Cheek

Whatever You Do, Don't Make Me Cry

After a verrrrrrrrry long 19 hour drive in a car with a thousand Christmas presents, a toddler, a hyper poodle with a set of pogo stick legs boring bruises into my thighs and uterus, and a pregnant woman (me) who had to pee constantly, we are finally at my parents' house down South where we'll be for the next week or so.

The amount of gifts sitting under the tree for MP is staggering. I have no idea how we are going to truck this home. How can a two year old possibly require this many presents? Especially after witnessing her occupying herself happily for an hour in the car with three napkins? (And yes, I am also to blame. Haba and Djeco toys are dangerous. I am a sucker for anything European, wooden, and painted.)

But MP is thrilled to be here and J is in his humping leg glory and we are thrilled to be here and it is all good good.

**************

Last week I met a lovely woman who is 19w with twins. We chatted, and she asked me how far along I was. I told her 14w. She gasped and told me I looked farther along than her. Errrrkkkkkkkk.

It was true. At least at that moment, in that lighting, in that shirt, I did. Strangely, my belly has become a moving creature--somedays I look positively giant, others tidy and small. At night I can feel things stretching and growing and there's no real way to explain it other than that it hurts. This is the first time in 12 years that I am allowing my husband to touch my stomach on a regular basis; rubbing it is the only thing that makes it feel a bit better, aside from slathering it in Mustela lotion. But it's so cool to look down and see it there, my round thing, somewhat tangible evidence that things are growing.

Oh, and I have a horrible chafe going on under my boobs. Possibly because.... I never take off my bra. When I take off my bra it's only to switch bras. (And here's another thing I didn't know about pregnancy: your boobs ITCH. Like crazy. All over. At any given point of the day there I am, both hands scratching away at my boobs like a gorilla. I am turning Random on like crazy, let me tell you.)

*************

Over the weekend I watched a Tivo'd episode of CSI. It happened to be sponsored by the ASPCA. I am a bit of a crybaby recently over commercials featuring, oh, mostly anyone going through something difficult, or starring an animal, or a baby, or a sweet phone call between two people. Anyway, sad animal faces stared out at me from the TV screen and a big fat tear trickled down my left cheek. And then a smaller tear trickled out of my right eye and traipsed down my right cheek. I got up to go to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and saw....

two bright red welts, one on each cheek, stretching from my eye to my chin. The one on the left was wider and bigger overall.

I couldn't figure out what they were. I poked and rubbed and examined and washed my face gently with cold water and the red, irritated, slightly raised skin stayed angry.

I went and showed Random.

"What the hell is on your face?" he asked.

"Oh," I said. "THOSE ARE MY TEAR TRACKS. It would appear that I am suddenly allergic to my own tears."

"Wow," he said. "Pregnancy is FUN!!!"

Then he came close, brows knitted, and peered at the area around my mouth.

"And why is your mouth all red?" he asked.

I don't know why my mouth was all red, but it was. Areas are blotching up everywhere. I am an extremely colorful pregnant lady: my veins are bright blue and everywhere (my father is convinced I have drawn blue marker down the side of my face); my skin is blotched red; my hair is brown at the roots and bright blonde everywhere else. It's fascinating, actually, to watch the changes my body is going through and to know how little control I have over any of them. It's kind of nice to be able to surrender this way. I'm like a science experiment right now; every day is a mystery as to what new symptom will crop up. (The nausea, by the way, has mostly given way to incredible hunger--which then resorts to nausea because I eat so much I, as my mom puts it, "crowd the baby out.")

I also have a solitary nomad hive that migrates to a different part of my right cheek every day. Sometimes it is smack in the middle, sometimes off to the right, sometimes down by my mouth. But I can count on good ole Mr. Hive to show up at some point during the day.

Oh. And Random's final words on my freakish tears?

"I'm going to write you the SWEETEST most ROMANTIC card EVER and make SURE you cry BUCKETS in front of EVERYONE, heh heh heh heh heh heh heh!!!!"

Whatta man.

*******************

Here's the best part of this post: On January 4 I have an ultrasound to check my cervical length (I told you my doctors were monitoring me closely because I had a LEEP surgery. Apparently my cervix was mauled, which is why it bled every time I had sex and between periods for millions of years until my doctor cauterized it last year).

