The Gift

I was just lying in bed, hands on my belly, laughing as the baby did a series of flips inside me. I'm 21 weeks today and the reality of this is so much better than I had even imagined. It has been hard to find inspiration to write about it, as every post would read something like, "Still pregnant. Still incredibly grateful. Still happy."

Which is not to say that this pregnancy hasn't actually been filled with drama. At about 12 weeks, we had the standard triple screen for Down Syndrome which came back with an alarming result: a 1 in 9 chance that the baby would have the condition. To put that in context, plenty of women become panicked when their odds are 1 in 100. Once we got that information, we had a month's wait before the final amnio report assured us that the baby was genetically typical. Which he/she is (we've decided to be surprised about the sex).

That was a lot of time to think about what it would mean to raise a child with special needs. And for me, that was the only option—raising the child. After these losses, and especially after seeing that baby wiggling around in the ultrasound, and knowing how much I loved him/her already, I couldn't terminate. If it had been another trisomy, a fatal one, that would've been different. And if Down's had been accompanied by life-threatening heart defects that promised multiple surgeries and misery, that might've been different. But every blog, essay, and book I read assured me that raising a child with Down's (who is otherwise fairly healthy) has its own gifts.

Which is not to say that we weren't absolutely frightened. The thought of coping with societal prejudice; of fighting for school placements and resources; of having to go through the rest of the pregnancy feeling different or unlucky, unable to bond with the "normal" pregnant people with all their easy optimism; worrying about raising a child who would need some form of special care well into adulthood...the stress manifested in a rash of red welts on my face and in a reluctance to share our news with anyone outside a small circle of friends and family. It was...very hard.

But...it wasn't wasted effort, either. One thing became very clear to me through this: the whole purpose of having this child is to love it, just for being alive, and to to find daily meaning in providing that love and care. The point is not to see this child grow up to become some thing—an artist, a college graduate, a race car driver. It's to love the process, not the product.

Of course, I won't be able to remember this every day. I'll get caught up in the same bullshit that everyone does. I'll fret over report cards and standardized tests. But it's a gift to have this perspective at the outset, and to have even more reason to feel so grateful for this healthy baby kicking away. Sweet is the fruit of adversity.

New year, new beginning

I didn't go to temple for Rosh Hashanah this year, which I regret. It is an intense time, and it would've been good to spend a day thinking about the past year, in all its misery and grace.

I'm pregnant again. We found out about a month ago. My cycles had been strange. I was beginning to think that I wasn't ovulating, and because charting was proving so stressful, I had skipped it altogether. But then I had some symptoms—the twingey sensations in my uterus, breast tenderness—so we tested.

The news came on a very good day. We had moved back home and were spending the weekend in a favorite coastal town. In the preceding weeks I had been feeling so relieved. Almost fully healed. Life felt rich and full again, I liked my new job, our friends were glad to see us. So I was on that high when we saw the faint second line.

Since then, I've been on a roller coaster. I started the Lovenox shots, which weren't nearly as bad as I had feared. I got some good hcg results, followed by last week's ultrasound which put me at about 7 weeks, with a good, strong heartbeat. That's a first for us. But being pregnant again is also kicking up some of the pain from last year. It feels like I'm far out on a limb, now responsible for this little life, while also managing my own emotions. It's so hard to not give into the fear and the what-ifs. Who am I to have a healthy pregnancy when I was such a mess just 9 months ago? How can this end in anything but heartbreak? Can I handle the uncertainty and the physical changes? How do I think about this little life? What do I owe it? For now, I'm tentative, trying to be welcoming and loving, but not able to really pull it off.

I'm trying to breathe through it, remember to talk to people when it seems overwhelming. The nausea and fatigue are slowing me down, which maybe isn't a bad thing. I'm trying to surrender to this.

Not pregnant

Looks like I ovulated later than usual this month. It's hard to say exactly when, but it might well have been when Adam was out of town. Or maybe we just didn't get pregnant, for whatever reason.

I'm beginning to contemplate whether it would be smart for us to meet with an adoption agency when we move back home next month. Just to get some of the preliminary work underway. It might be that I'll get pregnant and it'll stick and all will be well. But I need to learn more about our options. Adoption takes time. And if we ever do manage to have a bio kid, we'd still want to adopt a second, if possible.

