Monday, December 22, 2008

What child is this...

Look at us.  We are a family.  Oh what a difference a baby makes.

The last three months went unwritten about because I was recovering from birth, mastitis, and sleep deprivation.  But I am learning a rhythm to this role now and Delaney and I are operating pretty well as a team.   

Yes, now my B the G goes by Delaney Louise Coffey.  Choosing the name was a trial and I eventually had to stop telling people the various candidates when they would inevitably ask.  It never failed to amaze me how openly critical some could be when they heard my list of names.  I've been privy to some pretty bad baby monikers in my time, but I would never tell someone I didn't like the name they had chosen.  Or that I went to school with a insert name and she was a real asshole.  People were too honest with me when they asked about her name and I was surprised how many of them didn't get that I wasn't asking their opinion, only answering their question.

So in the end I began giving vague answers about there being a list of possible names and then changing the subject.  Delaney was a name my mother had mentioned to me and one of the very few Justin and I agreed on.  His tastes run much more traditional than mine and while I don't usually like the last name as first name method, there is something feminine and delicate about the name that I find very pretty and unusual.  Which is the word my mother-in-law used when I told her Delaney's name for the first time.  "Well that's...unusual."  I could tell it threw her for a loop, but you can't please everybody with the name game.  And it really suits Delaney.  

Speaking of feminine and delicate, she is weighing in at a hefty 13 lbs now at three months old and Justin and I roll our eyes when we think back to the IUGR diagnosis and how worried we were about her tininess.   Her thighs have glorious, thick rolls in them and her cheeks are chipmunk-y with big rose blooms on them.  Even her elbows and knuckles have fat dimples and I think back to one of my adoption posts where I had to draw a picture of the baby I was going to adopt.  I've got to find that drawing and post it because honest-to-god Delaney looks just like the little papoose I drew.   Granted it was a pretty generic drawing, which was the point of the exercise and she doesn't have a feather coming out of her head.  But she has the same dark eyes and serene expression.  And she certainly is the chubba wubba baby I was wishing for last fall.  

It's a wonder how certain things come to pass.  And why other times we're left guessing.   

So while my Adventures in Babymaking are at an end, I've decided to keep writing when I can about my journey into motherhood.  I've already missed some whopper stories with my absence but I'll try to pick it up now that I'm back into the groove.  Remind me to tell you about the mastitis cum breast abscess.  A real kicker for a new, already neurotic mom.


Tuesday, September 30, 2008

At Last


This is the first chance I've had to update the blog, so you may have guessed that B the G has arrived by now.  And she has.  

Weighing in at a healthy 6.8 lbs., she was put into my arms on Sunday, September 21, 2008, looking a bit stunned, but peaceful.  For all of the drama and trauma of my pregnancy, labor and delivery was remarkably straightforward.  Practically textbook.

Justin and I attended a local street fair on Saturday, with Elvis impersonators and men in drag on stilts, funnel cake and local art, both good and bad for sale,.  I was absolutely exhausted when I got home, but figured it may have moved things along a bit.  Sure enough that night around 7:00 pm I went into labor.  At first mild and manageable, by midnight, contractions were 3-4 minutes apart and had me on my knees.  

By the time we got to the hospital I was doing the panting and moaning act that you see in TV.  Sure now that I wanted that epidural, we were triaged in, I was told I was 4-5 centimeters dilated and to wait for anesthesia.  Sweet, sweet relief when that spinal hit and I could suddenly look around and feel the reality of knowing I was about to deliver a baby.  The drugs did slow down my dilation a bit, so I labored awhile until they decided to give me some pitocin to speed up my dilation.  Up down, up down.  

Around 10:30 a nurse checked me, told me she could see the head and asked me if I was ready to celebrate a birthday.  The rush of it when she said that...the imminence of my whole journey was right there in front of me.  I pushed for about 25 minutes under the nurse's rather drill sergeant like command.  The touchy-feely stuff goes out the window when they are trying to get that baby out.  But I was glad she was pushy.  Take-charge demeanor in a crisis is very comforting to me.  Especially when I have no idea what I'm doing.

11:09 and she was out, pushed into the world by brute strength, willpower, and her own determination.  Justin cut the cord and went over to look at her.  I was shaking with the effort and emotion, tears just pouring down my face as I stretched to get a look at her in the cleanup tank.  And then she was in my arms, outside of me, looking at us.  She has a head full of black hair and looks like a little Natalie Portman in the V for Vendetta phase.  She is tiny and pink and perfect.  

 

Friday, September 19, 2008

Passing the baton...


My grandma died yesterday.  I had hoped she would live to see her great-grandaughter, even if she might not have been too sure about who she was and where she fit into the family tree.  But she was 99 and tired.  I am selfishly sad because I will miss her terribly.  And also blessedly happy because she was ready to die as she and I discussed so many times.  Yesterday was also my father's birthday who was her only child and who looked after her like Florence Nightingale in his home until her death.  Death was always just out of her reach and I like to think that at the end she did have some control and timing over her departure after all, choosing to be alone with my dad on his birthday.  

She always used to wonder out loud why she was living so long and for awhile I had wonderful, easy answers for her.  "You have to teach me to crochet.  You have to attend my wedding.  you need to meet your great-grandchildren."  Then, as she got older the answers got harder.  Her eyesight and hearing got worse, her mobility decreased, her memory shortened, and I came up with lamer and lamer answers like "you have to finish this crossword puzzle" or "you need to have dinner with me."  Until finally for the last year or so, she would ask me the question again, and I was forced to say "I don't know, Grandma."  Because I really didn't.

99 is a lot of years.  I put myself to sleep last night making a chronological list of all of the things she had witnessed in her lifetime.  There's the usual old person list: several wars, the advent of cars, the Depression, man on the moon, computers and the internet.  But I also thought of trivial things - tissues in a box, polyester, credit cards, ball point pens, tampons.  So many things that changed and then changed again while she grew up, grew out, grew old.  

It is easiest for me when remembering people, to use my sense of smell.  My Grandma never wore fragrance at all but the smell of Pond's cold cream makes me feel like she's standing next  to me.  She also used to make this divine beef soup whenever we would visit her in Pennsylvania.  One of those quintessential grandmother soups that take all day to do right and that nobody has the time to make anymore.  She would stir that soup all say, skimming fat off the top, adding vegetables and herbs.  When we arrived at her house, the smell was intoxicating.  She kept the noodles separate in a blue bowl, boiled and ready to spoon in to the broth.  I always wondered why they were separate.  Did they get overcooked if she added them later?  Did someone along the line prefer no noodles and it became habit to serve them separately?  I'll never know because I never asked.

Brown butter, too.  What is it with eastern Europeans and brown butter?  My grandparents put it on everything.  It's such a unique, evocative smell for me, but it's richness was an acquired taste.  Not until I was older did I learn to love the flavor of it drizzled over the handmade potato pierogi my grandma made.   One of us always left her house with a case of the runs and we were all usually 5 lbs. heavier.  But man, they were good.

So, I'll look for her dark eyes in the face of my daughter.  Ochi chyornye, like my grandfather used to sing.  And hope that maybe Grandma brushed past her on her way out and my daughter's way in. Rubbing off a gift or two, like in the fairy tale.  Her easy, contagious laugh,  her fierce desire to constantly be learning despite her 6th grade education, or her love of music and singing.  The circle of  it humbles me as I think of her in labor with my dad 66 years ago yesterday, pacing and worrying about his birth.  And here I am, my due date has come and almost gone, but I am just as heavy with my child all these years later, just as anticipatory, just as scared.  

I am forced to be patient for the little life inside me to find her way out in her own time, as my Grandma was forced to be patient in laying down her own burden of such a long life, long after she was tired of carrying it.  I am so glad she is gone, I only wish I could have been there to tell her she was dying while it was happening.  It sounds macabre and heartless, but I know her well enough, that she would have been so happy to hear the news.  Relieved and happy.  But maybe she already knew.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Low Rider

Ok, almost a full 10 months pregnant.  Friday is D-day at 40 weeks and she really can't get much lower without falling out.  

I have an overwhelming urge to clean the blades on the ceiling fans, not to mention the fridge, the dog, the car and the washing machine.  Yes, I cleaned the washing machine.  The dog was harder.  

I took the car to the local fire department and got a lovely fireman to help me install the car seat properly today.  He had just completed a four day seminar on car seat safety and installation, so I feel pretty confident that it's in there correctly.  Can you imagine a four day seminar on child seat safety?  I should bring him some doughnuts or something.  What do firemen eat?