I didn't think much about it past the obvious "coolness, u/s, another peek at babe" factor, but then I realized that I will be 16w1d, and that a u/s at that point can show gender.

ACK! So I might know whether Rocky is a boy or a girl in less than two weeks. Y'all.

Cheese, Peppadew*, and Mayo Sandwiches

Here's a tip: don't eat two sandwiches of the above combo no matter how yummy they sound unless you want to see what they look like when they come back up.

I haven't been on in over a week because pregnancy has sucked every creative juice out of me and replaced it with nausea juice. All I can think to write are various vignettes on my eating foibles. Poor Random has been sick with intestinal flu so he has also been of the moany groany sort and our daughter is currently ruling the roost, shaking fingers at poor J the dog, playing "Peoples" with old french fries and eating goldfish from her washcloth puppets. *Sigh.*

I have gained 5 pounds in my first trimester. This is horrifying. I felt like writing "y'all" right there because A) I have family down South and, thus, have permission B) am watching Paula from Food Network who deep fries her deep fry, come on down y'all I have a deep fried stick of butter for y'all! Can you imagine if she ever married that dude from Diners, Dives, and Drive-Ins--the guy with the super blonde hair who eats deep fried hamburgers? If Paula ever got pregnant they would give birth to a vat of oil.

The one bright spot at the weigh-in was that last week I had gained 6 pounds, so at least today there was a nice solid loss. I was expecting a gain, again, since betwen bouts of nausea I have been eating, um, fourteen meals a day.

Saturday I finally managed to get my Hi-bebe doppler to find that pesky Rocky despite his (her?) dancing around like a flashdance extra, and nailed a heartbeat in the 160s. Today at my OB appointment my doctor found it again pretty quickly and we listened in rapture to the whooshes. I could listen to a whole CD of those. Apparently my uterus has popped out of my pelvic cavity and is now residing somewhere around my belly area. This causes me to whisper "yikes, y'all" because it's such a weird thing, a body organ popping out and moving around. Whippersnapper uterus! Sometimes I just can't figure how I'm doing all this stuff without being in charge of it at all, you know?  It also makes me worry that after all the hellish cursing I did at my uterus in the million years we were trying that it will decide not to stop at my belly and will actually migrate all the way up until it slides up my throat and chokes me.

Other than having nothing much interesting to write about except that MP is currently making towers of everything she can find and this results in some interesting combinations (plastic tumbler on top of sponge on top of wooden pot on top of wipes container on top of pillow), and that MP is able to recognize that the shadowy baby on my ultrasound is, actually, a baby, and that MP now says "I don't have any boobies!" when you ask her where her boobies are, and that she thinks all of Random's moles are nipples (heh heh heh heh heh heh heh, this is soooo funny and provides endless stores of amusement as I watch her point to all the moles on his face and proclaim them "nipples") there's not much to say. Pregnant, boring, and getting happier and fatter by the day.

Next ultrasound is in two weeks to check cervical length. Apparently, I need to be monitored pretty closely since I had a LEEP surgery 10 years ago and this puts me at risk for incompetent cervix. If I have to get a cerclage I will....I will......I will get a cerclage. Hurmph.

Thanks for sticking around. I'll try to find something interesting to write about soon. And Happy Holidays!

*Peppadew: Piquante peppers! Sweet AND hot at the same time! Mmmmmmmmmm the goodness. Just not, you know, with mayo and cheese. Urm.   

*Insert Huge Grinning Bobble Head of Me Here*

My NT screening was as awesome as it gets.

Baby was a boogey machine, waving, kicking, doing the chicken dance. Rocky measured one day ahead of my due date, which is actually four days ahead of where s/he measured at my last check. The ultrasound is the first step in determining your risk of carrying a baby with birth defects; a blood test is coupled with that and a percentage is given to you. Rocky passed step one with flying colors. Next week we'll receive the results of the blood test and have a more complete picture. If all looks good, we won't have to even consider an amnio.

