Healthy Passenger, Engine Light On.

Ok, great news first. I have one, perfectly healthy baby girl cooking. She is definitely a girl with real lady bits and nothing dangling below. More importantly, she has a four-chamber heart beating away, two beautiful kidneys, one little bladder, a spectacular brain, ten fingers and ten toes. She is measuring exactly on schedule. This is the most important thing. I am baking a healthy little warrior.

Here's what's not so great. Probably ok, but not ideal and possibly kind of terrifying. I have complete placenta previa. This means that my placenta is growing directly over my cervix. 95% of cases of placenta previa at this stage move on their own (due to uterine expansion) and the issue resolves. This is not the terrifying part. It's not the best news but it's manageable news. In the event that my placenta stays put, I will have a scheduled baby extraction via c-section at 37 weeks.

This is the only condition that I for sure have right now. However, I am at risk for some related complications. There is some evidence of placenta accreta - not all the evidence they would need for a diagnosis - and so I am being carefully watched for this condition. Placenta accreta is where the placenta actually grows into the wall of the uterus and cannot detach following delivery. The "treatment" is c-section followed by immediate hysterectomy. Oh, and massive blood loss and transfusions.  Right now, my OB thinks I do not have this condition as A) it is excessively rare and B) I have only one of several indications needed for diagnosis. The Maternal Fetal Medicine specialist was concerned. She was kind of a freakshow and I would rather never see her again which, fortunately, I don't have to. So, placenta accreta. Let's just not. I am being carefully watched for this.

Finally, and fucking terrifyingly (not that placenta accreta isn't a total Halloween special), the location of the umbilical cord insertion puts me and baby girl at risk of vasa previa, a condition where the umbilical cord is draped over the opening of the cervix. In order for this to develop, my placenta would have to move the opposite direction of the cord insertion point which, for this pregnancy, is near the edge of the placenta instead of in the middle. If labor started spontaneously and my water broke, the cord would have no support and the baby would die a matter of 2-3 minutes. Hence, to avoid any risk of labor, standard practice for this is c-section at 34 weeks followed by what I assume to be gobs of NICU time.

To put it all in perspective, we live in a miraculous modern age where babies can be made in petri dishes. We can monitor the hell out of scary situations and intervene before there's any real danger. What's more, aside from the placenta previa, neither of these conditions may develop. Statistically, they probably won't. But the possibility is there, a little dark cloud hanging back in the recesses of my head. For now I need to learn to live with my cloud and not let it shadow the fact that this little girl is kickboxing me all the time, moving my stomach from the outside and generally letting me know that she's a little hell raiser. I can't wait for her to arrive, safe and sound, preferably with a minimum of drama.

19 Weeks as told by Bullet Points

A post in bullet points. Because it's easier and I don't need to organize my thoughts. Also, not a ton is going on.