Meanwhile, we'll get back on the schedule that has worked for us in the past: sex every day in the 10-day fertile window (to allow for o-date variations).

On other news, I just flew home yesterday, after having completed all my job interviews. They went well. At least, I'm happy with how I did. If I don't get any job offers, I'll still know that I did my best. Meanwhile, I wonder what will happen if someone does make an offer. Can I handle a new job while also dealing with TTC and potential miscarriage? What if I do get pregnant? These jobs are all intense. Not pregnancy-friendly. They're also great opportunities. Career-defining opportunites. Do I let them pass me by on the off-chance that I end up with a baby that I want to be home with for a while? Could the stress of a new job hinder our attempts? I can't answer these questions until I know whether or not there's an offer at hand, but if that does happen, I'm going to have to decide quickly. Help.

Wha?

My chart is fucked up this month. I thought I was seeing an ovulation spike yesterday, but it dropped again today. Meanwhile, the thermometer is giving me a different temp every time I take it. Just two minutes apart, these temps tend to go up steadily, even though I haven't gotten out of bed or even moved.

Just in case I have ovulated, I've started taking low-dose baby aspirin for the rest of this cycle. But I'm so very much in denial about what I'll also have to do if I actually get pregnant.

Meditation

I finished up my last day at work and am now officially an independent contractor. It's strange, having no office to go to, no place where I have to be. Unsettling. And there's a lot of contract work to do. At least I can do it sitting on my bed.

Adam and I took a long weekend in a resort town nearby. It was a charming place, as they always are, and unfancy. Mineral baths were cheap and clean, which really played to my egalitarian fantasies. Spas for everyone!

Lying in the bath, knowing I was near ovulation, I tuned in to something like sadness and unease. So I talked to those emotions the way my old therapist taught me: You give the feelings a persona (actually, you just let the image come to you. It's usually a younger version of yourself), and then talk to her in the voice of your most wise, compassionate self. It's a Sybilesque dialogue, a way to soothe the difficult emotions, and accept them as part of you, but not all of you.

I asked her (the image I got was of a younger me...early teens?) what was wrong. I got a deep sadness in my gut, and tears in my eyes. "I can't believe you're going to make me go through this again," she said, crying now. The miscarriages. I imagined gathering her up and telling her that I won't leave her alone this time. I pictured all the resources we had now, the ones we didn't have before. Being back home again. A safety net. I said I wouldn't abandon her like I did before, no matter how anxious or sad she gets. And I pictured all the different parts of me as a group that could surround her with love and safety. I resisted the part of me (it's always there) that saw the exercise as silly and indulgent.

It helped. But sometimes it's so hard to do this work while still living in the world. There's no space to stay tuned in like this. And yet I seem to need to do it. How?

Time to get busy

It's CD10 and we're entering the window of fertility. Oh please let this work.

Meanwhile, for your entertainment...

http://cutethingsfallingasleep.blogspot.com

Not pregnant

It's ok. I mean, it wasn't my favorite thing to figure this out on Mother's Day. But I can also recognize that it was a good thing to stick my toes in the waters of trying without having to manage the emotions of an immediate pregnancy. If I'm not pregnant five months from now, I won't be so sanguine. But for now, it's ok.

And I'm distracted by a couple of job prospects that have recently come up back in our hometown. What luck! What timing! Only thing is, I had planned to ease off the work a little bit. Do some consulting and independent projects. I thought that was the Big Lesson I was supposed to be learning after my miscarriages: Slow down a bit. Work more independently. Learn to go with the flow. Have a flexible schedule. Get pregnant, try to relax, tune in. But these opportunities have landed in my lap and if I'm offered either of the jobs, it'll be pretty impossible to turn them down. They don't come around often. Hardly ever. A very lucky dilemma. But how to manage a (pretty please) pregnancy and a new job? And then to be locked into full-time work after some sort of too-brief maternity leave? I've lost some of my drive. Work doesn't seem as important anymore.

In the past, I've found that it helps me to look for signs, indications that a particular direction is the right one. I've toyed with the notion that when you're on the "right" path, things tend to fall into place. When I look back over my life, certain people or opportunities have come along at key moments. They seemed to recommended themselves with their good timing. It was as if the universe was saying, "Here. Do this!" And it has always worked out.

