a meme, since i apparently have nothing to say

The rules of the “game”: 1. Mention the person who tagged me – it was Coffeegrl, whose blog I love and finally today got around to adding to my Reader. Yeah, I suck at the basic mainenance chores of life. 2. Complete the lists of 8. 3. Tag 8 more bloggers and tell them they’ve been tagged – I’m skipping this part cause I think everyone has done it and this particular meme went around months ago. As usual, if you’ve not done it and are looking for something to do, consider yourself tagged.

Eight things I am looking forward to:

1. Finally going swimming in my new bathing suit that I scored at the consignment store for $12, because it is finally warm enough to swim (last week was absurdly cold) and I am starting to feel like an aquatic mammal on land. Best to return to my natural habitat, I think.
2. Getting our guest bedroom and baby room somewhat organized – it’s a work in progress but we’re getting there. Sort of.
3. Finishing the end of Brea.king D.awn because the writing is so appallingly bad. Yet I cannot stop reading. And holy fucking hell, *spoiler alert* the name of her kid is just so absurd, I laugh everytime I read it. Worst. Invented. Name. Ever!
4. Re-reading H.oward’s End, since I just finished re-reading Za.die Smith’s On Be.auty, which is completely brilliant and an homage to the former and I’m curious to discover the connections for myself, and I love E.M. For.ster anyway.
5. Hitting up a cherry festival with my husband this weekend.
6. Getting my deep freeze cleaned out and ready for filling with summer fruit and tasty meals for after the wee bit arrives.
7. Seeing one of my oldest friends next week – I haven’t seen her for 10 years and she now lives in Sweden, so it will be a rare treat to reconnect.
8. Seeing I.ron & Win.e at our local folk festival in a few weeks. Although I will probably cry, cause listening to his songs always makes me cry – so much heart and quiet beauty in those songs.

Eight things I did yesterday:

1. Picked up my new glasses. Photo coming soon – brace yourselves for complete optical sweetness! Think of what glasses Harriet the Spy might wear now that she’s all grown up, and make them tortoise shell with a touch of purple. Uh-hunh.
2. Went grocery shopping and stupidly bought peaches, nectarines and a cantaloupe that will all ripen around the same time.
3. Kegels.
4. Walked the dog and talked to him while we walked. Don’t think anyone heard me.
5. Drove around listening to flamenco music really loud and trying to sing along. Hope to G*d nobody heard me!
6. Walked home and got blisters on my ever so slightly swollen feet.
7. Talked to my mom and heard about her seeing a baby hummingbird. Cool.
8. Saw a baby flicker perched in a tree while walking the dog. It’s been a good year for baby bird sightings in my family, I guess – a few weeks ago I saw a whole family of thrashers at my friend’s place.

Eight things I wish I could do:

1. Sing really beautifully. I’m ok, but I won’t give you goosebumps or make you cry, that’s for sure.
2. Be snappy with comebacks when people say something to piss me off. I’m always a day late.
3. Teleport myself places so I could see my family whenever I wanted without spending a lot of money and time to get to where they happen to be.
4. Salsa dance. I’ll probably take lessons someday, but since I’m married to a committed non-dancer, it kind of takes the fun out of the sexy partner dances.
5. Read people’s minds when and only when I want to. Cause I’m a little bit paranoid and a little bit voyeuristic.
6. Bring about world peace, cause that would be so nice. And also cause I’m starting to run out of ideas.
7. Get over my aversion to financial things and anything that involves filling out a form.
8. Fly, like in dreams where you just kind of swim and swoop through the air.

Eight shows I watch:

1. Anything La.w & Or.der-related, although SVU is a bit too much for me sometimes, especially lately. L.aw & Or.der: UK is totally great and I am digging seeing the former Dann.y Baldw.in (from Coron.ation Stre.et) in a completely different role. Although they are recycling the American scripts and since I’ve seen virtually every episode, I start remembering the plots about 15 minutes into the show. Still great, though.
2. Wh.at Not to W.ear – love it.
3. The news.
4. Cor.onation Stre.et – Best. Show. Ever. Although they’re going through a bit of an overly dramatic phase in the Canadian episodes right now, and I prefer the funny, mundane stuff.  Still, it rules.
5. Bei.ng Eri.ca – One of the great CBC shows destined to get cancelled because the CBC is run by asshats, apparently. Twi.tch City? JPo.d? Ah, the brilliance. And the waste.
6. The Simp.sons. Cause it’s like Shakespeare or the Bible now – you simply need it to understand a huge number of cultural references. Plus it’s awesome.
7. Iconoc.lasts – fascinating.
8. Dog Whisp.erer – it has dogs, which is awesome, and he’s a man who clearly understands energy and emotions – that is just hot. Plus I super puffy heart Daddy the pit bull.

