The Land of Milk and Poo

Too Bad I Don't Resemble Elizabeth One Bit

Around six weeks I started getting ill. As in eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllll. As in "get me a bucket." As in "it doesn't need to be waaaaaaaaaafer thin, I'm already there, Garcon."

It hit mainly in the afternoon, and when it hit it hit good, like a truckload....of trucks. I was so exhausted I couldn't do much besides lie on the couch and ask MP to get me things--bottles of water, blankets, cocaine needles, the remote control. Often I'd actually throw up or dry heave--this would hit unexpectedly--once, I threw up in the sink while brushing my teeth. Twice I threw up in the shower. Sometimes I'd be sitting pretty (not really pretty, because who the hell is pretty when they're this sick??) and suddenly charge for the bathroom, knocking innocent bystanders (MP, J, Random) out of the way. If Random was home he'd whisk MP out of range, who was immediately concerned and would yell "OKAY MAMA?????" and persist until I managed a weak "yeah I'm okay, thank you" and yes, my little squishable one would then peep "you're welcome!").

Anyway, frequently throwing up or feeling like you're constantly on the verge can have a slightly detrimental effect on your parenting skillz. I basically collapsed on the couch every day. Elmo became our best friend. --By the way, that Mr. Noodle freaks me out. He's like a clown man child molestor, and his name is MR. NOODLE. Am I the only one who gets a little skeeved by him? Couldn't they find a nice Blues Clues type boy to dance around and waggle his bowtie?

The cravings and aversions for things were intense. I lost my desire for seltzer. This was the biggest thing, because I mainlined three bottles of seltzer a day minimum. All of a sudden I didn't want seltzer. I wanted nothing to do with it. I didn't really want diet soda, either. I wanted plain water and juice, which I almost never drank.

One day I wanted nuts more than anything I have ever wanted in my life. (In normal life I am only an occassional nut eater, and never more than a few at a time. I am pretty ambivalent about nuts.) I was driving to get MP from daycare and suddenly the intense desire for nuts struck me and I nearly found myself shaking with the need. I pulled into a small farmer's market near my house and galloped inside like my very life depended on nuts. I bought three big containers and ripped them open in the car. All the way to daycare I stuffed my gullet with nuts. I felt psychotic. I felt...nuts.

At home I was pretty sick and MP, watching, said "What happened Mama???" over and over as she looked concerned at me, gasping and coughing over the toilet. MP's little eyebrows knitted together. "You okay Mama?" she asked.

The m/s was like a constant hangover. I tried ginger. I tried Preggie Pops (good lord, that name makes me cringe. MP calls them my "pills" and gets very upset when she can't give me one). I tried crackers and bland foods and eating small meals and not taking my pre-natals. Nothing worked--and my OB felt I should be able to stick it out without drugs, as did I. My parents just laughed merrily whenever I gave them the Daily Pukey Round-Up, happy to hear everything was normal. Even Random started taking the hwarfs in stride--"oh did you puke again? Poor thing. Here, help me rake some leaves already, Mrs. Hurley."

Where was the cute pregnant glow that was supposed to come? People were starting to give me the hairy eyeball, I was such a hag. And my pants were getting tighter already even with being ill--from bloating, I guess.

And despite what I learned from the Nut Incident I then od'd on swiss cheese.

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I'd love to hear some of the things you craved and developed aversions for.....

Next up: I no longer fit in anything, surprise surprise, despite the hurling. So I go to the maternity store! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, me at a maternity store! And I learn something verrrrrrrrrrry important...... 

Rocky Hits a KO

*Back to the original story, still not at the present....it'll take quite a bit more till we get there...*

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I had so many transvaginal ultrasounds during my infertility years that I wouldn't have been surprised if someone had suggested permanently installing one inside to save everyone the trouble of having them ready for me. And here I was in the waiting room of a place that specialized in transvaginal ultrasounds. It would be my first since the last cancelled IVF three years ago. I was really, really, really nervous. I was unwashed and greasy and huddled up. Random sat next to me and held my hand. It was early in the morning.

"What does this remind you of?" he asked.

"Duh," I said, knowing automatically--we have what is known in our house as "SameBrain," where we both basically think the same thing at the same time.

