– In November 2005, we started the processes of buying a condo early in the month.  The same week we got approved for the loan, we found out we were expecting Jonas.

– In September 2007, we moved out of that condo and into the current house, and found out just 11 days after we moved in that we were expecting Julesy.

– And in July of 2010, we signed a lease to move out of this home and into a new apartment, only to discover just 10 days later that we’re expecting yet another baby.

If you ever find out that I’m moving again, I think it’s safe to assume that I must be pregnant, even if I don’t know it yet.

But leaving this house is especially sad.  When we moved in here three years ago, we thought this would be the place that our children would bring their children.  We never expected to leave.  Even though we were renting this house, the landlord intended to sell it to us when we were ready.  We knew it was going to be a few years before we recovered from the disaster of the condo we had just sold, but we thought that when the time was right, we’d take ownership and that would be that.

Bye Bye House - We'll miss you.

However, as time went on here, and we added Julesy to the family, we began to realize this place wasn’t quite right for us.  First of all, the layout is ridiculous.  Yes, it has three bedrooms, but not really.  When the first owners added an addition on to this simple walk-up ranch, they didn’t add UP, the way everyone else in the neighborhood seemed to do. Instead, they added OUT, meaning they put an extra bedroom and bathroom (our master suite) on to the back of the house, using another bedroom as the “doorway” to the new part of the house.

So what does that mean?  I means that you have to walk through one of the bedrooms to get to the other, which essentially makes that middle bedroom nothing more than a hallway.  For a very long time, we used it as my office.  But this summer we caved and turned it into Julesy’s room because we found that the boys couldn’t handle sleeping in the same room.

The other thing I hated was that, even though we had a back yard, there was no good way to get to it.  Because the first owners added this brick addition on to the back of the house, you could no longer really see the backyard from any part of the house.  We had a TINY window in our bedroom that was 5 feet off the ground, but that’s all.  The only way to get to the backyard was to go all the way to the front of the house, then to the side, and down the sidewalk.  I could never leave the kids outside playing while I went in to use the bathroom or something – I may as well have just left them alone at the park down the street for as much as I could see them from the house.  Going to the back yard was like going somewhere else.  I had to pack like I was going on a trip because there was really no running in and out once we were out there.

Oh, and the kitchen.  Ugh.  The tiny, TINY kitchen.  When friends came over they’d oooh and aaah over our kitchen because the landlord had installed beautiful cabinets, granite countertops, and stainless steel appliances.  However, all that was packed into a 5’ x 5’ space.  I’m not joking when I say that my husband could stand in the middle of our kitchen and touch all four walls at once.  It was a shoebox.  A miserable place to try to cook or store food.  I hated it every minute of every day.

But despite all this, we still had no intention of moving out of here.  We figured we’d stay here either until we could afford to buy it and immediately remodel the place, or until we could afford to buy the perfect house just down the street.  We adore this neighborhood.  It’s our home.  It’s where my bestest friends are now.  It’s where we feel the absolute perfect mix of city culture and suburban air.

But all of that changed the day of the flood.

When we woke up to find everything in our finished basement was destroyed, we immediately decided this was our chance to get out and move on.  We lost all of our furniture, toys, electronics on that floor, and we knew by the damage that had been done to the walls and carpet that the place would never look the same again – or if it ever did – it was going to take a long time.

So, we rented a 3 bedroom, 2 bath apartment just five minutes from my new business.  We’re happy about moving into a real 3 bedroom, and about not having to do yard work anymore, but we’re very sad leaving a place that we made a home.

Moving into this apartment means that there’s no hope of this being our last address.  We will have to move again – hopefully to a home that we own, but this means that none of my children will ever be born in the place they will grow up.  We definitely won’t be able to buy anything until after I’m done with law school and have worked for a few years, so we’re looking at anywhere from 6-8 years before we can own a permanent home. 

You’d have to know my back story to understand why this is so upsetting to me, but suffice to say that after growing up like a homeless nomad, I never wanted that for my kids.  I never wanted them to move even once - let alone this many times in their short life.  I wanted my kids to have a life like my husband had – being born and raised at the same address, with the same friends, until he started out on his own.