• That last post was bananas because I am often bananas. I can work myself into an anxious wreck over pretty much anything. Out of peanut butter? Let's freak the fuck out. The gender reveal, instead of being this happy, marvelous milestone like it was last time was, for whatever reason, a total anxiety trigger. My horrible, worst case scenario of they say it's a girl and then at the next ultrasound I'm told it's a boy, is not actually a tragedy of any proportion. It's incredible. Both options are. Option A: Vagina stays a vagina. Fabulous! I've always wanted to have a daughter. Super duper yahtzee. Option B: Vagina becomes a penis. I'm completely obsessed with my boy. I'd get to be obsessed with another amazing little boy. Love-splosion. 
• My ability to panic is epic. I come by it honestly. Thanks, Nana.
• Speaking crazy Nana, I received her gender prediction this past weekend. My mom is from Puerto Rico and I am the proud owner of a certified Puerto Rican witch for a grandma. If you're Puerto Rican, being a witch is not scary, it's awesome. For my family, it just means a lot of spidey-sense feelings about things, signs, dreams, etc. One thing we trust my bruja-Nana on is gender prediction because she's basically always right. The senior ultrasound technician of San Juan has predicted "a little girl. It could be a little boy but I don't think it is. I think it's a little girl." Those nondescript odds work for me.
• As of yesterday, I am 19 weeks pregnant. 
• That is almost the halfway point. Almost time for Janet Jackson to perform and have a wardrobe malfunction. Yesssssssss. 
• Babycenter.com says the baby is the size of an "heirloom tomato." That seems really subjective and has been rejected. It's like they've never been to a farmers' market.
• Parents.com says the baby is the size of a mango. Assuming we're talking your garden variety, grocery store mango and not one of the little subpar yellow ones. I can get down with this.
• I'm finally feeling movement! I've been feeling recognizable movement for about two weeks. At first, very tiny blips and pops. Had I not done this before, I definitely would have written it off as gas. Fortunately, I'm a complete veteran - Two kids, who am I? Michelle Duggar? - and recognized the mini-Morse code going on in my uterus. The movements are still little but gaining strength and are less easily confused with gastrointestinal distress. This development has done wonders for my psyche. (See bullet point #1 re: being a basket case.) 
• My God, pregnancy is so long. Why is it so long? I'm tired and bored, would like sushi, a bottle of Cab, and a handful of cold cuts.
• Henry. That kid is so cute, snuggly and loving it absolutely kills me. I've trained him to kiss my belly which helps me pretend that he is a fully-willing participant in the family growing exercise. He is really what wills this pregnancy to go faster because he keeps me very busy and very in love. Here's what's up with him:
• He talks constantly. His favorite topics of conversation are his dogs, Elmo, birds, books, daycare classmates, cars, his jacket, night-night, Mama and Daddy, his cousin (Juice's daughter) and Abu (my mom). Also, "no." Conversation is a very loose term. There's a lot of talking going on but my comprehension hasn't quite caught up with him.
• He needs a haircut. He has stick straight, white blond hair and he looks like Rod Stewart had a baby with Jeff Daniels from Dumb & Dumber when we go too long without a trim. 
• If he could eat whatever he wanted, it would be some combination of avocado, crackers, cheese, milk and sugar. Gross. Also, nutritionally complete.
• He's going to be an elephant for Halloween. Why an elephant? Because I found an elephant costume for sale in my neighborhood for $10. Also, he does an excellent elephant sound.
• He excels at Eskimo kisses. Which are not called Eskimo kisses anymore. Maybe Native Alaskan kisses? Better yet, how about "touching noses."
• Henry has had a really bad cough for the past several days which is making night time sleep somewhat craptastic. No other symptoms, just hacking. Your typical daycare plague. He wakes himself up coughing every few hours and then, if we're all lucky, coughs so hard that he pukes. This interrupted sleep is making for a crabby kid come early evening. Thus, screen-free granola parenting has sailed out the window in favor of Sesame Street so that something, anything, can be accomplished between 5 and 7:30. Desperate times, desperate measures, thank you, Elmo.

Le Reveal Sans Balloons & Cupcakes (I am so French.)

 Remember when I said I had so much less anxiety about this pregnancy than the last? It's still true. But barely. Apparently I can be thrown back into complete neurosis at any given time. I was pretty freaking cool, nearly cucumber-like, and then I started telling people at the 12-13 week mark and had to use the fetal doppler every 34 seconds because of the jinxing phenomenon.
Then things settled, my belly started popping, I started feeling cute and the day of the gender reveal arrived.

That evening was a clusterfuck. We got hit by torrential rains leaving J stuck on the highway in gridlock traffic. Knowing that there was basically no chance he'd make it, I called my sister and she hightailed it across the city. In addition to wanting an adult buddy, I also needed help with Henry who I'd already picked up from daycare so he could witness and fully grasp this momentous occasion. I was really glad my sister was able to be there. I am not my own emotional support. I rely on family, friends and strangers to fulfill that role in my life. Hence, this blog. Henry, while glad to see his aunt, insisted on lying on my chest, whimpering with his feet on either side of my belly while the ultrasound tech probed and prodded. The probing and prodding went on for what felt like forever. It really wasn't that long, just so markedly longer than with Henry's gender reveal. Moms of boys have had this experience: the tech swivels the probe around and there, between the legs, are giant floating balls and penis. It's the most obvious thing in the history of things that are obvious. This time, no balls. Also, no real cooperation on the part of the baby. Baby kept its legs crossed at the ankle and would spring up and down occasionally providing a momentary glimpse but nothing sustained. We kept getting flashes of nothing between the legs, then flashes of the infamous "three lines" and vacant space below but they were quick. The tech said she was fairly certain but needed her senior tech to confirm. The senior tech came in and was able to get a clearer shot very quickly. Ankles still crossed but there it was. Three lines. No balls.