Eight favorite fruits:

1. Cherries
2. Apricots
3. Peaches
4. Cantaloupe
5. Pears
6. Pineapple
7. Apples
8. Lychee

Eight places I’d like to travel:

1. North Africa – Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia
2. Spain
3. New Zealand
4. France
5. Australia, again
6. Continental US road trip – pretty much everywhere
7. Canadian Maritimes
8. India

Eight places I’ve lived:

1. Saskatchewan, Canada
2. British Columbia, Canada
3. Jo.etsu-shi, Niig.ata Prefecture, Japan
4. Mui.kamachi, Niig.ata Prefecture, Japan
5. Saskatchewan, Canada
6. That’s it!

Hair and belly photos

As promised, here are some shots of my new haircut and also my first publicly available belly shots. The hair is awesomer than it looks – I forgot to take a picture before flamenco where I got all sweaty and made the hair slightly flat. I think my head is cut off in the belly pic – we can all blame Manny for that. Also, sorry if the formatting is off – I’m testing out the iPho.ne Wordpr.ess app for posting and adding photos.

the road to nowhere is paved with good intentions

Really, truly, my friends – I do have the best of intentions when it comes to writing more. It’s just that it’s summer here, and our Prairie summers are short and must therefore be savoured and absorbed with great gusto. And then there’s, you know, life. I’m trying to get back to the blissful unscheduled existence I had a while back, but it’s tricky, cause I really do like doing everything I have scheduled. I think I just need support staff – someone to handle the grocery shopping and house cleaning and garden weeding and planning and organizing – and then I will be liberated to catch up on blog posts and emails and the like.

Yes, that sounds awfully good right about now.

My sister’s FIL did pass away, and while it has been hard on everyone, I think they are doing as well as can be expected. My nephew is doing ok with it although like all grieving people, he will be going through a process for quite a while yet. I was able to spend the day with him and his little brother the day that his grandpa died, and it feels good to know that I could help in some way, even if it did just involve playing in the yard and going on a shopping expedition for sidewalk chalk, washable markers and popsicles.

I am starting to look pregnant. For reals. I have to say that I get completely humbled and amazed at least once a day at it all, and Manny is no doubt becoming quite sick of me exclaiming, “Dude! I look PREGNANT!” in a tone of complete awe. I am 22 weeks today and seem to have hit the stage where I cannot possibly eat enough. I need to eat around the clock, like I was on antibiotics or something. Last night when I was going to bed I was just about to turn off the light when I realized I needed to eat. How sad that a homemade wheat-free banana muffin with a thick slab of cream cheese on it has become a sort of a chore.

I have a feeling I’m going to have to start watching myself a bit with my food intake – my ass and belly are the only things that have really gotten bigger, but that could all change in a couple weeks if I keep downing the calorie-rich snacks the way I have been. On the other hand, I have also been eating really well overall – I made a fabulous quinoa-black bean salad last week that provided a number of tasty lunches. If you want the recipe, you can find it here – it is definitely worth making. I skipped their crazy quinoa cooking instructions because I am too lazy – I just used less water, fluffed it with a fork and then chilled it overnight in the fridge before making the salad and it turned out fine. I also omitted the jalapenos because while they would be very delicious, heartburn is currently my mortal enemy and I fear excessive spice. Mild green chilies might have made a good substitute, though. Will try that next time.