It reminded me of early-morning waiting rooms at the IVF clinic. Except here everyone was older and there were as many men as women. But people still had that drawn, anxious look, probably because this was a place that specialized in all things Scan and some of these people were in for serious stuff. Anyway, it didn't bring back pleasant memories, although Random and I did crack ourselves up quite frequently during those harried mornings.

At the counter they asked me to fill out a form. The form asked for

# OF CHILDREN

so I wrote "one."

The woman at the counter then said "oh, so this is your second pregnancy?" And I said "nope, first pregnancy, second kid" and she looked at me like I had two heads. So I explained and she wrote "adopted" next to my "one" and I smiled thinly.

Finally our name was called and we were led back by a young woman who seemed really sweet. Good, I thought--it would make the bad news easier to take (if there was bad news! If there was bad news! I had to keep reminding myself to quit being such a pessimistic ween). We went into the exam room and I took off my bottoms, flinging them onto a chair. Random perched uneasily. The tech came back in and I hoisted myself up on the table. She turned off the lights, swiveled her chair around, and brandished The Wand.

I held my breath.  

I felt my blood stop as the tech began.

Within a second of The Wand the tech showed me a small blurb on the screen. She pointed at a pulsing speck, smaller than a grain of rice, and explained that what we were seeing was a heartbeat. She turned a dial and a sound filled the room--a whoosh whoosh whoosh registering on the screen as a series of peaks and valleys. "That's it," she said, capturing the beats per minute on screen. "It looks good," she said.

My neck craned forward. I was crying, a little. I looked at Random, who was holding my foot and staring at the screen.

"Crazy, huh?" he said.

I was six weeks five days pregnant when I first heard Rocky's heartbeat.

(You might be wondering why Rocky. We needed a name that symbolized something kick-ass, something that perservered despite the odds. Just picturing the sperm charging to the tune of Rocky training--and then picturing said sperm slamming into the egg at the speed of Rocky's left hook--and just pummeling away until the egg, defeated, let him in--made us both feel warm and fuzzy inside. And seemed fitting, somehow.)

Next up: I Get Sick! And Sicker! And Copious Amounts of Nuts Are Involved!

And Now For Something Completely Different!

MP. Is. Luscious.

The cheeks are plump and cannot go more than five minutes without copious smooching. The neck/chin area--oooooooooh. The belly. The tiny chipmunk voice. She is a dream of adorableness.

And sooooooooooooooo funny. A real trickster. One day, she and I will be partners in prank--Random had better watch his back. She "hides" her diapers under her head so we won't be able to find them. She loves to pretend she's a monster and will come at you going "ARRRRRR" with her hands in silly claws. She dances like a maniac. She sings medleys all the time--ABC morphs into Frere Jacques morphs into Twinkle Twinkle. She loves to sing "Poo Pals" with me to the tune of "Zoo Pals" (surely you have seen that commercial for paper plates and bowls with animals printed on them?) Poo poo poo pals, poo poo poo pals! Poo poo poo pals, poo pals make pooping fun! / First you do a dance, then you fill your pants....Poo poo poo pals, and on and on and on and on.

She's a complete nutball. She loves to show off her muscles and will hold up her arm and say "MUSHELLLLLSSS!" in this fake deep gravelly voice. She needs kisses at the slightest boo-boo--even if the dog brushes by her she'll rush to you with a "hurt" finger outstretched.

She lervvves stickers (see below) and fake tattoos (give her a tattoo and she will show the entire world. "LOOK! TATTOO!" she will proclaim). She throws tea parties for her Fisher Price People (which she calls "People," even if she's referring to one of them, as in "where did People go?"). She makes me wooden bread with "chocolate" (actually wooden sushi) and "butter" (actually wooden sushi egg) using her wooden knife and then salts and peppers the sandwich and adds a dash of milk from her baby's bottle. "BITE!" she tells me, thrusting the wooden bread in my face. (This is what I tell her to do with her peanut butter toast, because otherwise she will just pluck peanut butter from it and suck it from her fingers.)

She talks. ALL THE TIME. Sometimes she talks so much that Random and I tell her to "hush" and then she will say "NO YOU HUSH" and then we try to hide that we are laughing.

