Strange New World

My body is rapidly and slowly changing. I feel chubby, clumsy and slow....I do not feel pregnant. I feel like I will never look pregnant. 4 months and counting....I just feel big. I am a big chubby ball of body image insecurity this weekend...my breasts look sorta odd, my ankles are swollen from the heat and I feel like a retired pro wrestler...This is not self pitty as I am knee deep in a goodwill purge and room clean. I am feeling "good" just wondering who's body I woke up in today.

And Then Before You Know It Things Change

I have not kept quiet about the struggles I have had with early pregnancy. I have been downright simpering about it all at times. But sometime in the last 2 weeks things shifted. It wasn't the weather because it is still hot as balls out here. It isn't that I have stopped peeing or thinking I need to pee every 5 seconds because that has not changed. It isn't that work got easier or sleep got better or even that my house got cleaner and I got better at being less of a slob. Nope, nothing external changed at all. So, what, you may ask, has changed? Well, for the past three months I have been supplying the growing briny little ocean I carry inside of me with all the hormones it needed to grow salty and warm (holy shit am I warm!), to establish a good blood supply and to create all the stuff needed for the growth and development of a happy starfish. I am now happy to report that I have done such a good job that the little ocean is now supplying its own hormones courtesy of the infrastructure I so nauseatedly and hotflashingly set up these last 3 months.

You see, when your body is cranking out the hormones like a teenager you FEEL and ACT like a teenager. You cry over things that don't require crying. You stress over nothing and you hate everything and resent almost everyone. You don't even get the benefit of the hormones coming on slowly over say the years 10-13...nope you get slammed starting about week 4-14. I would LOVE to see the graph curve on hormone levels in pregnant chicks. I bet it is crazy steep. So, yeah, I was a wreck. I don't know how some women get through first trimester without all the nasty but I congratulate them from the depths of my soul because I am here to tell you that shit got DARK in here. I was about 3 days from calling my midwives and saying I was scared I was depressed when things finally started to lighten up and I started to get my energy, my appetite and my sense of humor back. It arrived just in time for our dear friend's wedding too. THANK GOD! Whoever said "it is darkest just before dawn" was once pregnant I SWEAR!

So, I am still here, wearing mostly normal clothes, eating the foods I ate before the starfish moved in for the most part. I crave strange things like baked beans and shredded carrots. I am still very averse to tomatoes and chicken. I sometimes look at my belly and wonder when it will look like there is someone living in there. I other times thank my lucky stars that I am still so strong and healthy and able to do my job. I only took one sick day my whole first trimester and that was the day we flew home from Maine. I was a blubbering, white rice eating, zofran popping, depressed ball of nausea and terror for the last 3 months. Sometimes I felt like I was just hanging on by the skin of my teeth, but it passed. I am still afraid of things and more easily overwhelmed than my nonpregnant alter ego. Mostly I am afraid that my two best local girlfriends won't want to be my friends anymore or as much once the baby is born. I am afraid of losing myself to diapers, nap times and breastfeeding. But it is manageable. I have a really wonderful team supporting me from my mother to my adopted mothers across the nation, my midwives, my work partner, my friends and most of all the absolute best man I know. I know lots of women say this but I swear to god I have the best one. He is patient, he is kind, he loves me even though I am burping for two now, sweating like a long-haul trucker and sometimes get the crazy at inappropriate times. He reminds me that this is all for good and that he is beside me no matter what. He takes out the gross smelling things I leave in the fridge and rubs my back when I can't get comfortable and the world is too hot. He is the master chef of white rice cooked in chicken broth as well as medium rare steaks on the grill. He loves my mother, is good to his own and believes in me. What more could a girl want in a best friend and husband.

So, here's to you second trimester. I thought people were just blowing smoke up my ass by saying "It gets better! Just wait till second trimester!" But ya know what? Second trimester is looking up. Energy, optimism, and appetite...I may just survive this pregnancy thing after all.

Sometimes the most important thing to say is "You're not alone"

Anyone who has read the last few posts can probably guess that I have been struggling with emotions/hormones/body changes/fear of the future. I really have been. What has been making it worse is that I have spent literally WEEKS feeling like the only woman to ever feel this way. Part of me suspected that was stupid but I just couldn't be sure and nobody ever talks about this stuff. Its not in any of the books and it is barely mentioned in any of the many (good) blogs I have read. Sure, ladies cop to being moody and exhausted early in 2nd trimester but everyone seems to wave a hand over it like it lasted as long as a lingering fart. Nobody ever admits to feeling days on end or better parts of weeks like a crazy person afraid they are about to jump into a river of fire.

