Salt and Pickles

The little girl (now confirmed) in my belly would seem to be quite the little swimmer swimming around in her mama’s fishbowl belly. She is constantly doing flips and moving so her head is down at one point and then is to the side and she’s laying sideways 10 minutes later.

 This was all confirmed at an appt today where they were monitoring her closely because 2 days ago they did a scan that found i had low amniotic fluid. All is ok though. I drank a lot of water between then and now (i totally own that i suck at drinking enough water) and things looked fine. The tech said “are you a swimmer? you have quite a little swimmer in there” 

she’s named now. But i think maybe i’m too superstitious to put it here yet.

We have a house guest for the long term. although she’s not actually a house guest right now , as i found her house sitting gigs. But she’s over here most days. This is a good thing because she’s like family for me and really needs a safe place to be. Her life being in upheaval. it’s also interesting because i SERRRRRIOUSLY need my space and I am hoping I don’t get irritable and uncharitable before all is said and done. I’ve strained friendships before where somebody had to stay with me for awhile.

I had placenta previa at my 20 week scan, but by now (28 weeks) it had resolved itself, which is a great relief.

I’m in the third trimester. that’s just crazy to me. still so much to do!

We have friends who have had a lot of bad luck (which sounds so.. mild compared to the truth of it) this year.

Their story here

I can only offer babysitting where I can, and casseroles where I can. and donate a little to help in the financial burdens.

I am so impressed with their brother and how he saved that little girls life.

Hi there. I’m a bad bad blogger. 

The baby is still growing and kicking away in my belly. I had one day where I was positive she was moving more sluggishly than normal and didn’t sleep much that night. But the next day she was back to moving like the jackrabbit she usually is

apparently my grandmother is convinced I’m having a boy, still. I have an ultrasound on wednesday… so we’ll see if ’she’ is still a girl! (i find myself hoping so, only because of the 3 or 4 little dresses I couldn’t stop myself from buying. i have control issues. or rather.. lack of control issues)

I’ve gone to minnesota and swum in a lake, I’ve shopped at the farmers market a lot, i’ve cooked a lot of healthy yummy meals, I’ve done far less to the loft than I’d hoped to by now.

right now we have a friend visiting.. potentially for awhile, although I got her a few house sitting gigs over the next few weeks. Will be nice to have some help with the physical labor part of getting the house in order. We’ve known each other since 1977.. so she is family. Going through a rough patch and hopefully we can help her get through it and established here in the bay area

I should really get out of my pajamas and into real clothes, as noon creeps up on me!

So we have 80% odds of a girl, so of course that means that I’ve already bought one dress and a few girly onesies. Also, as i build my cloth diaper stash.. a few of those diapers sure are flowery. Thankfully, I have no issues with being gender-confusing and dressing my son (if those 20% odds win out) in flowery onesies or pink cherry blossom diapers. 

I love Christensen Creations Diapers and can’t stop myself from buying them. I think I have 5 now and another 10 on the way. Luckily they have good resale value!

We spent Fathers Day in a sunny kiddy park with other parents-to-be and already-parents. It was nice.. a potluck with socializing and hanging out with little ones and realizing that it’s possible.  I feel a little sunsoaked and sleepy now though.

Yesterday was also spent with new parents (5 week old) and that reminded me that tiny babies are wonderful and also a little boring. sleep, cry, sleep, cry, eat .. ok eat some more. more boob! ok cry a little. rock back and forth in swing, wiggle arms around, be bounced in arms ..It’s not bad boring. Just reminded me that being a stay at home mom is going to have a lot of … long moments. Aside from cuddling the newborn, there was also bbq and some geekery. because the geeky nerdy boys that we love so are going to play D&D. That’s right. .. many-sided dice, bugbear beasts, hob goblins and other outright nerdtopia. in their 30’s and reliving the glory.

If i weren’t going out to dinner with family I would so be asleep right now. also, now that i’m no longer getting sick… I really love being pregnant. Every time that little squiggle kicks and bounces around, I am blissed. I imagine as i get bigger it will be less blissful, but right now every movement just is glee.

Do you think they’ll let me do a shot of tequila in the hospital once the baby is out? I joke. i swear.  