And there is the normal toddler stuff, too. Like--the whining....she whines a lot. So Random and I say "Are you whining?" to her, and she'll say "Yes." So we say "No whining!" and she says "No whining, OHHH, OK." And then she will whisper what she wants over and over in this creepy way--Ssssssssnnnaaccckkkky Mama I want Sssssssssssnaaaacccckkkky. And she will whisper it over and over again. My kid can even whine while she's whispering.

But overall she is just the best kid ever. I couldn't imagine a better kid, or for us to be happier.

MP used the ENTIRE sticker page that came with her Miss Spider coloring book. She was very proud of her creation and even put a few on her cheeks.

This is our old house (if you remember my old blog you will remember this is the house with the wonderful bathroom that I designed all by myself and the excellent, ahem, "caulk"). I am still amazed that we managed to sell this house with the carpet the way it was--you can't really tell in this picture but nasty doesn't even do it justice.

MP adjusted to the move pretty well--she hated the one night we spent in the hotel and was up all night crying for "home," but since then she's loved it and basically taken over. And the carpet is much, much nicer.

Mary Mia from SALSA IN CHINA (oh you know her link, go to it already) sent MP this shirt. It's too small for her now but who doesn't love a little babygut peeking out?

Since so many of you are asking--MP is two and a third now. J the dog is good--he's upped the humping over the past year since MP's been home, though, and gained a bit o' weight from the baby droppings. I think the humping is a need for attention. J and MP get along famously. Just the other day I was horrified to see MP with her mouth wide open and J licking her tongue. She was just standing there, letting him. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

O Baby O Baby Where Art Thou?

So.....positive pregnancy test #6 (getting darker with each pee). Still I disbelieve. I am the last person in the world I expected to be pregnant. Google says I could possibly be in peri-menopause or have a giant cyst emitting fake hcg. Google can bite me but still Google is a quasi-god in my world so I am still a bit leery eyed. And since I have had scuffles with monster cysts before option #2 seems quite possible, although apparently it's rare.

My first HPT is positive on a Saturday. I call my OB on a Monday, wait 45 minutes on hold before someone comes on.

I tell her I'd like an appointment right away, as I have had a positive!! test! (saying it I feel like I'm pulling a big joke on myself. Like all of a sudden I will turn to myself and say "you big eejit, what are you playing at? You drew that line on with MP's marker!" Also, I feel like an imposter. Like, I'm not REALLY pregnant, but these damn pee sticks keep saying I am--let's prove them wrong shallwe???)

She tells me they wait until eight weeks. Now I am all WHA WHA WHAT?!!!!!

That is about three and a half weeks from now. There is no way on this great somewhat green Earth that I am waiting three and a half weeks to find out if I am making this all up.

"I am high risk," I tell her, trying to sound in-the-know. "I am over 35. I tried for, like, six years and never got pregnant. We had MEDICAL INTERVENTION." Whatever happened to rising beta levels done every other day, like my RE would have done? Blood? Don't they want my blood? And how do they make sure I'm pregnant, after all? Don't they need to check? Or is it standard practice to let poor women waddle around for three and a half weeks not knowing if they are carrying a baby or just completely delusional?  YOU MEAN THEY ACTUALLY TAKE MY WORD FOR IT??????

"Ok," she says slowly, "we can see you a little over six weeks. How's next Friday?"

"But don't you need to check that I'm pregnant?" I ask, incredulous.

She laughs. "Did you take a test?"

I tell her I took six. So far.

"We go by those," she says. "They're pretty accurate."

"Ermmmmm....okaaaaaaayyyyy," I say.

Now I must wait a week and four days before I know what the heck is going on. I spend all my free time googling. I find out about blighted ovums, and I am terrified. I find out about something called missed miscarriages. I find out about irregular sacs and no heartbeats and ectopics and the horrible news that thyroid problems can lead to miscarriage (I have a thyroid problem!). And then, of course, I read about the ridiculously named "chemical pregnancy," which can even be shortened to "chemical," as in "I had a chemical." Why is it called this? Why not call it what it is, an early miscarriage? It still counts, no matter when it happens. I am suddenly aware that a positive test doesn't mean all that much, even though.... it does.

