady Sov show at the Doug Fir, we stay in. I drink the rest of my bottle of wine and finish off the last couple forbidden cigarettes (yeah, yeah, I know. A week ago I saw a very pregnant woman walking down the street sucking on a cigarette. Instead of mental recriminations, I thought “Wow, that’s brave.” I wanted to follow her and catalogue all the expressions of disgust and snorts of disapproval that she left in her wake.) I had planned on more excitement—a.k.a. drunken party time—had my period arrived, but the waiting game makes me want to stick close to home.
I awake at 3:44 in the morning, mind racing. Fuck, am I pregnant? Shit. What do I do then? What have we done!!!!!????!!!! I go out to the couch, my insomnia cure, and rest there until sleep (and f-ed up dreams) find me. I return to bed. 5:30. Still too early to get up. I contemplate peeing on the stick now, but know that neither I nor Mr. Crud would be able to fall back asleep no matter if it’s a 1 or 2 line kind of morning. I awake for good at 8:00.
“I gotta pee,” I whisper to Mr. Crud.
“Are you going to do the thing?”
“Yep.”
I unwrap the final pee stick and, after re-reading instructions that I can probably recite by heart, I take the test. I set the microwave alarm and busy myself by brushing teeth and putting in my contacts. I avoid looking at the pregnancy test stick like it’s my naked brother. I check on the time. 40 seconds left. I contemplate flossing as further distraction. I let my eyes stray to her honor sitting atop the hot pink EPT box-throne. I spy with my little eye 2 lines. But it’s not official so I look away. Enough time to floss? The alarm: beep beep beep.
It’s official. I’m pregnant. Again. Unlike the first and second times I do not feel the rollercoaster revving up in my guts. Calmly I walk back to the bedroom and kiss Mr. Crud on the cheek.
“So?”
“It’s positive.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
We hold each other tight. I wait for something to come over me: tears or waves of panic, but I feel calm. I choose to enjoy this pregnancy. I choose to be a warrior instead of a victim.
“Bad things can happen at any time. Might as well enjoy it while we can,” I say as much to reassure myself as Mr. Crud.
After breakfast I turn to my old buddy old pals: the internet pregnancy sites. “You just got a positive on a pregnancy test!” they say. I remember that pregnancy websites have a romance with exclamation points and how I hate the forced cheer. They caution me that it may just be too early to have taken the test, that I should wait until a week after a missed period for accurate results. False negatives are far more common than false positives (false positives in fact being very early miscarriages). I try to remember if these cautions were here before or if I just chose to ignore them. As I scroll through websites I’ve read before my heart rate takes it up a notch. I close the open windows on my screen. I can’t read these yet. Too soon.
Sunday—which I mark on my calendar with “Positive test” instead of “Pregnant!”—feels like it lasts 3 days. Mr. Crud and I walk around in a haze, hugging each other, offering weak smiles, cleaning. If all else fails, I will have a clean house.
“It doesn’t feel real,” I say. “I feel like I’m only kinda pregnant.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Mr. Crud says.
We debate telling our families. I go back and forth. Can I handle my mom’s cautious congrats? I should know how to do this by now. I’ve already done it twice.
In the afternoon we Skype with JADE (Mr. Crud’s brother, sister-in-law, and our niece and nephew). Niece Emma swoops in on the monitor camera and growls at us. We growl back. Mr. Crud and his brother discuss the recent end of the Sri Lankan civil war. The elephant in Mr. Crud’s office snorts behind us. JADE exits the camera’s view while Mr. Crud’s brother soothes my nephew’s puzzle demands and Emma runs off to check on dinner. “Should we tell?” he asks.
“Yeah. When the kids are gone.” I say.
“Of course.”
“You tell.” I say.
“You.” He says.
“No you.”
His brother and sister-in-law come back into the frame. Mr. Crud and I look at each other, take a deep breath and he spills the beans. “We got a positive pregnancy test result today.”
Just like I would have done it. “Kt is pregnant!” has become too presumptuous. Just the facts, ma’am. We’re still in kinda-sorta territory,
They raise their arms in a cheer. I suddenly feel bashful. I don’t want to discuss it further or talk about the particulars. I want to talk about their visit to Portland in a few weeks or the lovely weather we’ve been having. Mr. Crud does most of the talking, taking up my slack. I decide to hold off on calling my family. Wait until the trial period is done.
This morning, Tuesday, I call Dr. Awesome’s office for an appointment from my desk at work. Over the weekend I was haunted by nightmares of the bad doctors that would treat me while she is on maternity leave. Plus I feel like I need her to tell me it’s real. The receptionist asks me for the reason for my appointment.
“I think I’m pregnant,” I say.
“You took the test at home?”
“Yes. It was positive.”
“And you want to come in to confirm it?” She asks.
“Yeah. I’ve had miscarriages. I don’t know. I want to see my doctor.” I mumble, eyes on the work horizon. Not quite ready to let my coworkers in on my status.
“Okay, sure. How about Wednesday?”
Tomorrow. Hmmm…
“Do you have anything on Thursday or Friday?”
“No, she’s booked. You could call back later.”
“No, Wednesday is good. Tomorrow.”
I want to tell the receptionist about the trial period, how I’m not sure if this one is going to take, how the others didn’t take but it took me a trimester to discover that, but I keep it to myself for once. She and the other receptionists will know enough about me in time.
I imagine Dr. Awesome’s face, her pulling up my chart on the computer screen. I make my mental list of things to ask: how sweaty is too sweaty in yoga practice? Can I take a fiber supplement to head off pooping problems? I turn on the internet and do my early pregnancy ritual of re-reading all the websites that tell me it’s okay to practice yoga. Again I pray this is the last time I have to do this.
Symptoms: Hello, middle-of-the-night pee breaks
Light nausea when the hunger pangs strike
Ever so slightly bigger boobs (or maybe that’s hopeful augmentation)
This week in Miscarriage Pop Culture: Mr. Crud and I are catching up on our new favorite TV show, Battlestar Galactica. In tonight’s episode, Cylon Number 6 miscarries her baby Liam, the hope for the Cylon future. I totally called it. When she got knocked in the gut during a fight scene and then hyperventilated as her Cylon fellow’s newly returned-from-the-dead wife told her of his infidelity, I looked up at Mr. Crud. “Total miscarriage.” It was a sad scene, but also funny (for us) in a well-that’s-fucking-great way. Still, totally opposed to miscarriage as a plot point. Hollywood and Sci-Fi Channel, take note.