This all has me extra sad and nostalgic, but it’s happening, and I can’t stop it.

I just keep trying to remind myself, “There’s a pool at the new place.”

And about 8 months after my son was born, my boss finally did get pregnant. It took $20,000 of IVF treatment but sure enough, she got her two pink lines.  And what was the VERY first thing she did when the 7th week started?  Oh, you guessed it!  She COMPLAINED!  She complained about having to pee all the time. She complained about feeling sick. She complained about cravings.  She complained about her partner not being around enough and not taking the pregnancy seriously.  She complained about her condo being too small for a baby, and the McMansions she was looking to buy being too expensive.  In fact, I’m not sure if a day went by that she didn’t complain about some aspect of her $20,000, hard earned baby.

Did I judge her? Absolutely NOT!  Oh yeah, I chuckled at the irony, but as far as I’m concerned, no matter how badly someone wants a child, there is no preparing yourself (even the second, third, or fifth time) for how hard growing and raising a human being actually is, both physically and emotionally.  And each time we do it, we’re at an even greater disadvantage than the previous time because we now have other children that also need mothering while we’re deep in the throes of morning sickness misery and sleep deprivation.

When we were trying to get pregnant, I remembered morning sickness and how unpleasant it was. But, I had this delusion that I’d be able to manage it better this time because, after all, I was a veteran, right?  I know all the tricks of the trade; all of the secret remedies for curing nausea.  So then why have I suffered so badly over the last few weeks?  Well, maybe because not all those tricks have worked for me, and I’m too tired/lazy to run around town seeking out special herbs and spices to mix up some remedy that also may not work.

One particular tea seemed to help, but I ran out, and I can barely lift my head up to feed my children these days, let alone drag those mini nutbags into Whole Foods while they rip items off the shelf and cause me a mental breakdown in the herbal section. “Clean Up in Aisle 3” takes on a whole new meaning with my children in your store.

And so I’m just about 8 weeks pregnant, and essentially miserable.  I’ve never been a big fan of this whole pregnancy thing to begin with – I just like the prize at the end.  This week sucks especially hard because we’re moving our whole life a half hour away, and I have school, AND I have a mom due any minute, AND I have to run my business. Meanwhile all I can stand doing is laying in bed on my side in total silence.

I know there are people who are angry that I’d complain about having healthy children and a seemingly healthy pregnancy, but complaining is every mother’s right, and when it’s your turn, I’ll listen to you with no judgment whatsoever.  I’ve been there sister.   I’ll hold your hand, and your hair, while you just let it all out.   It doesn’t make you a bad mom, or ungrateful… it just makes you human.

__________________________________________________________

Oh please, I’m begging you PLEASE do NOT leave me six hundred (or even one) suggestion for a morning sickness remedy.  I’ve got lists coming out of my ass, and no time to try them all.  You can commiserate, but please don’t try to fix me – I don’t have the energy anymore. I’m simply in misery-loves-company mode now. Commiserate, or leave me a funny story – please.

Just prior to that, Julesy had been headbutting me in the leg – which is his “thing” – the headbutting.  I told him to stop because it was really hurting, then I closed my eyes to gather myself.  With my eyes closed, I started to think about a documentary we watched the other night which linked ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) with head injuries.  I was in the middle of wondering if I’d get Lou Gehrig’s disease if Julesy decided me to headbutt me in the head, when the little fucker did exactly that.

For some reason, out of nowhere, Julesy threw his head backwards with the force of a freight train, smashing me straight down the middle of my face.  He managed to hit everything from my forehead to my teeth, which felt like an absolute explosion of pain.

I sat up, stunned, but not numb.  Every inch of my face was on fire.  Violent anger washed over me and, god help me, I wanted that boy to be in as much pain as I was.  Undoubtedly, he certainly was in as much pain because, after all, it was his head that hit my head.  As he sobbed, I told myself I should comfort him because, duh, my child was hurt.  But, the blinding pain of the knot forming between my eyes turned to blinding rage, and all I could feel toward him was hatred.  Pure, unadulterated hatred.