B the G is still grooving around on a regular basis in there, although it feels different now because she is lower and her movements lately seem less...punchy for lack of a better word.  Maybe she's gearing up too, steering towards the mental focus and balance of  T'ai Chi rather than the physical Taekwondo she'd been practicing in the past.  

I'm feeling good.  Calm and strangely confident now.  Justin is still battling his back pain and my mother fell and broke her foot in two places, so her visit is out.  Hopefully my sister will still make it at some point, but I can do this.  I am excited and watchful and present at the moment.  It's very dream-like.  I don't think it will be too much longer.






Monday, September 8, 2008

Ode To A Panty

Oh blessed, life-changing, granny panties
Why didn't I buy you 10 lbs ago?
Goodbye vanity and red squinch lines
Hello sexless, stretchy comfort waistband.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Perspective

Since Justin's back is still not right and he is on painkillers, I had to drive him to get his hair cut this weekend.  He was starting to look a little simian, especially in the back, but I was still rather grumbly about having to chauffeur because the chairs there aren't very comfortable and my bladder now seems to be the size of a pea.

Justin's barber's name is Eli and he has an old school barber shop in midtown Atlanta, complete with striped pole and red leather barber chair.  He looks a lot like Mr. Magoo and speaks with a heavy Greek accent.  There was no on else in the shop that day so I was grateful we'd get in and get out. 

I sat opposite the red leather chair and the three of us exchanged pleasantries about the holiday weekend, time spent with family, etc.  He told us he has family in Tampa and spoke enthusiastically about spending time in Tarpon Springs, a Greek community near Tampa.  I asked if his children spoke Greek and he said "Little bit.  Not like me.  I speak seven languages."  People who are multi-lingual may as well possess a super power as far as I'm concerned and I'm always intrigued about how they learned, when in life, what were the languages.  Seven languages!  "How did you come to know seven languages?"  And he said "I was a prisoner for two years in the death camps in Europe."

Eli speaks Greek, Polish, Russian, Italian, French, English and German.  And then while he is snipping serenely around my husband's head, he started telling me the story of how he came to be in those death camps at 16 years old.   He was taken prisoner when Germany invaded Greece in 1941.  I always wondered how the Nazi's knew who was Jewish and who wasn't when they sent people to camps and asked Eli about it now.  He said when the Nazis arrived in a town they would build scaffolding and hang people from ten random families and tell the crowd that if they lied about their status they would be next on the scaffold.  I guess that was a pretty effective method.  He also said there was no mention of concentration camps or gas chambers.  Prisoners didn't know where they were going only that they were being taken away.  He said if people knew the journey by cattle car led to death by gas chamber, there probably would have been a lot more people running for it, or at least resisting.  For the time being, he wore the gold star they gave him and crowded onto the train with his two brothers.

He went on to tell me from that point forward, he was moved around between 8 different concentration camps.  He lost his older brother to sickness at one of them and was separated from his younger brother early on.  They worked digging ditches and unloading bags of cement from trains.  He said the Nazis starved them right from the get go and food became a preoccupation.  He learned to count the people in line to the barrels of soup and time it so that he got a ladleful from the bottom, where the potatoes were.  Although sometimes he did get it wrong and they switched out the barrels while he was still in line, giving him the thin, watery broth from the top.  He also learned which dumpster was used for the  officers mess and stole food from it repeatedly, carefully waiting for the searchlight to pass before doing his thieving.  He said he got caught only once and received 25 lashes on his bottom.  I felt hunger just listening to his stories, how you are so starved you will do just about anything for food.

Sometimes the soldiers would come to the prisoners for certain skills they had a need for.  Who is a mason?  Who knows electricity?  They came once and asked for a barber and Eli volunteered his services.  They took him to a small office where the Kommandant was waiting.  The man was completely bald and wanted his head and face shaved.  Eli picked up the straight razor to begin work and as soon as he did an officer cocked a gun and kept it trained on him during the entire process.  He did nick the Kommandant during the process and had nothing but some hair and soap to stop the blood.  When Eli finished, the Kommandant looked in a little mirror, wrote something on a bit of paper and handed it to Eli.  Sure he was carrying his death sentence for the nick, Eli opened it and found a coupon for some bread and cheese at the mess hall.  He thought he had found his gravy train, but that officer was transferred later in the week.

Five times, Eli said he stood in line to enter the gas chambers and five times something happened that stopped the process, a miracle, he called it, and he lived to see another day.  All this time I am sitting across from the chair, leaning forward into his story and asking questions, shaking my head, dumbstruck at the magnitude of it.  I know it is also millions of other's story who have survived the Holocaust, but I've never talked to a survivor before, and he was so open about sharing this personal, terrifying experience.   

Liberated with his younger brother who he was reunited with at another camp, he described the American planes flying overhead, while he was being loaded into another cattle car, this one open at the top so the planes could see the people piled inside.  "Les Americains! Les Americains sont ici, maintenant!" he yelled, imitating the joy, the relief, the exuberance they felt knowing the end of the war was imminent.  I was almost in tears myself at this point and Justin's hair was finished.

Eli lost a twin sister, and five other siblings to the camps.  His hometown of 200,000 was wiped out with only 200 survivors left at the end of the war.  He showed us pictures of his late wife, his son and daughter, his grandchildren.  His face is so happy and proud and I think he feels like the luckiest man in the world.  "Bring the baby back" he said pointing to my belly and he pulled out a blue plastic rocking horse.  "For customers and kids" he winks at me.  He thanked us again and again for the company and tried to give us the haircut on the house.  I was ready to stuff the money in his pants if he didn't take it.

My worries and problems feel ridiculous when we leave his shop.  Our biggest concern is whether we should buy a wagon or a sedan.  I can't stop thinking about Eli all day, or the next.  Where does one get that kind of triumphant attitude after all of that horror?  How does it destroy some and not others?  He said some prisoners would just throw themselves at the electric fence, unable to take the wretchedness their lives had become.  Their bodies would be left to remain there for a few days, hands gripping the wires even after death.  

I hope I am made of the same stuff as Eli and more than that, I hope B the G is too.  She has already proved herself a little fighter and we still have a big journey ahead of us. I feel so much wiser after listening to Eli's story and I can't really put my finger on what it is I've learned.  I feel calmer and more determined to enjoy every minute I have, though I know that feeling will fade or be forgotten.   In the end, I only know that I witnessed a little slice of strength and the real power of the human spirit, visiting with him that day.  I will add it to the other little nuggets of wisdom and stories and experiences I have collected and tell it all to B the G one day.  

Saturday, August 30, 2008

37 Weeks

Justin's back is still out and he is scheduled to go in for an MRI next Saturday.  His Doc has put him on Vicodin now which puts him in a much better mood, but means he shouldn't be operating heavy machinery, i.e. a car with a laboring pregnant woman in it.  

I hate to be so "it's all about me" right now.  I know he's in a lot of pain with a possible diagnosis of a herniated disc.  But I am in a bit of a panic about a) physically getting to the hospital when labor starts,  b) having to listen to Justin moan about his back and when it's time to take his pill while I am contracting, c) going through labor and delivery with no moral/emotional support from my drug-induced husband and d) homeward bound with a crippled husband and fragile newborn to contend with while my bottom is still healing and I'm on no sleep.   Ok, I very much am all about me right now.  I make no apologies.

My sister is on call to jump in the car at the first contraction and my neighbor offered to drive us to the hospital should we need her.  But I might be on my own for a bit with the whole waiting game of cervical dilation.  I think I can do it though.  I've plowed through so much on my way to this moment.  I just have to channel my inner Wonder Wheel and keep up a steady dialogue with B the G.   Since the dry run at the hospital with my tumble down the steps, I feel pretty confident that I'll have a great team there helping me out.  

I just got a pedicure and will get one once a week from here on out so I can at least look at my toes with pleasure.  The rest of me is pretty much hilarious at this point.  My belly looks prosthetic to me.  Like I should just be able to unhook it in the back and remove, it is so round and taut.  Some say these bellies are gorgeous and while that is not the word I would use, I do find mine vastly entertaining to look at.  Foreign and funny at the same time.   My belly button has timidly popped outward, giving up the fight of remaining inward under all that pressure.  And blue veins lace all across the surface, always there before, but in stark relief now because of my fair skin and stretched abdomen.  Like I said, I'm fascinated.  It's like a freak show kind of vanity.  

