Holy digital imaging, Batman!

 

So, some combination of my weird internal clock (which seems to operate referencing a time system entirely of its own creation) and some erroneous schedule precipitated by said weird internal clock misinforming our midwives of your actual arrival date led to my getting an ultrasound today...at which point you were exactly one millimeter shorter than you needed to be in order to get the screening we had gone in to get. Yeah, that's complicated, but apparently my having a kind of unpredictable internal cycle means that your due date could literally only have been determined by size, which could only be determined by ultrasound, which had to be scheduled before we had a completely accurate due date, although we'd already had an ultrasound to determine a more accurate due date, but that ultrasound happened half an hour AFTER scheduling the second ultrasound, so the original/inaccurate due date was used to schedule, so when we went in today, we basically just watched you wiggle around for ten minutes then rescheduled a third ultrasound for next week, when you will be the one millimeter longer that they need to do the screening we'd gone in for in the first place.

*pant*pant*pant*

Confused yet, Batman? Me too. That's why we went out for fancy breakfast afterward. Mmm...eggs with feta, sundried tomatoes, kalamata olives, and scallions: four things I've been craving like crazy, and I even got to steal some of your father's corned beef hash.

***Oh, hey, new readers: should you be joining us for the first time, I am not just speaking abstractly to a superhero out of hormone-induced madness. Batman is the nickname for the above pictured fetus, and you should totally go back and read more entries. It'll be fun, I promise.

The excuses continue, with a bullet.

I bring you Excuse #2: Violent, ongoing, and (without medication) incapacitating morning sicknesss. There is this fascinating little thing about morning sickness that seemingly everyone knows, but no one really talks about. See, it doesn't just happen in the morning. It happens all the time. Twenty-four hours a day. Non-stop. It has been an unstoppable onslaught of unrelenting horror abated only by excruciatingly careful eating habits, anal-retentive food selection, seemingly a fair amount of chance, and ultimately (to my disappointment) prescription drugs. 

Disclaimer: This is not going to be a link-heavy post because nothing but facts about vomiting, images of hurling, references to puking, discussion boards about upchucking, or blogs exploring booting just made me nauseous. Yay! Everybody wins!


In the beginning, I was basically fine on some days: I would wake up, feel a little nauseous, eat something, then snack regularly throughout the day, only occasionally noticing that I'm not quite comfortable. Other days, I basically wanted to curl up in a corner and die from the minute I woke up (at some point usually close to two A.M., my stomach doing such angry backflips that falling back asleep is a nearly impossible challenge) to the minute I managed to doze off, usually having kept down as little as one small meal's worth of food over the course of my waking hours.

It went downhill from there. The last two weeks of the school year trudged by in a haze of semi-conscious attempts to meaningfully teach and frantic scrambles to the bathroom. The week after school ended was...well, I probably should have gone to the hospital for IV fluids at some point, but I honestly felt so crappy that I didn't even consider that as a possibility. All I could think about was getting down some saltines or Cream of Wheat and praying that they stayed put. I started watching copious amounts of Anthony Bourdain in hopes that his pornographically beautiful culinary explorations would stimulate my appetite, a tactic that actually kind of worked...sort of...

Midway through that week, I figured that what with getting married the next weekend, constant vomiting was not really practical anymore. It was going to be pretty tricky to, oh, say, go through with a wedding ceremony when all I could really do was lie on my left side and occasionally dry-heave. I called my midwives, and after trying a few home remedies (ginger in many forms, lemon in many forms, small snacks, B vitamins, sleep medications, attempted bargains with demons and angels alike, small sips of caffeinated beverages, anti-seasickness wristbands, ritual sacrifice, anti-nausea hard candies, salt and vinegar potato chips, etc...), they decided that I needed to be on prescription drugs so that I (and consequently you, Batman) didn't get dehydrated. I guess they also didn't want us to be hideously malnourished, so aces to that, even though I feel like my body is thumbing its nose (my nose? our nose?) at my desire to make it through this process with as little medical intervention as possible.