And then, I hated myself for being a horrible mother who couldn’t look past her own pain to comfort her small child.  As it was turning out, I realized I’m no different than my bio mom.  She was fucked up, and now, so am I.  I suppose the only difference between she and I is that I haven’t run away.  Yet.

Then, like I’ve felt so many times before, my breath caught in my throat like a noose around my neck, and I started crying.  No, crying isn’t the word.  Sobbing might be right, but even that doesn’t explain it.  I soaked the bed with the kind of tears reserved for the deepest grief.  The kind of grief that leaves you begging the world to just make it stop for one minute so you can fill your lungs with air again.

But it didn’t stop, so I called my husband.  He answered the phone and I wailed.  Pretty quickly, I realized that the kind of wailing I was doing might have him thinking that one of our children was hurt, so I just told him “I can’t do this anymore.” And then I cried harder.  He asked me what was wrong and I blubbered that Julesy had bashed me in the face and Jonas woke up yelling at me about the stupid remote and his stupid cartoons and I just couldn’t stand it, and I couldn’t do this anymore, and it wasn’t what I agreed to, and he’s never home, and please don’t make me do this anymore.  Do what? I dunno.  Suffer like this, I suppose.  I was in an incredible amount of pain both from my face, and in my stomach where another knot was forming.

Then he asked to talk to Jonas, and Jonas blamed Julesy for making me cry, but Daddy made him say he was sorry about yelling at me over the remote.  Then he wanted to talk to Julesy, who was, by then, completely over the incident and had begun pulling forbidden things off my desk (like the stapler) and laughing hysterically in his mischief.  Typical.

I finally let my husband off the phone when I knew there was nothing else he could do.  I didn’t feed the kids breakfast.  I turned on the TV, pulled a pillow over my face, and went back to sleep.  When their fighting became unbearable, I promised them we’d go to the kitchen.  Just then, I heard the front door slam, and the kids ran to see who was there.  I just figured it was the landlord coming in and out because he had been there all morning working on the basement, but once the kids yelled “Grandma!” I started crying hysterically again.

He had called his mother. He called her to come over and save me from my children, and save them from me.  I didn’t want her seeing me like this, but I suppose somebody had to feed my kids.   She sat on the bed while I soaked my pillow with ugly tears and squeaked out answers to her questions.  Then she told me to sleep.

I couldn’t sleep though.  I had to do homework.  I got up, showered, and drove to school.  I cried a little more anytime I thought nobody was looking.  My head pounded.  An hour before class started, I fell asleep in my chair for about 15 minutes.  My face was swollen.  I was a mess.  Depression had a chokehold on me and I could hardly do anything but wallow in it.  My whole body hurt.  My whole life hurt.

I managed to drag myself into my classroom, and settle in to a seat, assuming I’d continue to feel like a pile of shit for the rest of the night.  I’m happy to say that the class lifted my mood, as school usually does.  Yes, I’m an authentic nerd, but this class was especially interesting to me because it was a Sociology class on Sex & Gender.  Right up my alley.  And the teacher was great.  The kind of person who makes it impossible to be suicidally depressed in his presence.

I could blame today’s breakdown on pregnancy hormones, but the truth is I’ve been on the verge of full-on crying jag for quite some time.  I’ve never really recovered from the PPD or PTSD I began suffering from four years ago, and every day is an exercise in trying to feel better.

Tomorrow, I suppose I’ll try a little harder.  Today was an absolute bust.

Well, weekend of our disastrous flood also happened to be the weekend that I ovulated.  Actually, I wasn’t charting my temps because life was crazy and I kept forgetting, but I WAS tracking my cervical mucous.  On Friday, the night before the flood, I told the Hyphenated Husband that I thought ovulation was wrapping up, so he “Threw a Hail Mary,” so he called it, and then we fell asleep probably as the basement was filling up with that same water we woke up to.

A couple days later, the Monday after the flood, I had another day of INSANE cervical mucous – people who keep track of this sort of thing will understand when I say it was the size of a golf ball.  So I thought maybe I had been wrong about Friday – or maybe it stopped and started because of the stress of the weekend – and we gave it one last shot on that Monday.  Pun intended.  Gimme a break, that was an easy one.