  

  


Thursday, August 28, 2008

Tight Fit

I know this is bizarre, but I can't help wondering if, when I poop, it gives the baby more room to stretch around in there.  I envision her stretching her arms out next to my intestines and  thinking "Whew, now I can move!"

Monday, August 25, 2008

Ripe


Don't let the smile fool ya.  I am really, really uncomfortable, pretty much all the time.  My back aches and the only thing that fits anymore are my earrings.  I wish there were a little zipper in there that B the G could undo and come on out.  I don't think she's dropped down yet, because I still have heartburn and it's hard to catch my breath sometimes.

BUT.  Other than that, my foot is on the mend, thankfully.  Justin is still battling his back pain and I need him to hurry up and get past it so he can move into the manager's position when we go to bat.  Right now, there's a lot of moaning and whining going on and it's not coming from me.   I know I sound unsympathetic.  I think I am.  There's only room for one moaner and whiner in this town and it's the one carrying the extra 25 lbs.  

As of Friday I'll be considered full term which is quite a victory for me and B the G.  We can go pretty much anytime from here on out and while I'm ready, I don't think she is quite yet.  I'm practicing my patience and my yoga breathing.    She is busy poking me in the ribs with her feet.  But at least they are the right way up...


Saturday, August 16, 2008

The Usual Suspects

On Friday I woke up to find Justin in the guest bed groaning in pain with his back out.  Neither of us are sure what exactly caused the pain, but it's probably related to his recently re-starting a morning workout coupled with assembling the enormous dresser/changing table for the nursery.  The workout involves lifting weights repetitively and the changing tables involves millions of little screws and pegs, a Makita drill, instructions that look like cryptic writing from ancient Mesopotamia, beer, and apparently the ability to swear like a sailor.  It's like a mathematic formula for pain.

We called the doctor and made an appointment for Justin to come in at 11:00 am that morning.  In the meantime I went about my daily business, in quite a cheery mood because my sister was arriving the following day, because B the G had been given the all clear with the IUGR and because now Justin was the one who had to keep still and I could legally do a little more around the house without hearing it from him.
 
I shared my good news about B the G with Mimi who calls about every morning for an update and we discussed the trials of her pregnancies and mine and she begged me now that this latest crisis had passed, to just sit still and not move for the next five weeks.  Ha. Ha. Ha.  

A morning chore I've done since we got Gordon is to open the gate connecting our yard to our neighbor's which allows their dogs and Gordon to frolic together at will.  He loves it, they all get exercise and it doubles the size of their play area.  This involves a little duck under a chain link fence and then lifting a doggie door cut into the fence.  I've been very careful about holding onto the fence, stepping slowly, and minding the dogs since my belly has gotten so big in recent weeks and lately I had been asking Justin to do it, but of course he was incapacitated in the bedroom.  I was thinking these exact thoughts as I went through the motions on Friday.  Watching my feet, placing my hands carefully on the fence, opening the gate.  It went like clockwork and I was practically whistling like Tom Sawyer on my way back to the house.  

Then. Coming down the terraced steps in the backyard, the ones that have no rail because they're TERRACED, I slipped off the edge of the steps, flailed my arms wildly and went down like a bag of dirt.  Most of my weight went on my right foot which bent inwards and my butt.  I sat their stunned for a minute while the dogs circled around me wondering what this act was all about.  Then my foot began to ache, then fear for B the G set in, then I started to cry like a toddler lost in a mall.  Big, scared tears, panting, breathing, the works.  I let everything out on those steps.  All of the fear I was experiencing at that moment, plus the angst of the last three weeks, the pain in my foot, the frustration of my situation.  The dogs began to bark and howl around me, sensing the emotion and I thought maybe Justin will hear and come help me.  He didn't.

I called Gordon over and leaned on him while I hoisted myself up.  Hobbling into the house I yelled to Justin that I had fallen and then sat on the couch and cried some more.  He comes out of the bedroom walking like Frankenstein and tries to make sense of what happened through my blubbering.   He's worried about the fact that I'm crying so hard that I might start hyperventilating and tells me to try and stop.  So I did.  Once I turned off the waterworks I was able to make a plan to get to the hospital to check on the Bean and my foot at the same time Justin went to his appointment.        

I had to drive because Justin couldn't raise his arms high enough.  I felt B the G kick a few times on our way there and I felt fairly certain that she was fine which helped me stay focused.  I hobbled over to the ER and Justin went upstairs to his doctor's office and we promised to meet up later, as though for a lunch date.

The ER, which by the way is on the far end of the hospital, told me I needed to go to the Maternity Center to check on the baby and then come back for my foot, which by now is really beginning to throb.  I make it to the Maternity Center and god bless them, they kicked in and took over.  Checked me into a room, put me in a hospital gown, hooked me up to fetal monitors and I got to hear that lovely, reassuring heartbeat.  They went over me with a fine-toothed comb.  Questioning everything, drawing blood, urine sample, blood pressure, temperature, a cervical exam that felt like they were trying to reach my throat from the inside.  

Somewhere in there Justin found me after a trip to the pharmacy for muscle relaxers and sat uncomfortably in the chair next to me.  He popped some and began to sink lower and lower in the chair, informing me that he would be unable to drive home.  After about three hours and seeing nurses, interns, residents and the attending, and hearing from each one of these people how important it is to hold onto the handrail when I am on stairs (they're TERRACED!), they and I were finally satisfied that my Bean was just fine and they sent us on our way. 

I really felt like I should get my foot looked at, much as I wanted to get home, get Justin home and get something to eat.  So I went back down to the ER and Justin told me he couldn't sit in a chair anymore and was going to take a cab home.  I knew it would be a wait so I told him to go and settled in for more waiting.  

The ER at Emory is light years away from the cozy, warm maternity center and I began to feel yucky sitting there.  Everyone there looks miserable, staff, admins, patients, everyone.  When I got called back I talked to a triage nurse who told me I would have to have an x-ray to see if the foot was broken.  I don't know what I really expected here. I mean it seems like a normal procedure for my problem, but being 35 weeks pregnant, despite reassurances that I would be covered in lead and only the foot would be x-rayed, I began to have doubts about proceeding.  I really didn't think it was broken, as I could still bend it and there was no swelling.  I really just wanted somebody to reassure me of this without an x-ray, wrap it, and pat me on my head.  

Waiting for the radiology tech, I sat next to an old woman wrapped in a sheet who smelled like urine and a younger woman who looked like 10 miles of bad road, and hacked constantly into her hands.  I began to feel germs creeping onto me like army ants and when the radiology tech came out and called the next patient in, he had the same vacant, disconsolate look on his face as the old woman in the sheet.   I had enough.         

I told the administrative assistant at the front that I was leaving, I didn't want my x-ray I just wanted to go home.  She asked me to wait for the nurse which I did for about two coughs worth of time from Hackensack sitting beside me.  Then I told them again that I was leaving and she made me sign a form that stated that if I died as a result of leaving early, the hospital was not responsible.  They underlined and emphasized the word "death" and I signed happily and limped out of that place like Keyser Soze leaving the precinct on his way to freedom.   

Justin was there in the waiting room when I came out, having forgotten that he didn't have house keys and fitting right in with the wretched face theme that was de rigueur for the complete ER experience.  Sadly, my limp didn't fade like Soze's when I left the hospital.  It hurts and continues to hurt if I walk too much on it.  So I'm back to being immobile for awhile.   Only now I have company!  Groggy, grumpy JC.   But at least we have each other.  

 

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Chubba Wubba



Success!  After three weeks of gluey protein shakes, abbreviated bed rest and gallons of water, B the G weighed in at 5.7 lbs today and hit the 35th percentile on the growth chart.  Her Dopplers are all where they should be and there is a healthy amount of amniotic fluid for her to float around in there.  

I am so relieved, so grateful, so proud.  The doctor is thrilled with our progress and told me that we could continue coming in twice a week for evaluating or come back in three weeks when it's closer to go time.  Justin said "Three weeks" faster than I could get it out and the the doctor said she had already written that in the chart because she knew what his response would be.  They've gotten to know him pretty well in recent weeks.  We are both tired of the trips, the angst, and the stress of the visits.  Just let her bake a little more and we'll be satisfied with continuing the above regimen and monitoring kick counts.

She moved around in my belly all during the ultrasound, doing her own little victory dance.  Justin credits the water and the Krispy Kreme doughnuts he bought for me.  I think it was the rest and the protein.  But I also wonder if she would have grown anyway, that she just hit a lull.  It's hard to know.   