** To my friends who are finding out the big news via blog, I apologize for not telling you personally. I owe you a drink, which I will buy you once I’m not pregnant anymore. Hopefully in 9 months or so. Fingers crossed.
By the end of last week I am convinced that there is no way I’m pregnant. Thursday brought cramps. Friday brought more cramps, but also a bit o’ nausea. I tell myself that my body is imitating pregnancy out of habit. It picked up a few things that it liked during the previous tangles with the knocked up life. Now when I feel hunger pangs, nausea will be their annoying sidekick. At least that’s my theory. Thanks again, body.
By Saturday I’m not so sure. My calendar is marked with one To-do: Period? Since MC #1, I’ve grown all too fond of the question mark. Instead of “End of first trimester” during the reign of Dewey, I added the question mark as insurance. Ditto for the due date. So what have we—we being my body and mind even though I know they are connected because I do yoga and shit-- learned? Nausea and question marks. Miscarriage really is the gift that keeps on giving.
The nausea persists on Saturday. I have a massage appointment with my hopeful-doula-to-be, Kelley. At my last appointment I regaled her with my suspicions.
“I mean I got a negative on my pregnancy test, but I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant,” I said.
She clapped her hands with excitement. “That’s so great.”
This time I return chastened. No special feelings or spidey senses tingling although you can set your calendar by my period. 26 days, baby. And I’m usually woken up by it. My 5:00 scrambles for Advil are legendary in the Crud household. Not today.
I tell Kelley my symptoms.
“Those could mean you’re pregnant or getting your period,” she says.
“Yeah, pretty smart system.”
(Later that day Mr. Crud chimes in with his favorite “Now that’s intelligent design for you!” when I tell him that pregnancy and period symptoms are identical.)
Kelley massages away the thoughts bumping around in my brain and for a blessed 60 minutes I feel relaxed. The cramps stop. I float away not caring one way or the other.
For dinner Mr. Crud calls for fancy tacos, which means Por Que No?!? I heed the call. And order a sangria. I told Kelley that one of the reasons I was holding off on the pee test was my desire to have a few drinks tonight. “That’s totally fine. Especially if it calms you down.” She’s a midwife-in-training so I order my sangria guilt-free.
“Could be the last one,” I say to Mr. Crud.
Instead of going to the party at a friend’s house or the Lady Sov show at the Doug Fir, we stay in. I drink the rest of my bottle of wine and finish off the last couple forbidden cigarettes (yeah, yeah, I know. A week ago I saw a very pregnant woman walking down the street sucking on a cigarette. Instead of mental recriminations, I thought “Wow, that’s brave.” I wanted to follow her and catalogue all the expressions of disgust and snorts of disapproval that she left in her wake.) I had planned on more excitement—a.k.a. drunken party time—had my period arrived, but the waiting game makes me want to stick close to home.
I awake at 3:44 in the morning, mind racing. Fuck, am I pregnant? Shit. What do I do then? What have we done!!!!!????!!!! I go out to the couch, my insomnia cure, and rest there until sleep (and f-ed up dreams) find me. I return to bed. 5:30. Still too early to get up. I contemplate peeing on the stick now, but know that neither I nor Mr. Crud would be able to fall back asleep no matter if it’s a 1 or 2 line kind of morning. I awake for good at 8:00.
“I gotta pee,” I whisper to Mr. Crud.
“Are you going to do the thing?”
“Yep.”
I unwrap the final pee stick and, after re-reading instructions that I can probably recite by heart, I take the test. I set the microwave alarm and busy myself by brushing teeth and putting in my contacts. I avoid looking at the pregnancy test stick like it’s my naked brother. I check on the time. 40 seconds left. I contemplate flossing as further distraction. I let my eyes stray to her honor sitting atop the hot pink EPT box-throne. I spy with my little eye 2 lines. But it’s not official so I look away. Enough time to floss? The alarm: beep beep beep.
It’s official. I’m pregnant. Again. Unlike the first and second times I do not feel the rollercoaster revving up in my guts. Calmly I walk back to the bedroom and kiss Mr. Crud on the cheek.
“So?”
“It’s positive.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
We hold each other tight. I wait for something to come over me: tears or waves of panic, but I feel calm. I choose to enjoy this pregnancy. I choose to be a warrior instead of a victim.
“Bad things can happen at any time. Might as well enjoy it while we can,” I say as much to reassure myself as Mr. Crud.
After breakfast I turn to my old buddy old pals: the internet pregnancy sites. “You just got a positive on a pregnancy test!” they say. I remember that pregnancy websites have a romance with exclamation points and how I hate the forced cheer. They caution me that it may just be too early to have taken the test, that I should wait until a week after a missed period for accurate results. False negatives are far more common than false positives (false positives in fact being very early miscarriages). I try to remember if these cautions were here before or if I just chose to ignore them. As I scroll through websites I’ve read before my heart rate takes it up a notch. I close the open windows on my screen. I can’t read these yet. Too soon.
Sunday—which I mark on my calendar with “Positive test” instead of “Pregnant!”—feels like it lasts 3 days. Mr. Crud and I walk around in a haze, hugging each other, offering weak smiles, cleaning. If all else fails, I will have a clean house.
“It doesn’t feel real,” I say. “I feel like I’m only kinda pregnant.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Mr. Crud says.
We debate telling our families. I go back and forth. Can I handle my mom’s cautious congrats? I should know how to do this by now. I’ve already done it twice.
In the afternoon we Skype with JADE (Mr. Crud’s brother, sister-in-law, and our niece and nephew). Niece Emma swoops in on the monitor camera and growls at us. We growl back. Mr. Crud and his brother discuss the recent end of the Sri Lankan civil war. The elephant in Mr. Crud’s office snorts behind us. JADE exits the camera’s view while Mr. Crud’s brother soothes my nephew’s puzzle demands and Emma runs off to check on dinner. “Should we tell?” he asks.
“Yeah. When the kids are gone.” I say.
“Of course.”
“You tell.” I say.
“You.” He says.
“No you.”
His brother and sister-in-law come back into the frame. Mr. Crud and I look at each other, take a deep breath and he spills the beans. “We got a positive pregnancy test result today.”
