Showered

Trigger warning for all you strong, beautiful one's that can't stomach another damn pregnant lady baby post.  Time to look away. I love you.







Well, well, well.   Guess who got showered with love and baby gifts this past weekend.  Put another tally in the "things I never thought would happen" column.  That column is getting quite full and if I think about it for too long I get overwhelmed with gratitude and cry like an idiot.

Saturday Shower - oh, folks, it was perfect...almost too good to be true.  The decor was literally picturesque, worthy of gracing the pages of Martha Stewart Living.  There were tons of flowers adorning a long, rectangular table upon which sprang up pops of gentle color in greenish blues, pinks, and wines. The refreshment table was decorated in white linen and displayed the classiest (and tastiest) array of tea sandwiches, fruity desserts, cheese, and crackers.  A floral smell permeated everything and, courtesy of some neighbor perhaps, mixed with the faintest smell of burning wood so that I would have paid serious money to have the scent in candle form.
      Better still, however, was the company.  I don't know how I got so lucky to be surrounded by such a mix of gentle, creative, hilarious, heart-on-their-sleeves souls but I'm very glad it's happened.  They mingled, ate, laughed, and probably fell into an awkward silence a time or two.  They sat around in a huge circle and watched me open baby gifts, seeming not to mind that I'm terrible at thank you's and being the center of attention.    I think I said very little during this time - a mixture of exhaustion and gratitude - willing myself to not cry in thankfulness.   I can't wait for my daughter to meet and know these women that have prayed for her existence even when it seemed fruitless, that love her now even before they have seen her.      

Sunday Shower - this one was nearly the exact opposite of the shower the day before.  Where Saturday's shower was gentle, quiet, and elegant, this one was boisterous and classic.  Everything was pink - from the booties on the cake to the sherbet punch.  A huge balloon in the shape of a bird, surrounded by a bouquet of smaller pink balloons, declared "IT'S A GIRL".  Split between two connecting rooms, there were 3 tables packed with chairs and still people had to stand for lack of space when it was time to eat.  The food was simple but wonderful - a mix of veggies, fruit, chips, and cold-cut meat sandwiches that hit the spot.
      My mom hosted and it was filled with her friends (all of whom I knew, of course) and more of my family.  I hadn't seen any of the women in years upon years, save for my grandmother and step-mother-in-law.  K's mom was there and she stuck by my side the entire time, sitting next to me no matter which room I ended up in (side note: except for a brief meeting in May at K's graduation we hadn't seen her since our wedding nearly 7 years ago). Aside from my mom, I've never seen a woman so excited to become a grandma and I'm glad she wants and is getting to share in these moments with us.
     Shower games were played, prizes were handed out, and I opened so many gifts I actually got sweaty and had to take a break.  At the end, everyone gathered around me and prayed for my daughter, thanking the Lord for the miracle of life that they had all been trusting in Him for over the last 3 years. It was not lost on me that these women had stood with my mom many Sunday mornings, praying on my behalf, and now they were here celebrating that answer to their prayers.

There will never be enough thank-you cards in the world to properly express what this past weekend meant to me.  It would better serve to crack open my metaphorical heart and lay it out for everyone to see.   As that's not possible, the best and only word the English language offers for how I feel is simple, and as always...love.

Getting Paid

Starting November 2nd, I will officially be employed as a telehealth nurse.  I'm glad to be part of a career that offers so many diverse options.  I'm excited to get to continue to pursue my passion even from the confines of bedrest.  Mostly, I'm relieved to be able to ease the burden that is that loss of my previous salary.  

They sent me a packet to give me an idea of what a day looks like for a 'Nurse Advice Line' employee...and they made the hilarious and unfortunate decision to make the headline in all caps while also abbreviating things:

A NAL OVERVIEW.


Oh. Um. Well, we need the money.




Seriously, though, I'm so pleased to have this new position and I'm looking forward to expanding my scope of practice by learning a new facet to caring for my community.  By the time it's all said and done, I'll be licensed in each of the 50 states and able to help patients on a national level!  That prospect is extremely appealing to me and I'm beyond blessed to get the opportunity to use my skills to the benefit of such a large group.

