4 more days

4 more days. Wow. wow. WOW.

It's midnight and I'm a bit nervous about the conversations I'll have to have. I should have been going in for my induction tonight but instead I'm waiting to hear from my OB and seeing how difficult it will be to push for a Friday/Saturday induction. I hate confrontation and going against authority, so we'll see how that goes. I also have my last MFM appointment for this pregnancy in the morning! They keep saying they wont' weigh him anymore since its not going to be accurate but I want to ask them to do it anyway just to have some sort of an idea since the biggish baby argument is the big one my OB is using for induction.

I took the primrose oil, walked to the point of sheer exhaustion. There's a crazy storm coming tonight and I hope the pressure will send me straight to labor too but I'm so exhausted that if I go into labor naturally tonight I don't know how well I'll do. Besides, all these things? Not working yet. It seems everything could send you into labor tonight!!! oorrrr maybe not. So like Lisa suggested I think I'm going to rest a bit more from here on out. I'm so tired I don't have the energy to put away any of the dishes. I've been cleaning up spotless each night before bed for fear that I will go into labor, rush to the hospital, and my in-laws will walk into our messy house to discover how we truly live! Gasp! Tonight I don't care so I'm hoping Murphy's law will ensure natural labor tonight!

This last weekend of coupledom felt special. We slept in, held hands on our walks, ate frozen yogurt out of the same cup, and had the types of conversations we stopped having somewhere along the way, about life, our perspectives, our childhoods. Being married as long as we have I forget sometimes that there is so much more to know and love about him. Also, IF, loss, and pregnancy has in some ways swallowed up the rest of our life. It was nice to be a couple this weekend.

But. We're ready now. We're ready Sunflower. We're done waiting. Please come to us. Come to us as soon as you can. Preferably tonight. You know your mama hates confrontation. Thank you.

Letting go of control

I've jokingly likened the wait for Sunflower to watching a kettle and waiting for it to boil. But I realized today I'm not waiting for it to boil, I'm willing it to boil as if by the sheer force of staring at the metaphorical kettle I will produce within it the bubbles I desire. I'm reading Momma Zen, a book given by a lovely friend, which, if you are pregnant or a new mama, you must read. She talks a lot about living in the moment, letting go of the illusion of control and being in the moment that is before us and she says it in a way that makes you stop in your tracks and listen.

Logically, I accept I can't control everything. I couldn't get nor keep pregnancies at will. I can't will a publisher to put an offer on the book my agent is shopping. We fight the carpenter bees in our awning daily but we can't control their hardiness. I know this and yet I still try to control things I can't. It's why I find myself up at 2am filled with anxiety as I wonder when will this happen? Why not now? And yet, these thoughts won't affect labor. I can do my best, walking and otherwise, but ultimately I don't hold the key to the outcome.

I'm trying to let go of the attempts to control and instead enjoy the time I have left. I can't wait to hold him in my arms but I will miss these karate kicks in my womb. I can't wait to hear him cry hearty sobs from healthy lungs but I'm sure a part of me will miss this silence in the middle of the night.

I guess I've been trying so hard to figure out what the next step is I forgot I can't. And the book helped me realize, that when it comes to control and my plans, they will all flip upside down once the baby comes. I plan to breastfeed but maybe I'll be unable to. I shudder at the thought of a C-section but that may be the only option. I have my Wii Fit ready to go to drop the baby weight but maybe it will go slower than I think. We imagine a happy cooing baby but we might have a colicky little bundle. If I thought I had little control now, that control is likely slipping away further once he arrives.

I'm telling myself: If I go all remaining ten days still pregnant- that's okay. I will re-read my favorite books. Call a friend and indulge in a one hour chat. Sleep in and watch the morning filter in through the windows letting the silence feel sacred. Go out with Jack Saturday night, hold his hand on an evening stroll and appreciate this brief interlude before we are coated in spit up and leaky diapers. I'm reminding myself I can't control the outcome but I can control what I do with the time I have.

Parenting Expectations

The crib and glider are set. His clothes are ready to be washed and folded. Minus pacifiers and a few small items, we're ready [Well, sort of, but that's a post unto itself!] I just hope we'll be emotionally ready. For eight years its been Jack and me. Sleeping in, eating out, traveling, renting loads of DVDs. Now we will bring in an unknown variable, a cute pouty lipped variable but a variable to what we've known.

