3/9/10

Alice inherited the “morning person” gene from Thomas, and has taken to waking up with him at 5am when he is getting ready for work. They eat breakfast together, she helps make his lunch, and then if she’s lucky, she gets to watch an episode of her favorite show without her sister shouting out all the answers. Tom wakes me up as he is leaving, and I’m greeted by my sunshine girl, ready for her day.

I poke around the house for a bit, cleaning and trying to wake up, until Ella crawls out of bed. I get her breakfast, and she promises to keep her sister out of trouble while I take a shower. I’m not feeling very optimistic about our day, but try to put on a happy face.

Once out of the shower, I wonder if I shouldn’t have had a cup of coffee before taking a four year old’s word on keeping her sister out of trouble.

The cat and I have a chat about her staying the heck off my bed, because she needs a haircut and I’m tired of waking up hacking up furballs. She ignores me.

I document the 36th week of this pregnancy. A month more to go, if this baby (unlike her sisters) actually comes near her due date. 30 days sounds so much sooner.

I finally feel up to eating, so I make a mega shake and gulp down 50 grams of protein in one sitting. The girls beg for “smoothies!” and then take one drink and dramatically tell me that “THAT is not a smoothie”.

We stalk the mailman, but he doesn’t bring us packages, just magazines and bills.

I eat my body weight in Sonic ice each day. My iron levels are fine; I just like how it crunches.

This plus this = my attempt at not spending money at the coffee shop.

+

The girls spend a lot of time looking out our front window, talking about squirrels, noting the comings and goings of the neighbors, and fighting over who saw that bird first.

I plot out what to take and when today. I think I need a fancy pill case with a reminder bell or something. I have another group of vitamins that I only take at night, but forgot to round those up.

Alice is potty training, so we spend a lot of time singing songs in the bathroom.

I consider making my bed, but instead crawl back in and cuddle with my pillow for a bit. I seriously thought this was the stupidest pillow on earth when I saw it online (“Pshh, I can do that with my 6 pillows! Who would waste the money?”) but then I found one for a great deal and now I can not believe I lived without it. I love you noodle pillow!

It’s close to noon by this point, so we decide to go for a quick walk around the neighborhood, and then come home for lunch. Instead, we get two feet outside the front door and I am hit with a series of killer braxton hicks contractions. Walk = sooooo not happening. I hobble the kids over to the van, and promise them that we’ll go do something else. (Note the baby seat. I installed it a few days ago to see if I want the van set up this way, and am not sure yet. Every time I go out I am caught off guard by it though. THREE carseats? OMG.)

I drive around for a while, and finally decide to give in and take the kids to “Old MacDonalds”. We rarely eat fast food, but Pam, my mother-in-law, takes the girls “out to dinner” here when she babysits them, so it is a sacred and mystical place for Ella. She thanks me over and over again for bringing her here. I’m thinking maybe we should come more often, if only to make it less attractive.

Once we get home, I enforce naptime, despite everyone swearing they are not tired. Of course they are asleep within 5 minutes of reluctantly agreeing to lay down and “think about summer”.

This is where our day went south and I forgot about my camera for a few hours. While the girls slept, I called our insurance company to follow up on an appeal we’d made, in hopes of them covering the cost of our midwife. Not completely surprisingly, they denied the claim again. I was bummed, but okay with it, since we had planned for this possibility, and were going to use some of the money from the sale of our house to pay Cathy.

As soon as I hung up the phone, Tom called and gave me the news that the people who were buying the house were backing out, after months of assuring us that they would not, and that it was all just paperwork and red tape holding everything up. Not only are we now back at square one with the house, but we feel scammed. Bonus that that money I had just been counting on a half hour before was now nonexistent.

So, as is my usual coping technique, I ran the bath as hot as I could stand it, and crawled in, and cried. The girls woke up, Tom came home, the water got cold, and I calmed down. By the time Cathy came by for our weekly appointment I was able to talk to her about it without sobbing, and of course she assured me that she wasn’t going to abandon us. She stayed for two hours, talking and laughing with us. We listened to Polliwog’s heartbeat and talked about what the next month will look like. I could have a baby in a week, or in a month and a half. When Ella is being antsy or nagging me to do something, I often ask her what patience means, and she always sighs and says “Waiting without complaining” with a resigned look on her face. We’ll see if I am any better at it than a four year old.

Once Cathy leaves, we hurry to make dinner and get the girls in bed, since it is already close to their bedtime. I do dishes,

and zone out to an audiobook.

Alice sorts through the tea, and I tell myself that the 15 minutes of quiet I get is worth the 2 minutes it will take me to pick them up later.

Tom makes dinner, heavy on protein.

The kids eat, and then Tom gets them ready for bed. He does most of the bedtime routine now, in preparation for the fact that sooner than later I will have a tiny nursling. Once they are quiet, we both sit down with our respective computers and zone out until we curl up on the couch and watch TV.

I pass out in the middle of a DVR’d episode of Lost, and am so, so glad this day is over.

But hey, look, there’s a squirrel on the porch eating a cracker. We think his name is Wendle.

Sure, sometimes they try to leave the house with only one shoe,

or with three shirts

or looking like they have been raised by blind gypsies

but never has the saying “Choose your battles” been more true than when you are trying to get a toddler and preschooler out the door.