It's a girl!

It's a girl? For real? Are you kidding? I wanted a girl, I want a girl but I was so completely thrown by the declaration. Tech said she was absolutely certain.  I walked out of there totally stunned despite the fact that all arrows had pointed in that direction from the time the ultrasound jelly hit my belly. I had tossed the pronoun "she" around in my head before this, looked at girls' clothing, but kinda didn't think it would happen.

So am I excited? Yes. I am. Do I completely believe it? No, not yet. I have the 20-week ultrasound coming up in mid-October and am absurdly anxious for a peek. I keep worrying that I'll give my heart to the idea of a girl and then be one of those people who is told they're having one gender and then delivers another. Seriously, I can't stop googling "wrong gender ultrasound." And, like googling "cancer" and "miscarriage," the interweb world is more than happy to share their stories of mistaken gender on ultrasounds. As are my mother and the housekeeper at my office. So I vacillate between happy and an emotionally-guarded nervous wreck combing the Internet for fetal vagina pics. They look like my fetus' vagina but still. BUT STILL. I just can't bedazzle one half of the nursery with glitter and flammable pink fabrics for another 3 weeks. You know, because that's what one does for female children. 

So that's where I am. 25% excited, 15% skeptical, 60% a ridiculous mess of nerves. 

As always, I invite and encourage your comments. HOWEVER, if you share a story about your cousin who had all three children's gender misindentified at an ultrasound, I will find you and kick you in the nutgina.*

*Nutgina - A common physical anomaly often misidentified on ultrasound as the wrong gender.

16 Weeks and Such

Sixteen weeks today. Feeling like shit. Horrible headaches that make me nauseous, general feeling of being woozy and light-headed much of the time. This pregnancy is kind of a doozy. Cooking Henry was relatively easy, I've come to find out. Things that are keeping me from lying on my bathroom floor and simply moaning: I'm developing a cute little beer belly; I'll feel movement soon. I felt Henry flipping around for the first time at around 19 weeks and, if it's true that you feel the second pregnancy sooner, then I'll feel something or other in the next couple of weeks. One pick-me-up coming in the very near future is the big gender reveal. We went to a Peek-A-Crotch ultrasound center at 16 weeks with Henry and, true to form, will be doing it again this week.

I find myself thinking about gender so much more during this pregnancy. There are two reasons for this. First, when I was pregnant with Henry, I was so totally sure that he was a boy that I didn't really feel like I needed to think about what gender was living inside me. Because basically, I knew. So when the ultrasound tech swiveled around to show a prominent set of twig and berries, it just didn't feel like a surprise. I was elated - I had grown genitals out of petri dish emulsion, J's sperm and my egg - but I felt like I'd known the whole time. This time I don't have that gut feeling. The pronoun "she" wanders into my head quite a bit but that's not the same as the feeling I had with Henry. I've dreamed about having this baby several times and each time, the gender switches. Equal ticks in the girl column and boy column.

This ambiguity keeps me thinking about the gender but more so it's the future picture of my family. I think I'm done after two. It was hard to get here and I can't imagine my body will keep responding well to IVF hell. What's more, I don't think I want to be pregnant a third time or have a third child. I want parenting to be a man on man game. Children should not outnumber adults or it's total anarchy. J doesn't feel the same way - he'd like a third, he's one of three kids - but that's a discussion for the future. A discussion in which he doesn't have a uterus and doesn't pee a little when he sneezes. (I know. Kegels.) When this topic does come up, he asks me if I think that his youngest brother, was a mistake. Um, what? The question is not, "Should we eradicate all third-born children from this earth?" My answer to that question is, unequivocally, "No, they can stay." It's hard having completely irrational debates. I don't mean to shrug off J's hopes and dreams for our family, I just know that the onset of the second trimester isn't the time to make sweeping decisions.

I had this little moment of clarity the other day regarding the gender. It's totally sappy and not really like me but it's made me excited and given me a sense of calm. We're just finding out who's meant to be cooking in there. I told you. Sappy. But I'm pregnant and cried while watching a 2015 Cubs highlights reel. Sappy is my thing right now.