Sometimes I worry about Jack's expectations. When you've dealt with IF and loss, and waited a while to have a baby, you have a lot of time to dream and fantasize. A few times now Jack has said our baby will be really chill, I can tell because he doesn't kick you very hard. He envisions him cooing in the crib, or snuggled between us in bed on a lazy Sunday morning. he knows his boy will share his toys, eat his greens and thank us for parenting him. (Well he didn't put it quite this way but its the impression I got). While I hope this will happen- I have tentatively told him its also going to be hard and challenging, sleepless nights, hormones I'm crashing from, not understanding his needs. He waves this away. Yeah but it will be okay, we won't mind because we'll love him so much, and besides, I think he's going to be an easy baby.

But just like acid reflux is annoying despite a much wanted pregnancy, I'm assuming you can love your child and still miss sleep. I'm lucky. I've had a few friends who refused to sugar coat it for me, and I'm blessed to have y'all, many of whom are parenting after IF and say it straight so I know it won't be kisses and giggles at all times. I just wonder about Jack and how he'll handle it if little dude isn't as easy as he predicts. I'm sure we'll roll with the punches but I hope he doesn't get punched too hard.

On another note, I hope he is prepared for the emotions I may experience. Having wanted this pregnancy for years, one would expect that I'll be just smiling and starry eyed at all times. I desperately hope this will be the case but I'm aware of the hormone-crash. That my mother had Post-Partum depression. That sometimes I struggle with regular old depression. And that if PMS is any indication, I might have emotional lows upon giving birth. We've been talking about it and he says he understands. I hope he knows that if God forbid I do have emotional instability, that its not because I don't love the miracle I've been given, but hormones that in some ways are out of my control.

Last April I lost Speck. Since then we've been through so much and our marriage only got stronger. I hope that if parenthood tests us unexpectedly that we will also find our way through this too.

Thoughts on being a stay at home mom

I quit my job as an education attorney in September because my boss had twisted my career into a dead-end job. The economy sucked. I felt burnt out. I had finished a novel. I figured I'd take some time off. Jack and I had saved enough and refrained from buying enough to make this a possibility. My family thought I was insane. Only Jack supported me, which is really the only one that matters since he is supporting me. In the meantime I got pregnant and as I recovered from burn out and felt able to consider going back to work I grew a belly that made it complicated to attend interviews and logistically, was I planning to start a job and then stop a few months later?

I've been home since September and there are benefits to being home. I'm pursuing my writing. The house is spotless, dinner is not store-bought pizza. I am less stressed out. But- being home all the time isn't easy either. Writing is solitary business and financially, it is still uncertain. I'm in the middle of my 5th rewrite for a publisher considering buying my book- but the rewrites are done for free, and they still have the option at the end to say no. It very well could be that despite my and my agent's best efforts, this book will not be published.

If I didn't have a baby on the way, I'd likely be applying for jobs. But because I do, my plan was to be a SAHM for at least the first year of his life. Yesterday we were taking an evening walk and he asked me when I was planning to start applying for jobs again. I felt stunned. I thought we agreed on the SAHM thing? He said that was fine but he worried that I seemed a bit stifled lately and that I would get too claustrophobic home cooped up all day at home with a baby and maybe it would be too much. Maybe I'm living in a bubble but though I know raising a baby is not going to be kisses and giggles all the time, I do think I will find it rewarding and meaningful. There will likely be days I will question why I do this, but that is the same of any job anyone has. He went on to point out that he thinks I'm too educated to be sitting around at home, baking and changing diapers.

I have a masters in education and a law degree. Sometimes instead of assets these feel like chains because they engender guilt in me. I am capable of making a lot of money. And yet I'm bringing in nothing right now. Since I was 16 I have made money and while I've never been rich (public school teacher, public interest lawyer) I have always contributed. It feels weird to have done all that schooling and sit at home.

In an ideal world my book will sell, and be successful enough that I can work as an author while raising a family. But that's ideal and there are no guarantees. I told Jack that if this didn't work out I'd likely return to the working world once my youngest was nursery school age because I wanted there to be a primary caregiver at home watching them. Then- he suggested his mom could come and watch our son. Needless to say the conversation did not end well.

