22w4d - The Family Grows

Holy emotional shit storm. Yesterday, December 10th at 10:10 AM, I became an aunt to a beautiful baby girl. 8 lbs 1 oz, 21 long, long inches.  7 months and 9 days after the announcement that sent me reeling for so long. 2 days after my first due date. I wish I could say that in the moment, none of it mattered. I am not proud. My mom and I paced the hall outside of the delivery room until we heard her first cries. Immediately, we both bawled. We cried, while she cried, for the total miracle of your own daughter/sister having her own healthy baby. I cried too for the distance this pregnancy put between us, even while I was in the midst of my own. I flipped back and forth between elation and this difficult feeling of longing, a childish response of "this should have been me." I hate to admit those feelings. It was not my time. It was a miracle, my family had grown by a whole perfect human being.

Those feelings dissipated entirely once I got to meet her. Really, she is possibly the most beautiful little girl in the world. She has a shocking amount of thick, dark brown hair and rosebud lips. I couldn't stop touching her impossibly soft cheeks and belly and holding on to her feet. She will know me as "that giant that won't stop poking me." I spent the day my newly larger family. Mostly we stared and commented on how much she looked like a member of our immediate family. Halfway across the country, my brother-in-law's family commented on how much she looked like their family. They are wrong. She is totally one of us. Smushy, rosy lips are our trademark. It's hilarious how narcissistic newborns make us. We are so quick to claim their every feature as our own. I really do think she looks like a hybrid between me and my sister as newborns because me-me-me-me-me. That's what babies do to us. We become so vainly introspective as we gaze into their every-baby-could-have-been-switched-at-birth faces.

My sister was a total trouper. Her water broke on Monday afternoon with nary another sign of impending labor. Once at the hospital, they started her on Pitocin which led to a completely sleepless night. At 6:15 am she was 3 cm dilated. Only 2.5 hours later she was fully dilated and evicting that kid. No sleep, no pain meds, 1.5 hours of pushing. She's like a Navy Seal of childbirth.

I stayed until early evening and then drove back home to the city. I gushed on the phone to friends (hands free, safety first) and then sat in traffic and allowed anxiety set in. Seriously, I hate that I did this and that I continue to let myself go to these dark places. It seems so selfish. I am sometimes incapable of reason and seeing the big picture. My heart started aching. Surely, it would not go so perfectly for me. Bad things happen to me - this is my default, stupid, dark place mantra. I will never get my boy. I will go into early labor. I will lose him. April will never come (unlikely). Maybe he will be born but not healthy, not beautiful like his cousin. Will my family gush over him as much since he's a boy and not a rosebud-lipped girl? Send in the men in white coats. I'm sure there's a perfectly lovely asylum where I can convalesce for the rest of my pregnancy, preferably in a medically-induced coma. These are the fucking thoughts that circled my mind last night and this morning. I hate them. I hate those thoughts. They represent the worst of me and the worst of two years of infertility. I am ashamed that I can't just revel in the love and awe I feel for my niece and enjoy this wonderful, healthy pregnancy that I've been blessed with. To clarify, I do get those moments of peace, wonder and happiness. I experienced that nearly all day yesterday with my niece and sister and didn't fall apart until I was alone in the car. On weekend mornings, when I sit around reading, sipping a cup of tea, and feel and see my boy bopping around inside, I am there: totally in love and in the moment. He and I feel natural and meant to be. I just can't always cling on to that. I bought a Christmas ornament for him and hung it on our tree. I visit it as my reminder of how good I have it and how real he is. Fake babies do not have Christmas ornaments, right? We call our boy "Pindakaas," the Dutch word for peanut butter, because...because why not? Pin for short. We remain miles apart on names and I am a bit concerned that he will forever be known as Pindakaas. I suppose there are worse names. Pin's ornament is a piece of toast with peanut butter and two banana slices on it (J and I are clearly the bananas - one of us more than the other). Impossibly cute, like my fetus. Handcrafted affirmations in felt.

TGIE - Thank God for Etsy

I am going over to my sister's house after work to welcome them home and eat my mom's home cooking. As soon as I'm there, I'll be madly in love again. I will feel like that the whole time I'm there. I will possibly/probably melt down in the car. And then I'll pull myself together, feel my baby boy squirming, and will be fine. And then not. And then fine again. Possibly until April.