My Semi-Annual Typing Exercise. Also, News.

You guys have probably been checking my site daily, or more likely, twice daily to see if I've updated a damn thing since October 2014. And, until today, I hadn't. I got all excited about my Tim Gunn-make-it-work career moment which didn't really happen and then nobody wants to follow up with a "just kidding" post. There has been progress on that front but not in the fireworks whiz bang way I had hoped. It's kind of hard to go all pyrotechnics with your life when you're largely financially responsible for the lives of two real people and two real dogs. Dog food ain't free. More on that in a bit.

The big, BIG news is that I'm pregnant! Again! Parenting is the best thing ever, Henry is the best, cutest kid ever, and we are greedy and want more. Here's what did not happen: conception as a result of intercourse. Here's what did happen: we went back to Dr. M, I took copious amounts of drugs, had a disappointingly lackluster cycle that somehow rebounded enough to produce two meh-looking embryos, we put both in with dampened hope, and then one of them hung on and grew. J and I feel like we totally tricked the system because we got knocked up as a result of only one cycle of IVF. Like it was soooooo easy. And then we remember that most people get pregnant by having sex and we shrug and still feel like we won the lottery for the second time. Does that even happen? By reading the interwebs, I see that people do indeed have multiple children, but still I'm amazed.

I'm 12+ weeks if anyone is counting. Feel free to file this in the annals of obvious things, but second pregnancies go much faster than first pregnancies. They also make you marginally less psychotic. For example, I've only diagnosed myself with listeria ONCE in 12 weeks. My diagnosis occurred yesterday as a result of some fresh-squeezed juice but I'm over it now. My fetal doppler is used twice a week instead of twice daily. I'm chalking it up to a mixture of being busy smothering Henry with love and some vague faith in the process. My uterus worked once, it might work again. Last time around I was very dedicated to my post-work schedule of lying on the couch, lamenting my fatigue and thinking about fetal demise. This time I can't really do that until 7:30 or so and then I usually fall asleep before I really get going. Plus I have to eat. There's simply no time. My due date of March 2nd seems horrifically far away when I think about slogging through a Chicago winter but I know that somehow the time will zip by. The first trimester did, now there's only 2 left to go if I've done my math correctly.

Now, the Tim Gunn part of things. My bestie, S, and I decided to start an interior design company called Gild & Wit. Up until the present, G&W has existed between Boston and Chicago with 99.9% of the work taking place in Boston as I am still working full time. Now S is moving back to Chicago with her adorable family in tow and, hopefully, I'll be more in the mix of things. We have a blog (obviously) though at present S is writing most/all of our posts. More from me in the future, I promise. I've just been kinda sleep-pukey lately. I don't know where this ends up. Hopefully with absurd wealth and our own line at Target. Or just happily dedicating all of my work time to being creative instead of some of my work time. Who knows. In the meantime, please check our site out www.gildandwit.com.

Tim Gunn Moment

When i started writing this post 87 years ago, I titled it "Is This My Tim Gunn Moment?" I have since decided that, yes, this is my Tim Gunn moment. Make. It. Work.

I've been dragging my feet, hanging my head, complaining about my well-paying-benefit-loaded corporate gig because of a generally difficult work environment. (Git out yer tiny violins.) I have felt less than supported in my new gig as mom. I won't go into details here because, hey, that's unprofessional and I am trying soooo hard to be the consummate professional. Fail. In addition to the "just because your life changed doesn't mean ours has to" - which, granted, has some merit - I've gone from delightfully independent to utterly micromanaged over the past year. Another not so glorious part of my job, I am on call 24/7 which has landed me in some unfortunate situations on major holidays and whatnot. Enough complaining. Just trust me, I do not relish the opportunity to go to the office every day and it's mostly not about who I'm leaving at daycare (though that has put things in perspective).