And as an aside, we haven't seen Jack's family since Thanksgiving because of how they acted, but I guess time heals all wounds because now he thinks that this baby will be some kind of salve, and that we will gather around him and all our issues will be solved. He's going to a conference two weeks after the baby is born and suggested his mother come to help me out. When I stared at him incredulously he said what? you'll have the baby to bond over. Or kill each other over? I'm concerned about this since a baby does not heal marriages nor in-law issues.

The truth is, I want to stay home with my son. I know being a SAHM isn't an option or even desired by every mother and I respect that completely. For me, its been something I always planned to do and because there is no job I'm leaving right now to do this, the transition is seamless. I just wish I could rid the guilt I feel when I consider my earning potential and the college fund that won't be growing while I stay at home.

Stretchmarks strike back

Only recently I was blithely asserting how I had nary a stretchmark on my belly. Yes I was aware that everyone in my family gets them. Yes I was aware that puberty left me with enough to make a hot tire jealous. It's called denial. Each day I smiled as I slathered on cocoa butter and told others the virtues of lotioning and hydrating. But you see- I hadn't really fully examined my belly since at the moment its hard to access visually the dark side of the moon, or as its otherwise known the underside of my planetary belly. Today after my shower I took a hand mirror and looked and um, yeah- there they were, enough to congregate and have marches and rallies. On that note I must say I love Jack very much. Why? Because I've shown him my belly as I lotion up and have proudly said see honey? no stretch marks anywhere! To which once he hesitatingly said um I think I might see one.... To which I shrieked with a look of panic, to which he quickly covered his tracks and said no no, it was just a shadow. And yes I believed him because I'm quite good at the art of denial. I'm not saying moisturizing/hydrating doesn't work. Maybe I'd be beat up skating rink if I hadn't done so, but I am saying that I gots them. And yes- I will accept them like the battle marks they are. I got these from carrying my son so if one must have such marks, they're the best damn stretch marks one could ask for.

Jack is nesting

I thought I've been running around like a frantic bird because of hormones. Maybe its a bad case of couvades syndrome, but Jack- it seems he is nesting too. On Saturday I got out of the shower to find him vacuuming behind the sofas. Sunday I woke to find he had removed all the petals from our ceiling fan and was scrubbing them with bleach. We had a carpet salesman come by yesterday to give an estimate and suddenly he's researching carpenters on Craigslist. You have to know Jack and how much, ahem, prodding, he needs to put his plate in the sink to know how peculiar this is. Granted its still tough to buy things with him since you can see the anxiety pass over his face when we do, but in all other respects I wouldn't be surprised to walk in to find him baking cookies or something in a new york minute. And speaking of cookies, I have somehow been able to suppress my sweet tooth since getting GD but I saw a commercial for softserve ice cream and now I'm craving it like crack. I heard there's a McD's in the lobby of where I'll deliver so methinks that will be the first thing I eat post-delivery.

Side effects of a foggy brain

Kate: I must say this week has just flown by.
Jack: Yeah? I wish that was the case for me.
Kate: It's amazing! After all these months of days that drag on, I don't know where the week went. Maybe I'm finally more comfortable and secure in this pregnancy. I've come a long way, maybe the rest of weeks will fly by just like this!
Jack: That's great honey, I'm happy for you.
Kate: So, is there a new Office tonight?
Jack: The Office?
Kate: Yeah, I really liked last week's episode, I wish they could all be hour long.
Jack: What day you think it is?
Kate: Thursday.
Jack: *silence* Hmm, that explains the week flying by.
Kate: Whatcha mean?
Jack: It's Tuesday

30 Weeks

Thirty weeks pregnant! Single digits a'comin. So thankful. So grateful. I simply cannot wait. And yet I'm sitting here trying not to bawl my eyes out. This is a frustrated woe is me post so please feel free to skip if you're not in the mood.

My doctor called and refused to give me a three-hour saying I definitely have GD. This frustrated me but I took a deep breath and told myself its okay. Ten more weeks. It's okay.