Just like I would have done it. “Kt is pregnant!” has become too presumptuous. Just the facts, ma’am. We’re still in kinda-sorta territory,
They raise their arms in a cheer. I suddenly feel bashful. I don’t want to discuss it further or talk about the particulars. I want to talk about their visit to Portland in a few weeks or the lovely weather we’ve been having. Mr. Crud does most of the talking, taking up my slack. I decide to hold off on calling my family. Wait until the trial period is done.
This morning, Tuesday, I call Dr. Awesome’s office for an appointment from my desk at work. Over the weekend I was haunted by nightmares of the bad doctors that would treat me while she is on maternity leave. Plus I feel like I need her to tell me it’s real. The receptionist asks me for the reason for my appointment.
“I think I’m pregnant,” I say.
“You took the test at home?”
“Yes. It was positive.”
“And you want to come in to confirm it?” She asks.
“Yeah. I’ve had miscarriages. I don’t know. I want to see my doctor.” I mumble, eyes on the work horizon. Not quite ready to let my coworkers in on my status.
“Okay, sure. How about Wednesday?”
Tomorrow. Hmmm…
“Do you have anything on Thursday or Friday?”
“No, she’s booked. You could call back later.”
“No, Wednesday is good. Tomorrow.”
I want to tell the receptionist about the trial period, how I’m not sure if this one is going to take, how the others didn’t take but it took me a trimester to discover that, but I keep it to myself for once. She and the other receptionists will know enough about me in time.
I imagine Dr. Awesome’s face, her pulling up my chart on the computer screen. I make my mental list of things to ask: how sweaty is too sweaty in yoga practice? Can I take a fiber supplement to head off pooping problems? I turn on the internet and do my early pregnancy ritual of re-reading all the websites that tell me it’s okay to practice yoga. Again I pray this is the last time I have to do this.
Symptoms: Hello, middle-of-the-night pee breaks
Light nausea when the hunger pangs strike
Ever so slightly bigger boobs (or maybe that’s hopeful augmentation)
This week in Miscarriage Pop Culture: Mr. Crud and I are catching up on our new favorite TV show, Battlestar Galactica. In tonight’s episode, Cylon Number 6 miscarries her baby Liam, the hope for the Cylon future. I totally called it. When she got knocked in the gut during a fight scene and then hyperventilated as her Cylon fellow’s newly returned-from-the-dead wife told her of his infidelity, I looked up at Mr. Crud. “Total miscarriage.” It was a sad scene, but also funny (for us) in a well-that’s-fucking-great way. Still, totally opposed to miscarriage as a plot point. Hollywood and Sci-Fi Channel, take note.
** To my friends who are finding out the big news via blog, I apologize for not telling you personally. I owe you a drink, which I will buy you once I’m not pregnant anymore. Hopefully in 9 months or so. Fingers crossed.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Reality TV
5-18-09
(WARNING: Spoilers of the season finale of The Office ahead.)
OMG! Pam is pregnant! Mr. Crud and I are watching the season finale of our beloved Office. The always adorable Pam hurts her leg. Jim takes her to the hospital. As the nurse wheels Pam into X-Ray, she asks Pam if she’s pregnant. Mr. Crud throws a knowing look. I wonder if it is a bit of misdirection to get us hanging viewers going down a blind pregnant alley. But no. A few minutes later Jim is called into the examination room for the results of Pam’s x-rays. Instead of a frantic rush to get her back on her feet so as to defeat the evil NY branch of Dunder-Mifflin, we see his face morph from shock to joy. They hug. He runs outside to tell his coworkers to “send in the subs” before returning to Pam for more celebrating.
(If I may poop on this sitcom parade, how exactly did this work? The nurse asks Pam if she’s pregnant on the way into the x-ray because x-raying pregnant women isn’t the greatest of ideas. Pam says no…so the nurse gives her a pregnancy test anyway? Are pregnancy tests standard when a woman of child-bearing age goes to the hospital after twisting her ankle? Did they x-ray her ankle and somehow tilt the machine up to catch an image of her uterus? In the parlance of the 30 Rock episode which followed: All these inconsistencies? Dealbreaker!)
And now back to our regularly scheduled blog entry about how my first thought after thinking the pregnancy development was kinda sweet (I’m surprised at how much I enjoy Pam and Jim’s cute premarital bliss.) was Pam is totally not going to have a miscarriage. A miscarriage scare so that she and Jim can know for sure for sure that they really want and love this baby? Sure. Everybody does that. But no miscarriage. Miscarriages in popular culture follow a few narratives:
• Bad woman gets knocked up and at the moment she decides she will change her evil ways to be a mother to this fetus inside of her, she has a miscarriage to punish her past misdeeds.
• Woman plans on having an abortion, but chicken-shit TV executives fear the wrath of the anti-choicers, thus have her cancel her abortion and allow her to have a miscarriage soon thereafter. Phew!
• Perfect cute couple are so in love and she gets pregnant and the birds are singing, but then she gets kicked in the stomach/has a car accident/falls down the stairs and she has a miscarriage. This technique is more common to Lifetime and weepy movies of the week.
My future master’s thesis in sociology/woman’s studies: Representations of Miscarriage in Popular Culture. (Please feel free to steal that. I’m more curious to find out the results than to do the dreaded research myself, although watching crappy TV in the name of research does have a certain appeal.)
The credits roll.
“She won’t have a miscarriage,” I say to Mr. Crud.
“Nope. It is a sitcom.”
I think about Jenna Fisher, the actress who plays Pam. She is hitting her mid-thirties sans baby bump. Does she want her own Peabody? Is playing pregnant a daily reminder of all that she is missing (or has lost—you never know a member of the miscarriage sisterhood from appearances) or a reaffirmation of her decision not to procreate? Or maybe she’s just doing her job.
As for me? We’re on the final week of the current TTC cycle. Either my period or a pregnancy test awaits this weekend. I have not the first clue as to whether magic happened this time around or if it is back to the drawing board. I have (mostly) stopped trying to guess. I don’t check on potential due dates or let myself get tangled in the superstition game. However I am looking at my boobs more than usual. Do they look bigger to you?
(WARNING: Spoilers of the season finale of The Office ahead.)
