—Simone turned FOUR yesterday, you may have noticed. We are having a big party this weekend, and you can expect quantities of pictures and maybe some weepy maternal sands-through-the-hourglass-of-time talk to follow. FOUR! FOUR?

—This pregnancy is taking place almost exactly four years after my last one, only behind by a month and a half, and it is odd to be pregnant during another presidential election year. I now firmly associate watching primary coverage with pregnancy, and suspect I’ll come over all nostalgic in 2016. Maybe I’ll feel phantom kicks every time I see an electoral map?

—Speaking of, I am finally starting to feel the baby move daily. Not a lot, or consistently, but it is helping my anxiety to become more a whirr than a roar.

—I have had more energy and been in a much improved mood ever since Chinese New Year on the 23rd, so I am giving all the credit to The Year of The Dragon. It is said to be particularly lucky. After last year, The Year of The Crying Woman, I am fully prepared to enjoy the spit out of it.
(I don’t actually believe in such things, but this would be such a happy, convenient belief that I am trying to will it into existence.)

—19 weeks!

—My actual delivery date will depend upon a lot of things, but it will definitely be before the end of June. Now that it is February, June does not sound nearly as far away as it used to. I can’t make up my mind whether this relative closeness is a relief or a cause for panic. Both?

—Gestationally speaking, Simone was born about six weeks from now. HOLY HOLY, you guys.

—With the twins, I had pelvic bone separation, a painful condition that makes walking, putting on pants, or attempting any movement that requires the lifting of one leg without the other excruciating. To my surprise and extreme annoyance, it started much earlier this pregnancy, and I wince and waddle everywhere I go. I am now in physical therapy as a result, and actually quite enjoy it, mostly because this therapy takes place in a warm pool. The one problem is that exercising in water is misleading. It feels as though you aren’t doing much of anything at all, but your muscles beg to differ later on. Worst of all is that upon getting out of the water you rediscover gravity, and are transformed into a you-sized quantity of Ununoctium. Usually I can barely hoist my way up the stairs and out of the pool, where I find everything that had stopped hurting when weightless has taken up bothering me again with redoubled effort.

—Last time after my session I was in so much pain that traversing the parking garage to my car took geological time, and brought me nearly to tears. I had to pick up a prescription before going home, and I’d been counting on also picking up some of my new favorite thing in the whole world, namely Haagen-Daz Pineapple Coconut ice cream. Alas, when I’d finally shuffled my way to the ice cream aisle, I discovered they didn’t have any. That, I am ashamed to say, brought me the rest of the way to tears.

—If you haven’t had Haagen-Daz Pineapple Coconut ice cream, you should just skip the rest of this post and go find some. Here is the flavor’s official page, with a place at the bottom to punch in your zip code and locate the nearest store stocking it. Go there now.

—I’ve had a cold, which did disgusting things to my throat, thus acting as a trigger to my gag reflex, and the night before last, Scott and I were stricken with a dramatic and cleansing bout of food poisoning.
HOWEVER, aside from these temporary setbacks, I have been spending much less time on the bathroom floor in the last weeks. I’m not yet able to wean my Zofran dose, but I am feeling leagues better, in sharp contrast to my last pregnancy, when I actually got worse around this time—possibly because I was already gigantic and consuming anything at all presented an organizational challenge (I was measuring full term when I delivered, and that was in the second trimester). So far this pregnancy I’ve had terrible nausea with very little vomiting, followed by improved nausea with lots more vomiting, and now, at last, rare(!) vomiting with nausea that sometimes disappears altogether, as long as I take my meds. I can enjoy food now, provided it is the perfectly right food consumed at the exactly right time in the precisely correct quantity. Those conditions are demanding, yes, but when they align, it is GLORIOUS. At my last appointment I had finally moved the scale a pound over my pre-pregnancy weight! (Though I’ll bet the vomitous fiesta of the past few days has undone all my good work.)

—Given my lack of weight gain so far, I would like very much to know where my body is getting the extra materials to construct new edifices: I have a belly in the strangers-feel-free-to-comment category, and what’s more, my bosom has developed a horrifying case of gigantism. As I recall, my 19 week bra size was as nothing compared to my postpartum size last time, and I have now progressed to an F/G, as in FFS, what am I Going to do when my milk comes in? I mean honestly. Will upright locomotion even be possible?