Then I sat down to dinner. Already full. There is too much damn food in this diet. Trust me, I love food but. . . this is ridiculous. I have to eat almost every two hours and not just a small bit. Here's what I ate today:

Breakfast: whole wheat toast, egg, tea, apple (2 carbs 1 protein)
Snack: one whole grapefruit plus nuts (2 carbs 1 protein)
Lunch: Tilapia Salad plus grapefruit (2 carbs 1 protein- I was supposed to eat three carbs but I was too damn full)
Snack: I was supposed to eat 2 carbs 1 protein but I was TOO FULL so I had some tea with a teaspoon of sugar (1 carb)
Dinner: Chicken salad plus random potatoes I included for carbs sake (3 carbs 1 protein)

I still have my night snack left and despite walking around I am so full I feel sick yet I've been told I must eat 2 carbs plus 1 protein before bed because I risk spiking my insulin overnight. This means an apple, milk, nuts. I'm FULL.

This just doesn't feel right. But still. I told myself to be grateful I'm not starving. It's okay. Sunflower is okay.

Then- it was time to check my after dinner levels- Twenty minutes go by. I pricked every single damn finger, I bled on every single damn finger- but not enough blood. Error says the meter each time. I'm down to two test strips now. Each finger is throbbing and the damn machine still tells me error.

Jack- trying to lighten the moment smiles and says aw honey its okay you'll get it, its no big deal, you can't let this upset you. Yeah that didn't work. I felt like John Locke on LOST who screams out all the time don't tell me what I can't do!! I just started crying my eyes out seriously contemplating a sewing needle or something to get me to f-ing bleed enough! I finally had to sit down and try composing myself- the dietician told me stress will spike my numbers but I was still shaky as I tried it on the highest needle setting and started bleeding profusely, finally it read my number: 80- well below danger zone- again.

I'm frustrated. I feel I'm being punished for wondering why people complain about this diet. Its not the deprivation of sweets, its eating like I'm on a Road Rules challenge on MTV. It's pricking myself until I gush to get a damn reading on that meter.

And then there's the other issue. I found out Jack has a required ten day trip to San Diego less than two weeks after the due date. I don't want to be home alone. My mom has to go back to work by then, my dad used up all his vacation for the year tending to his mother overseas, and he suggested I could ask my mom to come stay with you while I'm gone, once sunflower is here you guys might bond and it would be nice. What the fuck? I'm sorry- she stresses me out sans bebe and now you want me to be ALONE with her and my crazy FIL for ten days with a baby and my pregnancy hormones? Let me assure you that is not happening. I'd rather be alone or I can ask a cousin or my brother to sacrifice a week and spend it with me. Jack is not a jerk. He's really not. He's an awesome husband and has been great through all this- but I don't get it. He thinks that this me being a mother thing is going to automatically create a bond between MIL and me and that is just as unrealistic as puppies driving cars. Not. Going. To. Happen. AND even if it were to happen- I'm not going to test his hypothesis two weeks after giving birth living alone with them for ten days. Jack is going to try his best to get out of this trip but he's getting heavily pressured, hopefully this will be a moot point and his boss will understand- but right now its sitting like a boulder on my head.

So there you have it. I'm an emotional mess today. I want to be super-happy at reaching this wonderful milestone. And I am happy. I really am. I feel bad at this much frustration. Maybe its hormones. I'm not usually this easily unsettled to the point of tears. I guess I just feel frustrated.

In an attempt to be positive I'll end with three things good things at 30 weeks:

1. Parking in the expectant mama parking at stores gives me an inordinate sense of joy. For so long it hurt and now when I pull in and park my car there I feel like I have truly arrived.
2. Lately when Sunflower kicks he uses all his body parts. I love talking to him while he kicks. I like to imagine we're having a conversation and his little pokes are feedback on my thoughts.
3. The staff at my OB office are so happy for me and counting down with me. I love feeling like a person at my doctor's office, not just a billing code.

Phew. That made me feel better. So grateful to be here. Being in my 30's never felt so good. Here's to week 32, may it come sooner than I can ever imagine and may the thing that frustrate me now seem very silly then.

Anemia, Gestational Diabetes, and the blame game

I went to refill my prenatal prescription and found out my doctor called in an order of iron supplements for me. Huh? After a phone call to the OB I learned I'm also anemic. I guess with all the hooplah about having GD they forgot to tell me that minor detail. I've been told anemia makes you feel really tired and that makes me feel better because lately I feel like a three toed sloth forced to live like the humans. Still- I wish they had mentioned it. I just happened to have been a few days late filling my prenatal and the prescription was called in today. Had I not gone in, I'd not have known until perhaps much later.