I talked to my good friend Sarah last week. I have known her since I was in the 6th grade. She used to be a midwife with my mother and then she became my high school biology teacher. I went to school with her kids and her husband was one of the most influential teachers of my life. She is a special lady. Her daughter Megan, is a few years younger than me and due almost any day with her first baby. Sarah will be flying out to the west for the birth. She still rocks a very supportive maternal vibe. She has always been a 'with women' sort of lady and that has not changed in her years away from active midwifery. Anyway, I started talking to Sarah early in my pregnancy when I was trying so hard to keep the secret from my mom until I could tell her face to face. I called Sarah when I needed the mom voice and the midwife advice or affirmation that "no, no woman has ever died from nausea. Yes, funky heartbeats can be a very normal part of pregnancy. Chin up, you are doing beautifully". She totally made it possible to surprise my mom at 9+ weeks.

I had some funky heart stuff that was lasting longer than I thought it should and I was becoming afraid that it might mean I couldn't have a home birth. I called my mom and asked her advice. If I ever wondered how much my mom loves me I know now. She sort of freaked out on me. I didn't understand at first and was pretty pissed. She seemed like she didn't want to give me advice and like she thought I was being an overly dramatic teenager about it. She kept saying "You're getting all worried about it..." I didn't think I WAS that worried I just wanted to know if it was normal or not. Anyway, smash cut to G and I hiking in the woods a few days later and the wise soul that he is G said it perfectly. She lives a zillion miles away and is probably worried all the time about something happening that she can't fix. She is probably just saying "stop worrying. I am worried enough for the both of us." And that made so much sense. She has taken care of women for a very long time and seen the power of the mind and the body. She has had to remain an unbiased medical professional for these women. Not to say she didn't care deeply about many of them but she always had to put the personal and the emotional second to the best interest of mom and baby. I am HER baby. She is almost certainly incapable of putting the emotional aside. She just wants to be my mom and let my midwives be my midwives. That is fair. It was not very sensitive of me to try to make her my mom and my encyclopedia of women's health and pregnancy. Once I realized this things got a lot easier.

Anyway, the point of all of this is that I have been sort of a mess. Turns out I had a UTI. Bummer! But the emotional side of it was even worse than the three drops every 5min. I was sad and lonely and frustrated and just feeling so negative. I called Sarah. I was so blue I was afraid to call my mom because I was afraid I was actually depressed...like capital D. I didn't want her to worry about her little girl all the way out here feeling awful so I called Sarah. I was sobbing by the time she answered the phone. We talked a bit and she told me how normal this all is. She told me that lots of women struggle to get the rhythm and that nobody talks about it but many many feel it. I needed to hear that. I got off of the phone feeling buoyed and even laughing a little. I no longer felt like the worst pregnant lady ever. I felt halfway normal even in my crappiness.

The next day I spoke to another dear Sara. This one is due any second with her first baby, a little girl. She will be 40 weeks today I believe. She has been doing a great job, especially these last few weeks when all she wants to do is push this baby out and start the next page of her life. She and I talked about all the crazy mental shit that you go through. She had a much longer "getting pregnant" window than I did but had assumed she would have a struggle but not as much of a struggle as she had. I came at it thinking I would surely have trouble and thus, would have lots of time to settle into the idea of it all and BAM....here I am. So we both had some adjusting to do. Her, to believing she was finally really pregnant and me to believing I was F-ing pregnant already. She told me about some of her mental gymnastics and trips to crazy town and I told her mine. We each agreed that the other's sounded totally crazy but totally legit and I can't speak for her but I felt a ton better after talking to her. I felt like I was not so alone.

So, I have purchased some suuuper cute maternity clothes, this weekend I get to marry two of my favorite people to one another in a community ceremony, and I am actively looking forward to seeing my husband all dressed up for the wedding this weekend and getting to spend a night in a fancy hotel. I think life is going to be good. So, sweet friends, I cannot promise there won't be more posts of the wahhh nature but I think I am turning a corner. I think I am gaining some perspective along with this little bump in my belly. This is real, it is moving faster than the speed of light, but it is magic and that is wonderful.

