Uppercase Woman

Humorless

Do you know what I miss?

I miss having a fucking sense of humor.

I know I used to have one. You’ve all told me that I’ve made you laugh here in this blog. But since I got pregnant, my sense of humor has vanished behind a black and ugly cloud of fear. It’s not that I never laugh now; I do. I thought Theresa Heinz-Kerry telling that reporter to shove it was hilarious. But while I was able to use the humor to defray the pain of infertility, there is so much terror around this pregnancy; I cannot find anything to laugh at.

OK, maybe we could laugh a bit at me. I have felt much better since I confessed my fears to you all. I was afraid that everyone would want to climb into the computer and slap me silly (and some of you may have, but were kind enough to refrain from doing so) for wanting to change my mind at this point.

I know I’m not going to facing raising twins alone, of course. I’ll have my husband to help. We don’t have much family, though; my mother-in-law has Alzheimer’s; my husband and I are both only children (although I have three half-siblings, but they live on the other side of the country). My mother and I have struggled with our relationship these last years, and while I’m hoping she’ll want to be part of the kid’s lives (especially on Tuesday nights, so I can make a meeting!) I’m not counting on it. We have a great family of friends, and I know my girlfriends are all planning to take time off work right after their born to give us a hand (which is so awesome I can’t even believe it).

So I know we’re going to be fine. But it felt good to let it all go for moment there.

..............................................................

We saw the midwife yesterday. She’s excited about doing twins, although the practice she works out of hasn’t yet done any twin deliveries. She has to check with the back-up obstetricians at the hospital, to see if they are willing to support a twin delivery. They might well say no.

I liked her, but I didn’t love her. She was sweet, and very earthy/crunchy, but I bristled a bit when she said that breast-feeding wasn’t an option in their practice.

I was in the delivery room with a friend when she had her son, and if there is one thing I learned from that experience, it was to not get too invested in a birth plan and too attached to the idea of breastfeeding. My friend had a sudden drop in amniotic fluid at the end of her pregnancy, and they had to induce, and she spent four hours on pitocin without an epidural. She wouldn’t dilate (apparently common when pitocin is used w/o an epidural), and the midwife finally told her she had to have the epidural, and my friend just wept the whole time. After she left the hospital, breastfeeding turned out to be impossible, and she was devastated.

So instead of enjoying her birth experience, and enjoying being with her son, she spent most of her post-partum time grieving her plan.

I refuse to get that attached. If they tell me I need pitocin, I’m getting a fucking epidural. If they tell me a c-section is the only option, I’ll question it, but I won't fight tooth and nail. If breastfeeding two babies doesn’t work out well for me, then I’ll supplement with formula.

I am NOT willing to make myself crazy trying to live up to some ideal of a birth. There are too many variables. I have spent all my time in recovery letting go of control and learning to be flexible, and I hope to carry that through my pregnancy and delivery.

So while I liked the midwife ok, and the practice seemed very warm and supportive, I think that my husband and I are going to investigate a local hospital’s midwife program. Apparently, they do accept twins, and the hospital is about 45 minutes closer to my home and work than the other practice (although the hospital they use is close). We’ll be less likely to be turned down due to our risk factors (my high BMI and the twins issue), and insurance will probably be easier. We know we have to be in a hospital no matter what; might as well get our prenatal care close to home.

In the meantime, if anyone sees my sense of humor, please send it home.

I’ll end with a fabulous haiku written by my darling husband:

I’ve lost my sense of
humor it’s gone for good
please feed the goldfish

Oops

I have a confession to make.

I think I may have made a horrible mistake.

What was I thinking? I’m not ready to be a mother. To TWINS. Holy shit. I’m way too selfish. I have a good life. Why did I think I needed to change it with kids? Am I crazy?

Friday night I was so joyful and excited, after seeing both twins doing well on the ultrasound. By mid-day on Saturday, I was sitting there thinking, oh. My. GOD. I’m having twins. Then I saw a birth story where a woman was tandem-nursing twins, and I was like, holy shit, I cannot live with being that needed. Then I went to my women’s dinner, and listened to two mothers of infants/toddlers talk about things like where to get cheap diapers, and my best friend who sighed with relief and said, “I’m so glad I’m past that stage.” I thought—fucking diapers! I don’t want to deal with diapers on two babies! For, like, years!