Other than a few blips where I either forgot my pills at home (which ended in tragedy) or when our insurance decided not to refill my prescription because they are buttholes (which almost ended in tragedy, but then got fixed because my midwives are apparently paperwork ninjas), I've been more or less okay for a few weeks. Things are still iffy, and certain foods and food groups have been basically off-limits to me, per my stomach's directives. Suffice to say, my energy level has been a bit off. Some days are okay, but other days I find myself struggling to make it through more than a few hours of activity, even when that activity is pretty low-key.

This is, I know, kind of the same old story told by uncountable other women the world over. I'm not a beautiful and unique snowflake this time, and that's cool, but like so many others, I kind of have to wallow in my suffering as a way of getting through it. This whole retelling looks so hyperbolic when I re-read it, but it's 100% accurate. I'm mostly ranting now because it's more or less under control, and I can at least try to be kind of funny about it. Batman, don't let this be a guilt trip. I'm so happy that you're there to cause me to potentially ralph up everything I eat, and I couldn't be more grateful for the fact that dairy products are nothing but a menacing memory (don't worry, I'm still getting plenty of calcium). It means that you're growing, and while only a sadist would pitch this as a truly good thing, that possibility really does give me comfort.

Coming soon to a browser window near you is excuse number three, which I promise to be both the best and most enjoyable excuse of all.

Reality bites, but so do social mores!

Sorry, Batman. I've been crappy about keeping up with this for the last few weeks. I have excuses! Here they are! (I'm even going to make each one a separate post for the sake of bucking brevity and making myself feel like I'm a more dedicated documentary blogger.)

Excuse #1: Secrecy. Only a handful of people are aware of the fact that you currently exist (a point that will be moot by the time anyone is reading this, since I'll be retroactively posting a handful of posts, most notably including the one where I talk about you, y'know, existing), and we're being hellafied secretive. Why? Well, here's something terrifying that I didn't know. Apparently everyone has known since 1988 that nearly one third of pregnancies end in miscarriage. No one told me that! All the pregnancy books with pastel pink and blue baby junk on them say NOTHING about the fact that - even up to today - about one out of four women has a miscarriage, and about one out of three conceptions do not end with a baby. Doesn't that seem like something everyone should know? Am I the only one who didn't? SHOULD I REALLY BE THIS SHOCKED AND IRATE, OR AM I JUST OVERUSING UPPERCASE LETTERS NOW?!?!

Your very wise Aunt Anna initially informed me of this statistic, and my extensive (*cough*cough*Google*cough*) research verifies the fact that for some reason no one talks about an extremely common, natural occurrence. Is it shame? A fear of being judged for somehow failing reproductively? A need to grieve privately? I appreciate that these and doubtlessly others that I haven't even thought of are entirely valid personal reasons, but personally, I don't really get it. Most miscarriages happen because the zygote or fetus is in some way flawed (genetically or otherwise), so the child wouldn't likely survive anyhow. Doesn't that make a miscarriage a good thing in that case? I'm sure that comment has just earned me a pile of irate enemies, but I believe strongly in nature, and if nature wants something to happen, you just try to stop it. Better to let nature make us her bitches...again.

SO...we've not been widely circulating the fact that you are more than a hypothetical specifically because society seems incapable of dealing with it if a pregnancy goes wrong. That's sad, but I do appreciate how horrific it would be to need to tell, oh, say, my Bubbe that her first great-grandchild was actually just a benign cluster of cells and not the beginnings of a human being she would love. It would also definitely suck to need to explain to all my students and coworkers in September that my baby bump isn't showing because...er...um...false alarm? Just kidding?

Now we get to some of the potential penalties of sharing pregnancies early on. (Things get nasty from here on in, so here's hoping, Batman, that things turn around a bit before any of this becomes relevant to you.) I'm truly lucky to work in a career field that is pretty well protected by unions and all sorts of other fancy rigamarole, and in a place where that rigamarole holds water, but boy howdy, do pregnant women get a raw deal most of the time. (Pregnant teachers get a whole other bum rap from students that I'm sure I'll have a blast dealing with in the Fall, but we're not thinking about that yet.) There is a scary amount of discrimination against pregnant women in many workplaces, and even in a non-work setting, there are stigma galore.