Um, boring much, Anna? Here’s even more:

I have been wanting to cut my hair short for the past couple weeks since it got hot. My last haircut wasn’t with my usual person and she left it way too thick, and then I haven’t gotten it cut in about 3 months, so it’s feeling pretty heavy right now. Every week at flamenco class I turn pink like a lobster and fantasize about chopping it all of so it doesn’t make my neck all sweaty, but then I hesitate. Partly because everyone tell me not to cut it (why I even ask is beyond me since I know I look good with short hair and most people I ask have only seen me with a bob or longer hair) and also because I always had it in my mind that I would cut my hair really short when I have my baby. I do like to change my hair as part of big life changes and for some reason I just want to have a super short and cute haircut when I have a new baby. But my sister correctly pointed out that short hair is a lot more work – you can’t just ignore it like you can with my trusty current bob. So I am going to cut it fairly short now and over the summer, and then probably let it return to the bob into the fall and once the baby is born. I am going to get it cut on Thursday and promise pictures unless it’s a total trainwreck. Or maybe especially if it’s a total trainwreck. Although I rarely get truly bad haircuts – the worst one of my life was circa 1989 when the gal spent about 15 minutes cutting and 45 minutes crimping it with a huge crimping iron and hairspraying and teasing it into oblivion, and even that wasn’t so bad once I washed it. I was heavily into The Cure at that point, but had no desire to actually resemble Robert Smith.

I am dying to go swimming but I am loathe to spend big money on a maternity bathing suit. In an attempt to find a bargain that might work, I tried on some bikinis the other day and not only was the sight of my pale white belly not exactly attractive, I also had trouble with the tops providing adequate coverage for my veiny, swollen boobs. Going up sizes didn’t help either because the band around the chest was too loose, so I don’t really know what to do. Manny might find it sexy to see me displaying ample boobage but I would prefer to avoid the very real possibility of flashing my browner-by-the-day areolas to the world at large.

I have had some deep thoughts lately but need to work harder on formulating them into coherent blog posts. One of the big things has been around identity, and one of the other big things that has been plaguing me is how weird I find it that once I started to feel the wee bit moving around, my anxiety actually increased. Like when I haven’t felt any kicks in a while, I just sit still and start jiggling my belly until I feel a thump. Or I eat something or drink a glass of juice. It occurred to me this morning that I’m starting to get into this pattern where I am deliberately bugging my baby to make myself feel better, and that seems a bit wrong to me. So I am going to work on finding other ways to manage my anxiety when it comes rather than just harassing this little being. Not all the time, but at least some of the time.

Manny and I hit a garage sale on Saturday that was all baby and kid stuff, and we scored some pretty sweet deals. We picked up a glider rocker for $20 – it is oak and in really good shape and its only flaw is a fairly ugly cushion. Fortunately, said cushion just velcroes onto the chair and will be very easy to re-cover. I also got 6 sleepers, 5 very sweet onesies, a couple blankets and a little fleece bunting thing that my oldest nephew had but my sister has since gotten rid of – for some reason, I found myself getting almost weepy that I was going to get to put my own baby into something I had lugged my nephew around in. It is really sinking in that there is a baby coming to us.

swamped

Oy! I have been meaning to write more, and there is plenty to write about. Time, however, has been in short supply ’round these parts. I am resorting to bullets to catch you up on the happenings of the past few weeks, and hopefully soon I will get around to writing a few of the deep posts that have been swirling around my head lately. 

• My dad was in the hospital for 8 days because he had one of these. He’s ok, they caught it in time, and they’ve finally sorted out the medication enough that they let him out.  Scary as hell, though, especially since it was his second episode.
• During the time my dad was in the hospital, my mom was struck by a terrible stomach bug, so not only could she not even visit my dad, but she couldn’t even leave the house.  She’s sort of on the mend, but it’s been ugly. 
• My parents live a 3 hour plane trip from me, and I can’t afford to just fly out on short notice. Even though I wanted to, really badly. 
• Between talking to both my parents separately, my sisters and my grandparents who are here in town, I spent a lot of time on the phone over the past week and a half. 
• During that time, I was also putting the finishing touches on the article I was writing and getting it submitted to the editor, working on revamping how our support group works (more on this in a future post), carrying on my yoga and flamenco classes, working, living, AND dealing with the thrice-or-more weekly rehearsals of Manny’s first punk band that is reuniting for a one-time only gig opening for a band they used to play with many, many years ago.  Fortunately, said gig is happening tonight and therefore I will soon get my house and my evenings back. 
• Now, my youngest  sister, who lives at least in the same province but a 2.5 hour drive away, is facing her father in law’s health crisis and the very real possibility of his death within the next few weeks. And I am upset for her and for my brother in law and also, especially, for my sweet 5 year old nephew who has just been starting to have his existential crisis about death and what it means. I am sensitive about this kind of stuff at the best of times, but it’s really hitting me hard at the moment – just feeling helpless and shaken by the closeness of death and wanting to do something to help ease this process for my nephew in particular. But also feeling, because of the events of the past couple weeks, completely drained and exhausted and depleted. 