If you want a blissed out pregnancy blog entry read The Bump

I could write about how exciting and wonderful everything is. I could say how happy and zen I feel about the world. I could say that I feel like a goddess growing a tiny soul inside of me....but I would be totally lying to you all.

This week has been hard. Really hard. I have sort of had to start naming the monsters in the closet and inviting some of them out one at a time to fight to the death, or at least the mortally wounded. I haven't been in the lead on all of these fights this week.

I feel like nobody talks about this and thus, women are left feeling isolated, lonely and stone cold crazy. I feel like I have been depressed this week. I am sure the hormones play a significant part but damn. I have just been so sad and frightened and ambivalent about things this week, which then leads to feeling bad on top of bad for feeling that way in the first place. It has been a week of what G calls "Metta Worrying".

Some really wonderful friends of ours are getting married this weekend and I am officiating the ceremony. I am very excited about it but it is also going to be a long weekend as now it seems there are 4+ days of festivities in prep for the party on Sunday. There are multiple bachelor/ette parties, one of which takes G away to the coast for one night and another which involves everyone being intoxicated (except the knocked up among us) and singing Karaoke and then I think a rehearsal dinner and a welcome picnic....I am losing track. I should consult my spreadsheet again. Like I said it is going to be a blast but it is a bit drawn out for me in my current state of perpetual exhaustion considering I am taking 2 vacation days and working one extra shift to try and keep SOME vacation in the bank for when this munchkin arrives. Anyway, I was feeling all cranky and resentful because this is another weekend where I will spend almost no ALONE time with G. Running errands or working on folding laundry doesn't count. We have very sweet friends but last weekend our "date night" sorta got hijacked and the weekend before was spent working overtime to try to make up for the vacation we scheduled before we knew I was a ticking time bomb of unpaid maternity leave. I am so fucking ready for a "Fuck you world" vacation I could scream...no really.....the thought crosses my mind hourly. I am desperate to go sleep in a tent and wear my camping clothes and breathe the mountain air I am dying inside.

This leads me to my depression/fears of the week. I know, I know! We WILL make room for this baby. We will figure out how to live our lives and continue to adventure after they arrive. The shit of it is that right now, I don't have a warm, grunting, sweet smelling bundle of love to cuddle to my chest and flood me with love hormones. I don't even have the reassuring bumps and kicks in my belly to convince me this is a person and not just bad Thai food and a UTI. Right now I just have my insecurities about how much weight NOBODY else but me seems to have gained in the first trimester, I have my ill fitting wardrobe with no real baby belly to make the chub look "cute", I have my doubts about all of this, I have my fear that I am ruining our lives and we will hate each other when this all shakes out, I have my fear that I will not be able to hack it alone for 4 days a week during our days "on", I have my fear that being exhausted will make me a basket case 24/7/365 until the kid leaves for university and I have the bathroom....I live there these days as the 8cm, 2oz of baby nestles in on top of my bladder and insists on punching the pillows fluffy. All of my fears are selfish. I am feeling SO unready for all of this this week.

I get that "oh poor me. I got pregnant at the drop of a hat" should thank my lucky damned stars and shut the hell up about it. I get how lucky I am but this is hard work people. This is hard emotional work. I can't just go run it out. I cant out run it either. I just have to figure it out and for me this is hard. Feeling the last vestiges of queasy doesn't help either. I am a mess.

How come nobody ever talks about this part? My midwife says this is "the majority of women's dirty little secret about the first half of pregnancy". She says I am more than normal to feel this way and that is why we get 9 months...I don't know why we all insist on acting like roman soldiers about this. I am not 'complaining' per say. I am just telling the truth. I am beyond happy to be where I am. I cannot wait to meet this little person. I am on pins and needles to see G become a father but honestly, this is hard. Way harder than I thought it would be. I have never felt so crappy doing something so good.