I tried to comfort myself. I thought, hey you don’t have to just breastfeed. You can do a mix of formula/breast milk, so you get more sleep and they aren’t so dependent on you (DO NOT post comments about how evil I am to even consider not nursing full time, or I will track you down in blogland and kick your ass). You can choose to be a mother that doesn’t spend all her time at home, one that gets out into the world (although my brain is thinking, yeah right, with TWINS????).

I ran into a woman at the grocery store who said, “Oh twins are great, the first year is hell, but after that they entertain each other, you don’t have to worry!” Great. Another year of hell? After two years of infertility, and then ten months of hormone hell, I get to have another seven months of pregnancy hell to then have the year of twin hell?

When will my life not be hell? Seriously. When?

I know I should be grateful, but I’m scared. And sick. So, so sick still. Today I’m trying to work, and I have to run to the bathroom every hour or so to heave over the toilet. And this is with the Zofran, people.

Lots of people sent me tips to deal with my morning sickness. Here is what I’ve tried so far:

-Eating ginger all the time
-Eating every hour, every two hours, every twenty minutes, not eating at all
-Eating extra protein
-Not eating high fat food
-Eating high fat foods
-Seltzer, juice, Maalox
-Taking Zofran

The only thing that helped a bit was the Zofran, but that seems to be wearing off. I’m not having a good day today.

I’m convinced that some of this would get better if I could get off some of the fertility drugs. I’m still taking 2.5 cc of Progesterone in Oil, 2 Progesterone Gel doses, and three Estrace tablets—a day. Most RE’s have already begun to wean their pregnant patients by this point (8 1/2 weeks pregnant). I want off. I want to know that I feel awful from the pregnancy, not the drugs.

As usual, I’m confused. I feel scared about the pregnancy, I feel angry about the drugs, and I feel totally nauseous and frustrated. I don’t know what to do with myself. I spent four days at home, resting, and was feeling a bit better. But as soon as I have to be upright for any period of time longer than two hours, I begin to feel horribly nauseous again.

Oh, I’m fucking whining again. I’ll shut up now. I’m going to go home and go to bed--again. I think I puked up my Zofran today, so I’m gonna go take another one. Fucking fuck fuck.

20

Well, I just got back from my latest ultrasound.

To my shock and amazement, both babies are just fine. In fact, the little one is now exactly the same size as the big one-- they are both 20mm crown to rump (which is an adorable saying, don't you think?).

The was-smaller one's embryonic sac is now only slightly smaller-- measuring at 7.67 weeks vs. the 8.4 weeks of the was-larger one, but that could be for a million reasons, not the least of which is the sudden spurt of growth the little guy had this week.

I was completely surprised. I'd really mentally prepared for the smaller one to be gone this week. Not only am I surprised that they are both fine, I'm surprised how happy I am about it.

And the best part? We saw the was-larger one move. We couldn't see that in the other, since they are on top of each other and the was-smaller one is too far away, but still. It totally rocked.

Ah, the Zofran

Well, my blissful lack of morning sickness lasted until the middle of the night on Wednesday. 2am found me retching hard over the toilet for an hour, then trooping downstairs naked to find the olives to see if they would help again. I have no light in my refrigerator (further proof of my white trashness) so I first ate some mandarin oranges before I managed to find the olives. Sadly, they did not help this time.

I spent Thursday at home, and I decided to start taking the Zofran. Lots and lots of folks told me about it, and my doctor prescribed it without my asking for it specifically, so I guess I was meant to take it.

But it scares me.

If we have a daughter, my husband and I plan to name her after his sister. His sister was born in 1960 or 61, and lived, sadly, only a week. The reason? My mother-in-law took Thalidomide. Which was touted as a cure for morning sickness.

We won't even get into DES and the nightmare that it is causing getupgrrl.

You'd think I wouldn't be so nervous. Being in recovery, I know women who shot heroin and cocaine or smoked crack or drank daily throughout their pregnancies, and by-and-large, their babies have turned out pretty well. Women drank beer and coffee, smoked cigarettes and took all kinds of medications as recently as twenty years ago and most of the kids of that era are fine.

But Zofran was made for chemotherapy patients, not pregnant ladies. No long term studies of it's effect on pregnant women have been done (tests have been done in rats and rabbits, but still). So I'm nervous.

But I cannot continue to be a prisoner to the nausea. I can't focus, I can hardly work, and eating is sporadic. I'm miserable. And the Zofran IS helping; today is a bit easier than yesterday, and I imagine, once my "blood levels" are up, I will feel even better.