—I’ve been having contractions since about 16 weeks, and after a week of this they checked my cervix, which was still appropriately long and closed. (Of course it was also curvy and oddly situated enough to inspire interested murmurs, as per usual.) Long cervix or no, the contractions rather terrify me, if you want to know the truth, and all the uterine irritability has earned me weekly 17P shots for the duration. I think the contractions have lessened quite a bit since I started the injections, but it is possible I am imagining things, as it has only been two weeks.
My doctor had originally decided I wasn’t a candidate for the 17P, and I was on my way out when another doctor, who’d seen my chart, decided to amend the plan. Her thinking was as follows: When I came in at 22w2d last pregnancy, I was having contractions and my cervix was soft. That was when we found out Ames had died, and the contractions and such were attributed to that. You know the rest of the story—contractions continued, cervix shortened, water broke at 24 weeks, labor at 25 and 5. While there is no reason to think that Ames wasn’t the reason for everything, the fact is that I still presented with contractions and a soft cervix at 22 weeks and progressing preterm labor with cervical changes afterwards, and here I was this time at 17 weeks with contractions, so better safe than sorry.
Funnily enough, they won’t let you give the injections yourself, even though it is essentially a once-a-week version of PIO. I discovered this because my insurance won’t pay for a nurse to come and give me the shot, as is usually done, so I have to go into the clinic once a week—which is fine! But attempting to make things easier I offered to just do the shots myself, and the nurse looked at me like I was crazy.
“You can’t!” she said, “It’s not like Lovenox—these have to be given with a bigger needle, in your backside.” I assured her that I was well aware of that, that in fact I’d given myself eight weeks of daily intramuscular progesterone post-IVF, but she only looked more horrified and unconvinced, so I dropped it. I’m pretty sure I came across as some sort of deviant sharps enthusiast.

—I’d just like to point out, again, how truly inept my body is at pregnancy. It regurgitates its nutrients and thickens its blood, and then its joints slip apart and its child-bearing organ nervously contracts at the slightest provocation. With a bit of help from medical technology and/or pharmacology (and this time the help was only secondary, the result of chemical prodding for an apathetic thyroid), my body makes perfectly lovely, healthy babies…and then immediately sets about trying to kill them. It seems vexingly contrary. I hope the 12 weeks of progesterone suppositories, 20 weeks of 17P, daily Lovenox injections, baby aspirin, etc. etc. MY GOD etc. will be enough to appease it this time.

—If you follow me on Twitter you know this already, but at an ultrasound a week or so ago we found out that the baby is really and truly a girl. We are pretty excited, over here. Another thing you may have seen on Twitter is an ultrasound photo—a very alarming and ghostly-looking ultrasound photo that I assure you was an extremely charming and adorable ultrasound MOMENT, during which my newest daughter yawned widely:

I know. A little chilling at this time of night, but if you check again in the daylight I think you’ll find she’s pretty cute.

I haven’t posted because I’ve felt I’m expected—possibly even required—to post about my father, and…I don’t want to. His dying was both expected and a shock. It’s complicated, both the Rube Goldberg-like route he took to death and my feelings about it and him and us. Writing about it, even thinking of writing about it, is unwieldy and exhausting. I don’t want to, not because it would be too painful, or because I have suddenly developed a sense of propriety that would preclude dissecting my every internal burble in virtual public, but because there is so much else vying for space within my head (to be quite frank, being pregnant after a stillbirth leaves little room for thoughts of anything else), and I am working so hard to believe that Good Things Are Ahead! (i.e. the baby won’t die), that now that it is over—the seeing him for the last time and the wondering if I ought to have handled that differently and the dying that made such wondering mute—I want to put it all aside for a bit, taking advantage of the fact that our long near-estrangement means that his death will leave my day-to-day life largely unchanged.

2011 was a singularly grueling year, and having seen the back of it, I’m not feeling reflective. This probably won’t last—I have the tiresome ability to come over all contemplative at the sight of a discarded gum wrapper, after all—but if all I can do at the moment, or all I want to do at the moment, is look fixedly ahead, so be it. I’m sure this reflects poorly upon me in some way, but ah well. I don’t care enough to forego posting about the things I DO want to post about, at least not anymore.