The next day, Tuesday, we moved in with my mother-in-law while the landlord took his sweet time getting our house back into livable order.  Since we were sleeping under the mother-in-law’s roof, you KNOW there was zero hanky-panky going on in there.  That Monday was the last time we touched each other until we got to New York 10 days later for Blog Her.

We showed up at the hotel that BlogHer was at, parked our stuff in our room, and headed out for a bite to eat.  As I was walking out of the elevator, tweeting to my BlogHer friends on my phone, all the sudden I hear “splat” and feel wetness under my feet.

I look down, and see the first floor of our hotel flooding.

Of course I started yelling all over Facebook about the obscene irony of me being caught in yet another flood inside of less than two weeks.  But some people’s responses caught me off guard.  There were people on my Facebook page suggesting that I run to the drug store and pick up a pregnancy test because water is an undeniable symbol of fertility.  They suggest that all this ridiculous flooding I kept getting caught in must be the universe’s way of telling me that my body was in a state of creation.

HAAAA haa haa ha.  Oh, you people are hilarious.  Haa Haa Haa.

24 Hours later………………

So I suppose you people were on to something with this whole water/fertility business.  I went and googled it and found a few poorly executed websites listing a few myths and legends – but nothing that intriguing.  I want to know more though.  What’s the basis of this water/fertility connection? Are we talking about Greek mythology, or Far East legend?

I specifically want to know more about the back story because I’d like to find some girl names that are based in this water theory.  I suppose any water names at all would do.  At first I thought Brooke, but Brooke Hogan ruined that name for me.  What else is there?

Are you familiar with any water/fertility spirituality?  Got any decent websites you can link me to?  I’m not necessarily a superstitious or spiritual person, but being in a flood both during the week I ovulate, and the week I get a positive pregnancy test, is just too coincidental not to investigate – even if only for entertainment purposes.

Guest Post by the Hyphenated Husband

It’s Friday night, August 7th and I’m at Arlene’s Grocery, a rock club in New York’s East Village. The weird thing is that I’m in a New York club to check out a Chicago band. It’s amazing that family life can be so hectic that it takes a trip all the way to NYC to see a home town artist.  On top of that, I walk into the club to find out the doorman/bartender is a guy I used to play rock shows with back in Chicago years ago. It’s a small world and it’s even smaller if you spend any time involved in the arts. So this was clearly shaping up to be a fun and cheap night out.

So I give TFB a call to share my interesting news and she happens to be on the toilet at a bar.  My timing tends to suck because every time I call her she’s in either the bathroom, or wiping up baby shit, or catching one of our crazy toddlers as they stage dive off the dining room table.  So I try to make it quick call, and she tells me she is taking a pregnancy test.  I think nothing of it since I’ve been bombing at my attempts to knock her up for 8 months now.  The connection went to shit and I couldn’t understand what she said next so I figured it was nothing important and said “OK” to move the conversation along.  I know, I miss a lot of information due to this bad habit. She then yells, “Did you hear what I said?!?!” and I said I didn’t because of the bad connection. “It’s Positive!!” she’s says.  I can’t remember what I said next, but it somewhere along the lines of “NO WAY!” or “SHUT UP!” (in a positive tone of course).

I was blown away. This day and this entire trip to NYC could not have been any better. As it happens, she was just over in Soho with her bloggy friends at a private party.  She did a little celebrating with the ladies with some help from Shirley temple shots while I caught the short set of my friend’s band.  I would have snuck out of there immediately but I was the ONLY one there to see him.  I’m not joking when I say I was the only one in there, even the bartender stepped out for opening duties.

However, as soon as I heard “Thank You, Good Night!” I was out the door and running full speed to Soho to meet my beautiful, pregnant wife.   She was standing outside glowing and looking gorgeous. Just knowing she was pregnant reminded me how much I loved her and how attracted to her I am, and always will be.  I love that she is going to give us another baby, and add to that the 8 months of anticipation, I was ecstatic!  All I could do when I finally held her was hug her and tell her I loved her.   Even that doesn’t effectively illustrate how I felt then, or how I still feel now.