Regardless, I am thankful for the results and for the team of techs and physicians I got to know so well over the past three weeks.   It's a weird, loaded environment for all involved in peri-natal.  There's that gold-tinged advice to stay relaxed and stress-free for the baby coming in from all corners, but in the back of everyone's mind we all know I wouldn't be there if there weren't something unusual going on.  It's all unspoken and everyone is trying to protect me from worry and tension but also give me all the information I need.  It was a difficult balance for me and I did break a couple of times on my own.   To let it go and wait for her to make the next move is the easiest decision I've made in awhile.

 

   

Monday, August 11, 2008

Bananafanafofana

If I hear one more person suggest that we name the baby Sumatra, Venti or Folger's, I am going to shoot that person in the face with a bazooka.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Beenie Weenie


Little face turned sideways and looking out.













I had a Doppler test done which is exactly like the green and red storm systems you see on the Weather Channel, except they measure where the blood is flowing inside B the G.  They look at little weather systems in her brain, kidneys, heart and several other vitals and she scored very well, everything getting the blood and oxygen it should be getting. 

Afterwards the neonatologist came in to give me the good news.  I was so relieved, I got a little teary.  She asked me if I was stressed out, and admonished me for worrying.  I don't know if their average patient is some sort of robotic, unfeeling automaton, but honestly.  How can they tell you that you need all of these tests and your baby is this and that and you have to come in twice a week.  Now go home and don't worry.  I explained my position on worrying to her.  It's just something that comes naturally to me after getting this kind of news for my first, miraculously conceived, high-risk pregnancy baby.   She assured me that these are very precautionary, preventative measures and that her feeling is that B the G is simply a wee bairn, as the Scots say.  I told her that after this test and her reassurances, I would certainly rest easier and be more likely to stay worry- free.  I will try anyway.

I still have to go in twice a week to monitor her movement, breathing, amniotic fluid and heart rate, but that's ok for now.  Today at the ultrasound (above) she was face up and head down, just blinking and breathing, peering out sweetly towards my belly.  It was wonderful to see her again.  Her next measurement visit is in two weeks and if she hasn't grown significantly by then, we'll discuss inducement at 37 weeks so we can get her out, bypass my placenta or whatever is holding her up in there and physically stick the food in her mouth.

On another topic, I had my first shower last weekend in my beloved Charleston at Mimi's house.  The dirty dog snuck the whole thing past me into my beach weekend visit and I couldn't have been more shocked.  My family was there, except for my mother who couldn't make it, and so many friends from high school, college, and Moo Roo, it was like an episode of This Is Your Life.   There I was in the special chair, opening pink fluffy things, letting people rub my belly, listening to congratulations, advice and birth stories and I couldn't soak it up enough.  I wanted it to last forever.  I never thought I'd get to be the lady in the special chair with the big belly.  It was wonderful and I  felt so much love and support from these people that had known me for so long.  I grinned and laughed and grinned some more and I thank my lucky stars for putting me in that chair with all of those people around me holding me up.  

Thursday, July 24, 2008

La Petite Princesse

IUGR.  It stands for Intrauterine Growth Restriction and B the G just got labeled with it.  Her estimated fetal weight is below the tenth percentile and apparently this could be a cause for concern, possible premature labor or simply that she is a small baby.   What this means for us is bi-weekly trips to the neo-natologist to monitor her growth rate and my blood pressure to make sure both of us are thriving.  I could go more into what that potentially could portend, but I'm not going to.  She is small for her age and for now we need her to gain weight and grow.

I have started to dread my ultrasounds because rather than being a sweet little view into her world inside of me, they have become nerve-wracking, nail-biting waiting periods where I lay tense and anxious, hoping I don't get another bizarre diagnosis of some potential problem.  The doc told me that she had sent home every other patient she had brought in that day to monitor for IUGR and was hoping to go for a shutout.  But I blew the curve of course and now I get to become very good friends with the peri-natal receptionist.

For now, suffice to say we may bring her into the world early depending on how she measures up in the next couple of weeks.  In the meantime, I am supposed to relax (Ha!), try to eat more protein and monitor her movements to make sure she is still on spin cycle in there.  Each one of these things is going to pose difficulties for me and I am trying to work on them.

Protein:  Because Justin is a vegetarian I don't eat or cook meat as much as your average American wifey.  So I've tried to bulk it up recently with more burgers and steaks wherever I can get them.  The smell of meat cooking makes me queasy so I am working around this as well.  I bought some protein shakes at the health food store yesterday.  Blended one  up as soon as I got home and it tasted like frothy, strawberry flavored Elmer's Glue.  I choked it down and will continue to do so. Maybe the vanilla is better.  In the meantime, Justin is chasing after me with steaks and ground beef, which is hilarious considering how he referred to my burgers in the past as "dead flesh".  Now he's hawking it harder than a shill at Coney Island.  "Have you had some meat?  What did you eat today?  Would you like to go out for a steak?  Step right up, step right up.  I'll get the car."

Fetal Movement:  Here's where I begin to go more crazy than I already am with this pregnancy.  The doc says monitor her movements.  I say, how much should she be moving?  The doc says you know that answer best, whatever is normal for her.  So now, if I don't feel her moving pretty much every ten minutes or so I panic.  I poke at my belly.  I talk to her and sing to her and put on Blossom Dearie or Pink Floyd, both of which seem to stimulate her.  I have had earnest discussions with her about this and they are reminiscent of Richard Pryor in the movie The Toy.  The scene where he is in the toy store and is standing in the big, yellow Wonder Wheel as it's struggling to stay inflated - "Don't let me down now, we're a team, Wonder Wheel!  Hold yourself together.  I can't do it without you.  Come on Wonder Wheel",  as the thing is deflating all around him.  I don't even feel ridiculous doing this, because it inevitably produces a twitch or a kick and I can breath for another ten minutes.  I think she thinks I am deranged.  I think am on my way.

Relax:  Absurd considering the above.  I can distract myself with a book or TV and lay on my left side and eat my meat burger and strawberry glue shake, but it's always there in the back of my mind.  "Is she moving, breathing, eating, growing???"  

I get it now that this pregnancy is working at me, prying at my worst faults and forcing me to look at life, mine and everyone else's as a gift.  Despite the obstacles it has thrown in my path, I still feel lucky to be me, to quote some Blossom.  I marvel at women in third world countries who go through this process repeatedly with no counseling or advice or ultrasounds or monitoring.  They just get pregnant and have their babies.  I marvel at women who do this three, five, seven times, each pregnancy seemingly effortless and practically a ritual.  I marvel at women who have a child with an illness or birth defect, a genetic abnormality or worst of all a stillbirth or death.  Where do they get the strength?  Is there a maternal switch that flicks on that allows them to cope and function?

Maybe it is the same switch, albeit on a lower voltage, that is forcing me to choke down this protein shake and get over my gag reflex with cooking meat and sing and sing to B the G until I get a kick.  More ultrasounds on Friday so I am aiming for the fifteenth percentile with all of this.  We're aiming high.  We're a team, Wonder Wheel.  Grow little bean, grow!    








Thursday, July 10, 2008

Snaps!

My little Lima Bean at about 27 weeks.  Yes, I totally splurged and paid for the 3-D ultrasound.  It was worth every penny to see her sweet face.



























Me at 30 weeks and and with JC at the Braves v. Mariners game.  The Braves got massacred and I got a foot long hot dog.   Yummmm.







  





   














Sunday, June 29, 2008

Adventures in Easy Living

Justin has been in Vancouver since Wednesday and in an effort to keep my mind off of the possibility that I might go into early labor and have to ride MARTA to the hospital, I decided to go see a movie on Friday afternoon. A matinee. So luxurious. I belong to the group of people who love to go to the cinema by themselves. I can sit where I please (back row, nobody bouncing on my seat), buy whatever I want from concessions, and get there early so I have time to watch the previews. I also had a birthday party to attend on Saturday night and figured I'd pick up the gift while I was in this particular shopping center.

This little area I am visiting was supposed to be the next big thing in Atlanta urban living. Underground parking garage, movie theater, upscale restaurants and shopping and lots and lots of condos for those young urban professionals. It looks just like you think it would look. A little too landscaped and developed, sort of Disney-esque, a body in search of a soul. It never really caught on the way it was supposed to after several drug related crimes and a murder took place here. Atlanta has so many places like this. Cookie cutter clean, but with a seedy underbelly. I could never live here and actually hate shopping here, but the theater has great stadium seating and comfortable chairs, a plus for me and B the G.

