relief

It's not even March and the redbuds are blooming. They look like handfuls of candy floating in the air.

My dad was here for a couple of days and he brought with him a blood pressure cuff so I've been taking my blood pressure every 10 minutes. Craziness—it turns out that here in the comfort and peace of my own home, my blood pressure is nothing like it is in the doctor's office. I find this very interesting; it goes along with my general anxiety about giving birth in the hospital w/ the doctors, etc, but I had no idea my body was reacting to these emotional responses. Perhaps I should have known... our bodies respond to everything we think and do, and it's so odd to me that we don't suspect. We are IN our bodies after all, and you'd think you'd know if your blood pressure was shooting through the roof because you're nervous about the atmosphere.

So I'm much less stressed. Enormous amounts of anxiety have lifted, in fact. I didn't know before if what I was so nervous about was the doctors' being too nervous and reacting prematurely or my truly having a condition to fear, but now I believe it was the latter. Discovering that things are not as bad as they seemed makes me giddy with relief.

Frances is hilarious. She makes me laugh all the time. Yesterday she was tired and grumpy, and I said, "I think someone's a little grouchy," and she stopped, looked at me, and pointed at herself and nodded. She's talking now in sentences and paragraphs, though we can't understand anything she's saying. She walks up to me, looks at me with grave intensity, and says, "Blok mblig blik klib lib clik gok blok blig blik klib bnlib clik gok?" and then waits for an answer, blinking her big blue eyes. She knows all her colors now and can hand you the blue block or green shape when you ask, but the only color she can say is 'yellow'. She loves to say this word, and points at every yellow item in the room and says it: "ye-ow". When I ask where her baby brother is, she pats my belly, which is very cute but probably indicates little about what she understands of the situation.

I plan to fully enjoy the next two weeks with her, these last days before her life is altered in a permanent way.

venting

Yesterday at the doc my blood pressure was up again. It's not very high compared to the normal population, but it's up significantly from my usual. They now want to do monitoring (stress strip test and ultrasound for fluid levels) twice a week because of my blood pressure. In fact, they are talking about wanting to induce at 39 weeks (I'll be 38 on Thurs) if it keeps going up. Ugh. It's so hard to know if they're just being hysterical. I got so upset today about it all... I want want want want want to be able to have a natural birth experience, you know? I want it so badly, and I feel on one hand like their conservatism and lack of faith in the BODY will keep me from that. On the other hand, preeclampsia is serious, I know, and maybe I'm just being selfish in wanting this particular birth experience and ignoring the seriousness of the issue? It's hard to say. I'm seeing a midwife at my next visit and am interested to hear what she has to say about it, whether she thinks it's serious enough to warrent early induction. If I can make it to 40 weeks then maybe we can induce using natural methods like breaking the water, nipple stim, etc. Although I'm FINE with my experience with Frances, which was not ideal, feel that it was the only way and best way, I really was hoping this time would go differently. It's funny—some women wouldn't care. Some women would be pleased to have the birth come earlier, and they wouldn't think twice about being induced b/c they'd have the epidural anyway, and what's the big deal? Something about it trips something deep in me, though I'm not quite sure what. When I close my eyes and fantasize about the birth, it happens here in my own house. I secretly hope the labor goes so fast we don't have time to make it to the hospital. I wish Mitch were brave enough to plan for a home birth, but here we are. And a hospital birth is what it is. (but why am I doing it??)

What it comes down to is that I don't fully trust the doctors, but why not? It's something I'm having a hard time accessing on a conscious level.

Mitch says I'm stressed about something but he doesn't know what it is. I think it's nothing more complicated than the urge to nest v/s feeling unsettled—can't get our house straight enough; feel like I should be packing up, not hunkering down; projects to do to get the house on the market, etc. I think it's the nesting urge that's not being fulfilled. Maybe I can figure out some little things that might satisfy this urge for the moment, some things I can control, like cooking and freezing food for after the baby... Or organizing a diaper table in our room.

