A Very Special Blossom

So. I had a miscarriage on Christmas Day. Good times.

I got someone to see me yesterday morning. The nurse checking me in asked me how my Christmas was, and I squeaked out "um..." and started bawling. Ugh. The doctor did an external ultrasound and couldn't see anything, but wanted to do an internal one just to be sure. He didn't have the means to do it there, so he sent me over to the hospital. Before we left, we had to get Sascha's blood drawn for some bullshit sadistic lead/anemia testing, and she lost her tiny mind to such an extent that when it was over she threw up all over me. So we went home, I changed my pukey clothes, and went to the hospital for the internal u/s. The radiology tech was very quiet for a long time. Only when I asked did she say she saw an empty sac.

So I don't know if I was pregnant in the first place. I don't know. My mom says this is a good thing (being the pro-life Catholic that she is), but the truth is, that there was never any baby just makes me feel stupid for ever thinking there was one. I don't feel the least bit guilty, like I did anything to cause this; I think my science background helps me understand cell development and genetics enough to know better. But I do feel (irrationally, I'll admit) like I was one of those crazy women who lies about being pregnant to get attention. I feel stupid for crying wolf, and jumping the gun in my excitement. I want to just forget this ever happened and move on.

Nick got me a necklace for Christmas that depicts a family with two parents and two children. I think I'm going to put it away, lest I look like the looney that pushes around the empty baby carriage. Heh.

I'm okay, but I think I felt a lot better about it yesterday. I woke up kind of sad, and of course way more crampy than yesterday. And I'm really tired today. It's half past noon and all three of us are still in our pajamas, teeth unbrushed. Nice.

I am working to focus on the positives. I have a perfect, healthy, daughter. It happened over vacation, giving me more than a week still to compose myself before I go back and see my young, fertile co-worker who is due in April. I can focus again on getting back in shape (he-e-e-ey... wait, is that a good thing?). This is a zillion times better than finding out that there's some kind of genetic freakshow going on at 22 weeks. Compared to that family in CA that had the crazy Santa shooter? This is less than a speck of tragedy. And when I was checking in at the hospital, the receptionist was giving the woman next to me directions to the cancer center. I thought "well, if I had to pick which position to be in right now..."

We are actually going out with friends tonight, and I'm looking forward to ordering this amazing raw tuna appetizer this restaurant is known for. Maybe I'll have two. And of course several glasses of wine. See, lots of bright sides. And now Nick and I can try again to time another baby for the spring. And I don't have to miss the beginning of the school year, or plan sub lessons for my September geology unit (which is really hard... I was sort of dreading that).

I think the hardest thing about this has been other people's reactions. I could tell the doctor was struggling to tell me, like he expected me to be hysterical, and I was like "it's okay, listen, I'm fine." I had to console him, in a way. Everyone is so sweet and so supportive. I don't know why that's hard; maybe I am just that socially retarded. I don't want to talk to anyone on the phone because all of the "ohhh... awww..."-ing will make me cry and make my head hurt again from all the crying. And then that makes people uncomfortable because they don't know what to say, when really, everything everyone has said is perfect. My dad is really upset about this, which is heartbreaking but shocking because he sort of kept our pregnancies at arm's length. I feel bad having to be the buzzkill, the bearer of bad news. Making jokes about it (like the title of this post) helps tremendously, but I don't know if it makes other people uncomfortable, you know? Yesterday Nick said I could do whatever I wanted that day. I picked a few things and said (half-joking) "Tomorrow I'll be back to normal!" Nick said in this drill-seargent voice, "you have twelve hours to grieve!" That made me laugh for the rest of the day.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I read an article in Oprah a few years ago about this couple who would celebrate bad news. So last night my mom and I went to Whole Foods and picked out some great stuff and she, Nick, Sascha & I had dinner in front of "Mamma Mia" turned up extra loud with a couple bottles of wine, starting with the best bottle I had. It was just what I needed.

I don't want to sound like I'm in denial and all happy-crappy, everything's-just-fine, because it isn't. But I am okay. Not great, but okay. We still have a week off school so we're planning some nice things to do, and that helps a lot.

The worst thing about insomnia

Is that it's so unproductive. I'm up at 2 am to pee, and no matter how soundly I was sleeping, it's all over at that point. I'm too tired to give my ragged feet a pedicure or grade that mile-high stack of papers I brought home, but once it's daytime, I will be dead from lack of sleep so I won't get anything done then either. Insomnia is lose-lose.