The stereotyping is, frankly, hysterical. I'm almost edgy to start looking noticeably pregnant because people might worry that I'll fly off the handle sobbing if I see a picture of a sad baby tiger, or start raging wildly if someone takes the last loaf of bread before I get to it. Or that I'll attempt to eat everything in sight, especially if it's pickles (which yes, living the stereotype, I have been all about, but I think that's a hydration issue). Or that I'll space out while driving because of my "baby brain" and cause a fifteen car pile up. Or that I will become massively unproductive because I'll need to run off and pee all the time. Or that all I'll ever, EVER talk or think about will be babies babies babies. Yeah. Okay. Let's think about how many people do all those things - all the time - with no excuse, then consider how fair it is to impose those expectations on all pregnant women.

So...that's one hefty, overloaded reason not to have shouted your growth from random cells to a vaguely baby-shaped assemblage from the mountaintops. Also, yelling "this random group of cells has combined to create a vaguely baby-shaped assemblage!" would have been really unwieldy. Coming up next, excuse number two, which I lovingly call, "The Suck."

LIES! ALL LIES!!!

In this magical age of technologically-enhanced knowledge saturation, it's rare for me to ever feel like I don't - or can't - know something. If I forget the name of that guy playing the diner owner on "Bones" who just, maybe, possibly, might have been a beloved side character on "The X-Files" that one time back in 1998, I can easily look him up and smugly reassure myself of my television knowledge. "My" knowledge, really, is whatever I feel I can access in some way. Sure, there are times when I'm not anywhere near a computer, or my phone has no reception, so I do often need to rely on my brainmeats to get me through, but thankfully they too have been powerfully enriched by the crazy access to information we all have available.

Anyone who has ever mentioned the word "baby" (as in "love you too, baby!") or "pregnant" (as in "I was pregnant with remorse") in an email, on Facebook, on a blog comment, or basically anywhere else on the internet has very likely been accosted by ads for sites relating to babies and pregnancy. No joke: try sending an email to someone - anyone, really - in which you mention anything even tangentially related to the birth process and its results. Perhaps you might write the following:

Dear Mama,
I am thrilled that you labored for so long to make me the delightful cookies. It's like you birth these amazing little gifts from god out of nothing but flour and butter! I hope to see you on my birthday, when all our family can experience the miracle of your baking. Don't forget to bring Auntie Pitocin's pain relief pills!
Love,
Your baby


Try it. I dare you. Even if you don't, the internet will still do everything in its power to fill your brain with baby information both accurate and nonsensical. Anyone with a predilection for information-gathering is likely to encounter this type of material pretty much regardless of whether you are seeking it, so someone actually trying to use the internet to learn real information about pregnancy has few to no challenges ahead.

The stumbling block comes when you have a specific question and need a specific, accurate answer. It seems like virtually everyone who writes anything about pregnancy in particular, and babies in general, is convinced that the answer to every question one could possibly ask is "that is going to kill your baby." Nail polish? Totally going to kill your baby. Fish? Birth defects ahoy! Staring too long at a lamp? Probably one of the leading causes of birth defects. Alcohol in ANY quantity? That's going to kill your baby, you, and probably your entire extended family. Some things, like doing lines of coke or trying to teach yourself tattooing on your pregnant belly, are worth avoiding, but most things actually won't cause real damage. I'm surely not making friends by taking this position, but oh, internet...why do you be so paranoid?

I only really learned to appreciate the glory and wonder of instant knowledge gratification while in college. Part of this (and here I date myself a little) is due to the fact that the internet was not a fully-utilized or understood academic resource while I was in high school; as soon as I arrived at college, everyone else seemed suddenly aware of, well, everything. I quickly dove onto the world wide web and began to explore. The first time I noticed that some of the information housed therein was a little sketchy was when I tried to research the icky side effects I was having due to a new prescription. According to the internet, I probably had a fatal infection. I was advised to seek immediate medical assistance, set my affairs in order, and calmly await my maker. Obviously, I survived, and just changed my medication to alleviate the seemingly incapacitating symptoms.