Right now, I am about 16 weeks pregnant, and three days ago the baby looked like this:

I’ve been convinced for a long time now—based upon absolutely nothing at all, mind—that this baby is a girl, and at Saturday’s ultrasound the tech was 80ish% sure I am right. (With the twins, they said at 17 weeks that Ames was definitely a boy and Simone was very-likely-but-let’s-check-again-next-time a girl, so maybe it is harder to be certain with girls?) I had no preference at all—boy, girl, some new model entirely—but it has become increasingly hard not to think of the baby by its name (or what stands an 80ish% chance of being its name) and so if it is a boy I suppose I will owe it an apology.

This past week was the 4th anniversary of a certain horrible week that changed everything, and, as expected, it was trying. One of the days I woke up convinced the baby was dead. My doppler wasn’t much help with Ames and Simone as I could never tell for certain if I was hearing two separate heartbeats, but this time it has been a godsend, and I imagine it will continue to be until I am feeling regular, consistent movement (I felt some for the first time last week, late at night, but nothing definite since). Another day last week found me spending the afternoon in bed with a run of contractions (Braxton Hicks?) that eventually subsided with water, heat, and rest. I say this every year, but oh, I will be glad when January is over.

Simone continues to be the very best thing up to and including sliced bread. The other night, we were sitting in my bed, in near hysterics over something or another, and we finally subsided into giggles and sighs.
“Ah,” said Simone, in the peculiar accents of a 3-year-old, “it’s funny to laugh!”

My dad died last week.
The funeral is tomorrow, thus in between his dying and his funeral fell the holidays, which were honestly joyful; the day he died was also the day I saw an apparently healthy and obviously human baby at my nuchal translucency scan. It would be nice if events occurred in emotionally coherent groupings, but as I am all too aware, they seldom do. To be fair, even my emotions seldom occur in emotionally coherent groupings, especially when it comes to my father. I suppose this is fitting, then.

More, much, anon.

My brother is visiting our mother in Switzerland for some pre-holiday cheer. To me, of course, holiday season in Switzerland means only one thing: everyone’s favorite sack-toting, child-beating sidekick, Schmutzli. I have happily incorporated this particular aspect of Swiss culture into my own seasonal festivities, and so asked my brother to keep an eye out for anything Schmutzli-related. But he had a better idea.

You see, Max and my mother are leaving for a quick jaunt to Barcelona tomorrow, and in the course of his research, my brother had discovered a Spanish holiday custom that seemed to him to demand import. “We’re starting a whole new tradition!” he enthused. And then he proceeded to tell me about it.

Now, Max has a history of playing me for a fool. For instance, he once convinced me that the town of Killdeer, North Dakota was named for a bird called the Killdeer. This is true—what is not is that the Killdeer is so named for its practice of hunting in swarms, hundreds of the small birds rising up as one body to cover and bring down a full-grown deer.
(I know. I know. But you should hear him tell it!)
He loves to trot out the story of how he convinced me of the existence of The Tiny, Bloodthirsty Killdeer, and so when he started in on the story of The Catalan Shit Log, I naturally thought it was not the log that was full of shit, and went online for some fact checking.

My suspicion was almost immediately replaced by some unnameable melange of delight and escalating horror:

So—let me get this straight.

First you find a log. Then you wrap that log tenderly in a blanket and bring it into your home, where, beginning on the Feast of The Immaculate Conception, you ply it with nightly gifts of food. After 16 or 17 days of this, you gather the children, and together you shroud the log and beat it fiercely with sticks, crying “SHIT LOG! SHIT!” until it defecates candy, fruit, and small gifts. Eventually the log has nothing more to give, at which point you throw it onto the fire.

I…I honestly have nothing to add. I’ve never met a set of facts LESS in need of embellishment. There are Youtube videos of cherubic school children gleefully thwacking the Class Shit Log. The traditional Beating Song translates like this:

Shit log,
shit turrón (nougat),
hazelnuts and cottage cheese,
if you don’t shit well,
I’ll hit you with a stick,
shit log!