I know that this is, in many ways, crap rationalization. But I yearn to feel that I'm on a path. That there's some meaning and order in life. So I ponder this good fortune on the job front: Does it mean that I'm supposed to take a job (if offered) and keep plugging along? Will it lead to great things? Or should I interpret this as a sign that the marketplace values my work; that I could do well as an independent contractor?

Well, first step is to not blow the interviews, I suppose...

Wondering

Just got back from my trip, which was very good in almost every way except for my time with my family, which had me feeling oddly isolated. I think this is normal, though, when you go through a life-changing event and then return to your old haunts. I feel different now. And all of our old familial habits and ways of relating seemed hollow.

Don't I sound like Suzy College Freshman! Anyway, I think this will get better with time and proximity.

Meanwhile.

Possible pregnancy signs:

1) Sore breasts & nips
2) Crying at the drop of a hat (not in a depressed way, praise prozac, just a weepy way)
3) Toothbrush can make me gag
4) Occasional uterine twinges

Not-promising signs:
1) No implantation spotting (had that both times before)
2) No metallic taste in my mouth
3) Boobs don't seem that different from PMS symptoms
4) Didn't use the Pre-Seed this month, which has worked like magic in the past.

So...it'll be at least 5 days before I can test. Even that might be a little early.

Craving

Last night, I had a sudden craving for Nutter Butters. This is noteworthy because a) I'm trying to wean myself off sweets and have mostly lost my taste for junk food (rest assured, I haven't lost my taste for bread, cheese, and homemade pie). And b) the last time I had such a specific craving, I was pregnant. In that case, the craving was for leafy greens and liverwurst. I guess I needed iron. The pee test one week later confirmed that I was indeed up the duff.

It's unlikely that I'm pregnant already. I'm only now feeling the twinges of ovulation and my temps are just starting to creep up after a week of ping-ponging. But the sex was well-timed. So...I'm taking low dose aspirin* and waiting.

I'm also noticing that I'm not really freaking out right now. Of course, as I type this, my lizard brain is saying "SHUT UP! They will hear you and then you will be so sorry because you'll freak out really bad and it'll serve you right." See how healthy I am? But I'm trying to hold onto this peace, even if it is brief. Right now I'm ok. Even if I freak out in the future, I will still have these moments of calm. I hope.

Tomorrow, I'm flying cross-country once more to see family and to prepare for our big move back home, which will happen some time this summer. We're tired of being so far from our nearest and dearest and we want more support from the people whose bad genes got us into this mess. So we'll pick up stakes sometime this summer. It won't be easy to say goodbye, but there's a rightness in this decision that makes me feel comforted.

*Edited because I had initially typed "aspiring". This is getting rich.

Back in?

Today is CD 15. I generally ovulate around day 16, though my temperature was low this morning, so it may be a bit delayed.

In any case, we "tried" yesterday. I put it in quotes because it is too frightening to me to declare it. To simply state that I want a baby and then go about the business of making one. It feels like hubris, oddly. Like I'm inviting the universe to knock me down again.

If I get pregnant this cycle and the pregnancy sticks, I can have a baby before I turn 37*. It matters to me right now. So we tried. But emotionally, I'm keeping my head down, plugging my ears, and chanting "lalalalala" to silence the worries and superstitions. I don't have much faith in myself. I'm trying.

*Edited because I had initially typed "36". Hah. That's funny.

At the gate

My new cycle started this weekend. I think we're finally going to try again. I think I'm ready. At least, the thought of trying doesn't fill me with the panic that it did a couple of months ago. And taking care of the new cat has intensified my knowledge that I really, really, really want to have a child. I think I'd be a good mom. I really want to try.

The timing isn't ideal. Adam has to do a lot of traveling in the next couple of months. If we get pregnant this time around, I may well have to start the Lovenox injections while he's out of town. It's scary. I don't even know where to begin. My doctor said to call when I'm pregnant, but who's going to teach me how to do it?

On the other hand, I need to get moving. The pressures are partly biological: I got pregnant easily before, but what if my ovaries are winding down? They're also psychological: I don't want to face Mother's Day without at least having tried to get pregnant again. I'd like to try to have a baby before turning 37, if I can.

If my calculations are correct, I should ovulate around the 30th. Until then, we wait and see.