There is one small catch which remains entirely out of my control. The training is 6 weeks long and requires 100% attendance or will result in loss of the position.  That puts me training almost right up to my daughter's due date. Only time will tell how that turns out.  Here's to the unknown future. Cheers.

Permission Granted

A sweet friend told me last night that she thinks bedrest is sending me into a deep 'down' place and that I should talk to my OB about possible depression.  It means a lot to me that she was willing to speak up and tell me that what I'm feeling and saying doesn't altogether seem like normal pregnancy, hormonal emotions.  I admit that I've been feeling increasingly unlike the healthy self that I was so proud of several months ago.

K told me last night that it was okay to be sad because we did just have an unexpected, burdensome upheaval.  He asked if I noticed myself feeling this way before the bedrest news. It's hard to say...my memory is so foggy.  Even still, I'm historically bad at coping with hardships (re: my life crisis over being infertile) and I know I'm not handling this well.  I'm mad at my body. I feel guilty that K got stuck with dumb ol' me without knowing how hard it would be to have a family with me.  It's nice to hear that it's okay to be sad, though. I get frustrated with myself for crying, which usually just makes it worse.

I cleaned our box fan today.  I started to get proud of myself for accomplishing that task and immediately gave myself a stern admonishment.  "All I did was clean a stupid fan", I told myself, "big deal. I've done nothing else lately". And I almost accepted that; except a spark of 'hold the fuck up' washed over me and I realized that just as much as it's okay to be sad, it's okay to be happy. I'm allowed to be proud of myself that I cleaned this fan.  It needed it and I did it.  I have a clean fan now because I took the time to unscrew some things and wipe them down.  It might be minute but it's something.

Maybe I can pull myself out of this funk. Maybe not.  Maybe I'm a normal amount of sad and anxious and frustrated. Maybe not. All I know is that I'm thankful for the three gifts of realizations that I got over the last 12 hours: it's okay to be happy, it's okay to be sad, it's okay to ask for help.  I already feel a little less overwhelmed.

Repose

I completed my first week of bedrest with so much grace and class that I should teach a workshop on it.  Psych.    I'm almost ashamed at how poorly I handled being confined to home-couch-bed.   I whined, I cried, I got angry and irritable.  At one point, K had to load me up and drive me down the highway to keep me from losing it (and probably to shut me up. I've been more than a little annoying, I have a feeling).

If an enemy ever wants to effectively torture me for information, they can skip right over the more gruesome ways and go straight to locking me in a room with nothing to do.  I'll tell you anything...just please let me out of here.

Honestly, I was a little convinced that all it would take was one week and my cervix would miraculously get with the program so much that I would be allowed to get off bedrest and return to work.  No such luck.  I'm down for the count.  The bright side is that my cervix is unchanged - nothing is worse...and not worse is good.  Also, isn't it sort of beautiful that sometimes 'not worse' is worth celebrating? Just me? Eh, I'm sentimental and more than a little emotional.

I've been a nurse for 5 years. I like to work hard and fast, draining myself in all possible ways in service of someone that needs my help.  I'm very good at what I do. I find fulfillment in it. I couldn't really imagine doing anything else. It's odd to find myself without it, especially so suddenly and without any choice.

Now there will be those of you that say, "oh enjoy it. I would love to spend hours watching a show/playing a game/reading a book/being required to accomplish nothing". To you I say, please shush.  Perhaps, maybe, there is a possibility that I would enjoy this except that we just lost 75% of our household income and it's literally all my fault.  I have just shouldered K with so much undeserved stress. I have put our family in financial jeopardy.  I feel very guilty about it and I have nothing but unlimited time to dwell on it.

K appears to be unperturbed (thank God - because I'm perturbing it up more than enough for the both of us).  He's taken on the extra responsibility of the household without so much as a single complaint. He's patiently tried to talk me down from my self-loathing shouldering of the blame.  He tells me that we just take it one day at a time, we'll figure it out, and that in the end it'll all be okay.  He reminds me that there is no fault here, that my body is good, that nothing is going wrong.  I've repaid his kindness and steadfast patience by crying a lot. Lucky guy.