OMG! Pam is pregnant! Mr. Crud and I are watching the season finale of our beloved Office. The always adorable Pam hurts her leg. Jim takes her to the hospital. As the nurse wheels Pam into X-Ray, she asks Pam if she’s pregnant. Mr. Crud throws a knowing look. I wonder if it is a bit of misdirection to get us hanging viewers going down a blind pregnant alley. But no. A few minutes later Jim is called into the examination room for the results of Pam’s x-rays. Instead of a frantic rush to get her back on her feet so as to defeat the evil NY branch of Dunder-Mifflin, we see his face morph from shock to joy. They hug. He runs outside to tell his coworkers to “send in the subs” before returning to Pam for more celebrating.
(If I may poop on this sitcom parade, how exactly did this work? The nurse asks Pam if she’s pregnant on the way into the x-ray because x-raying pregnant women isn’t the greatest of ideas. Pam says no…so the nurse gives her a pregnancy test anyway? Are pregnancy tests standard when a woman of child-bearing age goes to the hospital after twisting her ankle? Did they x-ray her ankle and somehow tilt the machine up to catch an image of her uterus? In the parlance of the 30 Rock episode which followed: All these inconsistencies? Dealbreaker!)
And now back to our regularly scheduled blog entry about how my first thought after thinking the pregnancy development was kinda sweet (I’m surprised at how much I enjoy Pam and Jim’s cute premarital bliss.) was Pam is totally not going to have a miscarriage. A miscarriage scare so that she and Jim can know for sure for sure that they really want and love this baby? Sure. Everybody does that. But no miscarriage. Miscarriages in popular culture follow a few narratives:
• Bad woman gets knocked up and at the moment she decides she will change her evil ways to be a mother to this fetus inside of her, she has a miscarriage to punish her past misdeeds.
• Woman plans on having an abortion, but chicken-shit TV executives fear the wrath of the anti-choicers, thus have her cancel her abortion and allow her to have a miscarriage soon thereafter. Phew!
• Perfect cute couple are so in love and she gets pregnant and the birds are singing, but then she gets kicked in the stomach/has a car accident/falls down the stairs and she has a miscarriage. This technique is more common to Lifetime and weepy movies of the week.
My future master’s thesis in sociology/woman’s studies: Representations of Miscarriage in Popular Culture. (Please feel free to steal that. I’m more curious to find out the results than to do the dreaded research myself, although watching crappy TV in the name of research does have a certain appeal.)
The credits roll.
“She won’t have a miscarriage,” I say to Mr. Crud.
“Nope. It is a sitcom.”
I think about Jenna Fisher, the actress who plays Pam. She is hitting her mid-thirties sans baby bump. Does she want her own Peabody? Is playing pregnant a daily reminder of all that she is missing (or has lost—you never know a member of the miscarriage sisterhood from appearances) or a reaffirmation of her decision not to procreate? Or maybe she’s just doing her job.
As for me? We’re on the final week of the current TTC cycle. Either my period or a pregnancy test awaits this weekend. I have not the first clue as to whether magic happened this time around or if it is back to the drawing board. I have (mostly) stopped trying to guess. I don’t check on potential due dates or let myself get tangled in the superstition game. However I am looking at my boobs more than usual. Do they look bigger to you?
Friday, May 29, 2009
Word to Your Mother's Day
5-11-09
What could be a more wholesome, uncomplicated celebration than Mother’s Day? At least this is what I used to think. Mother’s Day = flowers, cute kid-made cards, champagne brunches (that’s my kinda motherhood), and burnt toast breakfast attempts by tow-headed kindergartners with gap-toothed smiles. Now I’m more in tune to the complications. Mr. Crud is more bummed about it than me. Throughout the day I catch a glum expression on his mug.
“You okay?” I expect it to be an early onset case of the Sundays.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It just feels weird.”
“That I’m not a mother?”
“Yeah.”
I chalk up my lack of reaction to the holiday as minor denial combined with minor hope. Maybe next year I will be a mother to a real live crying, pooping baby instead of an idea. Wouldn’t that be something.
Per usual, Facebook shakes me out of my denial with the flood of Mother’s Day-related status updates. All the mothers that I know had lovely days with their kids. Precious moments a-plenty. I feel the now-routine dip into contradiction: Good for you. Why not me?
Mr. Crud and I head to yoga class. “Happy Mother’s Day!” says our teacher as a welcome.
I know that she isn’t herself a mother so somehow this greeting feels okay. “And to you,” I say.
I pat Mr. Crud on the back. I hope I’m pregnant by Father’s Day. I already have a complicated enough Father’s Day what with my dad being dead and all.
We find our places among the yogis and wait for class to begin. Our teacher hands out slips of paper with a chant to honor Krishna’s mother. We clap to a beat. We chant. I know that Mr. Crud enjoys the clapping, that he can lose himself in the rhythm. As we clap I think of the other women and men of the world who may not be lost in the lavender-scented wholesomeness: The other wannabe parents like us who struggle with infertility and miscarriage; the parents of dead children with their wounded hearts; the children of incarcerated women, of abusive mothers, of dead, beloved or hated mothers; and simply those people who have complicated relationships with their mothers. I keep clapping. My wishes are for you, my complicated Mother’s Day compatriots, to find peace today. Just a little, whatever you can handle.
After class, Mr. Crud and I walk on sore, warriored-out legs back home. “Mother’s Day isn’t as simple as it seems,” Mr. Crud says.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I keep wondering what next Mother’s Day will be like,” he says.
“Yeah, me too.” I wonder if we’ll be able to gross out Peabody with the story of how she was conceived on a Mother’s Day a lot like this one. I hope so.
What could be a more wholesome, uncomplicated celebration than Mother’s Day? At least this is what I used to think. Mother’s Day = flowers, cute kid-made cards, champagne brunches (that’s my kinda motherhood), and burnt toast breakfast attempts by tow-headed kindergartners with gap-toothed smiles. Now I’m more in tune to the complications. Mr. Crud is more bummed about it than me. Throughout the day I catch a glum expression on his mug.
“You okay?” I expect it to be an early onset case of the Sundays.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. It just feels weird.”
“That I’m not a mother?”
“Yeah.”
I chalk up my lack of reaction to the holiday as minor denial combined with minor hope. Maybe next year I will be a mother to a real live crying, pooping baby instead of an idea. Wouldn’t that be something.