Now this bring us to the next part — the far more exciting part — home birth.  I can’t tell you how excited I am that we can finally prepare to welcome our child in the comfort of our home; in a peaceful environment without the intrusion of inept medical staff; without the pressure of the ticking clock.  I’m so excited that TFB and I can share this experience together and place all our focus on the birth.  No worries about fighting off nurses and doctors. No uncomfortable beds, no machines, no bright lights. This is the experience we’ve been hoping for, and it’s the experience TFB and this baby deserve. Am I at all scared about home birth?  Of course. It would be odd if I wasn’t at least a little nervous. But there is no way I would subject my wife and child to a cold impersonal hospital again. We’ve done our homework and we are set to beef up even more with HypnoBirthing and Bradley classes.  We’ll be ready.  More so than most.

Finally… finally baby #3 is on the way.  Thank you TFB — I love you.

__________________________________________________________

The Hyphenated Husband is Gina’s husband of nearly 5 years, and the father of her (soon to be three) children.  He is a teaching student, an IHSA certified reffing official, and the World’s Biggest AC/DC fan.  He is the only son of two Chicago Police Officers, one Mexican, one Irish, and considers himself a “recovering Catholic” after 13 years of parochial school.  Soon, he hopes to turn high school sophomores into history lovers through his passion for teaching.  One day he hopes to play guitar in a band again – but not until his kids are big enough to jam with him.

Essentially this means that it is illegal to release the specifics of a patient case you may have either attended or witnessed. Thinking in terms of a laboring woman, what happens in her hospital room stays in her hospital room.

Doulas are not bound to HIPAA, but we do carry a professional code of ethics which makes it unprofessional to openly discuss our clients’ cases. Some of us may gather in small circles to privately work out our thoughts on situations we may have been in, and try to grow our knowledge base by sharing experiences. However, it is considered quite unprofessional to openly discuss any identifying details of a specific mother’s birth experience.

Of course, privacy is essential to trust. A woman cannot trust a provider who would willingly pass the details of her case around the internet for all the world to see. For the most part, it is nobody’s business what happens during her labor.

Well, unless it IS.

Speaking in generalities, because I will not discuss specific cases, I can tell you that some things I’ve witnessed as a doula in a labor room have been nothing short of a crime. Women have the right to informed consent and refusal, and I have seen cases where that right is violated over and over again throughout a labor.  According to the American Medical Association,

“Informed consent is more than simply getting a patient to sign a written consent form. It is a process of communication between a patient and physician that results in the patient’s authorization or agreement to undergo a specific medical intervention…

…This communications process, or a variation thereof, is both an ethical obligation and a legal requirement spelled out in statutes and case law in all 50 states.”

So what happens when a woman flatly refuses to give consent, and a physician performs a procedure without her authorization and against her will?  Katherine Prown, Ph.D. tells us,

“The legal doctrine of informed consent/refusal developed from the laws on battery. In a medical setting battery is defined as touching or treatment that occurs without obtaining proper informed consent; medical treatments that are substantially different from the ones a patient consented to; treatment that exceeds the scope of consent; or treatment provided by a physician other than the physician who obtained the patient’s consent. As case law on informed consent/refusal evolved, however, the courts increasingly defined lack of proper consent as a matter of negligence. Negligence requires that the lack of proper consent or failure to meet the standard of care resulted in emotional or physical harm worthy of monetary compensation. In certain circumstances in which monetary compensation is not an issue, though, the laws on battery may still apply.”

Given this, I have borne witness to cases where a woman’s rights are so flagrantly violated that it seems like an obscene injustice not to tell the world about what happened to her. But once the labor is over, the dozen or so people in that room simply move on to another labor, and because of privacy laws like HIPAA, nothing that happened is ever shared with the public.