I don't know the words to adequately explain how surreal and incredible it is to watch your child boppin' along on a plasma screen in front of you. Random held my hand, hard, and we both stared open mouthed as Rocky responded to sound and touch. We saw two little hands and five perfect fingers of one hand, splayed against the screen. We saw a profile with an obvious nose and chin and forehead. It was the best moment of this pregnancy so far. 

My placenta is posterior, and the tech tells us this means I might be able to feel more kicks and whatnot. I cheered, and she laughed, told Random to remind me of this cheer late at night in a few weeks as I struggle to sleep despite Rocky's training for the Olympics.

Today I am nauseaus and exhausted and sick of coughing my lungs out with MP's old cold, but today I am also the luckiest, and most joy-filled, Mom and Mom-to-be you know. Now it all becomes real even as it becomes more surreal.

Thank you for being here for this. I started blogging again mostly because I was so scared, and I needed support in case something went wrong. But it means so much to me that you're here to share this good news, too.

As MP would say: "Mama appy!" 

10-11.6 Weeks

Not much eventful happened 10-11.6 weeks, except that I continued bloating, continued hwarfing, and still couldn't (and can't) find Rocky's heartbeat on my mini doppler (although I do hear a lot of something going on down there). I did tell some people that I was pregnant and they were thrilled for me. I thought that some might not be, but everyone was.

Their reactions made me think again about my reactions during IF to hearing my friends and family members were pregnant, and how I wish I could go back and change those reactions. Since adopting MP, hearing about or talking about pregnancy hasn't been a problem for me. I thought I'd feel a twinge here and there but really, all I think was how lucky and happy I was with MP and how I couldn't imagine any other way of having her. Being okay with all of that, for me, also means being okay with my IF and even embracing it as a part of who I am. But now being in the position I yearned to be in for so many years--and somehow getting here (magically) without any intervention--I am even more aware of who I was, who I've become since adopting, and the different place I'm already in now.

I think writing my old blog, thinking about all the heavy stuff, talking about it, reading everything I could get my hands on, really helped get me ready for adoption and by the time we adopted MP it was my first choice and so right for us. I've been so happy for friends and family members who have gotten pregnant this past year--genuinely happy--which is so nice to feel because bitterness is such a hard thing to carry around. No one asks to be bitter. No one wants to be bitter or angry or depressed. It just happens to you--mine was like a disease--like a side effect of my infertility. I don't begrudge myself my bitterness--I think it was an essential part of getting through IF, which turned out to be the most difficult time of my life so far. I do wish that my anger and sadness hadn't ruined so many friendships, that I could have had some super ESP or something and known how things would have turned out. But I can't go back now; all I can do is take what I learned about myself and use it to contribute to happiness, mine and others'.

Even during the adoption process, I found myself angry. I was mostly angry at the world for not accepting adoption the way they accept pregnancy, but now I realize that it's more a lack of understanding than of acceptance. I focused a lot on the dumb things people said about adoption, and I guess I thought that would continue after I adopted. People do say idiotic things (still, and now that I'm pregnant I hear things like "well, this is your gift for taking on MP" !!!?!?!?) but my reaction to those things is so different. I don't get worked up over them (as long as MP isn't there)--rather I just calmly say "MP is her own gift, and we didn't take her on, we wanted her badly." But those comments, honestly, are usually from very well-meaning kind people who instantly agree. And they are nowhere near as common as I thought they'd be--maybe once every few months someone will say something that makes me double take. Adoption just seems so natural to me these days and I understand that for most people it isn't, but we're obviously not most people and I'm content with that.

In a lot of ways I think this pregnancy has happened at exactly the right emotional time. I wasn't looking for it, but I've been far enough removed from infertility that I've actually been able to enjoy some of the more "taboo" things about pregnancy for infertiles--like shopping for maternity clothes, telling people somewhat early, and not obsessing too much. I was acutely aware from the beginning that if the pregnancy didn't work and I ended up with an early m/c I would be okay, as hard as the m/c might be. I knew I'd be okay because that is what infertility has given me--the knowledge that I have this bright inner strength and can actually be happy--and even more than that, that the thing that almost killed me emotionally is what led me to research adoption and brought me the most beautiful child ever. So I guess I have a different viewpoint on things now--although I am by no means this zen creature hanging out meditating and just cruising through life with a great big smile plastered to my face I have also figured out that sometimes the hardest stuff we go through can also lead to the greatest joys in life, if we let them.