Per usual, Facebook shakes me out of my denial with the flood of Mother’s Day-related status updates. All the mothers that I know had lovely days with their kids. Precious moments a-plenty. I feel the now-routine dip into contradiction: Good for you. Why not me?
Mr. Crud and I head to yoga class. “Happy Mother’s Day!” says our teacher as a welcome.
I know that she isn’t herself a mother so somehow this greeting feels okay. “And to you,” I say.
I pat Mr. Crud on the back. I hope I’m pregnant by Father’s Day. I already have a complicated enough Father’s Day what with my dad being dead and all.
We find our places among the yogis and wait for class to begin. Our teacher hands out slips of paper with a chant to honor Krishna’s mother. We clap to a beat. We chant. I know that Mr. Crud enjoys the clapping, that he can lose himself in the rhythm. As we clap I think of the other women and men of the world who may not be lost in the lavender-scented wholesomeness: The other wannabe parents like us who struggle with infertility and miscarriage; the parents of dead children with their wounded hearts; the children of incarcerated women, of abusive mothers, of dead, beloved or hated mothers; and simply those people who have complicated relationships with their mothers. I keep clapping. My wishes are for you, my complicated Mother’s Day compatriots, to find peace today. Just a little, whatever you can handle.
After class, Mr. Crud and I walk on sore, warriored-out legs back home. “Mother’s Day isn’t as simple as it seems,” Mr. Crud says.
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I keep wondering what next Mother’s Day will be like,” he says.
“Yeah, me too.” I wonder if we’ll be able to gross out Peabody with the story of how she was conceived on a Mother’s Day a lot like this one. I hope so.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Um...No
4-30-09
(Sorry for the cliff-hanger, folks.)
Saturday I awake with a rollercoaster tingle in my belly. Sure, it’s 2 days before the supposed arrival of my period, but I’ve been feeling all the symptoms: random nausea, weird bursts of energy, and haven’t my boobs been looking a little larger? Plus my dreams were all about Neal Pollack a.k.a. Alternadad. No interesting narrative arc to report. We were just hanging out, palling around, talking yoga and the like. But I associate him with fatherhood, and with this leap of faith that Mr. Crud and I have taken twice so far so this dream is Significant, right? Right? I whisper in Mr. Crud’s ear, “I gotta pee. I’ll be back in a sec,” lest he worry about my disappearance from our lazy Saturday morning in bed.
I walk to the bathroom. Each step is a change of heart: no, I should wait, it’ll just be a waste of pregnancy test. Why the hell not? I spend more on drinks that I don’t finish than I did for the pee stick. Nah, this is silly. Just wait. 2 more days. You can wait.
Even though I’m not sure I am knocked up, I’ve been acting like a preg. Friday I skipped the sauna and my weekly martini. All week I loaded up on sushi in preparation for a possible sushi drought. I even used my possible pregnancy as a bargaining chip for the last piece of Gonzo Roll, the favorite roll of Mr. Crud and I that is cut into 5 pieces, which necessitates an alternating extra piece rule.
“This may be the last time I can have this for a long time,” I say to Mr. Crud over our weekly Thursday night sushi binge.
He looks at me skeptically. “Maybe.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll give up my Gonzo rights for 2 weeks,” I say.
“Deal.”
In the bathroom I skim the side of the EPT box: detects pregnancy in 93 % of women 2 days before their period begins. Good enough.
I do the test like I’ve done before. As I wait the 3 minutes for the results, I realize that I’ve never gotten a negative result on a pregnancy test. Always 2 lines for me. I steal a glance at the stick. One line. The other one isn’t even faint. I zip back to check the microwave. 30 seconds until the results. My gut sinks. Negative. The microwave beeps. I pick up the stick and face the result window. Negative.
“Oh well,” I say and head back to bed.
Mr. Crud mumbles, “What took so long?”
“I took a pregnancy test,” I say.
“And?” He perks up a little.
“Negative.”
“I don’t even know how I feel about that.”
“Me neither.”
The cramps on Sunday and blood-streaked toilet paper on Monday confirm it. Not pregnant. Negative. All my inklings and stories were not intuition, just imagination. For the first time in the history of the Crud’s pregnancy attempts, we have not gotten pregnant our first month of trying. I tell myself that this is good. We are breaking the cycle of immediate impregnation and miscarriage. This time will be different. Third time is the charm.
“I feel both sad and relieved,” Mr. Crud says. “Is that weird?”
“Nope, that’s about how I feel.”
While I plot my week of pregnancy-less life—totally taking a Vicodin tonight, I think—I wonder if maybe my body has finally learned to tell the difference between a good egg and a bad one. Our timing was on. I felt ovulation cramps shortly after we, uh, you know. Maybe just maybe my uterus has learned discernment. (See, I knew that some part of my body was learning something from all that yoga.) For lack of finding any scientific reason for the miscarriages, I find myself tunneling deeper into superstition. I write and rewrite the story of conception, of the baby that I envision us holding one day.
Last night I tell Mr. Crud of my future fantasy that my niece Emma will one day come visit us all by herself. (No offense intended JADE, I just had this vision of Emma and me going about town on a niece-auntie mission for chocolate and costume jewelry.)
“By that time we might have a Peabody of our own,” he says. “That’ll change things.”
“If we don’t have a Peabody by then, then we’ll probably never have one,” I say.
“Yeah,” Mr. Crud says. “If that happens then we’ll have our house full of mangy cats.”
“And our well-groomed dog.”
Plan B is becoming the crazy cat and dog couple. For some reason the idea of having a lot of cats that we don’t treat well and a dog that we do cracks us up. Such is what passes for humor in Miscarriage World.
(Sorry for the cliff-hanger, folks.)
Saturday I awake with a rollercoaster tingle in my belly. Sure, it’s 2 days before the supposed arrival of my period, but I’ve been feeling all the symptoms: random nausea, weird bursts of energy, and haven’t my boobs been looking a little larger? Plus my dreams were all about Neal Pollack a.k.a. Alternadad. No interesting narrative arc to report. We were just hanging out, palling around, talking yoga and the like. But I associate him with fatherhood, and with this leap of faith that Mr. Crud and I have taken twice so far so this dream is Significant, right? Right? I whisper in Mr. Crud’s ear, “I gotta pee. I’ll be back in a sec,” lest he worry about my disappearance from our lazy Saturday morning in bed.