Before the movie, I head over to Dillard's (comparable to Macy's) to buy my friend the coffee grinder she asked for. And while I'm there I poke my head into the lingerie department to check out the bras. There's a Seinfeld episode where Jerry talks about moving and how you become obsessed with finding boxes in the weeks prior to the move. In grocery stores, out with friends, everywhere you go you're thinking "Hmmm, I wonder if they have any boxes they aren't using..."

I am going through something similar with bras while I am pregnant. My breasts continue to astound me in their sheer magnitude, especially as they are now starting to rest across my belly, similar to my great Aunt Helen. My brother and sister and I used to laugh about this when we were young and I guess maybe that karma wasn't so instant, because now that I am fighting the same war, it's not so funny. I wonder where Aunt Helen's old bras went to...

Back at Dillard's, I do a quick sweep through and find some sports bras and a helpful sales assistant who doesn't mind telling me that the ones I am trying on are way too small and brings me back a slew of new selections that really do look like Aunt Helen already wore them. No sweet pink triangles and a single dose of hook and eye. These bras are like giant boob socks with fat, padded shoulder straps and a mammoth back strap with four (four!) hooks in the back. Not even a relative of pretty, but oh the relief when I tried them on. I bought two on the spot and thanked my lovely helper.

So I hustle on over to the theater where I watch the light and fluffy new Sex and the City movie which makes me simultaneously nostalgic for New York and snarky over the ridiculously breezy way the movie makes New York living look. I hope no starry-eyed upstarts head up there after watching this, looking for beautiful, airy apartments, endless available taxi rides and how incredibly easy it is to navigate the Meatpacking District in 4 inch heels. But I give it a thumbs up for the sheer scale of the fashion in it that is like the fifth character in the movie and for Kim Cattrall's amazing figure at 50. Inspirational.

Satisfied and tired, I head back to the garage and realize as I approach my car that my keys aren't in my bag. Ugh. I never lose my keys. But since I've been pregnant I seem to be losing everything, forgetting everything, dropping everything. People say it goes with the turf, but it makes me crazy to lose things under the best of circumstances. When I'm hot, tired and pregnant it makes me want to kill someone. And with Justin out of town, it could potentially get fairly complicated.

So, trying to put a hopeful spin on it, I figure I must have left them in the dressing room at Dillard's which was my only real protracted stop anyway. I head back over there and ask a different sales assistant if any keys were turned in. Sadly, she tells me no, but we search the dressing room I used anyway and I leave my name and number in case they turn up. I go to appliances next to check if they are there and again it's a dead end. Back out into the heat, wondering if I locked them in the car, which is even more unlike me, but being pregnant and water-headed, not impossible. I check back in the car as far as I can see in the darkness of the garage, around the car, at security in the garage and come up empty.

Only one place left to check and that's the movie theater, which I am not looking forward to. Once there, I ask the young, disaffected manager if anyone found any keys and get a shruggy sort of no. At this point I figured it's time to take matters into my own hands and I sneak back into the Sex and the City theater to look around the seat where I was sitting. Previews are playing for the next showing and the theater is dark, but still fairly empty. I go back to my first seat (of course I switched midway through the previews) and bend down as far as I can in the narrow aisles to look under the seat. I can't see a damn thing. I get down on one knee with the various "oofs" and "ughs" that accompany this sort of movement combined with my big belly and try to get a better view. The gum-popping teenage girls further down the same row give me that eye-rolling, lip-pursed look that only African-American women can do right, though I've seen many a white girl try. It screams "Whatever..." without saying a thing.

Yes, whatever, because I am now crawling around the chair I occupied on my hands and knees feeling the sticky, disgusting movie theater floor with the flat of my palms to see if I can grope my way to discovering my keys. I am beginning to feel a little desperate now, not to mention gross. I try the same routine again at the seat I switched over to before the movie started. Getting up and down is harder here as I am further down the aisle, starting to huff and puff a little because I am winded and emotional, and of course I am still hanging on to my two bags of purchases from before as well as my purse . Again no luck and I hoist myself up again from the ground with a loud old-person groan, using the back of someone's chair for leverage. I hate people like me in the previews and it only makes me feel worse about myself and my predicament. "I'm sorry" I stage whisper to the person sitting there. I have old popcorn stuck to my knees and my hands feel like I just licked them and then ate an enormous batch of cotton candy. I can't begin to tell you how pathetic and sorry for myself I feel.

Don't panic, don't panic. People lose their keys everyday. But already I'm thinking about paying for replacement keys on these stupid electronic remote locks that all cars have now. And how am I going to get in the house? I'll have to break a window and crawl in. Oh god. I head back over to Dillard's to retrace my steps one last time before I kick into full-blown melt-down. I can feel myself truly waddling now, because I am exhausted, hot and broken. I hate the cute, tan 20 year-olds I see chatting on their cell phones and walking into H & M. The Pixies' "Where is my Mind" plays over and over in my head as I plow across the street. Again.

Security is starting to eye me funny there. Is that really a baby in her belly or is she going back and forth to her car with stashes of socks and underwear stuffed in her pants? I walk carefully back through appliances checking all the surfaces I was near. Nothing. Back to lingerie where, a little more wild-eyed now, I begin digging like a terrier through the sales bins I was gently perusing just four hours before. My original sales assistant turns up and asks if she can help. I tell her about my keys and explain I already spoke with the other assistant and they didn't have them, but that I was there just double-checking.

Then I see her recognize me, (could she really be helping that many crazed-looking pregnant women in one afternoon?) and she says "Of course I found your keys. You left them on the chair in your dressing room. I put them here in the drawer."

And voila! she pulls out my ring of precious, underrated metal forms that mean the difference between life and death for me at this point. I've spent half the day in this stupid shopping center and while I'm elated to get my keys and high-tail it outta there, I can't help but want to throttle the second ill-informed sales girl who sent me back to crawl through the sticky, popcorn encrusted floors of the movie theaters and stagger through the stupefying heat of a parking garage in Atlanta at 4:00 PM in June. As I drive home, I try to channel gratitude instead of blame because ultimately it was my pathetic self that left the keys there in the first place. It doesn't come easy and instead I vow not to leave my house again until B the G makes her entry into the world.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Is It Hot In Here?

I've always been the warm-blooded type, possibly due to being a member of the GRITS club (Girls Raised In The South). I used to love to walk to the beach in my bare feet trying to burn the soles to a leathery toughness so I could do away with shoes for the rest of the summer. I loved the way I could feel the heat pulsing off of my scalp like I could see it radiating off of cars, loved the drips of sweat running in pools down my belly. To some it sounds like hell, but to me it was invigorating. Cleansing.

I suffered through ten northeast winters, shivering constantly and never really feeling warm until I got that first full blast of summer heat. Justin and I have totally different thermal settings and I prefer the house at 80 or 81 in the summer while he is quietly turning the AC thermostat down when I'm in the other room. I crank my electric blanket to 10 in the winter and he slides a foot over to my side and claims third degree burns.

Cue pregnancy. I understand the whole bun-in-the-oven metaphor now. Because that's what I am - a walking, breathing oven that isn't allowed to drink a cold, frosty beer to cool down in this god-forsaken heat. I admit, I feel a little betrayed by this southern heat. Like we used to be partners, pals from way back and that we understood each other. But as happens in so many good relationships, I've changed, evolved, developed new interests and heat isn't the forgiving kind.

I went to Busch Gardens in Tampa with the whole fam-damily last week. As corny as it sounds, Busch Gardens is one of my favorite spots to visit. Ever. The roller coasters are some of the best I've ever been on, they have wonderful water rides that let you get soaked and cool off, a beautiful nature preserve with large, rolling landscapes for the animals instead of tight, depressing cages, it's pristinely clean and not too big that you feel like you've missed something if you spend the entire day there. And cold, frosty Anhauser is served anywhere you turn. Whether you're 4 or 44 it's pretty Mecca-ish, no matter what you like to do.

Oh but this time, I am a mobile Betty Crocker not-so-easy-bake oven and the heat has turned against me. It's well into the high 90's when we arrive and probably hits 100 degrees by 1:00 PM. I am forbidden from going on any water rides to cool off as most of them post signs warning expectant mothers to stay off or their baby will be jolted right out of their uterus. I can't go on the roller coasters for same reason and god knows I can't have a beer with Justin the Security Guard monitoring everything I put in my mouth.