Dancing in the dark

Yesterday was the Starfish's debut ultrasound. It sounds like we will have one more in another 8ish weeks for an Anatomy profile...whatever that is. But yesterday was pretty great. I have been spending far too much mental energy worried about the stupid little things. I am afraid our messy habits will make us bad parents. I am afraid I will never sleep again. I am afraid I will hate my job and wish I were home with my baby all the time. I am afraid we won't have enough money. There seem to be so many little details yet to work out and so many of those seem to be things that I am just going to have to wait and see. It is hard for me, the girl who wants to know where we are going for dinner so she can look up the menu on the web and decide what she wants to eat before she ever touches a menu. I like to know what's coming and this whole pregnancy thing is a bitch if you hate waiting.

We found out last week that I am a CF gene carrier and I talked about all of the fun associated with that. G is still waiting to hear from the Dr's office when he can get in a get screened but talking to the genetic counselor yesterday made us both feel a bit better about our options and the probability of our baby being born with CF. The point of this is that it had sort of put this odd pause on my mental/emotional connection with this little spirit. I was afraid we might see something 'game changing' in the testing and ultrasound. I was afraid to continue gestating my love and attachment in case the Dr said "Well, we don't see any movement" or "No skull..." all of that horrible shit flashed through my mind. I just sort of waited this last week. Yesterday, when the half crabby ultrasound tech squirted the warm gel on my belly I thought "well, game on kid. Let's see what ya got". And then I saw it. A round little head with a perfect nose. Arms, legs, I could even see the heart beating like a little firefly in their chest. I gasped. "It's a little person. Inside of me. That's our baby." Tears ran down my cheeks and the ultrasound lady said "wait, haven't you had an ultrasound elsewhere yet?' When I said no she said "Well, meet your baby." She then lead us on a guided tour of all of the reassuring landmarks like the skull, the nuchal tube, fingers, toes, nose, and butt. She told us the baby was right on growth for 12 weeks and 5 days and that everything looked "just as it ought to". She tilted me on my head and got the little one to move around and we could see the jaw just moving away and the arms moving around. G joked, "It's definitely your kid. It's already talking with it's hands".

It may sound stupid and maybe I am already doing it wrong, but I fell in love with this little one yesterday. I have been walking around feeling like I ate bad Thai food for the last 3 months and yesterday, seeing a tiny human shaped form swimming around and napping on my bladder I felt like I might just be someone's mom after all. It is still so very surreal but somehow just a little more real today. Last night I had amazing dreams. I dreamt I was flying and dancing and I didn't have to come down unless I wanted to take a running start and fly again. I was moving all over the sky and the music was awesome. I felt like something out of a movie. I awoke this morning feeling happy and not ill. I had slept for 6hrs without waking up to go to the bathroom. I woke up feeling so good, I think I'll clean out the fridge.

Navigating a Minefield

So, I had my first prenatal appointment this week and it was lovely. I adore my midwives and trust the process of the home birth practice so implicitly it felt like coming home. I grew up in an office very similar to the office of my midwives. Small, comfortably furnished, cozy, personal, practical.... It is so much like my mom's office I half expected her to walk through the door at any moment.

We sat and chatted about my medical history and about G's family history. We talked about how the pregnancy has been going thus far and ways to work through the nausea and constipation. I was reassured that I was doing everything right and that it will almost certainly get easier as I cruise into my second trimester. We talked about what sort of testing G and I are comfortable with and what we felt we MUST have or would really like to avoid. I decided to get screened to see if I am a Cystic Fibrosis gene carrier. My family has zero history of it and I just assumed that I would not be a carrier. La la la we drew some blood, peed in a cup and went out to lunch.

Two days later I am sitting at the airport waiting for a woman who is having some post-partum bleeding 5 days out from normal healthy vaginal delivery yet trying to fly home to Saudi Arabia to decide weather or not she will let us take her to the hospital. She and her husband are speaking to a ticket agent in the ladies room as she nurses the teeny tiny 5 day old. I (as per usual) have to pee so badly I am about need a snorkel so I walk to the other end of the terminal to use the other bathroom as the closer one is the location of the ticket agent meeting. I see that I have some missed calls and a voicemail. It is my midwife. Thank god she didn't do the "we need to talk about some labs so call me" thing. She straight up told me that my screen came back positive for the CF carrier gene.

