Category Archives: Pregnancy

The Big Day That Wasn’t

Posted on January 15, 2012 | 10 comments

I feel like a little girl that woke up Christmas morning to a bare tree. No presents. No ornaments. Just a tree. Taunting me.

Intellectually I understand that a “due date” is an estimate, a guess. But I was not prepared to see this day arrive without a baby in my arms. Em was three days early. “Get ready! Second babies come early,” said so many well meaning people. And here I am. Without my baby.

Intellectually I know that “Babies come when they are ready” and yet there is a little girl inside me that feels like maybe I missed my window. Maybe s/he isn’t coming. And here come the tears that I have held inside for the most part all day.

This whole pregnancy has been different. Not finding out the gender of the baby has meant that I have lived in this moment, in this pregnancy, instead of wishing it away for the baby girl that would be in my arms, as I did with Emily. It hasn’t been until the last few days that I have even really imagined it…. The baby. Our baby. And as the days passed I felt more and more ready.

And then ready turned in to an almost feverish desire.

Last night I dreamt that the doorbell rang and I opened the door and there s/he was. In a little outfit. With a little hat and a little suit case and a little smile. And I opened the door and Baby D walked in on tiny bowed newborn legs. And they were home.

And then I woke the rest of the way up and my baby was gone. Our baby was gone.

In the last few years things have changed for me. I have remarked more than a few times that it feels like someone else’s life or that my luck has turned around. I found the boy that became the man that gave me a fairy tale wedding and a home… And a baby. And that baby was going to come on time. Because that is just how this new life works. I act stunned and revel in my good fortune… But somehow in the last few years it has happened.

I guess I expect things to go my way.

But what if this is the end of that road? I have said to every midwife, every practitioner I have seen this pregnancy that this is my Labor & Delivery Do-Over. It is supposed to be my all empowering natural birth, the one that heals me. And now I have this ridiculous seed of doubt. Because of the date. January 15th. Every time it pops up on another device, my phone, my iPad, my computer “Due Date” I think … Right. Sure. If this baby even wants me anymore.

And I go back in my room and I bounce on my birth ball and I watch more Sex and the City reruns and I cry like a teenage girl. And I look at my swollen feet and my hand without an engagement ring because just this week it has gotten too small. And I whisper between the sobs “Come out, baby… C’mon out baby, please…”

And I pull it back together. And tomorrow I suspect I will go to work and make jokes about how I might be pregnant forever. But today…. Today I am not weepy because I fear I will be pregnant forever. But because I am afraid that Baby D will never come back. I saw him/her this morning. I saw my baby and I didn’t put my arms around them fast enough, or smell his/her head. Or let their fingers curl around mine….

And as absurd as it is… Now it feels like I will never get the chance. Because today is January 15th.

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Posted in Bad Mood, Family, Parenting, Pregnancy

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Vaginal Rhymes

Posted on January 14, 2012 | 1 comment

Something about being with MQD at the midwives’ office makes us both giggle like teenagers.  We sit down and try to have have this sort of “Look at us, we’re grown ups” kind of conversation while we wait but it never lasts.  Within minutes we are examining the pictures on the walls and giggling.  In the exam room the other day there was a quilt on the wall.  It showed a woman’s reproductive system at various times through a pregnancy.

I pointed out to him my favorite square on the quilt.  “I’ve always thought that square looks kind of like a monster…  oooohhh….. don’t be frightened by my falllllooooopiaaaannnn tuuuubes….”

If you are lucky in love there are moments when everything else fades away just like the movies and you have tunnel vision on your beloved…  All you see is this person whom you adore and there is nowhere you’d rather be.

That’s what happened moments after MQD said. “No.  Not a monster.  It looks like a rapper…. counting down the centimeters you are dilated.  ONE centimeter… TWO centimeters… ” and he slid his hand back and forth, making the “wikkee-wikkee” international sign for record scratching.

Sigh… that, friends, is how you know someone is “the one.”

 

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Posted in Nonsense, Pregnancy

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January 13th

Posted on January 12, 2012 | 7 comments

January 13th is a Friday this year, as I am sure you are well aware.  For some this is a day filled with superstition.  Friday or not, I can’t help but grin from ear to ear on January 13th each year.

In January of 2005 babies were the furthest thing from my mind.  In fact I spent the better part of at least three or four nights a week with two older gentleman.  One had been around at least a couple hundred years the other was in his early 80s.  Jim Beam.  And Ralph.  I was tending bar in the evenings and working at The Outer Banks Hospital in the dietary office during the day.  Ralph was my favorite customer both places.  Jim Beam was his drink of choice.  My days were fulfilling and my nights were long and hazy but I had youth on my side and managed to pull it off.