I'll leave you with a photo of my family's new perfect love.



Look at those sweet lips and that head of hair. Could you die?

A Belated Bloggy Thanksgiving

Wednesday, my day was book ended by incredibly fabulous news. With my morning decaf, I read this by Stupid Stork. Rejoice.Then, I went about my day, doing boring work things, generally rolling my eyes, practicing mediocre posture and pondering the merits of baby play yards-bassinette combos. Riveting. At the end of the day, I checked my blogroll once again and found yet another holiday miracle BPF story from Cork & Stork. This mixed in with Amanda from Beloved Burnt Toast tepidly celebrating the end of her first trimester. Honestly, I felt like my computer screen was set to the infertile Hallmark channel. My heart simply sung. If pregnancies were earned through wit, sarcasm and enviable writing skills, these girls would be octomoms several times over. Alas, they are not. And so through lots of science, patience and determination, they finally have what they deserved. This year, may we all be thankful for petri dishes. I know I am.

Blogging as a part of the online infertility community has been such an affirming, therapeutic experience. I don't know but I can't imagine the same level of camaraderie among knitting or home improvement bloggers. Some of my readers are my pre-blog, real life friends (IRL, as the kids say). They check my blog to see what's going on - IVF treatment status, the sitch in my underpants, etc - so that I don't have to write countless emails or go over the more painful details over and over again. In part, that's why I started blogging. Mostly, I began blogging to purge all of the stuff rattling around in my head, built up over this bizarre experience of having major lady organ failure. While the purging has been a blessing, the community has been the real boon. Call me creepy, but I think of many of my fellow IF bloggers as real friends. I think I can sympathize with Nev's sad-eyed participants on MTV's Catfish. You make me feel loved. It really doesn't matter whether that's crazy or not. I haven't invited any of you to move into my parents' house despite never having skyped with you. Your video chat has been down for 3 years, I understand. You only have 3 photos of yourself on Facebook and 10 friends with suspiciously unusual names. That's because you're an army brat from Guam. I get you. You get me. Our uteri are shaped like popcorn, our eggs are poached, and our husbands' nuts are filled with pop rocks. You are my (IRL and interweb) peeps. Thanks for being here. I'm not signing off, just having a little belated Thanksgiving gratitude fest.

20w3d - Relief-a-palooza!

This post includes an ultrasound pic. Feel free to skip if you're not in the mood.

First, I have reached the Bon Jovi portion of this pregnancy. I'm not going to bother with typing out the lyrics.

Breathing. Sighs. of. Relief. Kid just ACED his 20 week anatomy scan.

Four chamber heart? Check.
Kidneys? 2
Fingers and toes? Five per appendage, totalling 20.
Eyes? 2 gaping black holes (apparently how they're supposed to look)
Legs, arms, bladder, all that good stuff. He's a properly forming baby. Amazing.

J and I opted out of any early risk assessments - nuchal translucency, MaterniT21, and the like - at 12 weeks. I was on the fence and welcomed reassurance (though terrified of bad news) while J felt very strongly about not doing testing. His reasoning? We get what we get and we'll love who we get. Let's not spend the next 6-7 months worried about something we can not change. We will deal with whatever it is when the baby is born. We knew that we didn't want to terminate unless we found out without a shadow of a doubt that the baby's condition was incompatible with life. How do you find out without a shadow of a doubt? Through CVS or amnio, both of which carry very small risks of miscarriage. We just weren't game for all of it. J's strong stance on the issue made me gradually feel more comfortable. Lingering in the back of my mind were those "incompatible with life" syndromes. A hell of a euphemism. As this pregnancy has progressed seemingly normally and Kid is now big and strong enough to make me feel him moving around (despite a stubborn anterior placenta), I've been in a pretty good place. I really have trusted that he's healthy and normal. All that said, whispers of horror stories danced in my head leading up to today's scan. What if, what if, what if... And then, nothing. All good. A happy (I project), squirmy boy nestled right where he should be. My cervix is nice and long and my OB announced my risk of preterm labor "as low as anybody else's."* 

I feel a little weirdly relaxed. Very happy. Like I just had a glass or two of wine. It's the warming juju of relief.

Without further ado, here's my boy...

Looks like he's smiling, doesn't he?