Thank you SO much for your advice about GD and calling my doctor's office. Some people mentioned pushing for the three-hour. I would do that except that my insurance ends Friday and I'm afraid of going in for the test and getting positive results during my insurance lapse when I can't do anything about it. I'm signed up for a half day nutrition session tomorrow and hopefully the nurse can order my testing strips before the end of the week so insurance will pay for that too.

One positive of having been married almost 8 years before having a child is you have worked through a lot of your ish before the baby arrives. We used to argue and get dramatic quite frequently in the first few years of marriage but in the past two years I can count on one hand the number of serious arguments we've had. For this reason I was a bit dumbfounded by the argument we almost had last night. I was sitting in bed when I realized I had not eaten something before bedtime. I usually have a glass of milk with nuts per the GD diet. As I got up he said you're just so chill about this whole diagnosis. I looked at him confused. You knew you were going to have GD based on your history and you chose to eat pizza and other bad things for you. If you had been healthier you could have prevented this.

In the first year of marriage I would have started yelling at him but instead, I just took a deep breath and went downstairs to get my snack and cool down. I understand he's frustrated. He gets to be on the outside while I bake the baby and he's very health conscious and its true- I did eat more unhealthy than I ever had while pregnant. This isn't to say I was sitting there eating pints of ice cream but I was eating what I wanted when I wanted. I ate things that have been on my no-no list for years like Pizza Hut. Considering I have a history of diabetes and GD in my family and I had PCOS I should have been more vigilant. But at the same time I don't know if all the vigilance in the world would have prevented this. He was apologetic when I came back upstairs, but his apology feels hollow to me because I know he meant what he said.

Since getting pregnant I've been able to push aside all the emotions that come with having PCOS but now with the GD diagnosis its all coming back to me. My doctor told me I could cure PCOS by losing weight. I was ten pounds over my ideal BMI. Jack was at that appointment and he's reminded me ever since that I have PCOS because of my weight though research also shows you can have weight issues because of PCOS. I tried for years to lose those ten pounds, and let me tell you staying ten pounds overweight (and not more) was a struggle. Metformin helped a lot. I suddenly could see the results of my hard work and through diet and exercise my weight did start going down like normal people's do when they eat right and work out- ofcourse I got pregnant and lost pregnancies for the duration of that year so I never fully lost those ten pounds but with Metformin I saw it was possible to finally lose the weight.

This whole GD thing is taking me back there. To the place of guilt. To the place of: its my fault and I may have caused this to happen. I'm fighting the guilt because guilt does me no good but I'm tired of my family, my doctor, my husband pointing fingers at me. And- I'm also tired of me sometimes also, pointing fingers at me. I can only do what I can now that I know- blaming helps no one.

26 weeks and double digits!

I started counting down at 260 days, back then double digit day felt like a mirage but like any parched traveler I continued the hike. Now I'm here at the brief oasis along the way: double digits. It doesn't mean much viability-wise but it means a lot psychologically for me.

Speaking of viability, I read some amazing stories of preemies that were born very early and survived against all odds, including Amillia whose mother had to lie to doctors about her gestational age because had they known she was only 21 weeks they wouldn't have tried saving her. She's now a preschooler! Or Will Goddard who was born at 23 weeks and doctors refused to treat him until they saw him struggling to survive without any assistance for 36 hours after his birth. He is now 11 years old, plays the sax, has his own website and has authored two books. My uterus has been acting a little irritable lately, I think I have had a few Braxton Hicks and some wonky discharge which Dr. Google tells me is normal. Still, I hold these stories close to my heart, they give me hope when I feel a little scared. I thought I'd share incase they give you hope too.

Jack shared our news to his co-workers today. He went to Dunkin Donuts beforehand and brought in a few boxes of Munchkin Donut Holes to announce the impending arrival of our own munchkin. It tells me how happy Jack is since getting up thirty minutes early and just thinking to do this is so unlike him! He has changed so much this past year. It's amazing to see and it makes me wonder what he will be like as a father. I anticipate good things.

Incidentally, I'm fully convinced Sunflower reads my blog because after penning my post about my nerves about evil eye, he decided to mess with my head and go totally silent for two days. No pokes, no nudges, nothing. It even took me five minutes to find him on the doppler last night. I slept fitfully, worried sick. This morning I managed to force him out of hiding by eating some cereal, a glass of OJ and some tea with plenty of sugar in it. My stomach suddenly became a bowl of shaky jello as he wiggled out of hiding. I kindly asked him to hold off on hide-and-seek until he's safely out!