I walk to the bathroom. Each step is a change of heart: no, I should wait, it’ll just be a waste of pregnancy test. Why the hell not? I spend more on drinks that I don’t finish than I did for the pee stick. Nah, this is silly. Just wait. 2 more days. You can wait.
Even though I’m not sure I am knocked up, I’ve been acting like a preg. Friday I skipped the sauna and my weekly martini. All week I loaded up on sushi in preparation for a possible sushi drought. I even used my possible pregnancy as a bargaining chip for the last piece of Gonzo Roll, the favorite roll of Mr. Crud and I that is cut into 5 pieces, which necessitates an alternating extra piece rule.
“This may be the last time I can have this for a long time,” I say to Mr. Crud over our weekly Thursday night sushi binge.
He looks at me skeptically. “Maybe.”
“If I’m wrong, I’ll give up my Gonzo rights for 2 weeks,” I say.
“Deal.”
In the bathroom I skim the side of the EPT box: detects pregnancy in 93 % of women 2 days before their period begins. Good enough.
I do the test like I’ve done before. As I wait the 3 minutes for the results, I realize that I’ve never gotten a negative result on a pregnancy test. Always 2 lines for me. I steal a glance at the stick. One line. The other one isn’t even faint. I zip back to check the microwave. 30 seconds until the results. My gut sinks. Negative. The microwave beeps. I pick up the stick and face the result window. Negative.
“Oh well,” I say and head back to bed.
Mr. Crud mumbles, “What took so long?”
“I took a pregnancy test,” I say.
“And?” He perks up a little.
“Negative.”
“I don’t even know how I feel about that.”
“Me neither.”
The cramps on Sunday and blood-streaked toilet paper on Monday confirm it. Not pregnant. Negative. All my inklings and stories were not intuition, just imagination. For the first time in the history of the Crud’s pregnancy attempts, we have not gotten pregnant our first month of trying. I tell myself that this is good. We are breaking the cycle of immediate impregnation and miscarriage. This time will be different. Third time is the charm.
“I feel both sad and relieved,” Mr. Crud says. “Is that weird?”
“Nope, that’s about how I feel.”
While I plot my week of pregnancy-less life—totally taking a Vicodin tonight, I think—I wonder if maybe my body has finally learned to tell the difference between a good egg and a bad one. Our timing was on. I felt ovulation cramps shortly after we, uh, you know. Maybe just maybe my uterus has learned discernment. (See, I knew that some part of my body was learning something from all that yoga.) For lack of finding any scientific reason for the miscarriages, I find myself tunneling deeper into superstition. I write and rewrite the story of conception, of the baby that I envision us holding one day.
Last night I tell Mr. Crud of my future fantasy that my niece Emma will one day come visit us all by herself. (No offense intended JADE, I just had this vision of Emma and me going about town on a niece-auntie mission for chocolate and costume jewelry.)
“By that time we might have a Peabody of our own,” he says. “That’ll change things.”
“If we don’t have a Peabody by then, then we’ll probably never have one,” I say.
“Yeah,” Mr. Crud says. “If that happens then we’ll have our house full of mangy cats.”
“And our well-groomed dog.”
Plan B is becoming the crazy cat and dog couple. For some reason the idea of having a lot of cats that we don’t treat well and a dog that we do cracks us up. Such is what passes for humor in Miscarriage World.
Friday, May 15, 2009
Suspicious Minds
4-22-09
I spend the last three hours of my Monday night tossing and turning. Hello, Insomnia, I didn’t miss you one iota. As the numbers on my digital clock inch towards midnight I yank open my nightstand drawer. I admit it. I am powerless to defeat you insomnia. All my yoga breathing and mindfulness techniques and reassurances to myself that everything is fine, JUST FINE, are for naught. I need drugs and I need them now. I reach for my old buddy old friend, Alprazolam a.k.a. Xanax (which I will call it since it’s a delightful palindrome). Bleary-eyed I read the warning labels “Do not take if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or suspect you are pregnant.” I consider. I do suspect I am pregnant, but my suspicions are grounded in a few rumblings in my lower abdominals and a confidence in timing. What if the zygote hasn’t found a stretch of uterus to call its own? What if it’s one of those bad old lady eggs that every article about mothers over 35 howls about? What exactly constitutes suspicion?
The first time I was pregnant, I took a Xanax the night after I’d found out so freaked out was I. I had remembered that my previous doctor had said Xanax was okay for the pregnant. I took it out of desperation. There was no way that I’d be sleeping with the knowledge that a baby-parasite had taken up residence chez Kt without it. And I slept. And the next day I googled and commenced with freaking out. I wondered if my ex-doc had misunderstood my question or if I had employed some selective hearing. (“Oh yes, Kt, you can drink wine, eat sushi, smoke, dance until morning, sweat your ass off in yoga class, and take bucketfuls of Xanax without any worries.”) If only.
Tonight I go the safe route. I put down the Xanax almost apologetically. I’ll be back someday. I rummage around and find the Unisom, which is doctor approved for pregnancy. In fact it is recommended as a means of fighting off morning sickness when taken in conjunction with vitamin B6. I hate the way Unisom turns my mornings into a zombie zone, but I am at my wits end and I need sleep.
I eke out 4 hours and spare change of sleep. I zombie my way through the morning, feeling a facsimile of wakefulness only in the afternoon. Xanax doesn’t do this to me, I grumble.
In some respects I am walking the cautious path. I’ve cut out the alcohol, quit smoking (for good this time, I swear!), replaced the Advil with Tylenol, and am consciously avoiding the lunchtime smokers that clog the Portland streets.
In other respects, not so much: I am eating as much sushi as I want.
“Don’t get that Jeremy Piven disease,” Mr. Crud warns.
“You mean being a douchebag who will fuck anything that moves?” Zing!
I am working bean sprouts and soft, unpasteurized cheese into my diet as much as possible. I am enjoying sweaty times on the yoga mat, knowing that I might have to curb my vigorous practice as early as next week.
Or I won’t. Or I’ll wake up Monday morning with cramps, a spot of blood on the TP, and a craving for a dirty martini. I try to predict how I’ll feel pregnant or not. I try to prepare myself for either eventuality. Maybe it’s good if I don’t get pregnant right away. That happened the last 2 times…and we know what happened then. Maybe getting my period is a sign that my uterus has learned to discern a good houseguest from a freeloader.