*I admittedly had a freakout of a cervical nature that I shan't go into on these pages. Long story short, I had images of babies, keys and cell phones falling willy nilly out of my short gaping cervix. I don't know why I do these things to myself.

19w3d - Of Milestones and Stupidity

The pregnancy milestone that I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for has finally happened. About a year later than everyone else, I've started to feel lil' guy moving around. It's been very subtle - a few thumps here and there. My friend likened those early sensations to that of a balloon hitting a ceiling. Yup, sounds about right. Something small, blind and slippery keeps on bumping around. Occasionally, I'll feel a distinct and sudden movement. That's pretty rare so far. I've spent the last week or so wondering whether or not my sensations were due to gas (honestly they still frequently are) or to the kid. On Friday evening, I lied down on my bed with my doppler (best friend for life!) and placed it on my lower right abdomen where I kept thinking I felt something. Like magic, kid kicked hard and moved the doppler! I felt it inside and saw it outside. Confirmation. Since then, I've been trusting myself more and paying more attention. There's movement in there and it's weird and completely awesome. J is completely obsessed. He places his hand on my belly and swears he can feel something. I don't really think he can since the sensations are so subtle for me but it makes him happy. Why mess with it, you know?

And speaking of milestones, we're running into another. J and I have started looking into daycare. It would be lovely if one of us could stay home full time to take care of kid. Unfortunately, our finances simply won't allow this. The cost of a nanny is prohibitive so we've been checking out daycare centers. This may seem way too early however we'll simply be placing our name on the waiting list for July. Chicago parents are a rabid bunch of planners. I'm convinced some of them are putting their names on the lists before they even get pregnant. How can you get a leg up on these folks?

The child care search is terrifying on several levels. First, cost. It is cray-cray expensive to send your kid to daycare full time. Think private college tuition expensive. The places we're looking at - not fancy in the slightest, mind you - cost as much or more per month than our mortgage. Second, you are leaving your super tiny infant with a stranger. I don't even know this kid yet. I worked so hard to get him. I have to hand him off to strangers before he's even able to sit on his own? I know that everyone does this and it will be fine, it just gives me a bit of a sad. Third... I don't think there is a third. I'm sure there is, I just can't think of it yet. Contagious disease or something. So perhaps there aren't several things to be worried about, just two big ones. If you think of more, please keep them to yourself. I'm sure I'll come up with them soon on my very own.

Back in the first trimester, my sister asked me if I was "stupid yet." She, apparently, was dealing with classic pregnancy brain. (A scary note: she's a nurse in an impressive sounding department at a large hospital. I won't tell you which one.) I was all, "Why no! I'm sharp as a tack!" Fast forward to now. I am, on many days, dumb as a bag of hair. It hurts. My brain gets covered in this thick layer of green mold and I forget things and bumble around like I'm blind-folded. There's nothing I seem to be able to do about it. I fake myself out with a decaf coffee (living on the edge). I take the occasional walk. Helps slightly. It comes and goes. Yesterday was a really moldy day. Today is not. My job, while often intense and stressful, does not involve life or death decisions or the fate of nations. For this I am grateful. I apologize for any doubt I have cast upon other pregnant women who may or may not be battling the gradual molding of their brains. I'm sure they're all fine. It's just me. Or not.

Final note: anatomy scan on Tuesday. I'm a leetle bit nervous. Please be ok. Please be ok. 

17w6d - The Mother of Invention

Necessity is the mother of invention. Some genius said that. Ah yes, wikipedia says it was Plato.

I have an invention that is not really an invention that could revolutionize maternity pants. You see, those vaguely elastic panels don’t actually hold anything up, they just cover and smooth the belly. I’d say they do about 3-5% of the pants-holding-up responsibilities necessary. Your own hips and ass are responsible for the rest. Also problematic is the fact that the waist of the pants must be large enough to fit over your ass and thighs therefor, on most women, being slightly larger than that small but crucial stretch between bump and the spread of your hips.

 

Fact: this not-actually-pregnant model hiked her designer maternity jeans up between every frame.