I think that about covers it. Other things have been going well – we had our 19 week u/s this week and all looks good. The wee bit has turned breech and has been kicking me in the bladder and cervix and other down low things. It feels really, really weird, but every single thump is about the best moment of my life. Physically, I’ve been feeling quite good, and I’m sure if I can just get some good rest and time to really re-connect with myself, I’ll feel better all around. 

Tonight, however, punk rock beckons.

recent conversation

Starting on Monday, I have really been feeling the baby move. I was feeling it last week but it was very faint and usually didn’t last very long, so it was hard to be sure. But Monday was the day when it became clear that there is a human being in my belly. I was talking to my sister last night and asked to talk to my nephew, O, who is 5. Here’s how it went down:

Me: Hi, O! Tantie has something really special to tell you. 

O: What is it?

Me: Remember how I told you I have a baby in my belly?

O: Yes. 

Me: Well, I can feel the baby moving all around now!

O: (Long pause as if he’s thinking of what to say.) Sweet!

 

I can’t believe how great his slang usage is – before we know it, he’ll be swearing like a trucker to make his Tantie and her homegirl, Eden, very proud.

the stuff I don’t want to forget

Ok, because I haven’t done a single post talking about the pregnancy, and because a blog is, in part, a form of record-keeping, I am going to write one of those posts where I detail the pregnant stuff. It’s boring and probably extremely smug. So consider yourself warned. 

• I don’t think it started getting real until close to 12 weeks. It really just took a long time to sink in. 
• The story of how I found out is this: I had been temping, and on a Saturday morning, it was the cycle day that my temp had dropped in the previous cycle, and I had kind of made a secret deal with myself that if my temp didn’t drop that day, I would POAS. So I woke up, took my temp, and it was still up. Still not even remotely excited, I went to the bathroom and peed on a stick. Or more precisely, peed into my ceramic handmade Hello Kitty teacup that I use for collecting pee (have to find new, non-drinking use for it now), collected pee in the plastic dropper that comes with the dollar store peesticks, dropped required number of pee drops in the stick’s receptacle, and then stared at it for a while. Of course it was very white and I was thinking it would be another negative and my temp would wind up dropping the next day and I felt very discouraged. But I left it on the counter and went back to bed to play a Sudoku on my iPhone. When I was done the Sudoku, I went back and looked. A very faint but definitely clear line was there. Holy. Shit. I think at that point my brain just completely emptied of everything, and I went looking for Manny, who turned out to be in the basement sleeping with the dog who had scratched at our bedroom door early in the morning. (If we let him in to our room, he just scratches earlier and earlier and always wants to sleep with us, and as much as I adore the Luckster, I don’t want him to sleep with us.) I woke him up and told him to look at the stick. The whole time I felt like a zombie floating on a cloud in a parallel universe somewhere over the rainbow in heaven, a feeling which didn’t entirely go away until around the 12 week mark, as I said earlier. 
• I never threw up (or at least, I haven’t up to this point, 17 weeks and counting) but definitely had nausea. Eating regularly, ginger candy, strong mints, acupressure wrist bands and lots of rest have been very helpful. My nausea pretty much always got worse later in the day, and also if I ate too much. 
• My sleep has been screwed up from the start and I have had the most insane dreams. In one, I was attacked by someone’s pet rat named Alyssa and woke up clawing at my neck to get Alyssa’s biting, clawing self off of me. Good times.
• I have had trouble telling people because they get all excited and I feel like a massive killjoy when I’m not as excited as they are. 
• I’m worried about how to handle it when someone touches my belly without my consent. At the moment I’m thinking I’ll just grab their ass and see how they like it. 
• I’ve had cravings for the following: tartar sauce, oranges, Oreo cookies, pickles, apples, lemonade, potatoes, dairy products (like a crazy woman, I was! I had 3 Babybel cheeses in my purse at all times for the first 10 weeks!), bread, ice cream, ranch dressing, chips and dip, salt, pickled beets. More to come, no doubt. 
• I’ve had aversions to the following: meat (especially in the evenings), seafood chowder (duh).
• Gas. ‘Nuff said. 
• About the DI stuff – I thought I would be consumed with angst over our choice and early pregnancy would be consumed with wondering whether this really is the right thing. Instead, I’ve just felt so grateful that it was an option for us and that it happened so easily. This is such a surprise that in a way I keep waiting for the angst to show up – I’m sure it will at some point, but right now, I am totally at peace with it, something that even a year ago seemed impossible. 
• Leggings are my new best friend, and I’m currently enjoying a mini 80s revival in my clothing choices.
• The belly is getting visible now and yesterday I was talking to the woman working in the post office who was very obviously pregnant, and she noticed that I was, too – first time someone noticed who didn’t already know. Fun!
• We’ve had one discussion about names and we have way more common instincts than I expected, which is very good news.
• We both think it’s a girl, but we’re not going to find out. 
• I think I’m starting to feel movement but I’m not totally sure that’s what it is, so I haven’t got super excited yet. 
• I had the quad screening and the NT scan and the combined risk of a chromosomal problem after both of those tests is 1 in 18 million. I have to say that I was hesitatant about the quad screening because there are so many false “positives” but I’m glad I had it done now cause it does comfort me somewhat to know that all my results were far below the average for my age or for the general population. 