I’ve been a very bad blogger. I think I go into a holding pattern sometimes.  A friend mentioned that she hadn’t seen much of me, and I realized that I do this often in the 2ww but during the first tri I did it times ten. I was just hunkered down until I felt i could relax and believe I was pregnant.

Of course, once I reached 13 weeks the first thing I did was order knit black converse booties from Mahar Dry Goods! hah. 

So, our NT scan was friday and things looked great. I’m finally allowing myself to feel excited and happy and stop giving the caveat “but it’s really early” to anybody who asked how the IVF had worked out. (we were never very secretive about what we were going through. it’s just not our style. everybody knows our business, i guess) 

We were going to rent out our loft and move when we thought it was twins, but now that we know it’s one.. I think we’ll stick around for awhile. This has allowed us to relax a lot. We are definitely going to do some serious paring down though.

 I’m quitting my job in mid-june, which i’m very excited about. The baby isn’t due til mid to late October, and this will give me some months at home on my own before my life completely changes. I’ve never had that, and I think it will be wonderful.hell, i might even watch a soap opera… which I haven’t done since the late 80’s when I was a teenager in love with Steve (patch) and Kayla on Days of Our Lives. 

We’ve been a bit too busy on weekends. bbq’s and seders and birthdays and so many baby birthdays too. It’s good though. I’m going to try to write with more regularity now that I’m no longer hunkered down waiting for proof that things were sticking.

 I have been on Zofran for weeks and thus not really throwing up. but all i want to eat is watermelon , so i’ve actually lost some weight rather than gained. my midwife is not worried about this, since i have some weight to spare. today though, i made a midwestern style butter burger. basically it’s a burger with caramelized onions and a patty of butter that melts on top of the hot burger. it’s sinful but really good. since i haven’t really liked protein much at all lately, i just see it as a positive sign that I ate an entire burger!

i had all these plans to sew things before the baby came, but I haven’t sewed a thing since xmas.
maybe after i quit my job. yea, right.  

I’m still not fully believing that this last cycle worked. Today H and I were at the shopping center to pick up some kitty litter & food. We get these giant refillable tubs of litter, and they’re very heavy. When we were putting it in the truck, i tried to take it from H and put it on the floor by where my feet would be. H said “no way, you can’t pick this up. out of the way” I said “why not, hand it over” and he said “You’re pregnant” and i started dancing in the parking lot right there. Because, somehow… even though I think about it every single second of every day, I still manage to somehow not know/forget that i’m pregnant. I think it’s only sunk in about 20%. I can logically talk about it, but i can’t feel it yet. Part of that is because I don’t have the belief yet that something can work out for me relating to IF.  

While we were out we bought the kitty some treats. We got him one of those cardboard corrugated floor scratchers and we sprinkled it with catnip. He is now rolling around on it, scratching at it.. and drooling on it. It’s covered in wet marks from his prolific drool. My cat is a dog. (really. he growls when people ring the doorbell too)  

Last night I dreamed that we had twin girls and we named them our top girl name and the other name was Coraline. (nn Cora). Coraline is a book I just read and not a name on our list at all. I woke up convinced we were naming our kid Coraline. By 4pm that feeling had faded and it didn’t have that special dream portent to it anymore.

Last night we went to a “say goodbye to my boobies” party for a friend who is having a reduction. There were lots of girls in cleavage shirts, boobie cupcakes, a boob cake & even the dip was made to look like boobs. good times.  

I think I slept 12 hours last night. huzzah.  

I have to admit that every day that I go to the bathroom and see nothing on the toilet paper feels like some sort of win. 

also, i don’t have a lot of symptoms. I have mild crampy/twinginess.. and my boobs hurt a bit. The thing is my boobs don’t hurt the way i was expecgting them to. I thought they would hurt in a “ow you touched my boob and it really hurt!” sort of way, but rather they hurt when they’re not being touched. in an achey ‘wow, it’s really cold and my nipples could cut glass from feeling frozen’ sort of way

Tahoe is quite the balm for the itchy brain. I was able to play with a 2 year old and 5 month old. play board games (actually I didn’t do much of that, but I watched others) .. roast 3 chickens (there were 10 of us) … make grilled cheese & soups for lunches. and just all around relax with some of my favorite people. My tribe. It was great and I’m totally in love with the 2 year old. She’s a sunny force of personality.