This seems to me a pretty chaotic and possibly incoherent post, but that's what I've got. Please leave comments if you have insights. I'll take anything these days. :)

doctors

Friday my doc said no more exercise. He said he "didn't think I needed bedrest yet" and that I needed to "take it easy." Ugh. But he did say the words bed rest. Bed rest. How would that work exactly? I've taken this to mean I shouldn't vacuum the house all in one swoop, but instead do one room at a time and then sit down awhile. Of course, the minute he said bed-rest I remembered all the organizing and cleaning out I wanted to do before the baby comes. I've done some of the attic already but there are closets that are calling me! I'd really like to take advantage of the nesting urge when it strikes.

And it turns out my child has hand-foot-mouth disease. Why do they call it a disease when it's just a virus? It seemed that maybe she had something else because the rash was all over, so we went to the doc Friday (2 docs! Both mine and Frances'. She was worried at the 2nd one (mine) that they were going to look in her ears again.) and they used a tongue depressant to look in her mouth, from which they confirmed it is HFMD. Terribly traumatic, the tongue depressant. Had to nearly pry her teeth open to get out the paci. Even worse than looking in the ears. In any case, bumps all over--legs, arms, diaper area, hands, feet, mouth. So icky.

I hate that we go to a doc that is connected w/ a teaching hospital. Not that the connection itself is so bad, but I'm always caught off guard when a resident or intern appears. I need to be prepared, the moment I see it's someone in training, to say, "Nothing personal, but I'd rather have the doctor do... (the exam, whatever)." Friday the doc brought in this guy that looked 22 and introduced me to him, then said he was going to look F over and get some info, then the doc was going to come back. What this actually meant was that the young guy was going to do a full exam (feeling her stomach, listening to her heart and lungs, looking in her ears, etc) and then the doc was going to come in and do the full exam again. We were already pushing against her naptime and she felt crummy as it was, and let me tell you that two exams is really more than she can take. The young fella not only hurt her when he looked in her ears, but he felt bad that she was crying so much and kept patting her and telling her it was okay, and she did NOT want him touching her more than he already was. So every time he'd console her it would just get worse. I was so irritated with myself for not saying something, for allowing him to practice on her. I know they need practice... and I'm sorry that I can't help w/ that, but this time in particular I shouldn't have. Anyway.

less than 3 weeks

I sleep on the pull-out couch these days. Not only do I have a fortress of pillows—the body pillow, four regular pillows plus 2 throw pillows to prop up my swollen numb hands—but I get up to pee every two hours. When I was still in the bed with Mitch, I would try to roll as gently as I could out of the bed and slide ever so gently back into it, so as not to disturb him, but I finally had to admit that there was nothing gentle about my motions. Really what I was doing was heaving myself over and up, and then when I returned I had to rearrange all my pillows and heave myself back in the middle of them.

I've also had to stop carrying Frances. I can lift her onto the changing table or into the car seat, but I can't hold her for any length of time. It's not as hard as I thought it would be, and she doesn't seem to mind. Now and then when she's falling apart and needs me to hold her, I just sit down on the floor so she can come to me. The largest problem is, for example, that I can't pick her up inside the house and carry her to the car where I strap her in. Instead, I have to hold her hand as we walk down the stairs and sidewalk, and I have to be patient while she dallies at the bushes, then I have to convince her to get in the car, which is sometimes not so easy. Again with the flexibility. I've just had to rethink my schedule and how fast things get done, rethink how I arrange my day and what's important. It's been good for me. Sometimes it would certainly be easier to pick her up so we could make better time walking across the library parking lot... I'm sort of glad I've had to go more slowly with Frances this last bit, because I think it's prepared me well for the change of pace in my life after the baby comes.

Less than 3 weeks to go before my due date! I'm excited to see how Frances interacts with the baby, how she reacts to having a new creature in the house. I'm excited to see her hold him and see how she helps; she loves to be a helper. I held a 4-week old the other day and it felt so strange... I'd forgotten what it was like. Funny little creatures.

sugar sugar

All I want to eat is sugar. And baked goods containing sugar. And chocolate. (I also drink about a 1/2 gallon of milk/day these days, which seems absurd to me.) Today it took seriously all of my will power not to buy a box of HoHos at the grocery. One might think that it's not a big deal if I eat a box of HoHos; I am pregnant after all, and shouldn't I be allowed to indulge? There are actually several reasons I shouldn't eat this stuff (besides its being disgusting...), one of which is that both chocolate and artificial crap ingredients give me migraines. On the one hand, my migraines have been considerably reduced here in pregnancy, so the chances of its causing one are slim. But in addition to a possible debilitating headache, the sugar causes all kinds of general havoc in my body and brain. Tonight when my husband spied chocolate sauce on my vanilla ice cream he frowned at me; he doesn't understand failure of willpower. It all seems quite simple to him—something is problematic; don't do it.