What I find most bizarre—recognizing that, in this case, “most bizarre” is high honor indeed—is the fact that families personify this log, paint a face upon it, treat it as a treasured guest, and then, two weeks later, come together to taunt and beat their wooden charge (severely enough that, according to legend, it not only loses control of its bowels but finally urinates) before setting it ablaze. And for what? Nougat, traditionally. Nougat!

When my brother and my mother return to the states next week, they will not be alone: with them will be our family’s Caga Tio. I am not sure I have the heart to participate in this particular tradition, especially given the pains I have taken to impress upon Simone that we never, ever hit our friends. What am I going to say? “Unless they might shit nougat?” I grant that it would likely be safe to add a nougat-feces exception, but it’s a slippery slope, and I’d be setting a dangerous precedent.

These are the kinds of parenting issues I am faced with at the holidays—whether or not to let my child participate in scatological celebratory beatings, given that she does already have a knitted finger puppet of a character holding a staff meant for festive seasonal child abuse. I don’t quite know what this says about me as a mother. I am not convinced I want to.

Do you ever do that thing, where you are just going to rest for a bit, maybe to help your preschooler fall asleep, and then you open your eyes and it is the next day?
Yeah. Sorry about that.

Anyhow, the appointment yesterday was fine. Weird, but fine. More on that in a few paragraphs.

I never got around to telling you about my FIRST ultrasound appointment, and I meant to, because it was An Experience. I was just over six weeks then, and walking into the perinatology clinic gave me a strange, uneasy feeling. I had been back twice since my last pregnancy, once to check on Ames’ autopsy while Simone was still in the NICU, and then later for testing and discussion of the autopsy results—a post-mortem post-mortem, you could say. Returning in the context of a new pregnancy was more difficult than I had expected. I felt jittery and sick. When I tried to check in, the receptionist told me that the ultrasound was still on, but my peri appointment had been canceled. A nurse came out to explain things to me, and I tried to explain to HER that I needed to start Lovenox, that I’d heard it should be started as close to conception as possible, and that was weeks ago, and to my absolute HORROR, I found myself crying. Which…I don’t even…I was as shocked as anyone, let me tell you. The nurse pulled up a chair (I was that patient) and reassured me that they could absolutely start my Lovenox without a full appointment, and that a doctor would see me for a minute after the ultrasound to get me set up with the prescription. I don’t know whether that nurse remembered me from my last pregnancy, but I’m sure she’ll remember me now, alas.

The heartbeat ultrasound itself went well, as you know, which was a massive relief—I didn’t realize until I saw the heartbeat how much I had been expecting NOT to see it. The tech was very sweet (perhaps she had been warned that I was unstable?) and afterward left to get the doctor. And guess who that doctor was?
HINT: you may remember him from such lines as “You can see here that Baby A is demised.”

It was…something. The adjective escapes me. Of all the ultrasound suites in all the perinatology clinics in the world, you know? I mean of course I knew it could be him, or I would have, had I thought about it. But I hadn’t, and it was a surprise.

He came in beaming and full of congratulations and I shook his hand feeling dazed. I don’t think I’d seen him since that awful day, though it’s not like that was the only time we’d met—he was also the doctor who told us we were having a boy and a girl, and I saw him in Labor & Delivery around 16 weeks. Needless to say, it is the 22 week visit that sticks in my mind.
He obviously remembered me, or at least had remembered upon reviewing my chart, and said he’d order the Lovenox and have a nurse meet me in an exam room to go over the details. I was shown to said exam room, and…it was the room in which the DEMISED ultrasound took place. They hadn’t even changed the artwork. That dreadful poster: faux-hand-colored, boy in Olde-Tymey hat and girl with a bow. The ultrasound machine and exam table, everything was in the spot it had been. I felt I might very well have been on a horribly morbid episode of Candid Camera.

The nurse didn’t come in right away, so I had some time to sit dumbly in the chair (the same chair I’d sat in to chat about the twins’ movements, and later to call Scott) and remember that day with a truly sickening level of clarity that was far less like remembering and far more like reliving than I would have wished. I decided, while I was waiting, that I would simply have to switch clinics, but exposing that decision to even the dimmest ray of logic forced the conclusion that switching clinics was a foolish and untenable idea.

So—that was the day of my heartbeat ultrasound.