I hadn’t been trying to get pregnant… but I wasn’t doing anything to prevent it.  I’d been married for several  years and I was 29 years old.  It would happen when it was time.

On January 13th I woke up a little before five am, as was my norm.  And I peed on a stick.  Not a usual occurrence.  Positive.  I woke up Jeremy, he said not to tell anyone.  That we needed to be sure.  We’d wait a little while, we’d test again.

And I went to to work.

It was shortly after 9 am when I caved.  I burst in to my boss’ office, closed the door and told my secret.  Even though it wasn’t totally necessary to do so I had the luxury of a blood test at my disposal and by 10:30 that morning I had called my husband and my parents and spilled the beans.  I was pregnant.

January 13th.  I don’t think I will have a baby with a birthday on January 13th.  But that’s okay. Because I became a mother on January 13th, 2005.  And I never looked back.

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Curfew

Posted on January 12, 2012 | 10 comments

They say that babies respond best to high contrasting colors.  Hence the influx of black and white graphic images on baby toys these days.

So, I am sending out a postcard to Baby D. 

Listen up, Baby D.  If you think you are gonna stroll in this house one minute past January 15th and have everyone say “Ohh, so cute, look at the babyyy!!” you have another thing coming.  January.  15th.  Not the 16th.  Not the 17th.  Not “on my way, but running late…”  January.  15th.  We had a deal. 

Actually, call if you’re gonna be early.  I might be taking a walk.  Or trying to have sex.  Or stimulating my nipples or some other labor-inducing nonsense and that would just be weird for everyone. 

Now.  Do what you need to do. Have fun.  Be home on Sunday.  Got it?

Love, Mom

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When M&Ms won’t cut it….

Posted on January 11, 2012 | 9 comments

If you read pregnancy blogs or books (or even an Iphone app I have been using) you know that everyone suggests that the expecting mom and her partner make sure to take time for themselves before the birth of their baby.  They suggest a “second trimester get-away.”  After the sleepiness of the first trimester and before the third trimester uncomfortable-ness sets in, I guess,  the happy couple is supposed to head off to a bed and breakfast and bask in the joy of their impending bundle.  I can’t really wrap my mind around that.

 To me, that translates in to an overpriced weekend away in a time when Baby Budgeting is all consuming.  A weekend away where I can’t have a glass of wine, I may or may not get what I want to eat and I might fall asleep before I even remember to get laid.  No, thanks.

MQD and I have mini-dates all of the time instead.  They tend to last about an hour and take place while Em is either in bed for the night or having dinner across the street.  And tonight we had a sneak attack date.  My favorite kind.  Em had an invite for dinner so MQD and I did what any two red blooded newlyweds would do.

We went to the grocery store.  First we smooched in the kitchen and made some inappropriate jokes at our pets, and then I invited him to tag along with me while I ran out for a frozen pizza.    Can you have a better time?

Yeah.  You can.  At 39 weeks pregnant M&Ms will do the trick.  But at 39.5 weeks… you need Pizza. And Turtle Pie.  And Nachos.  And Oreos.

Last Hurrah

As we walked towards the check out we were giggling like a couple of freewheeling twentysomethings without a care in the world.  MQD looks around, evidently failing to take note of my pregnancy waddle and says “Do we look high?”

I burst in to giggles.  We unloaded our “groceries” and examined our bounty, as if one item would jump off the conveyor belt and answer the question he had posed.

“It’s not the food, Mike… it’s your slippers.”

Best Date Ever

 I couldn’t have asked for a better time.  Pizza, nachos, oreos, pie and giggles.  It’s not lost on me that at 39.5 weeks pregnant the Best Date Ever has all the ingredients of a 12 year old’s slumber party.

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Love & Marriage

Posted on January 10, 2012 | 11 comments

Love and marriage… go together like assorted maxi pads and M&Ms?  Somehow I don’t think that is what Frank Sinatra had in mind when he said “horse and carriage.”

But that about sums it up as far as I am concerned.

The other night I stood in the hallway between our bedroom and our living room.  Our beautiful new king sized bed in our lovely bedroom called my name.  But my husband, sitting on our new couch in our new living room… he looked pretty cute, too.  We are still newlyweds, afterall.  The siren’s call of our bed won me over so I inquired “Will you come and sit with me for a minute?   I’ll be asleep in five minutes.”

He rose from the couch and went to get me a glass of water.  Grabbed my Tums off the kitchen counter as he returned, placing them both next to my side of the bed.  He climbed in to bed next to me and began to laugh.  “You know we have only been married for nine months?”

Without even thinking how it might be received I blurted out “It seems like SO much longer than that.”