I ride the Sky Lift, a boring, but cooling, bucket ride over the park and sip my fourth frozen lemonade. I do a lot of waiting. Mostly for my nephews to enjoy all the rides they are now old enough to enter and ironically, now that they are tall enough I can't join them. I feel the sweat run down my back, my breasts, my legs, my temples. But it's not the same heat I loved and coveted. It's attacking me from the inside now. It surges up from the sidewalks in blasts and lingers under my skirt like a pervert. It pounds down on my head like a fist from above, demanding, draining.

I feel like a combustion engine chugging past the water flume ride, the tiger exhibit, the food stands. I think I see pity in the eyes of some mothers with young children and I bet they are wondering what on earth I was thinking of, coming here pregnant in this heat. I want to tell them it wasn't always like this. That we used to be a team, the heat and me. I didn't think my feelings could change so heartlessly, so easily. But all I want now is movie theater air conditioning and a cherry Icee for B the G. I would welcome a blast of arctic air or a cooling thunderstorm. My needs have changed and I've had to move on.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Ch-ch-ch-changes

1. Breasts. I knew they were supposed to get bigger, but I wasn't prepared for this. I have jumped two cup sizes and in profile look like a two-humped camel with my belly. I know some women welcome the size change, but I'm 5'3" and boobies this size make me feel like one of those Paleolithic fertility goddess statues. And nobody tells you that your nipples get bigger too. How does that work? I thought that was sort of a defined territory. Like elbows and fingertips. Oh, and they change color. From a nice rosy, pretty pink, to a ruddy sort of brownish pink.

2. Mucous. My nose seems to be much leakier these days and I've had a few minor nosebleeds. The Doctor says all mucous membranes are in flux with the hormones right now, so anything that can be lubricated is being lubricated. Including my vajayjay. After the whole implantation bleeding episode, I had a hard time getting used to this development but it seems to be part of the entire process and while annoying, certainly manageable.

3. Sex. See above, but when you're consistently lubricated and most of the blood you produce is gathering in that area, it's like being in a constant state of arousal. Really wonderful if you have a cooperative partner, really unfulfilling if you have a paranoid, neurotic, safety-obsessed husband who probably doesn't find your large brown nipples too exciting anyway.

4. Skin and Hair. This is where it starts to get good. My skin is spectacular right now. I haven't had a breakout or blemish in months and I really do see a different tone to my skin. A pretty, healthy glow that wasn't there before. And my hair which has always been on the fine side, is thick and shiny and full. I feel like a Pantene commercial when I brush my hair in the morning. Of course, all of my girlfriends tell me this is a short-lived luxury and all of that extra hair will fall out in clumps after the baby comes. Will report back on this, but I'm loving it for now.

5. Vertigo. Apparently with all of this extra blood in the network, standing and sitting can cause a bit of the dizzies as all of the blood rushes to reconfigure itself to my feet and head when I change position. So when I stand up, I often get really lightheaded and have to dive my head between my knees to keep from passing out. Not an issue at all at home, but rather funny in a restaurant, parking lot, or some other public place.

6. Gas and Kicks. I mentioned in a past blog about how excited I was for Justin to feel the baby kick. It's such an alien, funny feeling and reassures me that the baby is rocking and rolling in there. So one night about a week ago, I grabbed his hand and put it on my belly, because she was really popping around. He kept his hand there for a minute or two and felt her movements and then took his hand off and turned over to sleep. Really disappointed that he wasn't as thrilled with this new experience as I was, I kept after him, asking "Did you feel it? Isn't it cool? What do you think?" He said, "It feels like you have an upset stomach. It feels like you have gas." I married him for the romance, you know. He's loaded with it.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Sometimes....

...I forget I am pregnant and catch a glimpse of myself as I pass by a mirror. I have a split second of 'Oh, god, I have really gotten heavy this year" before I remember again.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Little Kicks Inside Her

I am now quite sure that what I thought was gas is actually B the G squirming around in there. And I get a free pass on mistaking it for gas because while everybody tells you about nausea and being tired when you are pregnant, nobody tells you that you will pass gas like your fat uncle after a chili cheese steak.

I know some people are just naturally more gassy than others, but this has never been a particular affliction of mine. So the subsequent arrival of wind with my pregnancy has been a double whammy if you will. I am constantly surprised by it. And it's not the kind you can blame on the dog because it follows you as you walk, - whomp, whomp, whomp - coming out with every step you take like your own little marching band.

I find it rather hilarious. Justin, however, is one of the few people in the world who don't think farts are funny. He prefers to ignore them when they happen to him and acts absolutely astounded that they could actually come out of me. Which makes it even funnier.

So when the kicks started, I naturally assumed it's more gas roiling around in there as my guts make room for baby. But in the past week or two, I've gotten plenty of taps and pops that usually mean gas, but then - nothing. And now they have started coming in adorable little rhythms in one area of my belly that certainly have never happened with plain ordinary gas. Pink Floyd's The Great Gig In the Sky came on the radio yesterday and B the G moved around wildly throughout the entire song. Can she hear now too?

I love to feel it and only wish Justin could experience it too, but right now, it's only internal. He'll have to be content with my existing external symptoms for a little while longer. Cue John Philip Sousa!

Monday, April 28, 2008

The Gene Screen

When you are over the age of 35 and pregnant you fall into a group I won't call high-risk because it makes me feel like a bungee jumper or spelunker. I prefer to use extreme-care or hyper-vigilant to denote the little extras tests and monitoring they give you when you are ahem - more mature than other whippersnappers in the waiting room.

Everybody gets offered genetic screening when they are pregnant, but we extreme-care mothers are usually strongly recommended to take part in these tests as certain genetic abnormalities seem to occur more frequently in older mothers. Sound like a textbook? I've done my research. So at about 11-12 weeks they do a blood test and ultrasounds, measuring for various physical indications as well as blood levels to detect whatever stuff it is that might provide a clue whether or not your baby is at risk.

So I get my tests, including a very innocuous finger prick and a pretty good-looking ultra-sound if I do say so myself. Then two weeks later a nurse calls with the results. The thing to remember with these results is that they are probabilities, estimates of risk. If you took Statistics in college, now would be a good time to remember some of that information to get a grip on some of the numbers they give you.

The nurse spewed off three sets of ratios for my risk, my results with my age, my age alone and an average 35 year-old's risk. She's rather cheery and sweet, but the information she gives me is that I have a positive risk for Downs as a result of my tests and the ratio is 1 in 98. She suggested an amnio centisis to get definite results and wished me good day.

So I kind of panicked. 1 in 98. Good odds for a horse, right? That means 97 other babies came out perfectly healthy. Still the number seemed scary as I looked at my notes from her phone call and I called my sister, her husband the doctor, my father, my mother, my girlfriends and of course Justin. Over the next two weeks, I searched websites and read tons of blogs about Downs Syndrome, 1st trimester screening tests, and amniocentesis and the risks involved with that. I know amnio is performed with an ultrasound and there are millions of women that have had successful procedures done, but I couldn't shake the image of a long needle puncturing B the G's little water balloon we built in there. My warm fuzzy pregnancy glow began to fade to a dull, weak 25 watt attic light bulb as I tried to find out the best decision for moving forward with this news.

Too much information is a dangerous thing and with the internet, I could get any kind of information I wanted to back up any opinion I began to form. Countless blogs and web-chats from women with false positive tests for these screenings. High risk of miscarriage for amniocentesis. Low rates of miscarriage for amniocentesis. My doctor gave me a ratio of 1 in 300 for risk of miscarriage with amnio, but said the important thing to remember was what I was going to do with the information once I found out the results. In other words, would I terminate if the baby was positive for Downs Syndrome? If so that's one thing, if not, why risk it? Heady stuff.

I am not a religious girl so I have no ideology or doctrine to fall back on regarding this subject. But I have developed a healthy dose of spirituality based on various readings, my own experiences, and pure gut instinct, especially lately. I pondered all of this for a few days, re-thinking care of a special needs child, my miracle pregnancy and this latest information. Justin comes from a very anti-medicine background and is suspicious of all invasive procedures and tests that aren't deemed absolutely essential. Did this mean he was prepared to care for a special needs child? Was I? His answers were always vague, sort of wait and see type of words, which I know means it's ultimately up to me to decide.