Yesterday’s appointment was much better. It is already less unsettling to be back in the familiar office, and the nurses are truly lovely, as usual. It helped that I was in a different exam room this time (I have thought of requesting that I never be put in the other exam room again, but I am afraid that will make me seem even more unhinged that I doubtless do already). I won’t deny that the place still feels a bit grim and haunted, though. If you read Half Baked, you may remember the doctor I called McGleamy. I loved him so, and was sure he’d get a kick out of the book. Back when it came out I’d decided to send him a copy, and it was when I was looking for his address that I discovered he’d been killed by a car while crossing a street in front of the Los Angeles Airport, in 2009. There is a lovely plaque in the clinic, with his picture, and it makes me terribly sad. So yes. Grim, haunted. A little.

I did have the same doctor (I am trying very, very hard not to think of him as Doctor Demised, though this is a challenge). He told me that if ever I need reassurance, I can simply “drop by” and someone will give me a quick Live Baby Check. He was very kind, and in a way it isn’t such a bad thing that he was there for what happened before. Though, to be quite frank, he seems to regard it as largely irrelevant, and this is what made the appointment so odd. Quoth he: “this is a whole new pregnancy, and what happened last time…there is no reason to believe it will happen again.”
Which, okay, but is there a reason to believe it WON’T? I kept bringing it up, and he kept gently steering me away, reminding me that I am on both Lovenox and baby aspirin, and that we don’t know exactly why Ames died, and that there is no reason I shouldn’t just sashay on through this pregnancy like a Normal Lady. He’d say things like “You can stop the aspirin at 37 weeks,” and I’d laugh and mime writing it in my calendar, because COME ON, like “I’ll make a note of that, and also can you tell me about the clinic’s evacuation procedures in the event of a zombie apocalypse?” but he was serious. The nurse gave me a booklet with all three trimesters in it, and information about hospital preregistration and “birth” classes, and I accepted it all with a panicked smirk and some mumbled genuflections, and that was that.

I’m nine weeks tomorrow. It’s still early, blah blah blah, but early, late—will there be a time when I feel reasonably convinced that this is going to end in a baby? Honestly, why would there be? I suppose it’s as good a time as any to be hopeful, then. Right?

On Friday I was writing you an update post, the gist of which was “I’m Feeling Somewhat Better,” when what should interrupt me but a sudden urgent need to stumble to the bathroom and kneel before the toilet.
The next morning, determined to try again, I found my site entirely inaccessible. I’d exceeded my bandwidth (there is still someone out there, hotlinking something, but damned if I can find it). I am back up and running as of this afternoon, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lightning bolt is about to take out a server, or me, so I’ll post a quick hello while I know I can. Hello! I am alive. More tomorrow, after my appointment. 8w5d, for those keeping track.

P.S. Because I wouldn’t want you to be deceived into unwarranted admiration of my mental fortitude (going so very long without a Live Baby Check), I should tell you that I actually had a quick pity ultrasound last week when I first began to feel like I might not die, after all. Appropriately-sized lump avec heartbeat was present and accounted for, and slight easing of nausea thus attributed to an improved med regimen and IV fluids—an explanation I had previously dismissed, feeling that embryonic demise was far more likely.
Hoping to be happily surprised again in the morning…

Long before I’d begun thinking about children, I knew pregnancy would be rough on me in one specific way. Hormones and my stomach do not play well together. I had birth-control-induced hyperemesis twice. The first time, when I was about 14, my already spindly 93-pound frame was whittled to skeletal proportions—I believe I got down to 79 pounds—and the second time, some years later, I ended up hospitalized for three days due to dehydration. My first pregnancy with Scott was discovered before my period was even due to arrive, because I threw up, and I had a hard time functioning until about a week before I miscarried, when I felt better and knew something was wrong. During my last pregnancy, the nausea started when I was six weeks and change, and by about seven weeks or so, I couldn’t keep anything down at all. I’d already been taking the Unisom and B6 combo, but while that helped with the nausea, it did nothing once the vomiting began. Thus, Zofran. Zofran was a miracle drug for me. I still felt ill, but not terribly so, and I was well enough to go to work, to eat some, and most importantly, to DRINK. On Zofran, I threw up maybe a couple of times a day, sometimes not at all. Yes, I was on the maximum dose, and had to wake myself to take a tablet at 4am (the last dose wearing off functioned as a nausea alarm clock), and I did continue to throw up regularly until I delivered at 25 weeks. Still: Miracle Drug.

