SLEEEEEP

Sleep. It’s all I can think about. It’s all I want to do. The only reason I’m writing this blog now is because I just finished my lunch and I have a meeting in half an hour that I need to stay awake for. In my finer moments I have actually tried to figure out whether I could quit my job now and just sleep for the next 7 months.

It's a...beating heart

This was the big morning that I returned to my doctor’s office to find out for certain what is going on in my insides…and the news is good. I have a 6-week-old fetus complete with beating heart and nice big yolk sac. I feel really good about this, which is a total turnabout from my last pregnancy, when I was in a perpetual state of disbelief. I’m excited about embarking on this big journey on purpose. I’m looking forward to maternity clothes and decorating a nursery and shopping and eating extra food at Thanksgiving. I’m looking forward to time at home with Natalie and her new little sibling, and to teaching them to get along. I’m not quite to the point of thinking about the sleepless nights and how I’m going to get any rest with a toddler around. Sleep when the baby sleeps isn’t going to work this time, but I feel ready for this.

No news sucks, and my news sucks more

After an agonizing day of waiting to hear from the doctor’s office on Monday, they finally called me at 5:30 and went through this little circus with the pharmacy because it was suddenly URGENT that I start taking some hormones. Everything was normal in the blood tests except progesterone, so I have to take supplements to keep my body from deciding that I’m not pregnant anymore. This happened with Natalie, too – same sucky song, second sucky verse. This time, I don’t feel like it is working, though. I feel a little increase in the hormonal side effects, but not much, and there is some cramping. Do we really have to talk about this today? I’d rather talk about something else. If you’ve ever taken progesterone, then you know what I’m saying here. If not, then you can just go enjoy your hormonally balanced life.

I don’t have any music, books, or scriptures today. There is no room in here for that stuff right now. I have been reading this week’s issue of TIME magazine, and I was really taken off guard by an article about women becoming suicide bombers. This is becoming a serious issue, apparently, and I am so thankful to live in a world where my husband isn’t going to shame me into blowing myself up and killing people to save his honor. Seriously. It seems that after going deeper into the demographics, most of the women are wives who have been accused of adultery or another crime or unmarried young women who have been told that they were not good enough to marry. Their husbands or families then “give them the option” of becoming bombers to spare their families shame or to avoid prison or stoning. And the reward? They are told they will be the most beautiful of the 72 virgins that await a male martyr in heaven. Nice. The other disturbing statistic is that on average, the women who take this track are better educated, older, and hold a higher social status than the men. The article included a picture of a mother dressed in her bomb gear kissing her toddler son goodbye- with a smile on her face. It was obviously a posed picture, and the background was some propaganda-style posters. This picture has been haunting me. What could drive a mother to leave her children for this fate? I have to believe that that mother had the same love for her children that I do for mine, and I just can’t imagine the forces working in her life to bring it to that end.

Is anybody in there?

Where is Beetlejuice when you need him? Cause I’ve got myself trapped in the world of the not-quite pregnant but definitely suffering the symptoms, and I need some help getting the heck up outta this joint. Beetlejuice probably just deals with the dead, anyway. Maybe I just need Michael Keaton.

At the doctor’s last week, they took my blood, urine, cervical cells, etc. and then asked me why exactly I thought I was pregnant. This is actually one of my greatest doctor fears lived out. I even saved a home pregnancy test for the day before the appointment just to be sure that I was not dreaming this whole thing up. I seriously spent a significant amount of time before the appointment with visions of the lab tech walking into the exam room holing my pee and a stick and saying something like “Lady, your crazy. There’s nothing in that uterus of yours but your own crazy self.” Apparently Wanda Sykes works at my doctor’s office.

That’s not exactly what went down, but I did have a very long ultrasound in which the tech asked me several times whether I was sure about the first day of my last period and did not find what she was looking for. After some time waiting in the consultation room, my doctor came in and told me that he thinks it is most likely that I ovulated late in my cycle, so things are not as far along as they would have thought. However, there could also be some serious problems – ranging from a simple unviable ovum to early miscarriage on down the list to ectopic pregnancy – that could produce the same symptoms. I had to come back for more blood work on Friday and I still have no idea what is actually going on in there. Why don’t they call me? Does that mean everything is just fine in there, or that they have called the men in white coats to come and get me for imagining up a pregnancy? Surely if it was miscarriage or something, they would have called me…right? Could I have imagined up a pregnancy? The thing is, I’m not sure. I took 4 home pregnancy tests that all came out positive. My boobs are sore, my period is now 2 weeks late, and I can’t keep up the energy to get through a day without a nap. Somehow that is not enough to convince me that this is real.

Waiting for Wednesday

…still anxiously awaiting the OB/GYN appointment on Wednesday. I’m having abdominal pain today that is making me run to the restroom every hour or two to verify that I am not bleeding. Never mind the fact that my bowels have been all messed up all day, or the persistent gas. It’s obvious that the pain is in my uterus, people. I naïvely believed that this pregnancy would be less angst-ridden since I did not indulge in bottle after bottle of wine at my childhood-best-friend’s wedding during week 7. (No, I did not know I was pregnant. Non-pregnant people who are not actively trying get pregnant do not know what “implantation bleeding” means. If you ask me, March of Dimes could do some good by educating us folk on that little piece of trivia.) Instead of my own ignorance, the wrath of nature has gotten me this time. I spent the weekend rolled up in bed with a fever from who-knows-what infection that of course stuck me outside business hours and before my first prenatal appointment. I’m sorry, but my neurosis that week 4 seems too early to call the OB/GYN on the on-call line at 3 a.m. on Sunday and be all “You haven’t actually confirmed my pregnancy yet, but my head is on fire!” won that argument. Somehow, I’d rather tough it out than take any chance at hearing, “That’s what the 24-hour urgent care center is for, honey.” In reality, my OB would never say that to me, but I live in fear of being a burdensome patient and I always believe that my next call will be the one where they decide I am too much trouble. Yeah, yeah, I know, I pay them to take care of me - add it to the list. Whatever.