Body of mine

A common problem you'll discover among the infertile crowd (and I'm most specifically talking about the infertile individual of the couple) is this feeling as though their body has failed.  It's a theme I've noticed over and over whilst reading about the emotional effects of infertility and in talking to a great many infertile women and men.  An infert will express disappointment in their body, going so far as to feel their body is less than, useless, and/or betraying them.

I never felt this so acutely as I saw others did.  I was aware that my body ovulated improperly.  I realized that my body was incapable of getting pregnant on it's own accord. I was frustrated that I couldn't find a quick, easy fix. I just never out and out blamed my body. I felt spared in that, lucky nearly, that I could remain somewhat rational about it - afterall, we take our small victories were we can get them when it comes to the losing game of being infertile and one of mine was that I didn't hate my body.

Still, when I discovered yoga I began to respect my body again.  Yoga starts with this lovely mindset that you don't focus on what you cannot do. Instead, the focus is purely in what you're capable of.  You can hold a pose for 2 seconds? WONDERFUL! LOOK AT WHAT YOUR STRONG AND LOVELY BODY IS DOING!!  And slowly, in celebrating each little thing I was capable of, I started being capable of more and more in the land of yoga.  Before long I was not only accepting of my body but very proud of it.  I felt powerful and incredibly feminine again - two things that infertility had definitely taken away from me.

I stopped being able to do yoga like I was used to by late March.  Infertility treatments really take a toll on my body by adding weight, increasing fatigue, and decreasing stamina.  Hyperemesis knocked me out of the game completely and by the time I found a way to cope with it, I had lost a lot of energy and muscle. Pregnancy led me to feeling overly fatigued and incredibly activity intolerant.  Still, I managed a few yoga sessions here and there.  Getting back into the mindset was nice - the refocus on beauty and capability.  I was reminded of how wonderful my body is.

And, I was very proud of the fact that, though my body couldn't get pregnant easily, it seemed to be doing a bang up job of staying pregnant this time around. I gave accolades to this little body of mine for that, incredibly thankful especially knowing that there are too many infertile women that cannot say the same. I felt I owed it to my body on the behalf of so many people and things to specifically celebrate it for that victory.

Yesterday it was discovered that my cervix is much too short and already funneling, an indicator of pre-term birth.  A decent measurement for a cervix at my stage of the game (27 weeks) would be at least 3 cm, 2.5 cm on the low end, with good being 4cm.  Mine is an unfortunate 1.97 cm. I was ushered into a room to discuss this with the OB, swabbed for a test called fFN (it's a test based on it's negative predictive value.  Mine was negative meaning it is 99% likely that I will NOT go into labor during the next 7-14 days), and then sent to the perinatologist for further evaluation.  He confirmed the findings and after a short stay in L&D, I was shot up with steroids and sent home on strict bedrest.

I had a hard time last night with being down on myself in a way I hadn't been in a while and mad at my body in a way I'd never been before.  It's a bit difficult for me knowing my body isn't doing the bang up job I had been celebrating. It's very difficult for me to be undeniably reminded of the fact that I cannot do well what comes easily and naturally to the majority of women.  I admit it's a loss of some identity, a loss of that feminine quality I had come to embrace.  I'm not normal and there's just no way around that.

Today I'm going to try to focus on my victories:
   -we discovered my short cervix in time to do something about it
   -as far as anyone knows, this babe is staying put for at least a couple of weeks
   -she's growing strong and well

and I'm going to try to convince myself that this set back and reminder needn't rob me of my beauty, my womanhood, or my femininity.  I am still powerful and lovely. We'll see how I do with that.
 

Sharing the Rain

     When I was in elementary school my mom had an in-home daycare.  I'll bypass telling you about all the loads of fun we had surrounding every holiday and during the summers because neither of us have that kind of time (although let me quickly tell you about the time a kid made himself puke up grape juice on our wall to try to get out of time out - didn't work, my mom meant business).  Instead, I'm going to focus on the rain.  On those lucky days when it would rain while we were on some sort of school break, we would throw on our bathing suits...a good daycare kid always has a bathing suit handy...and run out into the backyard. We'd pretend we'd been stranded in some deserted place and had to fend for ourselves, foraging the ground for fruit that we'd snuck from the kitchen and strewn about.  Eventually we'd make our way into the alley, opening up a whole new world of roughing it. When the sun finally shone, or parents showed, we were soaking wet and completely entranced in our world of make believe.