I started this over a week ago and reading over it I am cringing somewhat at how boring and self-indulgent it is, but since I’ve hardly had time to sit down the past few weeks, I’m going to publish anyway.  Cause the likelihood of me writing anything else before next week is fairly slim at this point…

no, really. what do YOU think?

A while ago I mentioned that I was invited to write an article about blogging for IAAC’s quarterly magazine, Creating Families. And because I am lazy totally value your opinion, I want to hear from you about your experience in the ALI (adoption, loss, infertility) blogosphere. I may work some of your responses into the article, but I will totally ask you individually for permission before doing that.

For me, blogging has partly been a way to do something I’ve always wanted to do, but never could do consistently: keep a journal. I have probably half a dozen diaries dating back to elementary school (my first one was a Judy Blume diary filled with quotes from her books and photos of cool 70s kids emoting various things ranging from self-esteem-filled to sexually confused to hurt-and-perplexed-by-the-way-girls-gang-up-on-each-other-at-a-certain-age), but not a single one of them is even close to half filled. Of course, most entries are about despair of one sort or another – boy-related, mostly, though lots of stuff that would now fall under my handy, catch-all “my process” tag. When I take the time to read through some of the stuff I’ve written over the years, I’m struck most often by how incomplete it is – how much of the time I have no idea what I was prattling on about and what was causing me such profound distress. And I think that a big part of why I could never maintain a regular practice of writing down my experiences and my emotions was that, somehow, it was a bit hollow for me. It helped to get it out, but then once it was out, I just moved on.

Blogging, on the other hand, offers me a chance to let it out AND have my ego gratified by people reading and commenting. I’m being flip, of course, but it’s true. But more true is that blogging is a way for me to get out of my own head. I can wrestle with the language and figure out my feelings as I write them down, but what comes back in the comments is not just praise or hollow words of comfort. So often, the responses I get from you all challenge me to look at my own situation differently, to get out of whatever trench I’ve just dug for myself and seem determined to wallow in. Pieces of advice or words of reassurance stay with me, and I find myself passing them on to others when I recognize my own experience in their writing.

The blogosphere, at least our little corner of it, is a place where all the journals and diaries have sprung to life, and started talking to each other, trading secrets and insights. They’ve taken to the moonlit streets in the lovely painting you can see on the header of Stirrup Queens, gathering in large and small groups, offering words of comfort, silent abiding hugs, the darkest gallows humour. They’re celebrating and grieving and planning and acting and making friends. And I often feel like I’ve stumbled out of my house in my pyjamas, rubbing my sleepy eyes, amazed by my luck at being able to find such a wonderful place to belong.

The community that exists here in the ALI blogosphere continues to amaze and astound me – every time I click over to the LFCA, or see a new photo of Cali’s sweet boy, or find myself on the receiving end of wishes of love and support after writing a difficult post, I am both humbled and proud of what we are all creating here. We’re forging a new world, sisters, and most of the time it’s a world I desperately wish more closely resembled the real world.