This experience, which somewhat soured my first semester of college, gave me a very cautious sensibility for internet-sourced information. I've been doing my homework on babies, pregnancy, etc... and you know what? For information about anything even tangentially medical, the internet sucks. I'm keeping an eye on mega-sites like The Bump for such humorous thread as "When do I tell people I'm pregnant?" (er...maybe you should save a decision like that for NOT a massive public forum partially populated with people who worry about getting pregnant from having sex - while pregnant - and instead consult your partner and brain). I'm taking it back into the world of books: at least I can know, for sure, before I even open the cover, that an author is either aligned with my philosophy of non-terror, or alternately trying to convince me to give my child a fear of needles before they even finish growing toes. Batman, check your sources, know your authors, and don't trust anything that even vaguely resembles a message board.

It's not a hiatus, it's just the end of the school year.

Good lord. Is there any way to make the last month of a middle school year any easier? I have a few ideas, but most of them would get me fired...or kicked out of my apartment...or possibly arrested...in any case, the last month of school for seventh graders and their teachers goes a little something like this:

Teacher: "Good morning, guys! Let's do something ridiculously fun and easy, okay?"
Student #1: "-grunts-"
Student #2: "Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy? It's almost suuuuumerrrrrrr."
Student #3: "DidyouseewhatIjustdidinthehallwayitwasSOOOOOfunnyOMGIamlikesohypertoday!"
Teacher: "Uhm, like I said, this is going to be ridiculously fun and easy. I know it's all we can handle, and it's nothing crazy, so just bear with me, okay?"
Student #4: "Can I tell you about what my cat did last night?"
Teacher: "Maybe after class, but for now..."
Student #4: "My cat is SO FUNNY..."
Student #1: "-grunts- Can I go to the bathroom?"
Teacher: "Uhm, sure, just..."
Student #2: "Awwwwwwww! Why does HE get to go to the bathrooooom? I wanted to goooooo."
Teacher: "You CAN go, just sign out and..."
Student #3: "Isawthisguyinthehallandhewasgoingtothebathroombuthedidn'thaveapassandyoushouldcalltheoffice!"
Student #4: "When my cat goes to the bathroom, it's SO FUNNY!"
Teacher: *collapses in a pile of disappointment, overwhelm, and resignation*

This is how I spend six hours of my days right now. It's like the third week of May magically released some catalytic gas that just shorted out the fuses in every kid's brain, and they are just-barely-working machines whose only functions are to whine, ramble, consume sugar, share irrelevant personal stories, and glare judgmentally when asked to do anything else.

Suffice to say, I've needed to take a break from blogging. I'll start to be back as soon as the madness starts to slow down, although the week after school ends is our wedding (holy crap), so it might be a weensy bit longer than that. I'll be back ASAP, I promise!

Om nom nom....oh no.

In the last two weeks, I've developed a whole new relationship with food. I don't seem to be having the typical morning sickness that tortures so many women: I'm not so crippled with nausea that being near food is a disaster, I'm not vomiting uncontrollably if I happen to catch a whiff of...er...anything, and I can comfortably put and keep food down. I am, however, really iffy on the idea of eating. In the mornings, eating settles my stomach, but it feels like I'm prolonging the inevitable. In the evenings, however, pretty much everything unsettles my stomach just enough to make me kind of dubious before I eat. I imagine it's how professional skiers feel before attempting a tricky jump: "This could be awesome, or I could end in a bloody, crumpled pile, but in any case, it's going to be amazing for at least few seconds and there will absolutely be pain."

So far, any other unpleasant symptoms (which have thankfully been few) pale in comparison to the psychological side of things. I'm growing paranoid about eating the right food and avoiding scary stuff so that you can grow healthy and strong (and without flippers), but I'm in this really weird position of wanting to avoid putting on weight yet because - oh, right - we're getting married in three weeks. Yes. This is shallow. It's not quite "give me a tummy tuck so I don't need to put effort into losing weight naturally after birth" shallow, but on my personal spectrum, it feels nearly as bad. I feel like a total douchebag for not wanting to eat those required many cups of whole grains every day because they go straight to my ass, and I don't mean in the healthy digestive way, I mean in the "why don't my underwear fit anymore? I thought these bastards were elastic!" way.

As one may recall from my earlier post on the glories and joys of bacon, food is pretty important to me. After a rough day of work, basically nothing helps me decompress like cooking something complicated. Even a not-so-rough day seems to end better when I've spent upwards of an hour concocting something schmanzy. I know a lot of this is because cooking with my dad was such a treat for me growing up. It wasn't even a rare occurrence; we cooked together most nights of the week, and for literally every special occasion we hosted at home. Still, that quality time with my father made food - and eating it - a truly powerful and beautiful element of life.