He smiled and said “Well, I am glad you feel that way, too…”

It has been a whirlwind of a year.  Last winter we were finalizing wedding plans.  And a year later we are in our new house, married, our daughter climbing on to the school bus at the base of our driveway every morning, waiting on the birth of our baby.

If your life has to resemble a Talking Heads song better “Once in a Lifetime”  (And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife and you may ask yourself— Well…How did I get here?) than “Life During Wartime” (This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, This ain’t no fooling around, No time for dancing or lovey dovey, I ain’t got time for that now!!!)

So, what does this have to do with maxipads and M&Ms?

The other evening I tucked Em in to bed and snuck back downstairs.  In to the medicine cabinet in our bedroom I went.

There was a time in my life when the master bedroom medicine cabinet was a treasure trove of good times.  Need to sleep?  Wake up?  Get happy?  Chill out? Get psyched?  I gotcha.

And now this.  I paused as I opened the door and snapped the picture above.  And then I listened for little feet before I snagged the bag of M&Ms that MQD had hidden for me.  Had to make sure that no one would bust me ripping the bag open.  There in my medicine cabinet is everything I need to feel great. Big maxi pads, small maxipads, lanolin for sore nipples, breast pads for leaky boobs, my favorite face soap… and a bag of peanut  M&Ms.

It’s no secret I am not exactly feeling great lately.  I am DONE being pregnant.  Finished.  Ready to trade the low throbbing all day pelvic bone pain for the pains of labor. Ready to hold this baby in my arms, instead of between my thighs (or at least that is how it feels, so help me every time I get up I feel like a baby is sure to fall out and hit the floor, if only it were that easy.)

But this morning… this morning I felt great.  Super.  Awesome.  Like today is gonna be cool. It might even be okay if I stay pregnant through the next TWO or even THREE days… because the M&Ms… they are multiplying. I don’t think it is magic. I think it is Love & Marriage.

 

Love & Marriage

I love you, MQD.  It has been one hell of a ride, these last nine months.  We laughed when we started looking at real estate that we were out of minds to get married,  have a baby and buy a house all in one year.  But give us a few more days… and we’ll have made it.  Relatively unscathed.  I know I am no picnic.  And I know it might have felt more like Wartime than Once in a Lifetime at times… but the best days are still ahead of us, sweetheart.  Hang in there, we got this.  And keep stocking the medicine cabinet. xxoo

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Elephantitis of the Ankles

Posted on January 8, 2012 | 3 comments

“My feet look like elephant feet.”

As I struggled to get out of the car I dropped something.  For the 800th time today.  “I’m a mess,” I mumble to no one in particular.

From the back seat Em chimes in “And you can’t stop saying shit.”

Without missing a beat MQD says “You’re already Mother of the Year, only eight days in.”

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All Through the Night

Posted on January 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

Eventually I had to leave the late 1970s behind.  As inspirational as they may be.

This morning’s revelation is brought to you by 1984.  Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s  So Unusual” was crucial to my development.  Of course “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” was a big hit, but it was “Time After Time” that really touched me as a kid.  Even as an eight year old I liked to sit in my room occasionally and wax poetic.  Throwing myself to the ground passionately as I sang along “If you fall I will catch you…”

But not until I had Emily did “All Through the Night” go through my head over and over again.  Night after night, dare I say it, time after time.

All through the night
I’ll be awake and I’ll be with you
All through the night
This precious time when time is new …

The last few nights have been sleepless reminders of her newborn days.  The tossing and turning of pregnancy is tolerable.  There are moments, sometimes hours of deep sleep, peppered with trips to the bathroom and uncomfortable rolling over and rearranging of pillows.  But there is sleep.  These last few nights, however, have been long trials.  Preparation so my body can remember it’s amazing ability to function on “rest.”

Last night I encouraged MQD to go ahead and head out to see our friends.  His Saturday night outings may be few and far between in the coming months.  I climbed in to bed alone and could feel the impending discomfort of another sleepless night. The thought crossed my mind that I won’t probably sleep all through the night until I had a baby in my arms.  And then I had to laugh. Because surely I will not sleep then, either.

But last night.  Last night I slept.  With my baby in my arms.  All through the night.   I had to wake her.  And hold her hand as she stumbled down the stairs.    She climbed up in my bed and was asleep almost instantly.  But not before she said “I love you, Mommy.”

And I love you, baby girl.  Thank you for the good night’s sleep.

Always.  You will always be my baby girl.

 

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Welcome Back…

Posted on January 6, 2012 | 4 comments

A recent trend on facebook has people looking up the #1 song on the American  Billboard the week of their birth.  1976 was a great year for popular music.  Earth, Wind & Fire, Queen, Parliament, Paul McCartney, The BeeGees, The Who, Thin Lizzy, Neil Sedaka.  There was something for everyone.