All I am going to say about CF is that it is bad. True it can come in many shades of awful but the fact of the matter is it is almost always really a super shitty thing to go through. There is a TON of great information on line if you are curious but it is a big possibility that if your munchkin is born with CF they will need a lung transplant or will possibly not live to see their 5th birthday and if they do you will see many days in and out of specialists offices, NICUs, and emergency rooms. CF is fucking horrible. You slowly or quickly lose elasticity of your lungs and have trouble breathing and coughing. A chest cold could kill a person with CF. I saw a few families over and over and over again at the ED where I worked, who were just hollowed out by this thing. It sucks. That said, it takes 2 sets of the gene, one from each parent, to make it even possible for the baby to have it. It is also recessive so even if both parents have the gene the baby has a 25% of having CF, a 50% chance of being a carrier and a 25% of not even being a carrier so the odds are good but the stakes are HIGH! So, wisely my midwife says "Here's the deal, you should have the first trimester scree which includes an ultrasound and if your insurance will pay for it you should definitely have G tested. You should consider having him tested even if you have to pay out of pocket. When you go for that first tri appointment they will see the results of your CF screen and they will offer you a meeting with a genetic counselor. Take it. You will be much better informed and you will be able to make a better plan after that." So, I did. And on Wednesday we are going in for an ultrasound (about 7 weeks earlier than I had planned on having one) and more labs and an hour meeting with a genetic counselor.

I was pretty bummed at first. I was just sad to have to deal with this. Sad to have to make these kinds of appointments and possibly have to make these kinds of decisions. It doesn't even feel like I am pregnant yet, just chubby and hot and having to pee CONSTANTLY with odd aversions to food. I was just starting to feel like I was making my way out of the woods and into the second trimester. This has sort of put an odd hold on all of my emotions. I just want to wait and see what happens when we get G's results back....then see what the GC says....then see if we need to do an amnio....then see if we need to make any really shitty choices....and not just about CF....It is so surreal and I know in my gut that everything is going to be alright but my busy little brain has trouble keeping an even keel sometimes and I have to shut down being excited so I don't worry myself out of it. I will keep you posted.

Good bye nausea. Hello Starfish!

Week 9 has come and gone and with it appears to have gone the worst of the food aversions and nausea. Thank GOD! I was honestly beginning to think I was never going to want to eat real food ever again. We finished up our work week and in a haze of exhaustion we threw together our bags and passed out for a few hours before the alarm clock dragged us up and out to the airport. 16hrs later we were standing at baggage claim 2 hugging Mom and C. We were in Boston. We had made it to the hot and humid east.

I was all butterflies and nerves as we walked to the parking garage. How was I going to tell her? Did she already know? Could she tell just by looking at me? I finally said "Hey Mom, do you still have a doppler kicking around?" She said, "Uh yeah, why?" I said "Well, because I heard you can hear fetal heart tones between 10 and 12 weeks." She said "Oh shit", and started to giggle. C said she had her suspicions (Mother of 3 daughters and grandmother of 6 grandlambies) when I hadn't been calling my mom on a regular basis (because all I wanted to say to her was "MOM, help. I feel awful!"). Mom said she must have suspected something because when she was packing a cooler for us she put pickles in and as she said she has never packed pickles in a cooler EVER. Funny!

We got back to the house and she dug up the doppler. The starfish must have been hiding in the back because we could hear me just as clear as day but no starfish to be found. I wasn't worried. I was a little surprised actually, that I wasn't worried. I was confidant that starfish was in there and healthy but just probably hidden behind my poor guts. The next night after my first veggie rich dinner in 2 months, I hit the living room floor again and this time the starfish was right there. Woosh woosh woosh....I was blown away. There it was healthy and strong, about 170 times a minute. There was the baby. Heart already beating strong there in my belly. G came in from the kitchen and we both held our breath and just listened. Before I knew it all three of us had tears in our eyes. Holy crap! It's really real. G held my hand and kissed my head and looked like he was going to cry. "That's our baby" he said. "Yeah, there they are".

So, that was the night we met the Starfish for the first time. I can't wait to wait a few days and hear it grow stronger and easier to find. In the mean time my nausea seems to be coming in waves far less frequently and without the complete and utter aversion to all things nutritious. I have eaten salad, fish tacos with homemade salsa and even some steak. I am pumped to feel so much better. I missed food. I am looking forward to the second trimester, feeling better, looking pregnant not just chubby and more energy! I feel like this pregnancy thang is just going to get better and better. Keep your fingers crossed for the kumquat sized starfish and I! We'll keep you posted.