I've spent the last few years working out an eating plan healthier than my college habits, which admittedly were not nearly as awful as most undergrads'. Now, instead of eating a paper cup filled with sausage links for breakfast (not proud of that) and four or five cups of coffee, I do a granola bar and single cup of coffee. Midmorning, instead of cheese fries or a bag of something (anything), a cup of plain yogurt with fruit. Instead of lunch being a monstrosity of a sandwich with two meats and basically every spread or garnish the on-campus cafe had to offer, I eat a big salad with grilled chicken, crumbled cheese, and homemade dressing. Dinner was always one of the better meals of the day, usually consisting of whatever meat looked least dubious in the dining hall and a pile of veggies (which is actually pretty close to what I do now, except that our meat options are basically never dubious), but now I forgo the meal that I lovingly titled "inevitability." Inevitability was the extra meal that inevitably took place some time after 8:00PM and before sleep, whenever that was. Now, I basically don't eat after 8:00PM at all, rather than hopping out the door just before midnight to grab something crazy unhealthy at the 24-hour diner. All of the "now"s in this paragraph, however, referred to two weeks prior to the "now" that is right this second. I've learned to love quality food, not just food that is delicious because it's deep fried and often covered in bacon and cheese..then served with an adult beverage.

NOW, as in "while I sit here writing this," things are a bit different. Food - whether eating it, preparing it, shopping for it, or basically anything that involves me and edible substances - has become an unpleasant chore akin to scrubbing the dusty grime that somehow accumulates behind the toilet. Someone has to do it, because not doing it is completely unacceptable for health, social, and ethical reasons, but I sure as hell don't want to.

Batman, this sucks! I totally don't blame you, but geez, I will be so excited to move past the "nothing appeals to me, even in the least" stage of things to some kind of unrestrained cravings. I'm actually pretty excited to discover what I end up wanting: some people stay pretty simple in their desires, like a friend who could only stomach peaches for months, but I'm kind of hoping I want something bizarre, like bagel chips and tikka masala sauce...or pickled okra dipped in salsa...or peanut butter on a spoon dipped in bacon bits...but for now, I'm choking down whatever gets plopped in front of me. Ryan is being amazing about doing a lot of the prep work and trying to only cook things that actually appeal to me, thankfully, so I know I'm not even close to not eating enough. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've put on a a few pounds since you showed up, which is giving me Pregnant In Heels-style anxiety about fitting into my unalterable wedding dress. I feel like a jerk. A pudgy, cranky, vaguely nauseous jerk.

On the other hand, I had a pretty cool moment in the car the other day. I was driving by a restaurant out near the mall, and - for the first time - I said something out loud to you. Even though I'm being a crappy role model for reveling in the glory of beloved foods right now, this is something I truly hope you inherit from me. I told you "I really hope you like Indian food," and boy, did I mean it.

Holy shitsnacks, Batman!

Last weekend I went to my college five year reunion. I have a ridiculously strong attachment to my college, and not even the "community" per se (since I have basically kept all my closest college friends close), but the place itself. The campus is gorgeous, for one, but it just has this magnetic, almost magical property that makes every inch feel powerfully vital. I was overwhelmed with love for the place the entire time I was there; two of my best college friends and I walked in circles for a whole day, nostalgically soaking up every tidbit of memory we could find. My feet were practically raw by the end because my shoes got so covered in mud during a perambulation through the riverside woods that I had to take them off and walk halfway across the gravel- and Olde English bottle-strewn campus barefoot. Totally worth it.

For this glorious weekend, my dear friend Anna and I stayed in a Bard dorm. Our plan was to recreate the most nostalgia-filled and historically accurate weekend night possible, complete with only making a brief appearance at a campus event, then holing up in someone's dorm room (in this case, our "rented" triple in the dorm Anna had lived in for two years) to play video games, eat fancy snacks, and drink half-decent booze. In hindsight, that last bit might have been ill-advised, but I couldn't have known at the time. Put simply, it was one of the best weekends I've had in ages. I felt reconnected to a place I truly love, absorbed in a powerful friendship, and thoroughly empowered to move forward knowing that so many others from my college had gone on to become real, functioning grown-ups...and parents.