Depending on the stretch of the material and your girth, the panel + gravity combo is often not enough. Leggings are a rare exception. I find myself scotching up my pants 7 times a day. And that’s just because I don’t care about the other 28 times when I need to. At first I thought under-the-shirt suspenders were an option but then considered my lopping mammaries. Then I remembered those adjustable tabs that were on hideous carpenter pants. You can adjust them to be tighter and cinch in your pants at the waist. In my perfect world, three maternity pant tabs would be placed on the pants - one at each hip and one at the back (located your tramp stamp). These tabs could be adjusted throughout the day as necessary to accommodate meals, gas, etc. What do you think? Genius! Now someone should manufacture them for me. I can't really sew and do not own a sewing machine. Also not in the market for one. Thanks for the offer.

 

 

I figure my options to solve the problem of ever sagging pants are as follows:

1. I actually figure out where to get real pants tabs and sew them on by hand. I'm exhausted just thinking about this but it might be the only way. 
2. 
   Don't solve the problem. There's nothing wrong with low-riding the crotch of your pants at mid-thigh. (To answer your question, yes, I am wearing the correct size pants.)
3. Use giant diaper pins to cinch the small amount of fabric that needs cinching. Do they even sell these now? Will I get stabbed twice a day? (This was my supervisor's suggestion. He has been dragged into the issue against his will. I feel he has an inherent interest in my pants staying on at the office.)
4. Suspenders. See boob issue and general fashion concerns.
5. Dapper Snappers. These are super awkward, bulky and of questionable value. I would squeal with delight if any of you have actually used these. Clips are available for pants without belt loops (98% of maternity pants).



 

What is the solution to this? Why is this a problem that we as a society have not addressed? Can I just wear maternity overalls and is that a thing?

 

16w2d - How I Became a Member of the Pen15 Club

Um, you guys? There is totally a penis growing inside of me. A mini penis with mini testicles attached to possibly the cutest little boy fetus that you have ever seen. I kvell, swoon, melt when I look at the ultrasound pictures from this weekend. A little boy. He is real and not a figment of my imagination.

Am I glad I went to a creepy Sneak-A-Boo elective ultrasound shack? You bet your tiny balls I am! I need to break down the experience for those of you considering a trip to the local strip mall and/or currently tssking and eye-rolling. First off, as I said before, mine was not in the mall. It was located in a very nice brick office building in a lovely, leafy neighborhood in Chicago. We signed in, presented our last ultrasound pictures (wisely, they make you prove that you are getting actual prenatal care and not using them as a filler for actual medical expertise), and were quickly called into the ultrasound room. It was giant, dimly lit, and had a big flat screen television on the wall. The examination bed looked like it had been custom made to accommodate a 600-pound man. Cooooozy. I laid down, scooched my pants down to the pubic bone and accepted an unnecessarily large blob of ultrasound gel. J sat next to me and held my hand. The sonographer found our guy - at that time an "it" - right away and swiveled the probe around to get the infamous "toilet shot." Clear as day were two legs, a tiny butt, and something dangling in between. The sonographer said, "There it is," and J was like, "What? Do you know? What is it?" Someone obviously hasn't been studying google images of gender ultrasounds apparently.  Good thing the sonographer and I were all over it. Then she typed it out "It's a boy!" on the screen. This is the point at which I started crying. It just all of a sudden became so so real. We got to see more views of him including in 3-D which is a total freak show affair and not overly adorable. They don't begin building fat until 26 weeks so the 3-D images make your cute 2-D black and white baby look like an animated skeleton. Appropriate for Halloween. My unsolicited advice is to stick to 2-D early on or at least not despair that your child is a monster based on a single ultrasound image.

J and I left the ultrasound palace grinning and kind of skipping. We were giddy motherfuckers. When I walked in, I felt like I had a "condition" with a questionable prognosis. When I left, we were the parents of a growing little boy. I would have paid a million dollars for that feeling (or a similarly feasible sum) but I only had to pay $45. At my insistence, we drove directly to Buy Buy Baby (which, as the name suggests, is a total commercial horror show) and each picked out a vaguely boyish onesie. J detested the big box store experience but I loved buying something for a real person.