Thankfully my obsession with knowing one way or the other is waning. I’ll be fine either way. I think. Now if you’ll pardon me, I have some reassuring Buddhist philosophy books to add to my library list just in case my bravado crumbles before next Monday.
I spend the last three hours of my Monday night tossing and turning. Hello, Insomnia, I didn’t miss you one iota. As the numbers on my digital clock inch towards midnight I yank open my nightstand drawer. I admit it. I am powerless to defeat you insomnia. All my yoga breathing and mindfulness techniques and reassurances to myself that everything is fine, JUST FINE, are for naught. I need drugs and I need them now. I reach for my old buddy old friend, Alprazolam a.k.a. Xanax (which I will call it since it’s a delightful palindrome). Bleary-eyed I read the warning labels “Do not take if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, or suspect you are pregnant.” I consider. I do suspect I am pregnant, but my suspicions are grounded in a few rumblings in my lower abdominals and a confidence in timing. What if the zygote hasn’t found a stretch of uterus to call its own? What if it’s one of those bad old lady eggs that every article about mothers over 35 howls about? What exactly constitutes suspicion?
The first time I was pregnant, I took a Xanax the night after I’d found out so freaked out was I. I had remembered that my previous doctor had said Xanax was okay for the pregnant. I took it out of desperation. There was no way that I’d be sleeping with the knowledge that a baby-parasite had taken up residence chez Kt without it. And I slept. And the next day I googled and commenced with freaking out. I wondered if my ex-doc had misunderstood my question or if I had employed some selective hearing. (“Oh yes, Kt, you can drink wine, eat sushi, smoke, dance until morning, sweat your ass off in yoga class, and take bucketfuls of Xanax without any worries.”) If only.
Tonight I go the safe route. I put down the Xanax almost apologetically. I’ll be back someday. I rummage around and find the Unisom, which is doctor approved for pregnancy. In fact it is recommended as a means of fighting off morning sickness when taken in conjunction with vitamin B6. I hate the way Unisom turns my mornings into a zombie zone, but I am at my wits end and I need sleep.
I eke out 4 hours and spare change of sleep. I zombie my way through the morning, feeling a facsimile of wakefulness only in the afternoon. Xanax doesn’t do this to me, I grumble.
In some respects I am walking the cautious path. I’ve cut out the alcohol, quit smoking (for good this time, I swear!), replaced the Advil with Tylenol, and am consciously avoiding the lunchtime smokers that clog the Portland streets.
In other respects, not so much: I am eating as much sushi as I want.
“Don’t get that Jeremy Piven disease,” Mr. Crud warns.
“You mean being a douchebag who will fuck anything that moves?” Zing!
I am working bean sprouts and soft, unpasteurized cheese into my diet as much as possible. I am enjoying sweaty times on the yoga mat, knowing that I might have to curb my vigorous practice as early as next week.
Or I won’t. Or I’ll wake up Monday morning with cramps, a spot of blood on the TP, and a craving for a dirty martini. I try to predict how I’ll feel pregnant or not. I try to prepare myself for either eventuality. Maybe it’s good if I don’t get pregnant right away. That happened the last 2 times…and we know what happened then. Maybe getting my period is a sign that my uterus has learned to discern a good houseguest from a freeloader.
Thankfully my obsession with knowing one way or the other is waning. I’ll be fine either way. I think. Now if you’ll pardon me, I have some reassuring Buddhist philosophy books to add to my library list just in case my bravado crumbles before next Monday.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
"The Babies"
4-20-09
I open the can of worms. “I think I might be, you know,” I say to Mr. Crud.
Despite my assurances to myself that I would be cool about this whole “pregnancy bullshit”—as I’ve taken to calling it whenever I talk about going another round—andnot obsess over cervical fluid, pangs in the lower lady regions, and random appearances and disappearances of suspected preg-symptoms, I am about as far as one can get from cool. I’m hot. Burning. Hellfire hot.
“Really? How do you know? Really?” Mr. Crud asks, eyes wide.
“I’ve been feeling action in the lady parts. Cramps mainly. But it could just be gas,” I say.
“Don’t cramps mean--?”
“Not necessarily.” I decline to explain mittlelschmerz, the term for the slight, one-sided cramping that ladies can feel when ovulation begins, which I felt. At least I think I did.
After checking numerous fertility calculators, I compiled my data and found the fertile days. I tried not to talk up the days too much lest I scare Mr. Crud and lead to, ahem, other issues that may impede the making of a Peabody 3. Then I got to scrutinizing my fluids. We both decided that we wouldn’t put too much pressure on ourselves this month. No carpet-bombing, just leisurely good times with the one you love. Nonetheless a week ago as I lay in viparita karani in yoga class, I felt the slight cramping commence. We had some leisurely good times that morning so I wondered. Could it?
And for the last week, I did a pretty good job of letting it go. I told myself that I was quitting smoking (a-fucking-gain, I know) because smoking is dumb, all my friends are doing it, and I was tired of the extra phlegm in the morning. The quitting has nothing to do with Peabody.
Friday I almost surrendered my post-work week cocktail, but relented at the last moment. This could be the last cocktail I sip for a long, long time. Better to seize the day by the salt plum vodka martini than to lament what could have been the following Friday. I remembered my mantra: All or nothing. If this martini has any negative effect, it would be to hamper fertilization and/or implantation. I remind myself of all the times multiple doctors have assured me that nothing I ate, drank, or smoked during the first 4 weeks of pregnancy could have caused a miscarriage.
“So, when can you find out for sure?” Mr. Crud asks.
“Next weekend. Actually next Monday.”
“Oh. That’ll make for a long week.”
It already has for the both of us. Time drags. Each twinge I feel in my lower abdomen sets me spinning. I have dipped my toe back into the pregnancy and miscarriage website-a-palooza and swing between feeling comforted and totally freaked out. I allow myself to ponder the trajectory of my theoretical pregnancy, both the good outcomes (With a potential due date in early January there will be no hell trip through snowstorms for Christmas on the east coast!) and bad (If we get another ultrasound of doom, I’ll at least be evacuated of another dead baby by the 4th of July. Just in time to get shit-faced and take up smoking again!).
See what I mean? So not cool.
Last night Mr. Crud flops into bed and rolls over for a hug. “I got the super Sundays,” he says. “The Sundays” refers to the unsavory salad roll of mega dread of the week ahead and regret of the weekend promise left unfulfilled.