This time, I got sicker, sooner. I am already on my strict Zofran/Unisom/B6 schedule, but while the drugs are keeping me from actually puking, I always always feel like I am on the verge, and in general feel leagues worse than I did with Ames and Simone. Imagine the worst hangover you’ve ever had, or the worst motion sickness, a time when you felt like even moving your eyeballs might be too much for your perilous equilibrium. It’s like that.

It makes no sense, because, like I said, the Zofran IS keeping me vomit-free, as long as I am careful not to miss a dose, so it SEEMS like I should feel much BETTER than last time, or at the very least the same, right? Alas, no. (Last time I was on prednisone up until 17 weeks, so I suspect that has something to do with it.)

I haven’t been able to do much of anything. Most of the day I am curled on the couch, focusing all of my energy on Not Puking. I usually have a small window in the early afternoon when I am well-ish—I can read email, talk on the phone, take a shower, and act human. I try to get some food and liquids in me then. Today, though, I didn’t even get my window. I don’t think I am getting enough to drink, and I’ve lost a few pounds. The Zofran side effects have been awful (still working out the best Colace timing/dosage). I can only care for Simone if you broaden the definition of “care for” significantly, and forget work or cleaning around the apartment. Scott has been great, but I fret about the burden on him.

Wednesday marks seven weeks, and it terrifies me to know that this is where I am, even maxed out on my meds, and that it is likely to get much worse before it gets better. I feel guilty that I’m not enjoying this more. I’m afraid that I’m going to go in and find out that the heart has stopped, and that I won’t have it in me to try again. I want this to work so badly, and I know—I KNOW—how lucky, how extraordinarily lucky, I am to have gotten pregnant at all. I am counting the days until the second trimester, and feeling simultaneously scared that I won’t make it that far at all and scared that if I do, this sickness won’t end there, but instead will continue the whole way through, which seems unbearable to contemplate. I worry about taking all these drugs, and I’m angry that I have to, that I can’t be one of those serene natural pregnant women who blithely swallows a prenatal vitamin and CERTAINLY doesn’t have daily injections, suppositories, and seven different pill varieties on rotation. Pregnancy after infertility and loss is complicated enough, and this adds another layer of worry and guilt, and feeling ungrateful and broken.

So that is where I am. Yesterday I fell asleep before I could post anything, and this took me all day to type, so I can’t even promise that was a one-time lapse. Right now, “one day at a time” is the best I can do. It’s good enough. Today, I have no reason to think that this pregnancy is doomed. I have no reason to think that I won’t feel somewhat better at 12ish weeks, if I make it that far.
Simone has recently noticed the sun, or rather the lack of it in the evening, and I have to reassure her daily that it will come back up again, that it always does. I ought to listen to myself once in awhile.

I know. I know. I thought about not posting at all, because Simone is sick, I am back on Zofran, and the best I can do today is, once again, awfully close to a blank page.

However, I am trying not to be too hard on myself about my lackluster foray into National Blog Posting Month. I am making new ears and a placenta and a heart that BEATS, you know. More to the point (and my current need for distraction aside), the hope of quashing perfectionism is one of the more compelling reasons to attempt something like this 30-days-of-posting rigamarole. When the month is over, I’d like to keep writing here most weekdays–every weekday, if I can swing it—and that’s never going to work if I get derailed by the same all-or-nothing mindset that has proven so destructive in the past. There will be days when I plan to post and don’t, or when I start writing something and can’t finish it, or when I want to share a few paragraphs of drivel without worrying that they don’t merit an entry. If I want this site to be what it used to—my diary, the precious real estate where I think and chatter and worry and confide in my friends—I’m going to have to get comfortable pressing that “Publish” button again.

So, since I have nothing for you, please go read this marvelous, marvelous post by Arwen. It’s about perfection and expectations and the dim lens through which we view our own accomplishments. I could have written it myself, and I’d imagine at least a few of you out there will relate to it as strongly.