I am way too informed. I am now an expert on how things can go wrong during pregnancy. I also find out that most miscarriages happen before ten weeks and I figure it is a forgone conclusion for me at this point, so every trip to the bathroom I expect the worse.

And I am still half convinced that my body is playing one big massive hysterical trick on itself and has somehow managed to magick the HPTs into saying something that isn't true. I now have nine happily congregating in my bedside drawer and I consult them nightly like prayer sticks. Although the traitor EPTs have faded and I convince myself that they somehow know the truth--this pregnancy (if this is what it is) will fade.

Six weeks and one day comes and it is time for my appointment. I bring along a friend I have confided in. I give the nurse information and pee in a cup and she says "why are you so scared?" and I tell her my story. She says "I would be that scared then, too." This does not make me feel much better.

In the examining room the doctor tells me that they will do an abdominal scan but that she does not expect to see much. And she puts the transducer (I now know the name for this!) over my lower belly and angles it and says...

I think I see a small pregnancy sac there. But I can't see anything else. She pulls the U/S away and wipes my belly and tells me to get dressed.

For a second, I saw a blank circle the size of a quarter on the screen.

I don't know what I expected--I had thought, maybe, heartbeat? Worm shaped thing? Fuzzy slippers and a binky? 

In the office I tell the doctor about my fears. Blighted ovum, I say, is my biggest right now. Just the name makes me want to cry. I hate that it's "blighted." I hate this word. Why can't we say "hurt egg" instead?

"I can't rule that out," she says. "Your risk of miscarriage is about 33 percent." She then hands me material about screening for birth defects and launches into a speech about my options. I look at the timeframe for said tests--11-14 weeks? We are thinking about 11-14 weeks? Woman, I am 6 weeks with what might be a small sac or might just be a hole in my womb! Let's go one hour at a time here!

The doctor gives me a prescription for a trans vaginal u/s where, she says, they will be able to see more. She gives me a prescription to check blood levels of HcG and progesterone. My next OB appointment is scheduled for when I am ten weeks. I laugh (somewhat maniacally) as I leave--I won't be back, one way or another. My friend asks me how it went, and I tell her the truth:

"Inconclusive."

Although one thing has been confirmed.

I am probably not making all of this up.

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Next up: MP detour! And--thanks for the welcome back. Wow is about all I can manage.

An Infairytale of Sorts

I didn't think I'd ever write this post, for about forty million kajillion reasons. (Okay, three that I can think of off the top of my head.)

Reason #1: I decided, a year ago, to stop blogging because I needed to protect my family, and my website was being regularly snarked by some big meanheads. And I didn't feel like battling them, so I made the really really hard decision to quit. It was like cutting out a piece of my heart.

Reason #2: I needed to focus more on my daughter, and I was spending waaaaaaaayyyy too much time in blogworld. (Daughter: (Tugging on sleeve) Play! PLAY! Me: (Staring at screen) What's a synonym for poop? It needs to be poetic.)

Reason #3: Well, you'll see below. Probably the biggest reason I never expected to be writing this specific post.

(But let me say that I missed writing and missed being a part of bloggy goodness like crazy. My writing muscle is all stiff and dorky, but hopefully it'll limber up.)

Anyway, let's start at the beginning. I'm going to tell this weirdass story in chunks, working up until I get to the present (this is only chunk #1...the whole story is going to take me a while). And I'm going to be completely annoying and tell it in the third person, because it still seems so unreal.