My prayer life has deteriorated to the point of futility. One minute, I am convinced that God is telling me that I am having twins (seriously.) The next, I’m sure it’s a miscarriage. The whole “be still” thing is not happening. God – you know what’s going on in there, and I know you will take care of me and the baby, whether she (or they or he) is ever born or not. Please take this worrisome spirit away from me!

Here’s a burning question: Why don’t I want to tell my mother about this? We talk on a daily basis, and life would surely be much easier if I could just tell her what is going on with me. Still, I am convinced that she is not going to be happy. That is something I’m not prepared to take. She only had one child – me – and that was enough for her. Whenever Bernie and I would talk about having another, she would always pull the conversation to how perfect and complete Natalie is. There is something in there related to the unspoken idea that baby number 2 = mommy retirement (albeit temporary) that I know stands in opposition to all mother dearest holds dear. Maybe it’s the fear that she won’t be able to keep up with them? I don’t know. If I knew the answer, I might be able to sleep a few more hours at night. There’s also this nagging suspicion that if I don’t say anything, she won’t either. I half believe that I could show up with a baby one day and she still wouldn’t ask me if I had been pregnant. It’s not that she wouldn’t care or wouldn’t notice, it’s that she might actually be that non-confrontational.

Bleeding for Two

So – you know how sometimes you are pretty sure you know how things are going? This week was one of those times. I thought the biggest part of this week would be Natalie’s transition to a new class a daycare and the potty training. Right? Those are big things. My boss is out of town at work, so the week was all planned out there – no surprises. Wednesday was a blood drive at the office. I woke up Tuesday feeling dizzy – not nauseous, mind you – so I told the blood drive folks that I was tentative on the whole thing. Mid-day, I started my period and began to feel better. I almost always have a migrane or dizzy spell at the appointed time of the month, so I wrote it off. Wednesday, I had a very nice experience with the blood center and gave my pint. I was thinking it would be nice to go home and have a glass of wine in my reduced-tolerance state, since my dieting has limited my intake to non-buzz-inducing quantities. Then it hit me – I was standing at the elevator to go up to my office and I thought the floor was going to meet my chin. I sat myself down in the lobby and my nice co-worker Martha bought me a juice and pretzels. I felt so bad that I went home at 3:00 and crashed. The next time I went to the restroom, I noticed that my period had completely vanished. About an hour later, I thought I might have figured this one out (I’m slow, y’all) and I peed on a stick – a stick that, 3 minutes later, had the faintest hint of a pink plus sign. And now I know that, despite no medical research to prove it, it really is a bad idea to give blood when you’re pregnant.

Today’s book: What to Expect when You’re Expecting (some sadistic mutha), which surprisingly does not have any dire warnings about what can happen if you donate blood during pregnancy. There are warnings against everything from touching cat poop to skydiving, but they seem to think that no one would be stupid enough to save a life while “in a delicate state.”

Today’s music: “Say Won’t You Say” (Jennifer Knapp) Isn’t love amazing? I forgot how to speak – knowing you are near and I am finally free…All my devotion, put into motion by you

Today’s scripture: Then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must die…” (Numbers 15:35a.)
I would love to discuss this verse with people who want to ban certain other people from their churches. I’m sure they have heard the “plank in your own eye” plenty of times. I think this one is more convincing. The significance here is that the man God was talking about was guilty only of collecting wood on the Sabbath – the sin of disobedience. Yet I don’t expect to see any picketers at the local high school waiting to shout hateful things at the teenagers coming out of detention. (AND – I don’t expect anyone who claims to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God to claim that the kid who cheated on his algebra test has not committed a sin.) Guess what people? In God’s eyes, sin is sin. The good news is that God has already paid the price for all of it - yours, mine, and everyone else’s.

Two steps back?

This week has been slow at work, which means that my brain needs some action. The only notable event of my weekend was being pooped on by poor Natalie. It was worse for her than me. We were reading a musical nursery rhyme book when I smelled a suspicious odor. Assuming that her panties were in control of the situation, I jokingly asked “Natalie, are you pooping on mama?” Then I lifted her off my lap to see an exceptionally large glob of poop had escaped her pants and was now sitting in my lap. Natalie was speechless – which is rare for Natalie. As my husband was carrying her off to the bathroom while I tried to stand up without transferring the glob of stink from my jeans to the carpet, she grabbed onto both his ears and looked him directly in the face. With a worried look in her eyes, she asked him “Daddy, did I poopie on mama?” A tear rolled off her nose before Bernie, desperately trying to stifle hysterics, told her in all seriousness “Yes, but mama will be OK.” If some kind of emotional trauma was the problem with our potty training, this weekend was definitely two steps back.