So I invite anyone reading this to chime in about why you blog, about what it means to be part of this community, about risks or drawbacks of blogging – anything. What would you like to say to fellow infertiles who haven’t discovered the blogosphere, particularly those who are feeling isolated either emotionally or geographically?

I’m also taking this chance to invite you to delurk, if you are indeed lurking. Even if you don’t have a blog and just read, please use this as a chance to introduce yourself and tell me why you read.

new order

Well, internets, it seems things are finally starting to shake down in the mind of annacyclopedia. I’ve had a few realizations about why it’s been hard for me to write since getting knocked up, and I’m really hoping that this will help shake loose a flood or even a steady trickle of words from my brain.  I realized the other day that I was holding back from writing about the pregnancy partly because I don’t think it’s that interesting – I’m no different from any other pregnant woman out there who feels tired, nauseous, incredulous, freaked out, bloated, awe-struck, whatever. But also partly because I was having a blog-dentity crisis.

When I started blogging, I was desperate to find others whose stories were just like mine. I combed the blogrolls, searching for my own story told by someone else. The more similar, the better, I thought. And surprise, surprise – there weren’t very many. I found other DI blogs, which was so great, but nobody had gone through a failed vasectomy reversal and gone straight to DI. To this day I don’t think I’ve found anyone whose story matches mine on those points. But I don’t care anymore, because I very quickly realized that it truly doesn’t matter – that the sense of community and belonging I found here in the blogosphere has little, if anything, to do with how similar someone’s story is to mine. Instead, it’s about something way harder to describe – it’s the heart connections that happen the same way they happen in real life. Mysteriously, instinctively, spontaneously –  through the little jokes that I tell that someone actually gets, or the casual mention by a blogger I already read that they love a particular band, or share a particular interest of mine, or the way a woman I admire to the point of being intimidated gives me a shout-out or sends me a sweet, supportive email out of the blue.  The way some of you have taken the time to tell me that my words have made a difference for you, in some small way. The way the guts of our experience – spiritual, emotional, physical, political, intellectual – get shared either through brilliant, detailed exposition or revealing little aphoristic posts so crammed with truth they leave me breathless for minutes or hours or days. 

If all of this sounds incredibly self-centred, it is. For me, blogging has been about finding a place where I belong, where I can tell my own story and be heard and understood. I do it because it is about me.  And in some way, I think that’s true of all of us. At the very least, that’s what draws me in – the appeal of women all over the world, trying to understand themselves and their lives by writing their own stories and releasing them like a cage of doves. 

Somehow, getting knocked up and trying to write about it, I forgot all that. I got caught in the belief that my blog is for other people who might need it, and I feared hurting those women who were like me at the beginning – desperate for a mirror of their own experiences. I didn’t want to have the story someone needed to hear, only to have them show up on my blog and be faced with a post about about stretch marks and the alarming growth of my ass. I didn’t want to let that woman down.

How’s that for wanky and delusional and self-aggrandizing?

I’ve realized that my blog is for telling my story. Plain and simple. That my story now includes being pregnant and hopefully becoming a mother to a healthy and adorable baby. And while I don’t have an obligation to tell it, I do have a desire to tell it, as much for myself as for anyone else. My blog archives are some of the most precious things in my life – it is so powerful being able to look back at a record of who I have been, of what I’ve come through, of what has healed and what remains to be healed.

I realized, too, that while I don’t struggle with feelings of guilt about being pregnant, I was wrestling with some weird stuff about talking about being pregnant. I know that everyone who doesn’t get or stay pregnant easily has their moments of anger and sadness over others’ pregnancies; I’ve had plenty of such moments myself. For some reason, I was taking that on, and trying to protect those of you who are still waiting and trying and hoping. Again with the self-aggrandizing.  I finally remembered that even though I’ve had times when hearing someone else’s good news has been painful, there are lots of times when it’s brought me joy and hope, and that my reactions are largely random, i.e. that sometimes I’m able to be thrilled for a virtual stranger and yet am plunged into despair over my own sister’s pregnancy announcement. And also that all of you dear readers have free will and can click away anytime you want, with my blessing and support. 