You might be asking “Is it really that bad?  Can it really, seriously be that bad?” You tell me.   (**Trigger Warning**)

• I have seen a mother flat out refuse a procedure and/or treatment and the doctor say, verbatim, “You can say no, but we’re doing it anyway.” And they did. And nobody in the room could stop them.
• I’ve seen the mother’s parents get into yelling matches with the nurse or doctor because the medical staff constantly coerced or threatened the laboring woman to the point of emotional distress.
• I’ve seen a doctor stand over a woman and force her to “pre-authorize” a major intervention that was neither wanted, needed, or ever actually used during the labor, and refuse to leave the room until her signature was on the paper – giving her no time to contemplate the decision or discuss it with her family.
• I’ve seen a woman scream “No, stop!” while trying to kick a doctor’s hands out of her, as she tries climbing up the back of the bed to escape, while the doctor ignored her pleas and reaches farther into her vagina – blood curdling screams fill the room.
• I’ve had women cry and beg me to help them – to keep the doctor or nurse from doing whatever it is they’re doing to them – and I can’t help at all.  Being a bodyguard is outside my professional scope of practice.
• I’ve seen a woman say she does not want an episiotomy, and the doctor say “Sorry” (snip, snip, snip) “I had to make some room.”

On one hand, I’m glad I was there to help those women in whatever way I could. On the other hand, it’s terribly stressful having witnessed crimes against women and know that professional secrecy will prevent everyone in that room from discussing what happened to her.

Of course the mother could take this information to the authorities, but that rarely ever happens. On one hand, as long as the mother came out with a healthy baby, nobody cares how she was treated in the process. She would need to have a damaged baby to have any sort of a legal case that an attorney would see worth his/her time. It’s also quite easy for a laboring woman not to remember or understand the details of what was being done to her.  She’s in laborland – not taking minutes in a meeting. Women also have a hard time coming to terms with being violated.

This is the same reason so many women don’t report rape. After the incident is over, they just want it to be over. They don’t want to think about it, or drag it through a court system. They may think that it’s partially their fault, or that going public may put their story under embarassing and unfair scrutiny. When I took my VBAC story to the Chicago Tribune, my obstetrician accused women like me of having a “control issue.” No apology.  No admission that his behavior was unethical and potentially illegal.  He simply blamed me for not submitting to his violation. There are a million reasons women do not report violations, coupled with a million violators who continue to practice the way they do without anyone holding them accountable.

What can be done? At what point can we, who witness these crimes, open this can of worms and start talking about what is happening to individual women every single day in this system of ours? I know that it’s not my place to file complaint about the way a woman was treated, but if there’s no transparency, where does that leave us?  I can tell you that it leaves me angry in my bones and feeling sick to my stomach.

In the mean time, I have to decide whether or not I can handle seeing any more of these hospital births, or if I should send women in to the lion’s den without someone like me there to help them in whatever small way I can. It’s a tough decision, and one that I may grapple with for a long time to come.

_______________________________________________________

If you are a mother who was violated, did you report any of it?  Was there a resolution?  If you are a birth professional who has witnessed these births, how do you recover emotionally knowing there’s nothing you can do?

I know I already slyly announced my pregnancy in one of my BlogHer 10 posts, and on Facebook, and on Twitter, but there still seems to be people who haven’t heard the news.  Each day a new person pops up on Twitter or Facebook and says “What?  You’re asking about prenatal vitamins???  Do you have something to tell me?!?!” So, I suppose that means the news deserves its own post.

I’m having a whole range of emotions about finally being pregnant.  For the first 5 minutes after seeing the second line, I was out of my mind ecstatic.  Then, after I’d told some people, all the sudden the reality of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks.  Ah, motherfucker…. I’m gonna have to BIRTH this thing!!!  Crapping God Dammit.

Then I realized that I’m going to get fat again.  Right before I went to New York I bought some punk rock clothes that made me look like my bad-ass punk rock (read: skinny) self again, and now that is all shot to shit.

See? Hot. Smokin' Hot. And Now It's Over.

Oh wait, is my vanity showing?  Deal with it, dude.  There’s not a woman alive who doesn’t prefer to feel good about the way she looks, and I don’t think that undermines my feminism in the slightest.

The next day I was in the back of a cab feeling so nauseated that I wanted to strangle the life out of the driver for swinging the cab through the streets like a maniacal douchebag. Then I remembered that I will have absolutely no control over when or where I get sick for the next few months.  Spontaneous puking is on my horizon.  Son of a Biscuit Eater.