Perhaps this is connected in some way to my lack of patience yesterday. It wasn't just with F; it was also the jar I couldn't open because of my sad swollen hands, the dog's non-stop barking, etc. At one point I heard myself scream at the top of my lungs for the dog to SHUT UP. Then I felt really silly. I don't know if I mean screaming at the dog is connected to a lack of willpower or eating too much sugar. F just looked at me like everything was perfectly normal.

I wish I knew what causes my patience to give out somedays and to stay perfectly intact other days. Of course, this would probably require me to UNDERSTAND what it is I'm feeling when I feel it. Yesterday afternoon (sometime after screaming at the dog) I smelled a twinge of anxiety about the house in NY, about the move, about the changes coming with the coming babe. Sometimes there's excitement, sometimes anxiety. Perhaps if I knew what I was feeling it wouldn't have to well up and take me unaware.

Just after coming back from Rochester I was only excited about the move, and definitely less anxious about the winter there, having seen it first hand. Now that we've got a house and I've seen it and the neighborhood, my work is to picture myself there—pushing the stroller down the street, meeting neighbors as I go, driving to the grocery; living my life. I'm going to visualize this, visualize myself happy there, comfortable, satisfied. Visualize what I want to have made real.

I'm going to go eat some cereal.

hormonal emotions, emotional hormones

I'm so emotional these days, which is two parts comical and one part traumatic seeing as I'm not emotional enough in my non-pregnant state. Mitch is feeling a lot of pressure right now in trying to get things done on the dissertation, since in March he's not going to get anything done for a while aside from diaper changes and late night burpings. This morning he grouched at me just the tiniest bit and I dissolved into tears. I couldn't pull myself together for hours. Later, the kids did a christmas pageant at church and just afterward a 12-year-old came up and handed me this index card with two stick figures holding hands on it. It said, "I wish you a friend when you need one," and I almost started crying again right there. I thought maybe it was some kind of omen or divine guidance, and then I realized the kids were handing them out to everyone. I left it on a table in the fellowship room. 

I don't know why I'm so emotional. I mean, of course it's because I'm pregnant and wacky with hormones, but that's not all. Two weeks ago the hormones were just as plentiful and I didn't cry every time someone smiled at me then. The only thing that's different, really, is that I'm not working. School is out. Which means I'm home all the time with Frances. My patience is not as thin as I expected it to be but I wonder if it's more trying for me than I realize. She's in this complete mommy stage where she not only wants me to hold her all the time, but she runs her hands in my hair and kisses and hugs me and puts her fingers in my mouth and ears. Penelope Leach (child expert author) says that for the toddler this stage is like the infatuation of early love; you just can't get enough of the other person. I suppose if I think of it that way I'm somewhat flattered and more sympathetic to her plight than my general reaction which is that I simply can't breathe. 

She is cute when she kisses me. 

motion

I can feel him move now. It's funny how quickly you forget what these things feel like. I mean, it wasn't that long ago that I was pregnant. I suspect that's nature's plan—the forgetting; else why would I even agree to go through this childbirth thing again??

It's still pretty slight movement, little pings in my abdomen. I won't feel them for a while, then it's like a sweet little surprise. Oh, hello there! Little man moving around.

And we're in Rochester, NY right now, in a hotel with down pillows near campus. Mitch got a job offer from them last week. We're here so I can see what this place looks like and so the folks at the Simon school can tell me the winters aren't so bad. We'll have a real estate tour tomorrow and I'll know more then. Today the dean asked Mitch point blank what was affecting his decision and he pointed at me. So I tried to gather my thoughts about what my criteria are for a place, but I couldn't get them all out in the right order. I hit on some of them but maybe I it's just about a feeling. FEELING. Actually, this isn't a bad way to go about it, I don't think. I usually try to figure these things out in my head and that gets me just nowhere. Perhaps if I tried to feel it in my gut instead (where the little pings are happening...)

pregnancy brain

I don't remember its being this bad last time. I will be standing in the front of the class, MID-SENTENCE, and the thought will leave my brain. Just dissipate, like steam. It really makes you feel silly. Today I got home from the grocery store without the sandwich meat I'd had the deli slice. I suspect it's still sitting on the top of the deli case as I write this, waiting me for to come rescue it. I even checked my receipt to see if I lost it somewhere in transit, but it never made it to the register. And this is the SECOND time I've done that. Seriously.