Tomorrow night I'm going out to dinner with a gang of women for our semi-monthly women's night. We're checking out a fancy new restaurant that just opened in my neighborhood. I'd really like to be able to actually eat something!

Olives and Midwives

Let’s all pause for a moment and bow, collectively, to the wonderful Julia, who has provided me with a successful treatment for my morning (otherwise known as all-motherfucking-day) sickness.

After reading her blog yesterday, I was overwhelmed with a craving for olives. I had a long day planned (work, a committee meeting, a regular meeting, then dinner at the diner afterwards) and no olives in sight, so naturally I called my husband to come to my rescue.

How sweet is he? He went to the grocery store and not only bought a large bottle of olives for home, but a small 3oz emergency bottle of olives. He gave them to me right before the meeting, and I ate them all, even downing the juice like some sort of freak.

It helped. My stomach felt better. I went to the diner, and I ate almost a whole meal! I ordered their steak dinner (remarkably good for a diner) and ate about ½ the steak, ½ the mashed potatoes, and most of the salad! I haven’t eaten a whole meal in nearly three weeks!

I went home, slept well, and started my day off with just a touch of olive juice. I feel better today; not well enough that I’m worried I lost the babies (although the thought that one is gone has crossed my mind) but well enough that I might not need that Zofran prescription my doctor called in for me today.

I also started taking an additional vitamin B6 supplement (there is a fair amount in my prenatal) on Monday, and I’m wondering if that is helping too. All I know is that I can work, sort of, and sitting upright doesn’t make me have dry heaves every twenty minutes.

I have my next ultrasound on Friday, so we will see what’s going on in there, how the little baby is doing now. I’m looking forward to it, and totally open to whatever the ultrasound shows (well, except maybe that both are gone—that I’m not up for).

Call me crazy, but I want, especially after so much medical intervention was necessary to achieve pregnancy, to have a natural childbirth if possible. I know the best way to assure that medical intervention is a last resort, instead of the first one, is to use a midwife.

So I called our local birth center, a rather famous one (they did a Birth Day there). My friend had her daughter there last March, and it was a wonderful experience for her. Someone in her childbirth class was pregnant with twins, so it was my understanding they accepted women with twins (although you have to be delivered at the hospital, not in the center). And they did—last year. With the increase in medical malpractice insurance costs, they no longer can accept twins.

So I called another midwifery center, one associated with a local hospital. Nope. They’ll do prenatal care until 24 weeks, and then turn you over to a doctor.

After some Google research, I did find a midwife who works with a hospital not too far from me. Her assistant said she probably would do twins, at the hospital (which is fine with me, and preferable for my husband). Her office, though, is almost an hour away. Sigh. I set up an appointment anyway, and I guess we’ll see what happens. I hope we don’t get all the way out there and they tell us they don’t do twins. Sigh. At least they accept my insurance!

Blah Blah Blah

Blah blah blah nausea worse every day blah blah blah

Blah blah blah can barely stand to be upright blah blah blah.

blah blah shut up bitch, you're lucky to be here, every infertile woman would kill to vomit from pregnancy blah blah blah.

________________________________________________________

A lot of people asked about the cause of last week's bleeding (which has not recurred). They don't know. They said 50% of IVF patients bleed, and those with twins bleed even more.

I don't care, really, what caused it, unless of course it happens again.

Very Scary

We had quite the scare yesterday.

I had a series of meetings at work yesterday (ok, one wasn't a meeting, it was a massage, to try to get rid of the crick in my neck) and after the last one, I was overwhelmed with the urge to go to the bathroom. And go I did, straining in the public restroom at work (I try to shit in the one single toilet bathroom at work, not the public ones, but this was an emergency). It was painful, but I dismissed it.

Afterwards, I went to sneak into an empty dorm room and snooze a bit, and on my way back to the store, I stopped in the bathroom again, and my underwear was full of blood. I wiped myself, and the toilet paper was soaked through with it. Three times.

I ran and called the doctor, who said to come in immediately. Unfortunately, my husband was killing time while waiting for our car to be finished at the mechanic (I forgot to blog about the cracked head gasket costing us $2200 to fix). I called my husband, he called the mechanics, and I'm not sure what he told them, but twenty minutes later we were in the car and on the way to doctor's office.

The bleeding had stopped by then. I was feeling scared but not overwhelmed (otherwise known as numb). I do remember thinking that this was all my fault, I was so tired of being sick that I wished a miscarriage on myself.