So this post is to declare a new order here on my blog. That although I probably will never talk about pregnancy symptoms in great detail, I will no longer be holding back. I’m claiming this space as my own even though it always was. I just forgot. 

Blog-dentity crisis over.

shaken, then stirred

This is a story in two parts. The first part is the bad news. The second is the good news. So there is no need to hold your breath while reading the first part.

Thursday evening, we had a bit of scare. I was having a poop (my current obsession with apples is doing wonders for my digestion) and I looked down to see a drop of blood fall in the toilet. My mind froze on just one thought: “no, no, no no, NO!” There was some more blood when I wiped – not a lot, but it was bright red and terrifying. I made my way upstairs and told Manny, and somehow managed to have the presence of mind to call the health line nurse who, like all health line nurses, is an angel in disguise. As she listened to me and started to ask me questions, I could feel myself calming down. No cramping, swelling of feet, hands or face, dizziness, blurred vision, abdominal pain, fever. Nothing other than maybe 1 or 2 milliliters of blood, which by this point had stopped. She said I needed to see a doctor within 24 hours, and that if I felt I needed to go in right away, I should do that, but to watch myself carefully and if the bleeding got worse, or I was cramping or anything else, I should go to the ER immediately. I was surprisingly calm by this point; for whatever reason, I just felt like everything would be ok. The bleeding did not continue or resume, although there was a tiny bit of brown spotting through to the next morning. She also suggested I call the OB/GYN on call at the hospital, which I would never have thought of on my own, although it’s on the voice mail message of my clinic if you call them after hours, which I have inadvertently done at least a dozen times. So I did call, and spoke to the OB, who said I could come in and he could see me, but he wouldn’t be able to to an ultrasound until the morning, so it would probably be better just to come in first thing in the morning.

So that’s what we did. Manny and I were at emergency at 8 on Friday morning. After waiting for 2 hours, we finally got in for an ultrasound. My panic had returned pretty much as soon as we walked in to the hospital, and as we were waiting for the u/s, it was at its peak. For all my excitement to have my first scan on Monday, we were about to find out whether all was indeed well, and the circumstances were not at all as I had imagined. They called my name, and Manny and I went into the little room. The very nice tech told me to hop up on the table, and I had a weird moment of cognitive delay, cause I had the urge to take off my pants. I started to laugh and shared this with Manny, who laughed, and the tech, who looked at me a bit weird until I told her we had done fertility treatment to get pregnant and that I had done lots of follicle tracking scans. She tried to do it abdominally, but my bladder was completely empty, so she wound up having to ask me to remove my pants anyway. Ah, good old dildo cam – how I missed you! She had the screen angled towards her for about half a minute, but then she turned it around so we could see, saying that we didn’t have to be holding our breath.

I saw the heartbeat before she even pointed it out and I’ve never been happier or more relieved to see anything in my life. It was AMAZING! She then proceeded to give me a very thorough wanding, pointing out all sorts of things along the way – looking at both ovaries, my uterus, the baby’s arm and leg buds, the bones ossifying in its face, the developing brain. We got to see the baby moving around and gaze in wonder at the flickering heartbeat. She printed us out two pictures which I will try to scan and post a bit later. According to their calculations, I was 9w3d, and the baby was measuring 10w exactly, with a heartbeat of 176.

I then went out and waited some more – before they’d let me leave, I needed to see the OB on call. They did some blood work as I waited, but it was still nearly 3 hours between getting the u/s and seeing the doctor. However, the waiting was much easier knowing the baby was ok, and the OB was very nice. She explained that the scan showed I had a very small bleed under the placenta, and that while it could be risky if the bleed got bigger, it was not that  uncommon and would most likely resolve on its own. I was smiling to myself as I held back from saying, “Oh, a subchorionic hemorrhage, right, gotcha.” We bloggers are just so damned well-informed! She answered my questions and then told me that she was on call until 8 the next morning, so if anything else happened or I was concerned, I could call and speak to her directly. She, and everyone I dealt with in the hospital on Friday, was amazing, and I am so fortunate to have been so well cared for.

As we were seeing the baby, between little bouts of teariness from me, I was thinking about how this is my child, MY child, my CHILD. A child to whom I could one day relate this story about the first time we saw her. And how much joy we felt when we did.

I know we are a long way from holding this child in our arms, and I am not taking it for granted that we will. But the sense of connection I am starting to feel to this baby – it humbles me as it sweeps over me. I am grateful. I am in awe.

dudes.