“Is it the Sundays plus the pregnancy bullshit?” I ask, pulling him in tight.
“Yeah.”
I thank G-d that when Mr. Crud is nervous and down, I feel okay, a shaky confidence that I will need to bolster in the coming months with large doses of Sylvia Boorstein and Buddhist philosophy.
“We need to come up with a word for this,” he says. “Like the Sundays.”
“How about ‘The Babies’?” I ask.
He considers. “Eh, it’ll do for now.”
I’m at work and going over the same Yoga Journal articles that I’ve read before, assuring myself that I don’t need to immediately halt my yoga practice on suspicion of pregnancy. I re-read an old miscarriage website that I can practically recite by heart. My eyes fall on a new (un-sourced) statistic: after 2 miscarriages, a person has a 40% chance of miscarrying again. Shit. I don’t remember that one. I feel whatever shaky confidence I had evaporate as I stare at the screen, scrolling and scrolling for source material. I try to remember all the stories of women who had multiple miscarriages and eventual successful pregnancies. I picture my yoga friend Jan who is so pregnant now that she looks on the verge of tipping over.
The phone rings. Mr. Crud. Good, I was just about to actually do some work to get my mind off of 40%. Wouldn’t want to do too much work at work.
“Hey hon, how you doing?” He asks.
“Oh okay,” I say in a tone that is clearly not okay. “I’m feeling a little scared, about, you know.”
“You got ‘the babies’?” He asks.
“Yeah, I do.”
But I can’t really talk now unless I want the collection of theater students sitting in the lobby to hear my tale of preg-scare woe.
He offers words of comfort and says, “We need to come up with a better word.”
“Agreed. It’ll do for now.”
Just like everything else.
I open the can of worms. “I think I might be, you know,” I say to Mr. Crud.
Despite my assurances to myself that I would be cool about this whole “pregnancy bullshit”—as I’ve taken to calling it whenever I talk about going another round—andnot obsess over cervical fluid, pangs in the lower lady regions, and random appearances and disappearances of suspected preg-symptoms, I am about as far as one can get from cool. I’m hot. Burning. Hellfire hot.
“Really? How do you know? Really?” Mr. Crud asks, eyes wide.
“I’ve been feeling action in the lady parts. Cramps mainly. But it could just be gas,” I say.
“Don’t cramps mean--?”
“Not necessarily.” I decline to explain mittlelschmerz, the term for the slight, one-sided cramping that ladies can feel when ovulation begins, which I felt. At least I think I did.
After checking numerous fertility calculators, I compiled my data and found the fertile days. I tried not to talk up the days too much lest I scare Mr. Crud and lead to, ahem, other issues that may impede the making of a Peabody 3. Then I got to scrutinizing my fluids. We both decided that we wouldn’t put too much pressure on ourselves this month. No carpet-bombing, just leisurely good times with the one you love. Nonetheless a week ago as I lay in viparita karani in yoga class, I felt the slight cramping commence. We had some leisurely good times that morning so I wondered. Could it?
And for the last week, I did a pretty good job of letting it go. I told myself that I was quitting smoking (a-fucking-gain, I know) because smoking is dumb, all my friends are doing it, and I was tired of the extra phlegm in the morning. The quitting has nothing to do with Peabody.
Friday I almost surrendered my post-work week cocktail, but relented at the last moment. This could be the last cocktail I sip for a long, long time. Better to seize the day by the salt plum vodka martini than to lament what could have been the following Friday. I remembered my mantra: All or nothing. If this martini has any negative effect, it would be to hamper fertilization and/or implantation. I remind myself of all the times multiple doctors have assured me that nothing I ate, drank, or smoked during the first 4 weeks of pregnancy could have caused a miscarriage.
“So, when can you find out for sure?” Mr. Crud asks.
“Next weekend. Actually next Monday.”
“Oh. That’ll make for a long week.”
It already has for the both of us. Time drags. Each twinge I feel in my lower abdomen sets me spinning. I have dipped my toe back into the pregnancy and miscarriage website-a-palooza and swing between feeling comforted and totally freaked out. I allow myself to ponder the trajectory of my theoretical pregnancy, both the good outcomes (With a potential due date in early January there will be no hell trip through snowstorms for Christmas on the east coast!) and bad (If we get another ultrasound of doom, I’ll at least be evacuated of another dead baby by the 4th of July. Just in time to get shit-faced and take up smoking again!).
See what I mean? So not cool.
Last night Mr. Crud flops into bed and rolls over for a hug. “I got the super Sundays,” he says. “The Sundays” refers to the unsavory salad roll of mega dread of the week ahead and regret of the weekend promise left unfulfilled.
“Is it the Sundays plus the pregnancy bullshit?” I ask, pulling him in tight.
“Yeah.”
I thank G-d that when Mr. Crud is nervous and down, I feel okay, a shaky confidence that I will need to bolster in the coming months with large doses of Sylvia Boorstein and Buddhist philosophy.
“We need to come up with a word for this,” he says. “Like the Sundays.”
“How about ‘The Babies’?” I ask.
He considers. “Eh, it’ll do for now.”
I’m at work and going over the same Yoga Journal articles that I’ve read before, assuring myself that I don’t need to immediately halt my yoga practice on suspicion of pregnancy. I re-read an old miscarriage website that I can practically recite by heart. My eyes fall on a new (un-sourced) statistic: after 2 miscarriages, a person has a 40% chance of miscarrying again. Shit. I don’t remember that one. I feel whatever shaky confidence I had evaporate as I stare at the screen, scrolling and scrolling for source material. I try to remember all the stories of women who had multiple miscarriages and eventual successful pregnancies. I picture my yoga friend Jan who is so pregnant now that she looks on the verge of tipping over.
The phone rings. Mr. Crud. Good, I was just about to actually do some work to get my mind off of 40%. Wouldn’t want to do too much work at work.
“Hey hon, how you doing?” He asks.
“Oh okay,” I say in a tone that is clearly not okay. “I’m feeling a little scared, about, you know.”
“You got ‘the babies’?” He asks.
“Yeah, I do.”
But I can’t really talk now unless I want the collection of theater students sitting in the lobby to hear my tale of preg-scare woe.
He offers words of comfort and says, “We need to come up with a better word.”
“Agreed. It’ll do for now.”
Just like everything else.
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