An hour later I informed the Hyphenated Husband that instead of walking around New York and enjoying our vacation, I was taking a nap.  There was no stopping it.  My body went into shut down mode, and resistance was futile.  Pregnancy means I am no longer physically able (and shouldn’t be willing) to operate on 3 hours of sleep a day.  I also cannot mainline Starbucks anymore.  (insert various expletives here.)

Growing a baby means I lose control over my body, my schedule, my diet, and nearly every other aspect of my life.  I know some people are saying “Seriously Gina, you didn’t think about this the entire 8 months that you were trying?” To which I would say that, yeah, duh, of course I thought about the birth, and the pregnancy discomfort. and the weight gain, and the loss of control.  I thought long and hard about all of that stuff before we decided to start letting sperm run loose in my vagina.  However, after 8 long months of trying to conceive, the focus became less about being pregnant, and more about seeing those two lines that I longed for.  This has also been the most stressful month in probably the history of all months ever, so it never occurred to me in a thousand years that my body would pick THIS month to start building a human.  My timing is truly impeccable – if by impeccable you mean Excellent at Inconvenience.

As a matter of fact, my friend heard the news and sent me a text message saying “Ha!  I guess all those people who told you that you needed to relax to get pregnant clearly have NO idea how your body works!” Yes, which reminds me – thank you a-hole naturopath.  I guess contrary to her diagnosis, eating crap and never getting any sleep is exactly what my body requires to conceive.  I should have known.  That’s exactly how the last two were conceived.

Seriously, I can’t even believe we found the time to knock me up.  Between the flood and all the other stuff, we only got busy twice, four days apart, during the week I ovulated.  I was also too busy to chart last month so I can only guess which day I actually ovulated.  Isn’t that a pisser.

I was actually so convinced that I wasn’t pregnant this month that I swore I felt my period starting, and tweeted around asking for a DivaCup at BlogHer.

Then, the next day I stocked up on tampons from one of the Expo booths, AFTER I sent my husband to the store to buy me an 8-pack of Tampax.  I really, seriously, did not see this coming this month.

And?  I’m truly nervous that this one won’t stick.  I never felt that way before, but after taking so long to get knocked up, I really feel like I have a near 100% of losing this bean.  While I was taking that nap I mentioned above, I had a horrifying dream that not only did I lose the baby, but I could see his face.  And yes.  It was a boy.  I have terribly vivid dreams anyway, but during pregnancy my dreams become completely surreal, and very hard to forget when I wake up.  They’re like acid trips on steroids.  One more thing I forgot to look forward to!  *Awesome*

Also, when I woke up from that nap, I told my husband I smelled cigars.  He said “Okay, that’s insane, because while you were napping I went outside and just walked PAST a man smoking a cigar across the street – just walked past him – that’s all.” And yet I could smell it.  I forgot that Pregnancy Nose smells everything in a five mile radius.  I think this is actually one of the up sides though.  I could go get a job at O’Hare airport sniffing luggage for bombs and drugs.

So here I am.  Pregnant. I don’t know for how long, but hopefully until Mid-April 2011.  And even though I wanted to be pregnant more than just about anything, I reserve the right to tickle your funny bone (or just my own) with my constant pregnancy-related sarcasm and complaints.  I also reserve the right to be scared out of my mind about the birth even though I’m a childbirth educator who should know better.

I will bitch. I will moan.  But in the end, I’ll pull it all together.  I always do.

I've gotten a million compliments on my awesome FuzziBunz t-shirt.

Then I ran into EcoChic and got her on video loving the purple FuzziBunz Cloth Diaper that I gave her.  If you’re at BlogHer 10, you’ve still got time to come snag a FuzziBunz from me! And don’t forget to enter the raffle to win a lifetime supply of FuzziBunz or a Flip UltraHD™ Video Camera courtesy of my amazing sponsor!

Then I poked around the Expo Hall and picked up bags full of swag from companies like Assets, Nickelodeon, and Mission.  That was tiresome so I headed back to the room to decompress.  I’ve been outstandingly exhausted and truly had to get a little cat nap or I wasn’t going to make it to the parties later.