So I decided. I knew there was no way I could terminate this baby no matter what the tests said. If this baby was supposed to be my baby, coming to me so late and right before my adoption, and she has special needs, than that is the baby I am supposed to mother. Sounds dreadfully Calvinistic and pre-determined, but I just can't deal with it any other way. I went through the same fears with adopting albeit with different illness and developmental issues, and forged ahead anyway. This was no different.

My doctor scheduled another ultrasound to give me another look-see and determine if they could find anything else out that might give me a clearer picture, as some physical traits are evident at 15 weeks. When Justin and I arrive the tech is surprised to see us as it's a few weeks early for our anatomy screening, which usually happens at 18-20 weeks. I explain our screening test results and what we're there for and she squirts the gel on my belly and we're on our way. I am in awe of the tiny creature on the screen, wiggling and swimming around inside of me. I can't take my eyes from the screen and am crushed when it's time to go. The peri-natal doctor comes in to go over the results and also asks us why we are there. Again (do these people even talk to each other?) I explain our 1 in 98 results and that we are there to try and avoid an amnio and see if there are any other physical traits to give us a clue about the Downs.

She says, "You're not 1 in 98. You're 1 in 271 for Downs. 1 in 98 is your risk for Downs based on your age. AFTER your screen your results were 1 in 271. Your risk decreased but reads as positive because it's slightly higher than a 35 year-old's risk of 1 in 294 which is basically where the line is drawn for this screening. You don't need an amnio."

Is it me? Are these little glitches in the system meant to test my mettle so to speak? Make sure I'm really a player in this thing rather than the cute cheerleader on the sidelines I always preferred to be? From the adoption to the pregnancy, it's truly uncanny the way these hurdles keep surfacing.

So after going through two weeks of angst and anxiety and ultimately resignation and acceptance I was suddenly set free again. 1 in 271?! That's a cakewalk, man! Bring it on! I suppose I could have been angry at myself for misunderstanding or at the techs and physicians that gave me this confusing news and let it go on so long without checking my records for clarification. But in the end, I was just happy to have my glow light flicker back on and also to know that I was committed to this baby and her arrival into my life regardless of her health or condition. And while I KNOW after this newest trial and everything that's gone before that there are no guarantees in life (Are you listening, Universe? I know! I get it, for Chrissake!), I do feel rather confident after the tech pointed out her labia, that B the G is a girl.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy


I am humming along at 16 weeks, but I've had my share of ups and downs over the past 10 weeks. When you experience infertility, all you can think about is "if I could only get pregnant, if I could only conceive..." and it never really goes beyond that point of the Getting of the pregnancy. Once I Get it, the goal is met, right? I have learned however, and this should come as no surprise for me, that complications, hills and valleys, come at you from all angles after a precious few weeks of just enjoying the miracle that I am pregnant.

At about 8 weeks pregnant, I went out to dinner with our neighbors on a Friday night and came home with a big clot of blood in my underwear. It's cliched but I can only describe what felt like ice in my veins as I sat on the toilet and felt another clot slide out of me. My run as a parent was coming to an end and I was back where I started. I wept, I fell into Justin, I sat in a tight ball on the couch and ached with the pain of it.

The next day, I called the OB/Gyn on call in my practice and told her what had happened. She said unless I was bleeding heavily and cramping, wait for Monday and call the office to come in. I was not bleeding heavily and cramping. In fact the blood had changed color from normal period red, to dark, end-of-period, brown. Whatever was going to happen had either happened or was in the process of happening and a trip to an ER in Atlanta on a Saturday morning was not going to change that other than making me more miserable in a waiting room full of miserable people. I chose to stay home and waded through a truly awful weekend of disappointment, guilt, and icy veins.

On Monday, the office scheduled me for an ultrasound the following day. I am an expert by now at waiting, as everyone who reads this blog knows. I have lists of projects, books, friends. events, to occupy me in any sort of wait, especially the drawn-out, ambiguous wait that entailed getting B the G. But this wait, this stupid 24 hour wait until my appointment was by far the worst wait I've ever known. I dreaded going to the bathroom the whole weekend so I wouldn't have to see the blood on the toilet paper. In the process of avoiding that dread, I consciously or subconsciously constipated myself (is that even proper grammar? Can one constipate oneself?) so I wouldn't have to push. Bear with me here (no pun intended), I know I'm getting graphic, but I was entering the depths of despair and even if the pregnancy was over, I did not want to see the physical evidence of it gush out of me into the toilet. It would have been the end of me.

Then, sometime Monday late afternoon, I had a little breakthrough. After one of these ridiculous bathroom breaks where I try to pee, but not push (try it - impossible) I lay down in my bed and felt the sadness of it lift off of me. Not that I was happy or suddenly not depressed, I just felt comfortable. At peace with what had happened and was happening to me whatever the result. It was a huge relief, not a religious event, but just sort of an agreeement with my body and my Self to let go of this pain. I felt almost forced into the peace and it was a welcome push. I knew I would be sad but that that I would be able to handle it is the only way that I can describe it.

That is not to say I wasn't still filled with anxiety the next day as I waited in the lab for the ultrasound. But I was prepping myself while I was waiting there for the news and the follow-up care and giving myself the Mickey the Manager talk from Rocky which I never could have done over the weekend. Eye of the tiger, you can do it Rock, sort of stuff. Keep yourself going.

I had such a great ultrasound technician I'll call Cindy. I laid the events of my whole reproductive life at her feet in the five minutes before I got on the table, starting with my infertility, adoptions plans, pregnancy and bleed. The words came out of me like a rocket and she handled it like a pro and I KNOW she must have seen how my mind was racing to keep control. To keep talking so I wouldn't have to think. Eye of the tiger, Rock.

She keeps the screen carefully turned away from me and starts probing around in my uterus with the magic dildo wand of sound. She is quiet and intense and I can feel my heart pound through my back onto the table below me as I wait with one arm over my face, hiding my eyes. "I know you're dying over there," she says. "I just want to make absolutely sure before I give you the news." My heart sinks with this, but again, I feel prepped and guarded and ready, like I can handle a million blows to the head, if I can just get off this table and on with my life.

And she turns the screen toward me and points to a tiny, tiny, pulsing point of green inside a small, green comma and says "That is the heartbeat. It looks nice and strong."

I break. I feel that thing inside me that was holding me together just break apart and I can't breathe, I cant speak. I extend my hand that came from the arm over my eyes and just grab Cindy's hand and squeeze it. It's all I can do. She is crying, I am crying. I had already said good-bye to that heartbeat and there it was pounding away and making me feel like a fool for not trusting it. A happy, silly, fool.

Implantation bleeding? Something to do with my quirky uterus? I don't know why, only that it happens to many women and it took my bleeding/spotting about two and a half weeks to stop. But there's B the G up there at 15 weeks, hanging on for dear life, while she admires her pretty toes. Just like her mother.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

My Crock Pot



I don't even know how to start this one.

But yes, that is my uterus, my ultrasound, my little bean-shaped human in there. When I say I don't know how it happened other than the sheer biology of it, please take me at my word. This has been the strangest part of this journey yet. Out of the blue in January I missed a period and began counting backwards. Something I TOLD you I didn't do anymore, so I really had to think back as to my last period and approximate. Actually it was fairly easy as I was in Philadelphia visiting the in-laws and had to make Justin stop at the Rite-Aid on the way home from brunch with them our first day there. I am paranoid about feminine product disposal in other people's homes too, so that kind of burned in my brain as well. Don't want to flush them, for fear of backing up the toilet and flooding the place. So I wrap them in huge mittens of toilet paper and try to take the trash out when no one is looking. I know it seems ridiculous. I feel ridiculous just writing it.

So back to the counting, it became clear at 36 days that I was officially late. But this has happened to me many times before only to show up at the exact moment I come back from the drugstore with a $20 box of tests in my hand. So I was determined to ride it out and played the little fantasy game that all women who want to get pregnant play when they are late. What if...could it be...telling no one. It's too easy just to take a test at this point. I enjoyed the not-knowing because it allowed me to pretend if only for a few days that I was. It may seem like torture to you, but I can't explain the desire not to know because knowing in the past ulitmately led to the abrupt and disappointing end to the fun part of the game.

But when I got to day 39, having never gotten this far in my late day count before, I figured it was time to end the game and figure out if I was hitting early menopause. I have boxes of pregnancy tests and ovulation tests under my sink from back when I tracked so I didn't have to fork out another $20. Oh the wonder of seeing the double pink line of the First Response test showing up after so many years of the miserable, lonely single line. I had a glorious moment to myself, sitting on the toilet, staring and staring at that double line. I practically felt the heavens part and swear I heard Colonel Pickering singing that song from My Fair Lady - "Tonight old man, you did it! You did it! You did it! They said you couldn't do it and indeed you did!"

