26w3d: lilacs out of the dead land

All month I've had the slightly itchy feeling I'll be glad when April's over.

Today is April 30, the one year anniversary of the end of my first pregnancy. I mean, it probably isn't the anniversary of the end; April 30, 2008 was a Wednesday, and the pregnancy probably ended the Thursday prior, which I guess would be April 24. But it was the end of my thinking I was pregnant, and that's the important part, as anyone with a blighted ovum or headless fetus could tell you. It's not what's there. It's the end of the dream, of what you want to be there.

The Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival is this weekend, again. We were planning on going last year, but by Saturday I was spotting and by Sunday I was bleeding and cramping but good. This year? I don't know. We love the Sheep & Wool Festival, but these days my feet get sore really fast. And we've got stuff to do, lots of stuff, tiny-guy's-room stuff.

I'm... I don't know. Breathing quietly through this day. The little guy has given me several reassuring thumps. If he were born today, he'd have about a 75% chance of survival and a 60% chance of escaping with no or mild neurologic disability.

The time between last April 30 and November 20 was the darkest I've ever had. Is it depression if it's about something real, and it goes away when the real thing goes away? Because since November I've had so many waves of realizing what a weight I was under during those eight months, how heavy and dark the hours were, how good it feels just to feel good, how light it feels not to be afraid of quiet time and my own thoughts. My joy has been so palpable not just because of what I have, my happiness and excitement for our life with this upcoming little boy. It's also about the lifting of pain. It feels so good when it stops.

Can't help but think about what this whole experience has meant to me as a person, as a parent. I am not at all convinced that it has made me a better person, but it has made me a different person.

This baby I am carrying, this tiny guy, my little fellow, our son: he is not better than our little solstice baby, the boy or girl or nothing that I was carrying, due December 23, 2008. But he is different. He is someone else entirely.

And the life that we will have together, kinehorah, is not the life that due-on-December-23-me would have had with Solstice Baby. But this is the reality we have, and I think it is going to be pretty damn wonderful.

I'm sorry that I couldn't be with your four-month-old self, little Solstice Baby. I really, really wanted you. But you couldn't be around, and that reality couldn't be ours. Now I am so very glad to be here with our little guy, our summer baby.

I thought that the solstice due date seemed so right: I was born in November, I love the fall and early winter. It's a time of year when I'm comfortable and happy. Summer makes me fussy and restless, trapped in our few air conditioned rooms, constantly scuttling away from the oppressive heat. But the baby we got is a summer baby. He is his own baby, and this will be his time, whether I like it or not. Maybe he will love the summer. Maybe he will love sports, or bagpipe music, or a thousand different things that I cannot even fathom being attracted to. He came along on his time, not my time, and he will be his own baby, and then, kinehorah (I have said that more often during the past six months..) then he'll be his own child, his own boy, his own man, someone I cannot imagine, someone I could not even make up.

I can't wait to meet him.

24w3d

Hallo, internets!

I suppose it's kind of boring the way I start off all of my posts with "forgive me, internet, for I have sinned. It has been {insert staggering length of time} since my last post."

So I won't do that this time. Except that I kind of just did.

The news in a nutshell:

Things are good. They're really, really good. Can't ask for much more. My blood pressure has been low; a second-trimester dip is normal, and I got it. It will undoubtedly start to creep up again soon, when I enter my third trimester (kinnehorah-knock-wood-god-willin-and-the-crick-don't-rise).

We are having a wee boy. A boy! The 18 week scan was a story unto itself, which I'll type up soon. Suffice it to say that there are indeed minuscule boy parts attached to the minuscule boy. After reeling and having a few minutes of whaaa? what do I know about boys? we have plunged into an enthusiastic study of baby-boy-hood. And I figure anything else we need to learn we can google.

I am continuing to be enormous. We thought that maybe I'd plateau and end up a more normal size. Nope. My combination of wicked shortwaistedness + unimpressive abdominal muscles = spherical me. Of course I'm just as delighted as most people who have spent two years willing themselves into precisely this state would be. I am starting to feel a bit... unwieldy. My darling darted away from me in the supermarket the other day to go and grab the peanut butter (my peanut butter, that I craved). As I saw her slim, graceful frame slipping 'round the corner into the next aisle, I felt an impotent rage. I lumbered, huffing, behind her. "Don't just run off like that," I snapped irritably. With her usual vast good humor, she assessed my rolling, panting figure, petted me and gently said "okay, I won't."

Hey I got a new layout. In case there are any of you who actually aren't reading this through an RSS feed... I dunno, I'm a bit conflicted. I absolutely love the look of it, but is it less readable? Please feel free to weigh in, I won't be offended.

This day in history. One year ago today, I had just gotten the results of my second beta for my first, ill-fated pregnancy. They weren't great but weren't awful; 74 at 14dpo, with a doubling time an unimpressive 67 hours. I was heading into the really painful part of the OHSS.

OHSS symptoms: completely miserable. Can't walk, eat, or breathe properly. My stomach looks like I'm six months pregnant. In fact, when I got my blood drawn today (for the second time today, third time this week) the technician thought I was six months pregnant.

One year later, here I am, actually six months pregnant. The word "grateful" does not suffice. I am not just full of gratitude, I am saturated with gratitude. I have been pregnant for 157 days (okay, technically, for five of those days the lab down the street was pregnant). Every single freaking one of those days I have felt again the pure shock of gratitude at my own outrageous luck. Even more so, now that we're (just) past 24 weeks, and each day that passes represents a tiny incremental increase in our guy's chances of survival.

I would never say that the two years, three IVFs, miscarriage, untold number of dollars (I refuse to calculate it) and loss of so many other things from my life were "worth it". But I do wonder if, had this pregnancy not been prefaced by all of the above, I would feel my gratitude so very keenly and continuously.

I've had some severe mood swings, and when I say "severe" I mean "full on snotty hysterical sobbing." Usually accompanied by my wailing "I don't even know why I'm cryyyyyyinnnnnngggg." But even when I am full of dread and misery I am strangely aware that This is not real. My reality is happy. Soon I will be back to reality. And you know, I always am.