Now that the pregnancy is a bit farther along and I am past the biggest risks, I am just feeling so incredibly blessed. I'm not a religious person and I don't really believe that things happen for a reason but part of me does wonder why I got pregnant now. Was it something in my emotional makeup that changed? Was it just the law of averages? I mean I was told by a top RE that it would be very difficult to get pregnant on my own, and that was three years ago. There weren't many months in the six years it took to get pregnant that we didn't take advantage of things. I did have a ton of stress the week we conceived, but it was a very different kind of stress than the kind we had trying to conceive. I don't know what to think anymore. I have become that cliche (the woman who adopts and then gets pregnant) but it's more than that--I can't figure out how it happened and there is a big part of me that wants to say it's because I'm just so much happier. That for me, happiness changes things biologically. Who knows?

Lots of people are bringing up the fact that I adopted, and that getting pregnant happens "all the time." This just isn't true. Studies show it happens only 3-8% of the time, and that it's more on the 3% side. That's 3 out of 100 women. And yet so many of us know someone who has adopted and then gotten pregnant. (Although I know a ton of people who adopted and are not pregnant.)

Anyway, I guess I am entering the "happy cow" phase that my mom told me about--not much is getting to me these days (except for MP here and there--who is still sick and really, really in a crazy tantrumy place right now). I'm painfully aware that while I've "earned" talking about pregnancy on and on and on it's not a terribly exciting subject and so far my experience has been (thankfully) as normal as you can get.

So now to the part that has taken over two weeks to get to: I'm going to be 12 weeks tomorrow and my nuchal screening for birth defects and dating/ fetal health/ fetal growth is on Friday morning at 8 am. I will post after that, hopefully with good news. I haven't heard or seen the baby since 9w1d, so I suppose anything could have happened since then, but I am cautiously optimistic. I will still be considered high risk, though, as I had a LEEP surgery in my twenties which could result in an incompetent cervix, and since I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis. But it will be a significant hurdle to get over. And I'm so, so excited (and anxious and nervous) to see something other than a small sedentary blob. Twelve week ultrasounds look pretty much like pictures of blurry babies. So that's where we are: present day, 11w6d, nothing bad has happened yet, everything depends right now on Friday.

Enough of that...here's a funny MP story to end a somewhat long winded, cerebral essay that I hope didn't put you to sleep:

Last night, changing MP's diaper...

we smell something icky.

Random: MP, did you fart?

MP: (Looks at da) No. (Completely nonplussed and deadpan.) Mama farted.

That's my kid--she's already figured out the meaning of life. Blame the fart on someone else!   

MP and Rocky

At some point I decided I would tell MP that she was going to be a big sister. So I asked her whether she'd like a brother or a sister. She said "brover."

(This changes hourly, by the way.)

Then as she tried to shove soggy Cheerios into my mouth, I told her I was sick. "Why sick Mama?" she asked. "The baby is making mama sick," I blurted out.

MP looked quizzical. "MP baby!" she said, pointing at her chest. Like, DUH!

"Yes, I know," I told her. And then I pointed at my mini-belly and said, "There's a little baby in there too." HA! Who the hell you foolin' woman?!?!?!?!? (Even now I mostly doubt there is actually anything growing in there besides the two tuna fish sandwiches I had as a snack, yep, a snack after my other snack after the other snack I had after lunch. If you're counting that's three snacks between lunch and dinner.)

MP looked at my belly, horrified, and then up again. "NOoooooooooo!" she squealed. "MP baby!"

I think she thought I might have eaten a baby. (And yes, I am still throwing up quite frequently but find myself occasionally freakishly starving. So it's quite possible that MP figured given the rate I'm shoveling down food it could very well be that I have eaten a baby.)

"No, MP," I tried to explain. "You are Mama's baby, and then in here is another baby. Two babies!"

She didn't buy it and she didn't like it.

We've decided to refrain from talking about any baby other than MP for a while. She still climbs into my lap and lies in my arms, demanding to be "Mama's baby," handing me her sippy cup and saying "Mama give baby MP bottle." So I guess we'll wait until it's more obvious to everyone that this will actually happen.