The house we stayed at was gorgeous. huge. although it had really poor taste in art. The main painting in the living room was aproximately 10 feet by 10 feet . Huge. It was of two people in a boat on a lake in the moonlght with a huge torch in the prow of the row boat. They were rowing towards a small cove. It was remniscent of hobbits, bootleggers & an early century prison break… all at the same time.

So now I’m in the second week of the two week wait. Let’s see how many days I can go without giving in to the siren call of the pee stick.

Also, can I just share this. I found it very powerful and it made me cry. Granted, i’m all hopped up on hormones, but I think I would have cried anyway.

This morning I set the alarm for 8:55 (yes, i sleep late). I woke up a bit groggy and dozed back off for 3 more minutes. When I woke up, I looked at my phone and it distinctly said 8:58
But I’d fallen back into a dream and had an exchange that was definitely a good 20 minutes long. With conversation, flow of movement, social interactions, etc.
I don’t have anything to say about this, since I don’t really know much about dreams and reality. I do know that I find that really interesting.. the difference between subconscious ‘time’ and real time

When I’m at acupuncture, I almost always fall asleep. sometimese it’s just threaming (thinking/dreaming) with some level of consciousness.. sometimes it’s full sleep. I always dream.
I always wake up with a start almost exactly at the hour mark .. convinced that M has forgotten me and I’ve been in there for 3 hours. I panic for a moment, and then realize she has other clients. There is no way she’d have forgotten about me, since she needs the room. But this happens 80% of the times i go visit.

Well, right after work I head for the snow. I am desperately glad of this, since i can’t fucking think about anything but embryos and peeing on sticks and what ifs. And I can’t make myself step back from the google.

Ok, have a lovely weekend

I didn’t read my updated calendar well enough. I was supposed to start the medrol yesterday, and I didn’t. So today I took two ,and hte most I can do is hope that that is ok. From what I’ve read online, medrol isn’t as necessary with FET’s as it is with IVF.. I hope this is true.

Last night we played board games with good friends. Cuba is kind of convoluted, but if you like strategerie games .. this is a good one. We ate cheese & thai food take out. And their daughter was hysterical and LOVING the attention by so many people. When her mom came up the stairs from the play room with her tutu, she was visibly vibrating and screaming “HERE SHE COMES WITH MY TUTU!!!”. She just turned 2 a few weeks ago. Her brother is almost 5 months old and mainly just cooed and giggled and bounced up and down . awesome kids. For some reason, being around babies and toddlers doesnt’ hurt me. Pregnant women don’t really bother me either, except a low level longing that I feel clogging my throat a little. but only a little.
I’m not a huge fan of being lapped, but even that i’ve been able to get over relatively quickly.

I don’t know.. maybe in a year or so from now, or if IVF doesn’t work? this will all change.

Today my friend since 1985 is coming over. I haven’t hung out with him alone in what feels like YEARS. (and may actually have been years). It’s important to me to hang out with my friends without spouses, without tribe.. to keep that core friendship alive. I’m excited. I think we’ll go eat $1 oysters, if he’s up to it.

I don’t feel optimistic but I also am not really feeling like debbie downer with this cycle. I think that’s good. I’m just in a holding pattern. I’ll do my acupuncture, i’ll do my transfer, i’ll rest with my feet up, i’ll watch movies and go to bed early. and as of THIS SECOND, what will be will be. ask me again tomorrow, when it will be doom and gloom.

I meant to go to IKEA to buy fabric today (they have some adorable fabrics!) because I’ve noticed that when i’m creating something, I feel much more hopeful and contained. I think I might do a small easy baby quilt, if it doesn’t frustrate the hell out of me.

Today on BART there was a woman sitting in seats diagonally across from me. She was wearing a beautifully tailored suit, a red and yellow scarf fashionably tossed around her neck, gold glinting glasses and sparkling jewelry. She was quite lovely and polished. She was working on some spreadsheets, bent over with concentration. I tend to people watch a lot on trains. I forget that people can see me watching them. very solipsistic of me. anyway.. as i was watching her, i noticed that her jaw was working overtime. She was chewing and chewing and chewing at a piece of gum. It made my jaws watch just to watch her.