Boy!

Yesterday was the ultrasound. I’m not afraid anymore. I had a bit of a breakdown a couple of nights ago, cried until my head hurt again, and I think I got a good bit of the emotional gunk out. Now I’m ready. When we went to the ultrasound I was ready for the baby to become real to me, ready to accept this into my life.

And it’s a BOY. I sort of can’t believe it. In my world, all little people are the girl variety. I thought from the beginning of this pregnancy that it was a boy, but I am still surprised. I imagined Frances with a sister… What to do with a boy? I have a friend who is pregnant with her fourth (fourth!) boy and she told me recently about taking her kids to storytime at the library. She said there were about twenty little girls there, all sitting quietly with their legs crossed, and only one boy other than her three. The boys spent the whole time running laps around the room and trying to climb the piano.

Boy. It seems so strange. Mitch said he hoped we have a boy for my sake, because girls’ relationships with their mothers are contentious, and boys love their mamas. Yes, that does sound sweet.


I know these last two (the 3D shots) are kind of freaky, but they're also pretty cool. Note the hand in the top black and white pic.

fear

My mailman Bobby, whom I adore, saw me out walking yesterday and waved hi. Then his smile sort of turned quizical and, looking at my belly, he said, “Don’t tell me you’re going there again. You just did that.”

I still feel foolish. I still feel embarrassed. I find myself explaining or apologizing or something, when anyone notices or congratulates me. I don’t feel like congratulations. I don’t know what I feel. I feel panicked. I finally started to cry about it last night, but I think I need about 3 more hours of crying to really get to the heart of it. I already feel trapped, and the baby isn’t even here yet. I feel trapped by the baby and by the move, like I’ll be so stuck taking care of them that I’ll never be able to make friends, never be able to come up for air.

And yet Frances is adorable these days. She’s started making animal noises (what does the sheep say, Frances?) and she’s a little clingy around the house, but that also translates to sweetness when I finally give up trying to get dinner started and just sit on the floor while she pushes the music buttons on her firetruck. She periodically comes and hugs me, then goes back to button pushing.

If only I were a different person, the kind of person who gets excited about the adventure of change rather than afraid. Why can't I be this kind of person?

headaches and a sense of humor

My belly is swelling. Now when I hug M, my belly touches first.

I loved being pregnant before—felt better than I ever had, both physically and emotionally. Maybe that will come still, but right now I’m not enjoying this much at all. Lately I’ve been struggling with my headaches, which let up during my pregnancy with F. Have had no such luck this time. And I’m even on this crazy super restricted diet to keep them down, which makes my life quite complicated and sometimes not much fun. After a certain period of time I’m supposed to be able to add back some of the items, and I recently decided to try to add yogurt back. It was, needless to say, an utter failure, and I’m (today) looking at my 8th day of 12 with a headache.

We have an appointment Friday for an ultrasound and to find out the sex of the baby. But I don’t want to know… not because I want to be surprised or anything like that. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it’s because knowing the sex will make this baby more real to me. I’m scared out of my mind to have another kid, keep wondering what the hell we’re doing, and it’s strange to me that this is what I have to deal with: this is my life, what it will be anyway. I’m an only child and it’s so odd for me to think of myself as mothering two little ones so close together. It’s frankly hard for me to imagine having more than one kid at all. I know I want this—know it in my head—but I still don’t know it in my bones. I’m trying to look at it as an adventure. I try most of the time to look at my life in general this way, but it doesn’t come easily for me.