I feel I should briefly address the gender question. Like, feeeeeeeeelings. So, I have written before and would have told you candidly at any point in my life that I wanted a girl. And I still do. One day, I would love a daughter. That said, it was really difficult to get one kid of either gender on board and honestly, I don't know that it will happen again. Having a daughter very well may be something that doesn't happen for me. It makes me a little sad but I have so much more happiness over my little boy that it's completely overshadowed. I am truly not disappointed at all that we're having a boy. I'm overjoyed. I love this little being inside of me and that's who he is, a boy. It was pure magic to find out another piece of the puzzle. He's his own person and gender is a small but important sliver.  The goal of unprotected sex (hilarious) was to have a child. Any kind of child. Just not a serial-killery child. As it became blaringly obvious that the whole sex thing was not going to pan out, the urgency to have a baby, any baby, like potentially a stranger's baby on the street, just kept getting stronger. I'm thrilled that it's a baby. I'm thrilled that it's my baby and that we successfully made a baby with genitalia. Go us! I'm a little afraid of baby penises and getting peed on. J came to me fully potty trained. I'm a little afraid that he'll be drawn to guns and general warfare. I don't know from boys. I'm from a family of girls. This is going to be an adventure. I'm married to a boy so we'll figure it out. Now, I just can't wait to meet our little guy. I insist that he keep cooking for 22-24 more weeks. In the meantime, I know a little bit more about who I'm talking to and talking about. My boy. I'm super in love. 

15w2d - Meaningless Updates and General Nonsense

I have been a delinquent blogger as of late. My apologies. Frankly, not a whole lot is happening these days. As was the case before getting knocked up, I think about my uterus 70% of the time (gross understatement). So that hasn't changed. Certainly the contents of my uterus have changed and magically continue to grow on a daily basis. I am now 15 weeks pregnant which feels pretty close to a miracle though I have yet to receive an email from the Vatican. I think I need two more miracles for them to reach out. I hope my next act will be to give birth to a healthy baby. M-I-R-A-C-L-E of science. My third miracle, in hopes of attaining sainthood, will have nothing to do with babies as I'd like to diversify. Amy, patron saint of in vitro fertilization and _____. If you have recommendations, I'm all ears. It needs to be amazing.

I'm officially out at work which is nice and sort of a relief on all fronts.
A) I didn't realize what a huge secret it was to hide. While you're simultaneously sleeping and gagging at your desk, you have to pretend to be a normal functioning part of the office ecosystem. I took on Dolly Parton 9-to-5 hours as of August and have acted as though it's normal to saunter in at that hour which, for me, it's not. 
B) Depending on what I wear, I look awkwardly lumpy. I hoped that my coworkers would just assume I was letting myself go. Which, in many ways, I have been. Exercising is like the most difficult.
C) Do you people realize how freaking hard this has been for so long? (you do, they don't) I'm ready to play the part of a normally functioning female body regardless of whether it's true or not.

In fascinating fashion related news, I bought maternity jeans which make me look like I've shit my pants but feel like a warm, cotton candy hug for my mid-section. I adore. My big girl pants, from winters of extra padding, are still fitting and seem like they'll work for the next few weeks. I was in California last week for work and came across a sportwear store called Lumpy's. It appears they sell golf and tennis gear for the septagenarian set. I have appropriated "Lumpy's" as the name for all maternity clothing shops. Overpriced industry, you're welcome.

Upcoming enticements... Tomorrow I have my second OB appointment. I get a cervix check but no ultrasound. Boo, but yay for another appointment to tick off the list. Second, J and I have decided to peek under the skort and find out the gender this weekend. We could wait until the anatomy scan in mid-November but we're impatient people. 2 years of trying to make this kid will do that to you. We're going to one of those elective ultrasound places that I always used to judge. Still do, actually. They typically have horrible names like Peek-A-Baby and things like that. The one we're going to has a non-embarrassing name which makes it marginally better. And it's not in a strip mall. However that's all just good marketing and location, location, location. It's no better than any of the others. J kinda wants a boy and I kinda want a girl (because we live for stereotypes) so one of us will win. Really we just want a kid so we're going to be thrilled either way. I just want to be able to imagine this monkey. It's another huge piece of the puzzle.

Everyone who has felt the need to render a guess has told me it's a boy and that's gotten into my head. I don't really have a sense either way but if everyone tells you something, you start to believe it. I will say, because it warms my heart and makes me laugh, that a coworker did waiver for a moment. I am quite close to one of the custodians at the office. He was overjoyed when I told him the news. He looked me over and said, "It's a woman." A woman. Not a girl, a woman. Which makes me think that I could be carrying a 50-year-old librarian with a bad perm. He then corrected himself and said, "No, it's a boy." So there goes my middle-aged female uterine companion. I'll let you all know.