26 weeks. I was never a girl scout but I wonder what kind I would have been. Probably the kind obsessed with collecting merit badges. I say this because tiny milestones like hitting 26 weeks, double digits, make me so excited, I could see myself getting beat up in a dark alley by other girlscouts after announcing my 20th cookie box sale. Oh well- Yay to 26 weeks as I hunker down to the next goal: Week 28 and officially entering the third trimester!

Dinner parties

We had a small dinner party tonight with friends we haven't seen in ages. Jack still didn't feel comfortable sharing and said we would only disclose if someone asked. No one asked though I feel convinced I got a few belly stares.

I asked Jack when he feels comfortable sharing and he said once we reach viability, 24 weeks. I think this is unnecessary but I respect his wishes. I see how his face pales when I flinch or touch my belly with a concerned expression. I'm nervous too but his fear is of monolithic proportions. I guess part of it has to do with the fact that anything that happens is so out of his control. It's out of my control too, but I get to feel sunflower do pilates daily so I have more peace. Still, I'm accepting that this is where he is emotionally. Jack can be laid back to a fault, so if he is uptight about disclosing this news, I'm going to respect it but it was weird today to sit there and not disclose particularly when the topic went to babies and pregnancy.

They began mentioning how everyone is having babies, all of them have toddlers of their own. For a split second I felt the old feelings coming back, the unique pain of infertility, and then sunflower would start up his dance dance revolution and I'd remember that I'm not alone right now. One of the girls inadvertently implied she was pregnant to which everyone said are you pregnant? She shook her head and then looked away and said I wish. Soon I hope. I remember her telling me last December of wanting to expand her family. I was struck again when she mentioned her daughter is no longer afraid of needles because she sees her dad giving me injections daily so... and then she fell silent and then I mean, she saw the doctor give me my H1N1 so. . . I nodded but I knew in the way she blushed that we were two IF sisters, sitting just feet apart, but the words went unspoken.

Seeing children make me long for sunflower. By the time I have him in May, I will have been pregnant for 15 out of 17 months. I know sunflower is the newest to chillax in my womb, and though I love being pregnant, I do feel like I'm gestating an elephant.

My rock

3am and I can't sleep. I came downstairs flipped on "Top Chef" and decided to run my dishwasher. As I closed the dishwasher I heard J yell "HONEY" at the top of his lungs and then I heard frantic footsteps down the stairs. His eyes were full of fear. Are you okay? I nodded, rushing up to him hugging him, yes, why? what's wrong? He shook his head, I heard a noise, I thought something happened. I told him I was loading the dishwasher because I couldn't sleep. He looked at me and said I'm glad you're okay. I looked at his hands, they were trembling.

Every time I call him at work, the usual mid day call, he asks me are you okay? And in his voice I hear subdued apprehension. When I called him breathless about an agent who seems interested, his first reaction was oh my God, you scared me, I thought something happened. He's afraid to tell anyone because he's scared of losing sunflower. We listen to the doppler every evening and if it takes longer than a second I see his shoulders tense and his jaw clench.

During the trial of infertility and losses, Jack held me up. He talked me off the figurative ledge. He told me everything would be okay.

Tonight is another reminder of how hard these two years have been for us. He's been my post to lean upon but now that things are settling down, I am beginning to see the cracks in his armoire. How hard its been for him to put on the strong front, to keep me from crumbling. I just took this for granted. I assumed his pain was less, that he handled it differently. Just the other day he said to me when sunflower is old enough we'll tell her she had two siblings and I'm pretty sure Speck was her brother. This shocked me because for months we argued as Jack insisted that my miscarriage was not a baby, just some cells that failed to work out. Now he's admitted to me he never felt that way, he said this because he thought it would ease my pain.

Now my fears are slowly diminishing, and he feels more comfortable telling me what he's going through and I feel like I'm looking at my husband of 7 years for the first time.

I'm sitting here now, tears rolling down my cheeks. To think he lives in my home, sleeping next to me in my bed, and only today is the full effect this has all had on him, truly hitting me for the first time.