I am, like, so totally lame. I can’t believe I’ve gone so long without writing anything, and there is so much to write about I don’t really know where to begin. So I’ll take a page from Io and give you a bulleted list that will hopefully catch you up on the major events of my life recently.**WARNING: Pregnancy talk ahead.**

• I’m 9 weeks pregnant. There. I said it, as publicly as it gets for now. I’ve told my family, and while we’re not going full-scale public with the news until we hit 12 weeks, at least I don’t have to worry about my mother finding out from some friend of the family who had stumbled across the blog. If you know me in real life, please keep this to yourself for now. Also, Manny’s family doesn’t know yet – we’ll tell them at 12 weeks, too. I’m really looking forward to that – I think they are going to be really surprised, since they don’t know that we’ve actually been trying or any of our issues.
• I’m still having trouble believing it and have never paid closer attention to the state of my used toilet paper. But it’s sinking in gradually – telling my family did help it feel more real and every day I believe more and more. I’m having lots of symptoms, which helps a lot – sore boobs, queasiness on and off but thankfully no barfing yet, gas, tiredness. I am grateful to have so many reasons to believe that this is real.
• I have my first u/s on April 6, when I’ll be 10 weeks. They could have gotten me in last week but Manny had a conference and wouldn’t have been able to come, so I pushed it back a bit. Having visual confirmation will be nice but I’m surprised by how calm and in the moment I seem to be. It’s kind of weird – usually this state of mind doesn’t come easily to me.
• Manny and I had a great time in BC with my parents and my sister, BIL and nephew. It was nice to get away from the snow even if we didn’t have really great weather until we got over to Victoria, where it was absolutely lovely.
• I had an amazing time meeting up with some bloggy friends – I had lunch with Tara, Emily, Emily, and planningdoesn’twork. It was so nice to meet them face to face and spend some time together. This Emily remarked at one point that I was quieter than she expected me to be, and afterwards I was thinking that it would have been nice to meet everyone just one on one, but I just didn’t have the time. I do tend to be a little quiet in big groups, preferring to observe and listen. But we did have a really good time together, and it was amazing how much everyone was pretty much how I imagined them to be. Also amazing is just how real our bonds can be, even though we may have and may never meet. Seeing these women in real life confirmed for me once again that blogging relationships are real and important. 
• The day after I met up with that gang, I got to meet Deathstar. And let me say that however awesome she is on her blog, she is even awesomer in real life. As she said, we could hardly get the words in fast enough, and we were tripping over ourselves to finish each other’s sentences. It was amazing. Also, she has the most ridiculously gorgeous eyes (she’s a knockout from head to toe, just to be clear) and I hope she wasn’t freaked out by me staring at them. In addition to being beautiful, she is also funny and smart and has that gift of really being present in a conversation and being able to really listen. After spending a couple of hours with her, I was on a high for the rest of the day. 
• I found out that my job will not become permanent at the beginning of June, but they’re willing to give me a four month extension on my contract, which means that if all goes as hoped, I will be starting my maternity leave at the beginning of October, which my sister and others have said is actually a good idea cause it gives you time before the baby comes to get organized and take it easy. The downside is that I won’t be getting topped up, so it’ll just be 55% of my salary, and I won’t have a job to go back to after a year. The money would be nice, but I’m too lazy and too preoccupied to look for another job right now, and in any case it would be virtually impossible to find something with equal pay and benefits to what I get right now. It’ll just take some more planning on our part to make things work, but really, it’ll be fine.  And I’m extremely grateful to be living in Canada where I get a full year of leave. It’s also possible for Manny to take a portion of that year as paternity leave, but we haven’t really discussed that yet. Plenty of time to figure all that out. 
• I’ve been asked to write an article for the magazine that is published by IAAC – it’s going to be about blogging and IF. I’m really excited about it and I will be coming to all of you for thoughts and input, cause I’m only able to have anything to write about because you’re all in the community. 

Ok, that’s it for now. I promise to get back in the swing of things and write more. It’s occurring to me that by not writing I’m missing out on a record of what I’m going through. I’m still up in the air about whether to start a new blog or just to keep writing here – will certainly keep all of you posted on any future changes. 

It’s good to be back.