The lovely, blond, wears-too-much-makeup Ukrain ultrasound tech told us not to worry, and sure enough, there were still two heartbeats. The big baby looked like a baby now--a head, little arm buds. The small baby? Well, it's clear that the difference in sizes was growing.

We met with the nurse, who told me to take today off, and rest. She said that the big baby was fine, but it was touch and go for the small one. She said it could catch up, the next couple of weeks would tell us. Then she spoted my husband's railroad hat and copy of Trains Magazine in his hand and nearly shrieked with glee. Turns out her husband is a railfan too. She promptly tore up our bill and said, "It's my birthday, I'm allowed!"

Since I haven't really begun to invest myself in the pregnancy, I don't feel a whole lot of sadness about losing one of the twins. A small part of me feels relieved; it will be so much easier, and less expensive, with just one. As long as everything is alright, with just one baby, I can go to a birth center. Our lives will be a little less dramatically changed.

But I'm still rooting for the little one. I'm convinced it's a girl, and the big one is a boy, and I really want a girl (god knows why, I was a rotten pain in the ass of a daughter).

I think maybe the blood was just a big subconscious ruse to not miss an ultrasound this week. I don't know. I'm just glad everything is ok.

Puke-a Puke

I have an old Salt N’ Pepa song in my head, you remember, the Shoop Song?

The chorus goes:

Shoop shoop ba-doop
Shoop ba-doop
Shoop ba-doop ba-doop ba-doop
Shoop ba-doop
Shoop ba-doop
Shoop ba-doop ba-doop ba-doop

But in my head, it’s going:

Puke Puke-a Puke
Puke-a-Puke
Puke-a Puke-a Puke-a Puke
Puke Puke-a Puke
Puke-a….

Ah, you get what I mean.

Today is the worst day of nausea I’ve ever had (and for an alcoholic who once drank the dregs in the bottles left in the trash behind a bar, that’s saying something). I believe it is wholeheartedly the fault of the Huevos Rancheros I ate for a late dinner last night. For some reason, up until now, Mexican food was one of the few foods that didn’t make me want to toss my cookies just by thinking about it. But the Huevos did not sit all that well.

So I’m going to go get acupuncture later today to see if that will help. I’m hoping that maybe my acupuncturist will drive a railroad spike through that spot that the seasick bracelets usually stimulate. I believe that will help because I bought the bracelets on Saturday, and they did seem to help me feel better, although I looked like a lost extra from Olivia Newton-John’s video for “Let’s Get Physical!” Unfortunately, I left the bracelets on the coffee table Saturday night, and for some unimaginable reason (and totally out of character for him) my dog destroyed them.

So anyway, contributing to the nausea, which persisted all night long (I know this because I have a horrendous crick in my neck that wakes me up every 20 minutes—alternating with the need to pee that wakes me up every other 20 minutes), was the night of fucked up dreams.

Dream #1:

I was at a seedy bar, and I was snorting gobs and gobs of cocaine (drinking and using dreams are common in recovering alcoholics). I really wanted to shoot the cocaine (you know, in my veins) but I couldn’t find a needle anywhere, until I remembered my 21 gauge 1.5-inch long needles I use for my progesterone in oil shots. Thankfully, I woke up before I actually tried to use those.

Dream #2:

I went to the bathroom, and when I wiped, there were two small grape sized things (one smaller than the other, of course) on the tissue, connected to each other by what looked like a vein. I knew that it meant I was miscarrying, although it was bloodless, and I also knew I was miscarrying because for some reason the embryos implanted to each other, instead of into me, so they couldn’t sustain themselves any longer. I carried them around all day waiting to go see my doctor to make sure that’s really what happened. I felt slightly relieved, because I knew that I wouldn’t feel sick anymore and I wouldn’t have to deal with hope anymore. I could go back to the misery of infertility, so much more comfortable than this scary pregnancy place.

Dream #3:

I was walking across a dark, muddy parking lot when I saw this very, very short person (who I first thought was a child) slip and fall in the mud. I ran over to help them up, and it turned out to be a dwarf. He was pretty cute, like the guy who stared in The Station Agent, and after I helped him up, he began immediately hitting on me. He was very funny, and kept making me laugh. I told him I couldn’t go out with him, and he said, “Well, if it helps, you should know that although I’m small, my cock is very large.” Which just made me laugh all the harder. We parted on very friendly terms.