     By the time I was in middle school my mom had traded the daycare for helping my dad run their own air conditioning company and I no longer thought to head outside in my bathing suit every time it rained.  Still, rainy days were special for me.  I got into the habit of stashing away sugar daddy's for just such a time as a rainy weekend with nothing to do.  Having opened my bedroom blinds and thrown back the curtains so that I could see the rain more clearly from my spot on the bed, I'd grab one of my dad's old Nancy Drew or Hardy Boy books, pop the end of a sugar daddy in my mouth, and let the combination off nature, books, and candy soothe me into the most wonderful sense of security a girl could hope for.

     High school, well, let's just say I mixed my independent nature with a hormonal streak of rebellion that wouldn't be tamed by sugary treats and mystery novels but I still loved the rain.  In between getting into too much trouble entirely too often and discovering the majesty that is interest in the opposite sex, I still managed to find a way to celebrate the rainy days.  In a gesture that suited my rebellion just fine, on those rainy, gloomy, dark days I'd put on one of the cutest dresses in my closet and head to school.  While everyone else was bundled up, comfy style, in oversized shirts and jeans wet around the ankles, there I'd be in stark contrast (or so I assumed). I firmly believed the sunny days didn't deserve all the pomp, anyway.

     Now if you know me at all you know my favorite days are still the ones where it rains.  I got married in a November because I acutely remembered how much it rained the November I'd met K and I hoped for rain on my wedding day.  To mix a couple of my favorite things, I've made K kiss me in the rain a few times and stand with me in it a few others.  I've sat on the porch of our home, steaming hot tea in hand, and let the rain be my companion more times than I can count.  On the rainy days when I don't have to work I wake up early just to be able to see the rain for longer.  I'll open the windows wide, light a cinnamon apple candle, and let the quiet, rainy morning ease my entire being the way nothing else has ever been able to do.  For me there is peace in the rain; there is comfort, there is joy, there is something to be loved and celebrated.  I'm never happier than on the days it rains.

     And I can't wait to share that with my daughter.  I hope she loves it, too.

Bad days

     I don't know what it is. I've never been able to describe it properly.  At it's worst, I drowned in it - choking on it, feeling it thick in my lungs.  I used to keep it a secret because I barely understood it myself but I've learned that it happens more often and lasts longer if I keep quiet.  Now I call it 'my bad day' and reach out to whomever is willing to help keep me from going under.

     I've started to recognize when it comes sneaking around. At first, I can't exactly pinpoint what is wrong but I know something isn't right.  I feel too rough...like my edges are sandpaper catching on cotton.  It feels tangly and messy.  The roughness turns into a raw, overexposed feeling.  The noises are too noisy, the silence is too silent, everything is just too much of whatever it is. The world is in hyperdrive and I can't find a good spot to jump in and join.  Then comes the sneakiest part of all, the overcompensation of the rawness - I am muted.  I can laugh, smile, and participate as well as ever but it's forced from beneath what feels like layers of glue.  The muted feeling quickly becomes my bad day.

     I guess if I'm going to be completely honest and transparent here (because if not here then where) my bad days are characterized by an overwhelming sense of sadness.  I will sob rolling, hot tears and mourn for things I can't articulate.  It's no use reminding myself that nothing is actually wrong; I'll just cry all the more thinking I must be really messed up to feel so sad when everything is okay.

     Luckily, mercifully, thankfully I manage to put away my pride and reach out to those I trust the most.  Some of them show up in person, physically guiding me out of the sadness until it sheds completely and I can walk without feeling it's heavy weight.  Some of them send texts of encouragement, assuring me that I'm not alone or broken.  Each of them remind me that if I hang on just a little longer the bad day will pass, as it always does.