There’s this goofy country song out right now called “Mr. Mom” about a fella who got laid off from work. He comes home and tells his wife, and she says “That’s okay, babe. I’ll go to work and you can stay home with the kids.” The chorus is: “Pampers melt in a Maytag dryer, crayons go up one drawer higher, rewind Barney for the 15th time, breakfast at 6, naps at 9. There’s bubble gum in the baby’s hair, sweet potatoes in my lazy chair, been crazy all day long and it’s only Monday Mr. Mom.” Something about this song makes me relax about it all… That the hardest thing to deal with is food in the couch, crayon marks on the wall. I mean, it’s irritating, but it’s not complicated. Maybe all I really need is a sense of humor. Anyone know where I can find one of those?

on the uphill

I've been thinking more about this analogy of being on the rollercoaster, climbing climbing the first big hill, locked in by those metal bars which perhaps are supposed to make you feel safe but just end up making you feel trapped. The analogy seems constantly more appropriate, even to the way one gets on the ride. It seems like a good idea at the time, seems like it would be fun. But then you're climbing that damn hill, the car and track clicking underneath you, and you wonder, "Who talked me into this?" One thing that was pointed out to me: after you get off, you think, "Whew, that was fun!" I'm not sure you think this in the middle, however. It's possible in the middle you're getting thrashed around so badly you think nothing at all. Perhaps I can look forward to the end, to getting off the ride, to the fun I believe then it will be.

surfacing

Antibiotics are wonderful things here in the modern world. I’m finally feeling better, finally finally. I was sick so long I started to forget what it felt like to be well. And yesterday when the fever finally lifted like mountain fog, I felt literally like someone different, like a different person. Or I felt like I was returning home after a long time away. I looked at my husband that night and said, “I’ve missed you.” It seemed so long since I’d seen him, looked at him. He laughed at me, of course.

The morning sickness has let up too. This happened sometime during the fever and I didn’t notice because I was too busy being exhausted. It’s funny—I didn’t realize the nausea affected me so much. It took me away from myself. Yesterday, suddenly, I liked sitting on the steps outside while Frances climbed them again and again, and didn’t think of it as tiresome. I liked saying hello to the neighbors as they walked their dogs by the house, and didn’t see them as intrusive. When I put the girl down for her nap, she sat for a long time on my lap and we just rocked, and I wasn’t in a hurry to put her in her crib, to get away. I was present. It almost felt like I was stoned, so lovely was the world.

In Europe, with both her grandmothers with us, I was so relieved not to have to manage her, feed her, change her, put her to sleep, entertain her. My mother or Mitch’s mother would ask, “Do you want me to take her?” and I’d think, “Yes, yes, please take her away, thank goodness.” At some point I actually wondered if maybe I’m just one of those women who doesn’t particularly like mothering young children. This struck me as odd, because I hadn’t thought of myself this way before, but it didn’t worry me much. I just thought, “Well, we’ll have to get a nanny.” But it was the nausea. How funny. And quite suddenly she’s a joy to me again. She had been before, but I’d forgotten.

I can’t imagine how people live their lives with chronic sickness or pain. They must be outside of themselves much of the time. Or maybe it’s that one goes deeply inside the self to try to manage the discomfort, and misses the outside world.

In any case, it’s good to be here. It turns out I like my life quite a bit. I feel warm toward my students this semester and I haven’t even learned their names well yet. Maybe it’s all the crazy estrogen, or maybe I just feel warm toward them. One thing—when I started to feel slightly better I revamped the syllabus and, perhaps in my fevered delirium, I cut several writing assignments and generally made their semester (and therefore mine) much easier. I didn’t see any reason for their workload to be particularly heavy. Why not go gently? I know I’m viewed as a hard, demanding instructor, and I’ve always thought of this approach as necessary for the learning process, but so what if they don’t learn quite as much? It just didn’t seem as important to me. I just want to offer them the things I know, the tools to help them be better writers, and some opportunity to practice, and let them choose how to receive it all. I want to see them more generously as people and not just students. I’m trying to remember they are children. It’s hard, because they don’t look like children. But they’re young, and they’re feeling their way. Why not be gentle?

It’s probably the estrogen.

travels

I know I need to write about the Europe trip… School started for me as soon as we got back, AND we all got sick, so I’m a little behind on several things including mowing the lawn, which is beginning to look jungleish.

Frances is walking. Walking! She started in Paris, which is a nice thing to be able to tell her later. It’s fun to watch, and she hasn’t taken off to such a degree that I’m running after her. She takes a few steps and stops to balance, then continues on. She can go clear across the room now, and is very pleased with herself.