***********

In other news, MP used the potty for pee pee today ON HER OWN for the FIRST TIME. She requested it. I almost fell over from sheer joy. And her new favorite thing to say is "I farted," which, unfortunately, she says a lot (correctly, I am loathe to add).

She is still hackingly sick with a terrible diaper rash that miraculously appeared after being in a nasty diaper for all of two minutes, so every other word out of her mouth is "itchy." If you tell her to stop saying it, you know she's itchy, she'll stick out her bottom lip as far as it will go and make mewly noises. And then tell you forty more times that she's itchy. But! The diaper rash led to the potty using! So one good thing came from the itchy. Hurrah!

Yesterday after her bath she got really, really upset. We put a fake tattoo on her leg (a dog) and she's been very excited about it, showing everyone, comparing it to our real ones. While in the bath she noticed that the tattoo was fading. She pointed at it, obviously distressed.

"Mama!" she said. "Look! Boo-boo there!" She was referring to the faded bits.

"I know, sweetpea," I said. "It's natural, it happens like that. After a while it goes away. It's okay, though. It doesn't hurt."

"Boo boo there!!!" She started to cry and although I kissed the tattoo it didn't help--it didn't bring back the bits of the dog that were gone. When we got into her room and started our powdering and creaming routine she was still a mess, crying over and over that her tattoo was hurt. I kept reassuring her and kissing it.

The weirdest thing was that the whole time I felt like the tattoo was this metaphor for death or something like that. Everything I said to soothe her seemed to fit for that and I couldn't help but wonder whether this was, in a convoluted way, a kind of death for a young toddler, one they could understand. A fading dog tattoo--something she loved, accepted as a part of her, slowly leaving her.

Anyway. That's my contemplative moment. Next up: Ten-Eleven weeks. We're getting close to the present..... 

Maternity Wear Bites My Big Bumcake

At nine weeks two days I decided to go to Babystyle and get me some stylin' clothes. I am a clothing whore--if there is one thing I spend lots and lots of money on, it is clothes. For both me and MP (as many of you know from my previous bloggy photos). I am so bad that I will buy stuff and then hide it in the car or the back of my closet and wait to wear it a few weeks (or wait to let Random see it) so that when he asks "is that new?" I can say "No! You just haven't seen it before." And I round everything way down. So a $100 pair of pants becomes, oh, $80.

I am also terrible at saving money on clothes. I have a hard physique to fit--I'm very tall with a 34 inch inseam and a large chest, so I have to be careful about what I buy and wear since it's very easy for me to either resemble A) a pro wrestler B) a milkmaid or C) a big ho. I can't shop for pants in most regular places because the talls don't even fit me. Most of my pants are ordered online or bought in boutiques or large department stores. I suck at finding bargains, and I can't ever seem to find anything on the sales racks, so I usually don't even look. And I hate buying things that aren't good quality, because I find they fall apart or itch or look cheap on me. So I end up spending waaaaaay too much money on clothes. My favorite stores are Anthropologie, Nordstrom's Savvy department (although I might have bought about two things from there in my life because they are even too expensive for me) and Banana Republic.

This is painful to admit, but jeans are probably one of my downfalls. I have about fifteen pairs and most of them range in price from $125--$175. They're all different sizes since in the past three years I have weighed in a range of +/- 30 pounds. The expensive jeans seem to be the only ones that fit my butt and are long enough. I've tried Gap long, but they look weird on me.

The last thing that plagues my clothing obsession: I am really, really picky. I like stuff with special details. I like the outfits they put together on What Not To Wear (my favorite show next to Project Runway, of course). I like plain, classic clothes on other people, but I like to have a slightly funky thing going on with every outfit.   

When I was going through the worst of the IF and desperately, desperately wanted a baby, one of the things I salivated over was the possibility of maternity wear. I'd get Babystyle catalogs and literally weep at how adorable the baby bumps sported by the models were, and how hot they managed to look in their little doll tops. I couldn't wait for my baby bump.

Then baby doll tops came in fashion for everyone, not just pregnant ladies, and I bought every cute one I could find. I figured that they would serve me well: I could wear them not pregnant and pregnant. Then IF hit bigtime, and then I got over it, and yet I still found myself gravitating towards empire waisted dresses and tops, mainly because they felt more feminine and required less gut suck-in.