I was a little freaked out about the miscarriage dream, until my best friend reminded me that some people dream about eating their babies while pregnant, which sounds really gross to me in my nauseous state. Now I think it’s just like the drinking dreams that happen to recovering people—those dreams only occur once you’ve stopped drinking. Perhaps miscarriage dreams only occur when you’re pregnant.

So that’s me today. I’m not quite as, I don’t know, weird as yesterday, even though my stomach is considerably worse. I’ll post tomorrow, if the railroad spikes in my arms permit.

A little cheese with that whine?

Like Julie, I’ve been feeling reluctant to talk about how I’m doing. I’m not in that happy a place, and as I mentioned before, I have a sort of infertile’s version of “survivor’s guilt.” So don’t read any further if you don’t want to hear me whine a bit. I don't know how to do that cool hiding thing Julie did, so you'll just have to move to a different page if ya don't wanna read any more...

So I’ve been trying to figure out why I’m so resistant to the unbearable fatigue I’m currently experiencing from this pregnancy.

By resistant, I mean, that up until a few days ago I was still trying to do normal things, like work all day long, and walk the dogs, and go to my meetings and hang out afterwards until late on a weeknight. I just wasn’t willing to believe that the tiredness was real.

Even when I read in several books that the early symptoms of pregnancy like fatigue can be much worse when there is more than one fetus involved; even when I know that the amount of fertility hormones I’m still taking (3 2mg Estrace tablets a day, 2.5cc of Progesterone in Oil, and two ‘shots’ of progesterone gel daily) can create the symptoms all on their own, without an actual pregnancy to boot, I STILL think I can act normally.

I finally succumbed over the weekend, and didn’t push myself at all. My husband wanted to chase a train on Saturday, and while he photographed it, I slept in the car. Then we saw an early movie and were home at 8pm on Saturday night.

Sunday I was going to do nothing, just lay around and watch TV, but instead we went to our little secret swimming hole (it’s in a tiny corner of a huge national park) with friends, including the sixteen month old daughter of our neighbors (oh yeah, her mom came too) and that was nice and relaxing. We got home around 6pm and I fell asleep on the couch waiting for Six Feet Under to come on HBO (I did rouse for the show).

Yesterday I sought out an empty dorm room (thank god I work in a tiny college with the dorms right here) and crashed for my lunch hour.

Ironically, all this sleeping doesn’t make me feel any better. I still feel tired as hell, and I still feel utterly, horribly nauseous all the time (I lost four pounds last week, but that’s a good thing).

So, as I was saying, I’ve been trying to figure out why I was so resistant to all this sleeping, and I’ve finally figured it out.

It’s exactly like depression.

Well, maybe not the nausea, although when I’m depressed I tend to binge on horrible things (like Hot Chips with milk—yummy!) and feel gross from that too, so I guess it kind of is the same.

Contributing to this feeling of depression is my fear, and lack of acceptance, of my pregnancy. While I have moments where I look at merchandise on line, or spend an hour looking through those infernal baby name books, I am still holding my joy in reserve.

I’m not sure what I’m waiting for; although the main thing seems to be the CVS testing we’ll be doing in mid-August. I’m also awaiting my 8-week and 10 week scans, because I’m so sure one of the twins will vanish. I haven’t called the birth center we want to use, (if it’s twins, we will have to be in a hospital and not the center itself, but a midwife from the center will be with us and we’ll have a good chance of a vaginal delivery, plus they’ll do all the prenatal care) because there are so many uncertainties this early. I feel immobilized, like you do in a dream. I can’t seem to move forward.

Will I ever enjoy this pregnancy? Last night as I crawled up to bed I said to my husband, gloomily, “By the time these kids are born, I will have felt like hell for nearly two years, and then the babies will be here and I’ll never get to feel good again. My life is ruined.”

That’s the spirit, right? I can hear the groans of those of you that would give anything to be in my shoes right now. But it’s so hard to just put one foot in front of the other these days, and process all these feelings. I promise

Two Beats Are Better Than One

Good News: Yep, two little heartbeat flutters on the ultrasound. One is still smaller than the other (4mm vs. 6mm) so we'll see how that all goes in another couple of weeks, I guess.

Bad News: Still no sex, no lifting/cleaning, all the same restrictions. UNTIL THE END OF THE FIRST TRIMESTER. Holy shit. I can live without the cleaning, but the sex? I'm not allowed to "irritate my cervix" in any way, since I'm more prone to spotting with twins and stuff. Great.

I'm not gonna post a photo, cause they don't really mean anything.