Traveling with a baby. Well, it wasn’t as hard as I’d expected, I suppose. You just entertain her when she’s fussy, and keep bottles constantly on hand. She got many more bottles than she should have—meaning she didn’t eat much solid food, I have to say. We’re back in our food routine now that we’re home. And both my mother and Mitch’s mother were with us, which meant I got to sit the entire first leg of the flight without holding her at all, listening quietly to my shuffle. It was rather heavenly. We rented a car in France for getting around, and the car seat was in the middle back (of course) so Frances had a grandmother on either side of her all the time. She had a hard time being in the back seat by herself when we got home.

The first night we were in Lacoste, in Provence, and we’d not really slept the night before because of the flight, and Frances completely fell to pieces at bedtime. Completely. She sobbed hysterically for 2 hours, would periodically fall asleep in our arms, and when we tried to put her down, would wake up and sob some more. After that first night, though, she was fine. Took most of her naps in the stroller because we were out touring towns and other things, and when she’d get squirrelly we’d just take her out of the stroller and either put her on our backs or walk with her holding onto our hands, which she LOVES to do. Having four adults at meals was good too, because we could take turns walking around with her while other folks ate. They apparently do not believe in highchairs in France. Besides, in Provence, every family in Europe with babies was there on vacation. It was like they were having some sort of population explosion. In Paris I think I saw one baby other than Frances. Not a child in sight there. City folks don’t propagate, apparently. Or they’d all left town for Provence.

So here’s what we saw, in case you’re interested in that—In Provence we stayed in Lacoste and visited Avignon, Arles, Roussillion, Bonnieux, Goult, L’Isle sur la Sorgue, Fontaine de Vaucluse, Cavillion, Gordes, St. Remy, and we also went to the Mediterranean and saw Cassis. Then up to Paris where our friend Tim, who now lives in Denmark, met us with his girlfriend. The two of them stayed with us there, which was great, and then we went up to Holland—Groningen—for 3 days while Mitch presented in a conference there. On the drive back down to Paris we drove by Rotterdam and the surrounding villages because Mitch has an interview with a University there in a couple of weeks. The position would be for next fall… Rotterdam wasn’t so great—just a big city, but the villages around were beautiful.

All of it was great. It was a fantastic trip. I could have felt better during it, but nothing much to be done about that. I’m hoping that when I remember the trip further from now I am able to edit out the nausea. Also, I have to admit here that while I’ve fantasized about having enough money to afford a nanny, even part time, I haven’t ever really gotten how that would work… I mean, do folks with nannies ever spend time w/ their kids? Do they want to? How much hands on stuff do they participate in? But with both grandmas with us on the trip, I get it now. Seriously. Because of the nausea, and because I had two nannies with me, I didn’t change a diaper for over 2 weeks. I know that’s nuts, but it was also really great. (What does this say about me as a parent? Anything?) It was amazing how much more patience I had when I could hand her off as soon as my fuse got low, and my fuse is shorter than usual these days—hormones, tiredness, nausea and all. So I’m fantasizing again… Maybe that’s what will save me from being institutionalized after baby #2 comes.

apartness

Feeling sick all the time is really taking a toll… Mitch and Frances and I went to West Virginia weekend before last for Mitch’s family reunion, and feeling the way I do while traveling, plus taking care of Frances, really started to wear me down. On the way home we stopped at my mom’s in Winston-Salem to get the dog (where we’d left him for the weekend) and while there I asked my mom if she’d be willing to take Frances a night that week. In the end it was decided we should just leave her there. We already had the pack-n-play and her clothes in the car. I ran to the grocery for some food and formula and diapers and then Mitch, the dog, and I got in the car and came home. It was an amazing feeling. We stopped to pick up a pizza and then realized we could EAT IT AT THE RESTAURANT. Wow. I told Mom to call as often as she needed, so we talked on the phone all the time. It turned out that my mom had more fun than she expected (and than I expected) with having Frances there. They took walks. They played in the yard and visited my aunt and my cousin and a friend down the street. They went shopping. In the end, because they were having so much fun, Frances stayed 3 nights. Three whole nights. It was amazing. I'd only been away from her one night before--when she was 5 months old and Mitch's parents kept her overnight. Then I felt an anxious pull to be near her, an oddness in my gut that was the missing of her. This time I didn't feel that. I lay on the sofa and felt sick and watched DVDs. In theory I wanted to do laundry and clean the bathroom, but I felt too horrible for those things. DVDs were much more helpful. And I have to admit, I didn’t miss her. I just felt relief. I don’t know what I would have felt if I weren’t feeling so sick, if I’d have felt more conflicted or longing, but as it was I was only relieved. Though, when I first saw her when she came home, I got choked up. Frances, apparently, had no trouble at all. She never once had a meltdown, never fussed, never cried except when she fell and hit her head in the kitchen. She’s rather comfortable in the world, and for this I feel enormous success.