So when I discovered I was pregnant, one of the first things I got all dewy-eyed over was the prospect of maternity wear. After all--in the past few years, pregnancy has recruited a lot of hot celeb mamas, and I figured clothing would reflect that. When I started bloating up at around six and a half weeks I realized pretty quickly that most of my pants weren't going to fit. I had gained a bit of weight over the summer (I like to blame it on anxiety--we were trying to buy and sell houses)--and the bulk of my pants were already getting a bit snuggy. I could barely button most of them. I was reduced to wearing the same two pairs over and over and alternating them with a few dresses I had. This dearth of clothing was pretty hard for me to deal with. I started getting itchy at night thinking about how I would need to pick out something to wear in the morning, and fell asleep picturing the contents of my closet, which suddenly seemed pretty meager. I wasn't ready for people to know I was pregnant, but at the same time if I wore my  normal stuff (even many of my tops), I would look either chubbers or pregnant.

So the trip to Babystyle was not only much anticipated but much needed. I was so excited to finally be able to shop there after mooning over some of the stuff years before. Once there, I immediately made a beeline for the jeans (of course) and pulled a couple out. I checked out the shirts (realizing I was still way too small for most of them) and then grabbed some pants, which is mostly what I needed.

In the dressing room I pulled the jeans over my small belly and gasped at how comfy they were. Why hasn't some designer figured out that a belly band is a great thing to wear at all times? How was I ever supposed to go back to wearing anything with a button again? Pshaw. I pranced around, admiring my chicness. This was going to be eeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzy.

The pants were way too short. They might as well have been clamdiggers.

I went out of the dressing room and over to the helpful salespeople, who were gossiping behind the counter.

"Excuse me," I said to the women. "I need help."

They looked at me and smiled. I suddenly felt slightly insane. What was I doing here? The (infertile) freak at nine weeks shopping for maternity clothes. HA! What fate did I think I was tempting?? Better make sure they had a good return policy.

"Sure!" one said, eyeballing me.

"Do you have any pants that are long? For tall women?" I asked.

"No," she explained. "Only short women come in here."

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Usually only short women get pregnant," she said. I KID YOU NOT. This is what she said to me. Usually only short women get pregnant. (Egads! Call Cornell! She has figured out what eluded my RE! My height was the answer to my infertility the entire time!)

"What?" I asked again, completely flabbergasted. "Tall women don't get pregnant?"

"Most women are short," she said. "The women who come in here are short. They all complain about how long the pants are here."

"Ahhhh," I said. As if I understood. Yes, of course, how stupid of me. Tall women wouldn't be having sex or getting pregnant, of course. Those models you use in your magazines and who are currently smiling at me from various promo materials, they are most likely all short. Or faking it by slouching. "Well," I told the saleslady, "I'm tall and I'm pregnant. So do you know where I might be able to buy pants for tall pregnant women?"

"Destination Maternity might have some," she told me. I had no idea what she was talking about. Destination maternity? Never heard of it.

I bought the jeans because they were strangely made for tall pregnant circus-freak women (obviously the jean-makers know we're out there). Then I went to Destination Maternity, which was not in the mall but was a whole frightening super-store dedicated to everything pregnant. (I couldn't even peek in the window of this place four years ago without going into convulsions.) The sales people jumped on me the second I walked in the door. Quickly, I learned from the sales lady who ended up harrassing helping me:

• High end stuff was in the front and was from A Pea in the Pod.
• Mid price stuff was in the middle and was from Mimi Maternity.
• Cheaper clothes were in the back and were from Motherhood Maternity.

Of course the only pants that went past a 30-inch inseam were in the front of the store, where the average pant was about $175. Of course. Because at this point I was happily willing to try out the back of the store--I just needed some damn pants.