So I'm up now, thinking about not only the gangly feet and ungraded papers, but the four shots Sascha's getting in the morning. The text messages I never answered yesterday. On the scale of human suckage, where do I fall for not doing Christmas cards this year? Is that the equivalent of giving everyone the finger? And if there is a scale of human suckage, with Spencer Pratt being a ten, who would be a one? Maybe I should start addressing cards next summer. The song from Sesame Street where these pigs sing the alphabet with "oink" in between each letter. Why I am so tense all the time. How I looked in the mirror in my underwear earlier today, and what kind of lighting-renovation genius it would take to make that a less scary image. This cool lesson I want to do next month.

Whether I am still pregnant.

Yesterday, still basking in the glow of Christmas morning, I started spotting. I tried to stay calm about it by shoveling anything edible in sight into my mouth (oh, how I wish I was one of those normal, dainty girls who can't eat when she's upset) and literally pacing the floor, although not enough to burn off 142 cookies. Later that afternoon, we went to our friends' house for dinner. I went to the bathroom and it was a lot more than just spotting. When I came out, I felt shaky and pale and freaked the hell out, but it was Christmas dinner and we had just arrived and there were a few people I didn't know very well, and everyone's all chuckly and the Sinatra's playing, so I had to roll with it. In a turn of spectacularly bad timing, at that very moment my friends' mothers started ooh-ing and ahh-ing about me being pregnant-- when are you due, how do you feel, and so on. I am such a bad liar, so I wanted to say "well as of two minutes ago, I'm not pregnant anymore... can someone pass the wine?" But I shrugged and stumbled my way through the fakest-sounding answers, feeling like one of those women from the Lifetime movies who lies about being pregnant to get attention. I escaped to the other room where I had a chance to talk to my dad about it. He told me how common it is and that the amount of blood doesn't make a difference, which made me optimistic enough to function through the rest of the night.

Sascha just so happens to have a doc appt this morning (hey, only five sleepless hours from now)-- see mental torture about the shots-- and it's right across the hall from the OB office. If I can get someone to see me on the fly, I'll find out for sure.

I guess this wouldn't bother me as much if I actually felt pregnant. I had a week or two of excessive tired, but then I rebounded. My boobs have stopped hurting. Of course they're still the size of Texas, but that could just as easily be from all of my stress eating. And I've only had a few thirty-second episodes of nausea, which is really no different from normal. I don't feel pregnant.

I wonder what's on TV at this hour.

The Yo-Yo of Sleep

Sascha is a loud sleeper. There are some nights where she actually cries in the middle of the night (sometimes it's 3-4 times, like a newborn) but usually she just does these loud whines. Like the threat of a cry. The first one will be loudest. I'm inclined to stay in bed and see if it passes, but Nick always gets up. That wakes me up more than the cry would. 15 minutes later, just as I'm sinking back to sleep...

"EHHHHHH!!!"

And I'm pulled out of it again.

I lie there a while, afraid to go back to sleep, but eventually it gets the best of me. So I start to sink again.

"EHHHHHHH!!!!"

And I'm pulled out of it again. Two or three cycles of this, and I look at my alarm clock, which looks back at me like "I was going to go off in 45 minutes anyway. Sorry."

It's torture.

This isn't the best start for a day when we're supposed to get a foot of snow, and school was NOT called off. Last time this happened, it took us six hours to get home, we didn't even make it to our own house (we went to my parents'), and Sascha had to stay at my sister's. I'm so glad that a few hours of school is so important to our superintendent. The teachers were planning a sick-out but Nick and I don't have the heart (or balls) to participate. Ugh.

Self-portrait at 5 weeks, two days.

Seriously though-- last night I woke up to go to the bathroom and Nick was gone. He has chronic heartburn that keeps him awake sometimes, so I feebly assumed that was what happened.

But I knew better.

Sure enough, in the morning I asked him if it was my snoring that drove him out of bed. He smiled like he was trying to think of something nice to say. I was horrified.

I have to look it up, but I remember this happening last time. Except I think it happened about halfway through. Of course, about halfway through my first pregnancy, I weighed about what I do now... at five weeks in.

*head on desk*

I can't remember if I said this before, but women who enjoy pregnancy* must all be skinny women. "Ooooh, look at my big boobs!!!" Instead of "holy shit, what size comes after DDD?" And when those tanks roll up my neck while I sleep, of course I'm gonna be snoring like Dennis Franz. (He looks like he snores, doesn't he?) Arrgh. Time to clean the dog hair off the guest bed and set up shop. *Not that I'm not happy! I am; I'm thrilled. But see photo above. That is how I feel.
A l r e a d y.

PS: Sascha has been amazing the last few days. Yesterday she held on to my cheeks and kissed my face several times during the day. I want to eat her up.

Observations at 5 weeks, one day.

I need to start taking belly pictures. At this point, I'm embarrassed because I'm all flabby anyway. So there's a belly for sure, but considering the baby (or rather, "baby" since it looks more like a trilobite at this stage) is about the size of a sesame seed, I'm not in the mood to show off the belly that looks like it's holding-- well, a bowl full of jelly. Ho, ho, ho.