yellowjacket

First thing: Being constantly sick from pregnancy makes changing a poopy diaper a completely new (and unpleasant) experience. Not much to be done about that.

Second: Frances and I got in last night from 5 days in Seattle. I was scared to death to go… I actually bought earplugs for everyone around me on the airplane because I had no idea how Frances would do. It turns out she’s quite a traveler. It was fully and completely exhausting for me, but she was great.

Third: Frances got stung by a yellowjacket today, right in the middle of her forehead. We had a fella come to cut back a tree that was hanging over our roof and my mom was here. My mom brought Frances out onto the porch to see what was going on while I was talking to the guy about what we wanted done. And there’s a yellowjacket nest somewhere near the porch… maybe under the porch itself; we can’t tell. Suddenly my mom is screaming “They got us! They got us!” and running toward the door, Frances’s face contorted in a huge silent cry, the kind that is followed by en excruciating wail. Turns out my mom was stung on the finger and when I asked where they got Frances she said she didn’t know. It was pretty clear—the big red spot on her forehead was very angry. She cried and cried, this odd shrieking cry I’d never heard before. I’m sure it hurt like mad, and kept on hurting for a good while. Right away I made a baking soda paste with water and put that on it but I don’t know how much it helped. I had to walk with her and hold her hands down to keep her from rubbing it while Mom called the pediatrician, who didn’t really tell us anything except to put soda on it and watch for a reaction. Surprisingly Frances didn’t really react to the sting—by the time she was up from her nap it wasn’t even swollen. She did, however, still have a glop of baking soda paste on her forehead with a spot of blood right in the middle. Mitch asked on the phone if she looked like a Hindu. Now we've got to figure out where the hell the yellowjacket nest is...

embarrassment

A funny thing: I find I’m embarrassed about the pregnancy. We wanted our babies this close, talked about its happening, made an active decision to try again for another. Was not an accident. But then, I find when I have to say it, I feel silly because I have such a young baby. But what is it that I’m embarrassed about? Do I worry that folks will think we are irresponsible and cavalier? Foolish? (It’s quite possible we are indeed foolish.) Yesterday I went to the OB for them to confirm the pregnancy—the girl that waited on me at the front desk is the same girl I saw (very) frequently at the end of my pregnancy with Frances just last September. Since Frances was so late, I was there every couple of days, and the receptionists would see us and say sweetly, “No baby yet?! I don’t want to see you back here again.” Yesterday Frances was in her stroller and the girl recognized me and smiled, said, “Oh, I wanna see the baby!” Then she asked what she could do for me and I said, “I’m here for a pregnancy test.” I could feel myself blush. How funny of me. She said, “You all don’t waste any time, do you?” I suppose that’s not an inappropriate response….

to tell or not to tell

We aren’t telling yet that we’re pregnant. Yet here I am posting for the whole world to see. What to do? I also haven’t announced this blog yet so perhaps I can continue to write away until we’re ready and then send out invitations for the blog. But that could be 6 weeks away! ~ since I don’t know how far along I am…. (I had to send in all sorts of information by email to the nurses at my OB and one of them called later to say, “I’m entering in your info and I just wanted to see if this was an error—It says the date of your last period is 2005.” “No error,” I said. “That’s the right date.” “The computer won’t even let me enter it…” she said. And then, “So you don’t know how far along you are?” “Nope.”) My best guess is that I’m 6 weeks—I’ll find out on Monday. I don’t think I want to write to just strangers until we find out. So this leaves a dilimma.