Things I additionally learned on this trip:

• When you are pregnant sales people don't bother "knocking" or letting you know they are about to barge in on you. This means you can be starky naked and suddenly the curtain is whisked aside and your sales lady is standing there carrying on a conversation with you as you are struggling to not fall over and wrestle the pant leg over your boots at the same time and the entire time your wobbly belly and big fat butt are jouncing all over the place.
• Maternity sleep bras are the ugliest unsexiest damn things I have ever seen. I bought two. I was horrified to discover that they were size XXL upon arriving home, which is THE HIGHEST THEY GO UP TO. I do not correspond to the size that XXL suggests you are but somehow they fit regardless.
• There is a big difference in quality between mid priced maternity clothing and mid priced non-maternity clothing.
• You can actually buy $75 dollar stretch mark cream.

After leaving slightly discouraged at the fact that I might be relegated to wearing skirts and dresses for the entire pregnancy given the fact that everything I liked was so freaking expensive, I decided to try out Old Navy and The Gap for maternity wear. I'd heard on message boards that they were pretty good and well-priced.

What I discovered at these two stores:

• Old Navy seems to specialize in huge stretched out sweaters that appear to have already been worn by several pregnant women at once.
• Their pants come to my shins.
• The Gap has some stuff, but everything seems to be very basic and boring and the selection is tiny.
• The Gap's long pants (I found one pair) came to my ankles.
• Buying bigger sizes in normal stuff doesn't work, because while it might fit in the belly it looks ridiculous everywhere else. 
• Even the Gap is somewhat pricey. I spent eighty dollars on a jean skirt and a long sleeved t-shirt. While I don't mind this as I will wear it a lot it still seems like a lot for such plain stuff. 

So. All that time I spent fantasizing about how I could dress up my adorable "baby bump" bloat bump was mostly for naught--because unless I want to take out a loan, I am going to be wearing the same stuff over and over again. And chances are it will be boring. I will not be a cute stylish pregnant mom, it would appear. Why hasn't Banana Republic or J.Crew figured out that having maternity lines would be smart? Why is most stuff either horrible or way too expensive for the fact that you are only wearing it for 9 months?

To soothe my poor shoppy soul I bought me some Ugly Uggs. I both hate and love these things, but once they're on my feet I don't take them off. I have been known to sleep in them. I will be buried in one pointy-toed shoe and one Ugg.

***************************

If you have any ideas for clothes let me know. Next up: MP's reaction to hearing that she could possibly be a big sister. And: Yes, I Am Still Ms. Hurley, Thanks For Asking. And then (later!): Guess How Far Along I Am!

 

7-9 Weeks

In my rush to get to the weird story of my maternity store trips i forgot about the stuff that happened in between.

Week Seven: More puking.

Week Eight: I order a Hi-bebe doppler, a handy dandy device that allows you to listen to the baby's heartbeat. I use it at 8.5 weeks and find my own frantic heartbeat, which ranges (according to Hi-bebe) from 53 to 146 to 223. I am either having a heart attack or becoming an amphibian. Oh, and more puking.

Week Nine: My second OB appointment with my new OB. We see Rocky briefly, a blurry blob, on an abdominal scan and hear a perfect heartbeat. I leave with the odd feeling that this could end up being a normal pregnancy, which completely befuddles me. The one question I keep asking is how in the hell did this happen? The puking hasn't stopped, but my OB assures me it will soon. We schedule my Nuchal screening U/S for 12 weeks 1 day. Hi-bebe still says my heart is about to explode.

Around nine weeks I realize that I basically fit in three pairs of pants, and one of them is a pair of sweatpants. NOTHING fits, and although I know it's probably mostly bloat I also have a lot of RLP, which is short hand for "round ligament pain" (how the hell do I know this?) and don't want much touching my belly area at all. So despite the fact that a trip to the maternity store at nine weeks and some isn't what most people do, I decide to splurge and take the nine week heartbeat as a good sign, planning a trip to Babystyle the next day.

And that's where I discovered a few important and startling issues about maternity wear. That may actually provide the clue as to why I was infertile for so long.

*****************************

Sorry I haven't been on--MP and I have been pretty sick and I've been creatively deprived. My funny bone is currently buried under four tons of phlegm and I can't think much past what to eat next. And I'm also aware that this blog is currently focusing a lot on pregnancy, and I expect that that will taper off as I get up to the present day. So if reading about maternity clothes isn't your thing, I totally get it. It's a bit weird to be writing a blog I wouldn't have been able to read four years ago.