I hate gum. It is ugly. it makes people look stupid .. their jaw working up and down over and over and over.
ugh. i hate gum. i hate the sound of the chewing. I hate the look of the chewing. hate. This is something I should probably deal with, since most kids like bubble gum. (maybe i can avoid their ever even finding out about the existence of gum?)

People who wait until a train comes and then just go straight to the door, completely ignoring the fact that there was a queue.

on a larger scale, I’ve realized my mother raised me into a conflicted snob. My mom was a luddite my entire years growing up. She spent her time thusly: teaching english, hiking/backpacking/rock climbing/running, cooking very wholesome from-scratch meals, gardening, reading literature (never bubblegum books for her), sewing me handmade stuffed animals and occasionally clothes, keeping a very clean house, taking me to ballet/puppet shows/festivals/etc, taking baths, always waking up early, living life fully.

We had one small black & white tv that I was allowed to watch a few hours a week on. They watched MASH and that was about it. As i grew older I was allowed a little more TV but not much. I bought my first computer in 1994 when I was 24.

So, this is the issue now. I find that I have a negative view of any time suck/passing that is not industrious/productive/creative/active or literary. My husband loves video games, and I (underneath somewhere) struggle with this sometimes because I see it as a negative time suck. (I don’t struggle with them because of loss of time with him. He’s very good at spending time with me and balancing all that … although we’ll fall into habits where we will spend less time together due to our interests, but if i ask.. he’s right there). I curl my lip. I inwardly scoff. This is bad enough. snobby and snotty.

But I also look down on myself. I read a lot of literature, ,but I also like trashier books (hell, sometimes i even like a good bodice ripper). We haven’t watched TV in a few years, but I want it back and when we have it I know i’ll watch it. I take lots of baths. I surf the internet A LOT. I avoid being creative, and I only cook a few times a week. I spend much of my outside-of-work (and probably inside-of-work) time doing very superficial time sucks. Things that are easy and occupy my attention so that I don’t have to do anything.
The thing is, I know inside that this is ok, but at the same time i don’t FEEL that it is ok. To be a successful worthy human, I seem to feel that people need to be like my mother. This seems to be a deeply ingrained belief. DEEPLY. i can never convince myself fully that it’s wrong. I’m not sure how to deal with that, when I like the internet. I like watching 7 seasons of Buffy in 2 months. I like drinking red wine, singing karaoke with friends, and reading a trashy book.

I do know that If i get old and what i look back on in my life is a lot of tv watching, internet surfing and bath taking.. I will be sad. So, on some level I’m right. I need to make sure that I’m creating a life that I’m proud of. But at the same time, it’s not bad that my husband likes to exert his energy and creativity in video games. and this is something I’m going to have to approach with myself when we have kids. Kids like to do fun simple things like play video games or watch the occasional tv show.

but as is obvious by many of the links on my blogroll, I also want to be the sort of mama who has that simple industrious waldorfy lifestyle for her kids.

and i want to stop being such a snob about the things people do (including me) to fill their time.
My mother now, i realize.. is addicted to being busy. She runs every day, she does lesson plans all night, she never (or rarely) takes a few hours for herself to just fill her time with lazy time. with mindless fun. She’s not actually the bastion of health that I have revered her to be.

ah. it all comes back to that thing they call ‘balance’. the biggest struggle of my life.

Nothing IVF related in this entry because: blah blah blah waiting waiting. two estrogen patches instead of one, but still. blah blah.

Last night in bed, Hans and I came up with my new title for when I quit working and stay at home. I will be one of the following: DOE (Domestic Operations Engineer), CDO (Chief of Domestic Operations), DOM (Domestic Operations Manager) , DDO (Director of Domestic Operations). which one do you think has the most pizazz?

I have other plans for that time besides, you know.. domestic operatioins. (like potentially being a Doula and starting a very small event planning biz for those looking for a non-cookie cutter event.) but I think I’ll feel less resentful if i have a fancy title, when the crappy stuff comes up. I wonder when I get to hire my first employee?