And besides, sometimes they end up pretty darn cute.

We spent a good portion of today in the back yard, swinging, plotting out the garden, cutting down trees, and knocking out the cable line. (Gives Tom the evil eye, and waves at the neighbors whose wireless we are hijacking.) Since there isn’t a lot of yardwork I can do without tempting my angry uterus, I set up the camera with the timer, and took a series of photos with the working title “If I am this big at 34 week, how am I going to survive the next six?” This was an outtake, an unintentional family portrait.

This outfit is what I am reduced to wearing until I am motivated enough to go buy  maternity pants that do not feel like spanx, and maternity shirts that actually cover my belly. Until then, it is skirts, ugly boots, knee socks, and shirts that I have to tug down every 10 seconds.

Another outtake:

Tell me Alice doesn’t remind you of this squirrel. Flashing red lights equally attract toddlers and small rodents apparently.

Because even when you are having a no good, very bad day,

they know that all you really need is a hug,

and someone to hold your hand.

Alice

Ella

Second Trimester

And now, at 32 weeks, we are firmly in the third trimester.

The first six months of this pregnancy feel like a complete blur to me, punctuated only by the constant, unending, miserable nausea. I am still ill on a regular basis, but 3-4 times a week is a world away from 10-15 times a day. I’m finally able to keep weight on, and my body seems to be trying to make up for the malnourishment of the last half year. If you cook it, I will eat it. I am always, always hungry, and even though there is not a lot of room for any of my internal organs in my abdomen, I can somehow put away an entire plate of food. And then another. And if you have dessert, I’ll take some of that too please.

We’re nowhere near ‘ready’ for a baby yet, since the majority of our newborn supplies are either packed away in the back of the garage, or loaned out to friends.  With only five weeks before we are cleared for our homebirth, I have moments of panic that I need to have everything set up, but Tom is quick to remind me that A) our little village of friends would not let Polliwog go cold, B) other than boobs, blankets and diapers, everything else is extras, and C) it’s more likely that we will meet this baby in nine weeks, not five.

The girls are very aware of their little sister, singing to her, poking her little feet (knees? elbows? What is that lump?), and counting down the days until she is born. I told Ella months ago that “the baby will be born when the trees have new leaves”, counting on a typical northern winter, and the trees not coming out of hibernation until April. Instead, we’ve had one of the mildest winters on record, and the trees have started budding in February. Now we’re counting down until Easter, with the promise that baby will come after the Easter Bunny. Alice has no sense of time, and asks me to “Open! Baby out!” daily. They also have a “Hatch baby, hatch!” song, which is unsurprising considering how excited they are about the chicken plans.

(Edited to add: Today we spent time with Chelsea and her family, and Ella could not get enough of Quinn. After leaning over me holding him and declaring him “SO CUTE!”, she begged to hold him, and then sat with us on the couch for a half hour, just holding him while he slept, stroking his hair. It struck me how much different life will be this time. She has grown up so much in the last two years, which is both obvious and so surprising to me at the same time.)

Emotionally, I feel like this pregnancy is very similar to Alice’s. With Ella the reality that a baby was the end product of pregnancy was so surreal that daily (hourly?) I was caught off guard, and  I would find myself giddily rubbing my belly, making promises. With Alice, and now with Polliwog, the element of surprise is gone, but there is a clear sense that this little soul is my child, and in some way always has been. I feel like welcoming her into our family will be a homecoming, not an introduction.

(Compare with these, of week old Alice. It’s a good think I am already pregnant again, because that little foot poking out may have given me baby rabies otherwise.)

Since I rarely actually talk about that first year of Alice’s life and how I struggled, sometimes it feels like I made it all up. Like I am blowing what I went through out of proportion, and that claiming to have had PPD is disrespectful to those who really had it. I did not take medication, I did not hurt my children, I “got over it”. Time dulls pain, and fear that I could fall into that abyss again kicks my denial into high gear. I don’t speak up when someone asks how people overcame PPD, because what would I know about that? I was just a little sad, a little blue, right?

But then I come across an article like this one, and I feel like someone is holding my eyes open “Clockwork Orange” style, reminding me that I wasted an entire year of my life, of Tom’s life, of my children’s lives, fighting with that bear. Each item on the list brings back a rush of memories that make me want to shield my face, to turn away. It hurts too much. And yet, I keep reading. I keep remembering. I keep reminding myself that I lived through all of this, and that I do not have to do it again. I know too much now to ignore the signs, to think that it is okay to feel so numb and angry and scared all at the same time. There is a good chance that I won’t have to face it down again – I was fine after Ella’s birth, which was one of the reasons I was so unprepared to fight it after Alice’s – but if I do have to face PPD again, I refuse to waste my time wondering and waiting. I refuse to waste another year of our lives.

I have a plan of attack, a worst case scenario tool kit of diet, supplements, yoga, acupuncture and if need be, medication. But mostly I just plan to talk about it, even when it is uncomfortable. I plan to ask for help, and take the help that is offered. I plan to let myself be supported. And the next time someone asks about PPD, I am going to be honest with them, and with myself.