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

Once upon a time there was a boy and a girl who wanted a family. So they started trying but things went immediately downhill in the form of strange bleeding. The girl went to a Reproductive Endicronologist because she had a lot of friends online who visited these amazing wizards of conception. That was only the second month of trying to make a baby. The Reproductive Endicronologist gave the girl many tests that revealed some problems, like luteal phase defects and other whatnots that the girl, surprisingly, has actually forgotten since then (it was a long time ago, anyway).  The girl tried out Clomid for a while, but that didn't do squat. So the girl made the decision to switch to a big, popular clinic. The doctors there (many Reproductive Endicronologists, all bedecked in white coats and bearing many Articles of Disctinction after their names) told the boy and the girl that they needed to do an IVF because of the whatnots wrong with them, but that their chances were excellent. So the girl and the boy did a few IUIs and then a few IVFs, some of the cancelled right before retrieval, some of them completed. And they switched clinics again, because the second clinic failed them and they wanted to be successful. And they underwent lots of tests, and then the girl decided to cheat on her new doctors and went back to Clinic #1 to have surgery done to examine what the hell was up. The surgery showed nothing. So more IVFs and IUIs were attempted but nothing worked, and the girl remembers the four years of medical intervention as being endless dawn trips to the city to get blood drawn, phone calls beginning with "I'm sorry," follicles that would not bloom, cysts that crowded her ovaries, and bloating. Oh, and tears--lots of them. And a bitter taste in her mouth that eventually filled her blood and changed her, literally, into someone she didn't recognize.

Eventually the girl and the boy were cancelled in the beginning of a cycle and told they would have to wait for levels to go down (an important level--FSH--was too high. This, the girl knew, was Bad News). This information came on their anniversary, so it was too much and they decided to adopt.

And then came paperwork and more paperwork and deadlines and trips to immigration offices and waiting and waiting and waiting.

THE FIRST BEGINNING

One day the waiting was over and there was a picture and information about a beautiful chubby cheeked girl. And a little over two years from the first paperwork sent, the girl and the boy adopted a 13 month old baby from China. And this baby girl (who we'll call MP) changed the couple's life and the skies opened up and let loose a whole galaxy of sunshine.

During this time when the girl would tell people she was adopting people would usually say "You'll probably get pregnant now." And at first the girl, when she said "no, I won't, and I don't want to anyway" was lying a little bit because really, she wanted to be pregnant as well.

And then after MP came the boy and the girl knew that getting pregnant was not important to them anymore, at all. And although the girl always wondered what had kept them from ever, ever, ever conceiving (after four years of medical intervention and two years of on-their-own) she embraced her new life as Mama and found the bitterness draining out of her as if she was a salted eggplant. (Foodies, you know what I mean.) And she threw baby showers and was genuinely happy for her pregnant friends and secretly thought too bad you won't ever adopt now, because it's so freaking awesome. And she was healed and stronger and in love with her daughter and her new family.

And for a year they lived happily, the three of them. And then one day after their year-long anniversary as a family, the girl began a new cycle, started her period, which had become nice and regular and was not plagued by strange bleeding anymore. And I guess this would then be called

THE SECOND BEGINNING

Two weeks later the family moved into a new house with a big backyard and an extra bedroom and a kickbutt family room with a woodburning stove. The house was so much bigger than the one they moved from that they had almost no furniture to fill it, but that didn't matter, because it allowed MP to race around wildly and somersault and jump ("bump!") and scatter her many, many toys (cooking/wooden food ones being her favorite because she is a Mini Chef in the Making).

And two weeks after that the family decided to go out to dinner and the girl realized she had still not started her period (it was a few days late). So she jokingly dug through a box and got out a First Response pregnancy test left over from, oh, years before when she should have bought stock in the stuff. She wanted to drink copious amounts of margarita and wanted assurance. Plus, it was kind of unlike her period to be late. Laughingly she peed on the stick and held it up to perform the Pee Stick Squint which she had perfected over the years ("do you see a line? I see a line. See if you angleitthisway youcansee--see it? No? Yeah. *Sigh* Me neither.") 

A line appeared immediately. And then another line. Two lines. Very clear. There were two dark lines. She grabbed the box, heart hammering, and compared: Two lines, two lines. Pregnant. WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAA?

She ran upstairs, saying "Ohshitohshitohshitohshit" over and over, and thrust the pee stick into her husband's hands, who was saying "What? What?" and rushing to her. He looked at it. He took it to a window. He said, "Oh, wow."

That night, she googled "false positive pregnancy test" and saw that it could, indeed, happen. She had three positive pregnancy tests by then, but she recognized that none of that meant very much.

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So that's it for now. A positive test. A relatively huge hurdle in a universe-sized obstacle course filled with hurdles.

Next up: OB Appointment number one. What the hell. I learn that a Fetal Pole is not something you vault with.