I took the test out to the the kitchen and watched from inside while Justin threw the ball in the yard for Gordon. Standing there watching him, I imagined his response, his surprise, how I would tell him. When he came in, I simply put the test in front of him and said nothing. His words after looking at it closely, and I quote were "What does this mean?" I should be more patient here, I think. Of course I know that there is a little grid next to the results clearly showing the pregnant, not pregnant option to the test. But he did graduate cum laude from law school for god's sake. I think they make these tests to accomodate people who can barely read.

"It means I'm pregnant," I say. He looks at it again more closely and says "Yeah. but this second line here is much lighter than the first... I don't know." This wasn't at all fulfilling the sweeping bear hug, rolling giggles, or shouts of excitement I had kind of envisioned in my whole Telling Justin Fantasy scenario. All it made me do was doubt that stupid second line and look at it more closely with him.

"It's there," I said firmly. "I'll take another test later when I have more pee." Squelched. But to be fair, by a man whose seen his fair share of my disappointed face after many years of fertility and adoption woes. It took three more tests and a few gallons of water to convince him, but in the end he succumbed, albeit never really reaching the heights of hilarity and swirly-twirly ecstasy my little brain had cooked up for this moment.

Between then and now the stories have piled up and I have so much more to tell. And it's only been 12 weeks. It was a wrench keeping quiet, but you know, I am 39 and really wasn't sure if this would be a pot sticker or not. I'm feeling a bit more confident now and welcome the chance to unload it in the blog. Who knew after all this time I'd be making my own B the G?

Saturday, March 1, 2008

I Know...I Know...

I've been awol again. All I can say is things have been percolating in the crock pot that is my life for the past several weeks. I do believe I will have some significant news this week on the B the G front and I look forward to sharing with all as soon as I get it. Stay tuned.....

Monday, February 4, 2008

I've Fooled Around Long Enough



Left you hanging, I did, about ol' Ruthie's follow-up with my paperwork. As you know, I told the director that Ruth and I were kaput. I was willing to go over her, under her or around her, but I refused to work with her from this point forward. The very next day after this conversation, I received copies of everything I had requested from Ruth 10 days prior along with the following love letter from Ruth:

I do apologize for the delay in getting this to you. When I told you by email, I would complete it, I thought I could but had some emergencies that had to be handled. Be assured that our agency will be there to assist you in whatever your needs are thru this process. As well as Peggy you can also contact Lillie as she is my assistant.

I think Ruth may have gotten an administrative backhand from Peggy the Meek. But I have no regrets! Even her apology sounds churlish to me. "I told you I would complete it but then I couldn't"? Was I just supposed to guess when it was done or keep rattling her cage until she sent me confirmation? I am not assured at all that they will be there to assist me and this latest folly only solidifies my opinion. I have visions of Russia knocking on my door asking where is the 5 month at-home update on B the G. And Ruth answering my queries with her usual "Oh I believe I sent them that. But then again maybe I didn't get to it. I may have had an emergency."

I can tell you this, I sure ain't going to contact Lillie, god bless her pointy little head, "for my needs thru this process". Ruth has an assistant and that's how she spells "through"? It's the director for me and my needs or I'm going straight to the Board. All these agencies have Boards with members who usually care about profits and service and reputation and such. And this one may or may not be appalled at Ruth's casual spelling habits and sub-par communication methods. But I've fooled around long enough. I love that line. Reminds me so much of my mother. And Bill Cosby. Let them hash it out who does the work. I do believe Ruth got a taste of Adoptra's whip of justice and I scored one for the good guys.

By the way, you should check this superhero site out if you are interested in giving your nemesis or hero a face. Or if you have kids. Or if you are yourself a big kid. It was very cathartic for me and exactly what I imagine Ruth looks like, baton and all, when she's not ignoring the plights of wanna-be mom's or hacking out misleading, deliberately ambiguous emails on her evil Computer of Malice .

Friday, January 18, 2008

RUTH!


She strikes again. I swear I need super powers just to get around this woman.

I sent a request to Ruth (Home Study Agency, arch nemesis - super powers entail a deep streak of evil and uncanny ability to delay any and all adoption paperwork despite it being part of her cover job ) on January 9th with some more documents that needed updating for our dossier, which is in Moscow at the moment. I sent a nice, fluffy little email telling her I hoped she had a restful holiday, keeping it happy, upbeat. It went something like this:

Hi Ruth,
I hope you had a good holiday and got some time off!
I received the following from AFC this week. I feel like we’ve done the interagency and commitments a thousand times, but perhaps I’m getting my countries and multiple renewals confused. Megan says I’m getting close, but it’s hard for me to believe.
Could you take care of numbers 2,3,4 below? The last three attachments above correspond to those requirements.
Thanks for your help. The address for the agency is attached to her signature below.

Best,

Meg Burdash


I sent this with the necessary documents neatly attached and numbered. After a few days with no response I sent this:

Hi Ruth,
I sent you an email earlier this week with a few more pieces of paperwork for my dossier. Would you confirm that you received it?
Thank you,
Meg Burdash


That same day I received this response:

Yes I believe I did.
Ruth
Senior Administrative Assistant
Adoption Program


What kind of a response is that? "I believe I did"??? What about yes or no? Is it taken care of? An estimate of when it will be taken care of? An acknowledgment of my kind, post-holiday words? Anything? I'm trying to adopt a baby here! You'd think I was trying to panhandle from her.

I decide it's time to call in the big guns. I have Justin draft out a very legal sounding letter to the director, expressing our dissatisfaction with Ruth and the whole communication process with her and suggest that she find someone else for us to correspond with as Ruth seems far too busy. I plan on sending it Monday the 14th.

And then....I chicken out. Monday comes and I think, maybe Ruth has sent the paperwork already. She has such a curt manner as I've so painfully learned from past exchanges. Maybe this is just her way of saying "done and done". I've got so many more miles to go with this agency and I need for us to be a team! See, how I conveniently forget that I am PAYING them to be on my team. Oh, it's twisted, man. I don't send the email to the director. I know. I am an idiot.

A week passes with no response from my adoption agency or the home study agency and I begin to feel like I've done the right thing. I've kept the relationship with Ruth on the strained, unfriendly note she seems to prefer but let her take care of the paperwork in her own timeline. An uneasy truce, but I can live with it.

I get this today from my adoption agency:

Can you give me an estimate of when your home study agency will have the documents to me? The folks in Moscow are asking. Thanks.


Have you seen that movie Clue where Madeline Kahn, playing Mrs. White describes why she killed her husband? She gets into that hilarious Madeline Kahn high-pitched voice and says "I hated him so much... flames, there were flames on the side of my face...panting, heaving flames..." and then she kind of fades out, unable to describe in adequate depth the level of hatred she felt for said departed, murdered husband.

That is the precise feeling I got when I received Megan's email above asking about my f-ing documents. And I'm quite sure some of that heat was directed at myself and my chicken-shit reaction to Ruth. I deserved what I got.

I picked up the phone toute suite after receiving that and called the director of the home study agency. I now understand why Ruth is such a slacker. The director listened to my problems and the issues I was having with Ruth, or at least I thought she did, and then told me how they were under a tremendous deadline at the moment with DHS and that was why Ruth hadn't gotten to it today. Which clearly showed me she wasn't listening because I had explained to her that I had made this request last week and was having an ongoing communication problem with Ruth. My dossier is in Moscow right now! They are waiting on you people! Help me! I feel like Tom Cruise here - Help me help you!

I couldn't care less about their deadline with DHS!! Where is the professionalism? Where is the customer service? An apology perhaps? I am paying these people thousand of dollars to get this right for me and support me with this adoption and I feel like I am holding THEIR hand and walking them through the process. How can you conduct a business this way? Although I guess if you're dealing with DHS, you can get away with pretty much anything.

I will try not to let her dampen my spirits or give me indigestion with this latest transgression. I must put out the heaving, breathing flames at the side of my face and re-gain the excitement and enthusiasm that I've been enjoying for the past few weeks. But I swear to you Ruth, hater of international adoption and all kind people everywhere, when you call and ask if I have received the invoice for your services, I'm going to wait many, many jig-dancing weeks before responding, "Why yes, I believe I did".