So, I googled and waited patiently.  Expecting to find a long forgotten hit song or maybe an old favorite, a KC & The Sunshine Band song if I was lucky.  I have laughed along with many of my friends as they have posted the song from their birthday week, some of which have been more foretelling than their parents might have guessed at the time.

And what did I find?  John Sebastian’s Welcome Back.   Yup.  A TV theme song.  At first I wasn’t thrilled that it was a song to celebrate the return of Gabe Kotter to the classroom that heralded my birth.  (Although a soft spot for Vinnie Barbarino and the rest of the Sweathogs surely exists in me.) But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s perfect.

And even more perfect that I listened to this song last night.

Because I am ready to welcome someone back to my life.  I don’t buy in to all the spiritual new age woo that you might think.  But that which I do believe, I believe with my whole heart.   And if there is one thing that I know it is that your children, they are and have always been yours.

Genetically speaking, of course, they could belong to no one else, but I think the parental bond goes beyond genetics.  Even more than I believe MQD and I were meant to be together (and I do think that forces stronger than my desire to have a perfect blind date brought  him to me) I believe that he and Emily knew one another before this life.  I look at the way she looks at him, and the way that he loves her with all of his being and I see it.

The moment Emily was born, the first time I looked at her it didn’t feel like we just met.  I had known her all my life.  Just as she had been waiting for me, for the right time. To come back.

Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out.
Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.
Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they’re turned around.
Who’d have thought they’d lead ya…
Here where we need ya…

Well, I did.  I knew they’d lead her to me.  Just as I know that Baby D is right on time.

This morning I woke from a dream a little startled.  In the last 36 hours Baby D has dropped and I can breathe.  And I can sleep.  And apparently I can roll over a tiny bit more to one side than I could before because when I woke, pillow between my knees like a good pregnant sleeper I was just slightly more turned towards my stomach than I have been in recent weeks.   And for a moment instead of worrying that I was no longer pregnant I thought “Where’s the Baby?”

It happened.  Baby D became a baby instead of a pregnancy.  The other day it was KC’s cheesy ballad “Yes, I’m Ready” that made me think I was finally prepared.  And this morning, it was ABC’s Welcome Back, Kotter that made me know it’s almost time.  Just in case there was any doubt I am truly a product of late 1970’s pop culture.

So, c’mon, Baby D…. your dreams and mine, that’s your ticket out.  We’re here.  Waiting to welcome you back.

 

 

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Pregnancy Brain

Posted on January 3, 2012 | 12 comments

This morning I snapped a picture of the bag I packed last night. Packing the bag to take to the birth center has me a little flipped out.  I am not a girl that prepares for things ahead of time typically. And I most certainly do not pack in advance.  I like to start packing at 11:30 pm, somewhere around the middle of the second bottle of wine, for a longer trip.   Or while everyone is getting in the car I like to rush around and throw some things in a bag as I race out the door for  a long weekend.

So once I get packed, it means it is time to go. Or at least that is how my brain works.

So, as I prepared to leave the house this morning I made sure to take a picture.  Because I could have the baby any second.  I could  go in to labor.  Today.  Because I am packed.  Which means it is time to go.

And I thought about that as I made coffee.  As I put my lunch in my lunch bag. As I started the dishwasher.  As I locked the side door and said “Hop in the car, Fish.”

And I started to kinda mentally map out a little blog post about how the bag in our bedroom was giving me the creeps.

And maybe that was what I was thinking when I started to back straight down my driveway.  In to a ditch.

Straight down my not exactly straight driveway.  In to a ditch.  And a tree.

I sat there for a moment.  Stunned.  And then I started to laugh. Well, that’s some Pregnancy Brain right there.  Is there really any need to debate whether or not it is a real thing?  I can’t even back out of my own damn driveway? This was certainly better blog fodder than a picture of a black Eddie Bauer gym bag.

I was calm and cool until  while on the phone with MQD a woman stopped and looked at me, with pity, and asked me if I was okay.

And then I fell apart.  And I cried and told MQD I didn’t know what I was going to do.  That it was cold outside!!!  He calmly told me to go inside . Our house. Since I was in the driveway.  And call AAA.

Of course, AAA. I forget about AAA.  Because I do not prepare for things.  Like minor car troubles.  Or needing a tow.  Or going in to labor.  But I guess I do now.  Because I have a bag packed.  And a picture of our AAA card saved on my phone.  Texted to me by my patient husband.  As I tried to figure out how I was going to stay warm.  While standing in my driveway.  Staring at my car.

The chances are pretty good I won’t put my car in a ditch any time soon.  Since I have the number for AAA in my phone now. So, I wait.  And try not to think about the fact that since I have a bag packed…. I might never have this damn baby.

 

 

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