What I have figured out is this: I am happy working when I am being creative. My favorite part of my current job is interior design. My best friend, S, is insanely creative and recently took the leap from her corporate gig into a retail interiors job. S and I are very in love and have been since sixth grade. So we're doing what any two gals with a penchant for financial instability and a longing for a creative bohemian lifestyle living in two separate cities would do - we're starting an interior design blog and business. All the details are still in the works. We're working on forming the LLC, getting our website up and running and talking to potential clients because, here's the stunner, people actually want to work with us and that is bananas. I mean, not truly bananas because we know what we're doing and have flawless taste but bananas because we're children pretending to be grownups.

You're probably rolling your eyes and thinking, "Well, la-dee-da, it sure must be nice to have the cash to finance this sort of gig." Yes, that would be nice. It's not the case for me. I'm going to work another job to keep this going. I foresee a lot of night and weekend work. And perhaps in 6-12 months, S and
I will shrug and say, "Well, that was stupid." But maybe not. And the maybe not is keeping us going.

All will be revealed soon, hopefully in my next post. 

4 Month Sleep Regressskerflafla

Hello, smug mom. I've got some terrible news for you.  I too used to have a baby that slept like an angel. One quick snack at 3 or 4 and not another peep til morning! And then there was that little daycare cold that lingered. That caused a few rough nights. And then I experimented with putting him down unswaddled. And then there was his last round of vaccines... And holy excuses I have not slept like a normal human being for a month! I now rub coffee grounds into my eyeballs in hopes of transferring some of caffeine's magical properties directly into my soul. It hit me this morning that I have now spent weeks staggering around the office like an extra from World War Z looking for Brad Pitt. He is nowhere and I am tired and my 21 week old baby has regressed to 3 wake ups per night. The 4 month sleep regression is real, my friends. Started at about 4-4.5 months and now we're a day shy of 5 months old. Consider this your episode of Scared Straight: Baby Fails.

Will I take this lying down? (Pun just realized and enjoyed.) Hell no! So here is what I'm doing to proactively change nights for the better.

• Falling asleep while reading that baby sleep book I purchased to preempt a 4 month sleep regression. Oops. Like so many other "this is how to soothe/feed/raise your baby" book purchases, it sat on my virtual Kindle shelf until I was absolutely desperate for its sage advice as well as beyond the point of being helped. 

I'd like to lodge a complaint against every baby "method" theory book ever written. Dear infant experts, try a different format. Perhaps a pamphlet? Something with bullet points totaling less than 20 pages? I am too tired to read the thrilling testimony - always in a gray box and in italics - of the parents who took your advice and got their kid to sleep in less than 30 seconds thus saving their marriage. Just give it to me straight. Do this, not that. Then do this, no, not that. Good. Stick to it. Stop that... ok, much better. That's how your book should read. Then I could stay awake and glean actual information from its pages. In summary, PAMPHLET WITH BULLET POINTS. If you have written a second chapter, you have gone too far.

• Practicing consistency. Also, inconsistency. 
• I always put Henry down "drowsy but awake" unless of course he's been particularly difficult or I am particularly exhausted in which case I put him down either mostly asleep or totally asleep. 
• In response to increased night wakings, disassociate nursing. When Henry wakes up at times where I am positive that he is not hungry, I pick him up and rock him back to sleep. Unless of course I am catatonic in which case I whisper, "Shush baby, don't cry. Here is the gift of my boob." 
• Obsessing about the swaddle. Henry is a swaddle addict. While freebasing Halo Swaddle Sleepsacks, he is practicing rolling over and mocking me in his Rock n' Play. So yeah, at 5 months he's still swaddled and still in the RNP. Oops, my bad. Unswaddled he sleeps in such short bursts. Long enough for naps but not for night sleep. I find thinking about it far more manageable than doing anything about it.
• Thinking about moving Henry into his own room. That would probably help with the whole nursing disassociation. Yep, bet it would. I should totally try that sometime. Except my husband basically bursts into tears when I suggest we should do that and, when attempted once, insisted we sleep with the monitor on full blast (the static was deafening) and brought him back to the room the first time he cried. I'd be annoyed if it wasn't so incredibly sweet. I am also quite tired and lack the energy to argue/reason with him. Co(dependent)-sleeping/parenting is endearing.

So how did you handle all of this? You probably weaned your kid from the swaddle at an appropriate age and had him sleeping in his own room. That would make sense. But let's say, hypothetically, that you hadn't done those things. What would you do then? 

Argh, it might be baby sleep boot camp time. Next week.