The trilobite (thanks to Babycenter.com, the website with the EVIL forums):


Doesn't that look like a vagina with a zipper? Suddenly I don't want that sesame seed bagel anymore.

My boobs kill. They never did get much smaller after Sascha, and I ended up splurging on TRIPLE-D bras. You read that right. Triple D, and that was when I was relatively fit. Now I'm even pushing the limits of those.

I am tired. I feel like I have mono and just spent an hour in a hot tub. It's very strange. In the middle of the day, I will feel the way a normal person does at 1 am after a long day. I am extremely grateful that I only have a week (plus 1.5 days) left of school until vacation, and all my lessons are planned out. This weekend has been nice for lazing around, especially since my parents were staying with us due to the heinous ice storm power outage.

My nails are losing their ten little minds. I cut them just three days ago and now I look like Dracula again. Would be nice if I was actually into long nails, or if this was 1986.

That's about it. I have a cold, which is NOT helping the tired at all.

Still happy!! Still excited!! Still not lying about that! Whoopeee!

Well whaddaya know.

I suppose it's time for The Pregnant Bitch, Round Two.

I probably should have waited, but I am Queen Blabby. If something horrible should happen in the next few weeks or months, you'll get to hear about that too. Blab, blab, blab.

We were going to stop trying. I guess mentally, we did stop. It was the day I was supposedly ovulating, and we had to decide whether or not to use a condom that we didn't have anyway. I said "you know, we've been trying like crazy when I was ovulating for the past six months. Screw it, I am not getting pregnant." And jumped into the sack. I'm just pissed that I didn't try that approach back in May.

I was two days late, but I didn't think anything of it because I've been a few days late a lot this summer. But then the registration for that half-marathon (the one I did last June) was going to be on Monday morning, and I had to know whether I'd be able to run it again or not. So Sunday night, rather unceremoniously after dinner (during which I drank a half a bottle of wine), I took the test.

Voila.

I was shocked. I still don't believe it.

Already, it's way different from last time. WAY different. I am really, really excited about it! I am pushing away thoughts of how tremendously inconvenient it will be to have it in August and miss the first part of the school year-- oh, just so logistically awful I can't even think about it. So I'm not. I'm focusing on the good things about having an August baby: towards the end, when I have to go to the doctor once a week, I will be able to go any time I want and not have to juggle work. I won't have to see anyone-- meaning co-workers and kids-- for the last 6-8 weeks. I can just float in my parents' pool. I will be able to pee any time I want! And hot weather = naked baby! Oh so awesome.

It's weird being like ten minutes along because I don't feel pregnant. The only thing that's different, that I've noticed, is that I'm very thirsty and drinking lots of water. Otherwise, same old same old. I'm very tired, but I don't know if that's the pregnancy or the holidays or my job.

Anyway. So there you go. And here we go again!

Working on it

I'm trying to work on this the Tom Cruise way. No, not with Scientology, but with exercise and diet-- remember how that was his prescription for post-partum depression? I know, it was hysterical (and oh-so-misguided), but that's what I'm trying.

Not that I'm against drugs! I'm not. I've been on them. But that was in my pre-child days when I had all the time in the world to languish at shrink appointments. Also, I don't feel like this is bad enough for drugs. I know what that feels like, and this isn't it-- because with this, I get moments of good, usually when I'm running or teaching. Back then, I didn't. For like four months. I'll tell you the drug I need. I need the one my friend's neighbor is taking. The one that will have me super-productive all day. Seriously. Another friend said that her mom said the way they managed motherhood back in the '70s was that they were all on diet pills (my mother is going to be horrified to read this because that was absolutely not her). Unfortunately, they've changed the formula since then, so Dexatrim wouldn't help me now. Sigh.

So contrary to the liver-damaging fantasies I've had of 30-year-old speed, I've been eating crazy-healthy food and trying to keep up with the running. I've done lots of vegetarian dishes. One I tried to replicate from this place. I also make this chickpea masala that's so freakin' good it almost makes me cry. Just thinking about it makes me happy (and simultaneously sad that it's not in my mouth this very second). By the second day Nick was whining about missing meat. Sigh again. He bought himself a hunk of ham to keep his carnivorous urges afloat.

But hey! A week of this and I've lost a couple pounds! Hooray! It's tempting to quit now because I'm comfortable. I feel comfortable. After only a week I can't possibly look that different than I did a few weeks ago at Sascha's birthday dinner. Behold Ed Asner in the dark blue sweater.

That's not bagging around me. My waist is actually filling that up. I know. That ain't just a couple pounds. That being said, it's salmon with brown rice and broccoli tonight. Nick is thrilled. Except not.