At 6:00 I hopped in a cab with Jill, Danielle, and BabyMakingMachine and headed to what turned out to be a completely boring party.

I mean, oh, except I got this in the bathroom.

That's a Positive Pregnancy Test Right There

I had been meaning to take a pregnancy test, so I grabbed one from the Duane Read across the street from where the party was.  I told the girls that I was going to pop into the bathroom to take the test so I knew whether I could get hammered or not.  Jill gave me a look like “Oh Gina, you so Cuh-RAzy.” My husband called me as I was sitting on the toilet ripping the test open, and listened while my heart hung in my throat as the two blue lines showed up on the stick.   He had bad reception so I had to yell “It’s POSITIVE!!!!” at the top of my lungs in the ladies room.  Luckily, he was at a rock club that was just a few blocks from the party we were at, so he hopped over and we had our own celebration.

And now, I go to bed.  Have to be up in 7 hours to do it all over again.  Feel free to squeeeeeee your congrats to me in the comments section.  I’m absolutely beaming with pregnancy excitement right now and cannot concentrate on anything else except visualizing the next 9 months.  I need lots and lots of sticky baby vibes too.

_______________________________________________________

@FYeahMotherhood & Me

I was excited to get the invite for that party because I knew it was pretty swanky and I heard that it had Suh-WEET swag bags.  It absolutely did NOT disappoint.  I really think the swag bags might be one of the major benefits of coming to this thing.  It’s not just a bunch of water bottles and pens.  The Social Luxe bag had earrings and body products and all kinds of stuff that makes a lady feel pampered.  Right before the awards, Jill from BabyRabies met up with us, and we all held hands while they announced that not a single one of us won anything.  PhDInParenting and HerBadMother took my category, as I predicted last month when they announced the finalists (and on my radio show last Sunday night!).  Called it! Oh well!  I got a free manicure and back rub out of it.  Jill and I also got to take a fun and flirty picture.

Then we came back to my room where I gave Jill and Beth Ann from Heir to Blair a FuzziBunz Cloth Diaper, and took some video of them geeking out over cloth.  If YOU want to snag a FuzziBunz Cloth Diaper from me (and you’re at the BlogHer conference) then hit me up when you see me and I’ll be happy to get one in your hands (outside the conference space, per BlogHer rules.)  I have a virtual cornucopia of fluffy diapers in my room and I’ll be happy to have you up to “shop!”  I would love to get you on video squeeing over cloth, and FuzziBunz might use some of the footage in a commercial or whatnot, so slap on your camera face and jump in front of my Flip while I pretend to be a film maker.

My BlogHer10 FuzziBunz Stash

I’m ALSO giving away 2 (two) lifetimes supplies of FuzziBunz Cloth Diapers, along with a Flip™ Video Camera to three separate lucky BlogHer attendees.  Come find me and bring your business card, which enters you in the raffle.  Winners will be announced LIVE on my radio show on Sunday morning at 10 AM (that’s the MORNING people!) Eastern Time.  If you are at BlogHer10, I would also LOVE to have you call in and talk to me live on the air to give me your take on the weekend’s festivities.

I’ve gotta wake up early in the AM for the “Newbie Breakfast” and then all the panels start.  I have no idea what I’m going to yet but if you want to meet up with me, then tweet me or email me and tell me where you’re at.

If you’re at home participating in one of those HomeHer10 or NoGoBlogHer parties, I promise you that there is as much work happening here as fun, so don’t be toooooo jealous.  I’ve swallowed enough Rescue Remedy today to raise my blood alcohol level beyond the legal driving limit in the State of New York.  BlogHer is fun, but it’s social anxiety’s worst enemy too!

Just ask The Bloggess – here she is, “hiding” in the bathroom just as I told you she would be!  (no, I did not tell her my plans to dethrone her – she’ll find out soon enough…. mwhaaa haa haaa!)

Jenny The Bloggess Surrounded by Adoring Fans

_______________________________________________

Are you at BlogHer10?  How’s it going?  Are you partying at home?  How’s that working out for you?