I was kind of caught off-guard by how many of my former classmates and other earlier alumni/ae brought their children to this reunion. Seriously: there were entire acres of campus that had seemingly been taken over by happy family units frolicking, college-student-style, in the lush, probably tick-infested grass. At the fireworks celebrating the class of 2011's commencement, and a whole slew of class reunions (which they always do on the same day, which just sounds logistically hellish, but that's Bard for ya), there were probably hundreds of children running around in the fields, playing in the garden, and generally loving the fact that they were free to roam more or less unbridled through massive crowds of friendly, safe grown-ups. While basking in this familial happiness, I was also feeling a little down about it, but then also feeling kind of silly for feeling a little down.

Why? Well, Ryan and I decided that it was time to give Batman-making a shot last month. This was a pretty surreal process, partly because we were thinking "WTF is up? Are we really doing this?" and partly because every time we *ahem* made an effort, I started quoting Julianne Moore from "The Big Lebowski" while rolling around on my back and laughing like an idiot. It's not that we weren't taking it seriously - I promise, we really did have genuine intentions - but given that it was still two months before our wedding, and statistics say that first tries don't yield babies, we sort of assumed we were just having some carefully timed rolls in the hay, and that was that. Before going to Bard, I had not gotten my period in almost a month, so I figured it was time to responsibly pee on a stick before allowing myself the late-night private boozing my nostalgic side so craved. Negative. I tried again later just to be safe, and negative again.

So...I stopped at the big red barn on my drive down to Bard, and we ended up doing tequila shots on Saturday night while playing Minecraft. It was awesome. I got exhausted quickly that weekend, finding myself practically dozing mid-afternoon on Saturday and begging for sleep by the end of the evening on Sunday. Waking up for school the next day...and the next...was agony. I was so tired driving home both days, in fact, that I seriously considered pulling over to either get a coffee or nap in my backseat. I marked it up to a long recovery time from a long weekend, and the fact that since we're only weeks from the end of the school year, teaching has gotten sort of rough.

On Tuesday night, I was so wiped out that I more or less just blobbed on the couch all night. I was also getting these kind-of, sort-of cramps that made me assume a very late period was on its way. Ryan ran out to the drug store to get me, and I quote "Vitamin D because the weather's been so crappy, and the cheapest two-pack of pee sticks they have." I realized that reading the directions for a home pregnancy test was a task I had actually not done very thoroughly before, given that...uhm...it's just peeing, right?

Pop culture tells women that a home pregnancy test is stupidly easy: any time you think you might be pregnant, you pee on this little plastic thing, then stare at it intently until some configuration of lines, dots, words, or whatever appear to give you your answer. In classic television form, this is best done with at least one girlfriend nearby waiting to scream either in joy or horror, since your impregnator will be too grossed out by something you peed on to respond immediately.

Turns out, there is some nuance to this business. Even the "test before your missed period" tests apparently don't really catch the pregnancy hormone in a urine sample unless you either test first thing in the morning (with very undiluted bodily fluids, and presumably while so sleepy that shock one way or another doesn't really hit you), or unless you are somehow so dehydrated that the hormone jumps right out (and your weakened body and brain, deprived of water, allow you to process the news calmly and sedately). I guess I'd been doing it wrong. Wednesday morning, I woke up, peed on the stick (correctly!), and then spent the next five minutes sitting there wondering if I should wake Ryan up to tell him that it was positive, or go through with my original plan to share the good news.

I decided to wait, and got him this on the way home:

The nice people in the bakery department at Whole Foods thought it was awesome, though of course I added the pregnancy test (washed!) when I got home, not in the grocery store. His reaction? After opening the fridge, finding the cake, and asking about half a dozen times if I was really, in fact, pregnant, he said "I'm terrified. I'm excited, but I'm terrified." Honestly, that's kind of where I'm at, too. The reality has still not set in, but the vague cramps and gradually increasing hypersensitivity to smells are helping to convince me.

Holy shitsnacks, Batman.