Nearly 3 years ago we got pregnant for the first time and were so excited. It was only the 2nd month of trying and I could barely contain myself. I knew the common wisdom to wait to tell folks but I didn’t understand it. Why would you wait? Even if you miscarried, wouldn’t you want these same folks to know? (These folks being family, of course, and not the random woman you work with… ) A week later I miscarried and I discovered rather quickly why it is that you’re not supposed to tell. It was awful. I went to a ballet with my mom and kept running into teachers she taught with whom she had told and when they would hug and congratulate me I’d have to say, “well, nothing to congratulate now…” It was bad enough having to talk about it when I felt so blue, but it was horrible having to convince them that I was fine when I absolutely was not. That, and people say the most ridiculous insensitive things. Things like, “That’s the risk you take when you get pregnant,” or “At least you already have a kid,” or “You’re young; it’ll happen,” Well-meaning, I know, but really really stupid. You’d never say anything like this to someone whose spouse had died… “that’s the risk you take when you get married,” “you’re young, you can marry again.” Seriously. Grief is grief and it’s amazing that our society is so ignorant about this particular form of grief. Okay. Done with that rant.

So what does this mean about posting on this blog? Perhaps I’ll delete this post before it ever becomes public. Maybe this is just an exercise for my brain to empty out and see how it feels. Or perhaps I can make it all public and then if anything goes wrong folks can read about it here. I could even give specific instructions as to appropriate responses. Well, for the time I’ll go ahead and put this up. My family won’t yet read it…

Crazy talk

You’ll never believe… So it turns out that it wasn’t the weaning that was making me grouchy and moody…. I'm—get this—pregnant. Pregnant. Omigawd. O. My. I’ve been having this achy sensation in my womb but thought maybe I was getting ready to start my period any minute, and then yesterday I decided to take a pregnancy test on a whim. As I was tearing the wrapper I was thinking, “This is a waste of $5 because it’s going to be negative. Why don’t I just not take it and wait another couple of weeks and save the money?” But, since I often give in to irrational desires, I unwrapped it. I watched the wetness slide across the viewing window on the stick and it immediately showed a + symbol. I thought maybe that was the “test” section and didn’t mean anything at all, so I yanked the box from under the sink to check what the symbols meant, and by golly… Then I yelled for Mitch, who by the tone of my voice thought something was wrong with Frances. He just looked at me when I showed him the stick, sort of a blank look that wasn’t frightened or especially happy, just curious. He says it doesn’t yet seem real to him. We took Frances to the Museum of Life and Science and the whole time I walked around saying to Mitch, “Did you know your wife is pregnant?” or “Hey guess what? Pregnant,” or “Wow, I could really use a nap since I’m pregnant.”

Did I mention that conceiving Frances took two full years and four attempts at intra-uterine insemination fertility treatments? I'd already made an appointment for next week with the fertility doctor, which I now need to call and cancel. Well, it saves us some money and energy!

There was a cute woman in a snappy wrap dress today at the grocery. We were standing at the deli together waiting to be waited on, and she asked how old Frances is. When I told her, she said she had a 3-week old at home. Wow—she looked amazing in her stylish little wrap dress! I was lucky to be standing upright 3 weeks after Frances was born… Had a twinge of something akin to jealousy, or fear about the next one, or something. Yesterday I was all excited thinking there will be another, another little babe to hold, another little person with little person smiles, but today I’m nervous. I drove to Winston this morning to my mother’s house, over an hour away, to have lunch at my mother’s with an old friend of mine and her children. The friend has a 17-year old (this child was born when she was in high school—the scandal of the year!) and now she has an 18 month old and a 3 year old. Note: 18 months apart. Which is about what I’m looking at here. So I asked questions, and she admits that she doesn’t leave the house with them much because it’s so difficult. And my gawd—she even has a teenager/ 2nd mother to help out! What in the hell am I going to do with 2 babies so close together??? My friend Erynn’s younger sister had two pregnancies very close together and the second turned out to be twins. So now she’s got 3 children under two. How how how? How does one not lose one’s mind? Or perhaps I will indeed lose my mind. Perhaps this is just the thing I need… Perhaps then I could let go of attempts to “hold it together” because, really, we all know that’s an illusion anyway. There’s no “together” to hold. We’re all floating in space, completely out of control of nearly anything that happens in our lives. We like to build up these images of ourselves as somehow responsible, but it’s all a farce. Ah, to be able to see that clearly~ It only comes in glimpses for me.