Laughing with Sarah

When Eleanor was born, I was totally shocked that we'd had a girl, since I'd been convinced we were having a boy. As I was processing the happy news of our little girl, I had a strange thought: "Hm. Since it's a girl, she can't have hypospadias like Sam did, so yay for not having to worry about surgery in the first year of this new baby's life!" I'm pretty sure I said this out loud to Matt. I'm pretty sure I jinxed everything. Eleanor and I came home from the hospital on Saturday, December 31, just in time for New Year's. All was well. In her first few days home, she didn't so much love sleeping at night - hated being on her back, and was awake every 45 minutes or so, which meant a lot of bleary-eyed days for us parents, and at least a couple nights of sitting up with her and sleeping on the couch. But other than that, all was normal. We went in for a weight check on Monday, January 2, and she had gained a great amount of weight, and the ...

Because Owlet's c-section was a scheduled one, and because it was scheduled for December 27, the only way that I was going to spend Christmas with my family was if they all came here, which they did. My mom came in time for Christmas Eve, and then everybody else came in Christmas Day or the 26th. Christmas Eve was a lazy morning of breakfast out (per tradition), and then gearing up for three evening worship services. After the first of those three services, both of my legs blew up like balloons. It hit me, then and there, that despite all of my anxiety about the c-section procedure, I was so very ready to be done with this pregnancy. I was tired. My legs were puffy. I had crazy heartburn. I'd slept on the couch more nights than in my bed over the last couple weeks because I couldn't get comfortable. I drank lots of water the rest of the evening, and came home between services to put on pj's and put my feet up. I committed myself to sit through worship except when I ...

Two doctor's appointments have taken place since my last entry. The first one was quick and unsettling. It was a busy day and the clinic was running late, which wasn't a big deal for me, but seemed to up the anxiety of everybody around me. Weight was up a small but normal amount. Blood pressure still hovering in the 130s/80s. It was one of those half-naked appointments (fun times), to do the Group B strep swabs and a quick check for any progress whatsoever. Turns out this baby is hanging high, and there are absolutely no markers that (s)he is going anywhere anytime soon. Dr. Locke and I had another quick blood pressure chat, and even though I could tell that neither of us liked my numbers, he also said that, rationally, there was no reason to be worried. He said that, as a doctor, if he hadn't known my history, my BP numbers wouldn't cause him any concern. And so to be fair and reasoned with me as a professional, there was no sense in getting anxious. He also said tha...

It finally happened. I had a freak-out. Took me nearly 10 weeks this time, which is pretty impressive. Yesterday we had our first OB visit. I'd met with the OB nurse coordinator a couple weeks ago to do a bunch of preliminary stuff, including bloodwork. Yesterday, we had our appointment with Dr. Locke. A lot of good conversation, especially about the complications with Sam's birth (but my perfect health for the entire pregnancy before that!). We talked through our IVF and FET cycles, and about plans and considerations for this pregnancy (repeat c-section, intentions to breastfeed, weight goals, nutrition goals, etc.) Once again, I will affirm just how much we love Dr. Locke! We did a basic physical exam, and again, everything seems healthy and fine. Uterus is measuring in the 8-9 week range, which Dr. Locke considers spot-on (except that I'm close to 10 weeks, so I don't know what to do with that). The only bugger was that we couldn't pick up a heartbeat on the ...

I'm not sure if it was Matt or my Mom who, in my life, first told me, flat-out, "Everything always looks better in the morning." But it is the truth, right? Every fear, every anxiety, every worry, every despair is heightened in the middle of the night. Especially when you are trying to sleep but can't. Especially when you awoke with a start. Yesterday was an anxious day for me, all day. I had awoken with a sore back to start the day, and my lower back ache coupled with constant (but not painful) cramps made me nervous that my body was trying to accomplish something (and by something, I mean nothing good). The constant aches and the constant anxiety about those aches meant that I became more and more of an exhausted, emotional wreck as the day went on. Every time I used the bathroom, I was sure that I was going to find bleeding. Meanwhile, yesterday was a very busy day, filled with meetings were I needed my brain to be present and focused, which meant using up ...

Here's the before and after shot from last Friday's egg retrieval. I love how the main difference in the two pictures is the presence of toast (or lack thereof). I guess this is your visual proof that my retrieval was uneventful and that I tolerated the sedation well. :) We left the house before 6:00 a.m., dropping Sam off at a friend's house (who would take him to daycare when it opened) on our way out. Our check-in time was 7:30 a.m. We got there just fine, checked in, and went up to the outpatient surgery floor, where I got all gowned up and IV-ed. We were all ready to go by about 8:20 a.m. And then we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Finally, around 9:30 a.m., they came to get me. I hopped up onto a wheely-bed, and they took me down to pre-surgery, where some nice nurses and a nice anesthesiologist all came to check in with me. And then more waiting. I was there about half an hour, during which time I did one of those "doze off and feel like I'm fal...

This morning was the first of our every-week appointments. It was packed with lots of stuff. First, weight. Five more pounds up over two weeks ago. All water, really. Nobody is concerned, which is heartening. My blood pressure was similar to last time - 122/80 - so nobody is worrying about the swelling in my feet and legs. My doctor just feels bad for me. :) It took forever to track down hedgehog's heartbeat today; probably because, at this point, the baby in my belly is, well, a pretty fully-formed baby, and so there are limbs and backs and bones and fat, and you have to monkey around to find a chest shot with the doppler. But heartbeat/belly measurements were nothing out of the ordinary. Baby is still head-down, though not at all engaged. Still floating. Dr. Locke did some feeling around on my belly and suspects that "we aren't winning any size awards" with this baby, meaning that he suspects a small-to-average baby. I'm TOTALLY fine with that. But we shall ...

We are now in week thirty-six. Crazy. Physically, I feel better than I did for most of last week - sometime overnight, late in the week, I think hedgehog shifted position, so my stomach removed itself from my throat, which made both my heartburn and queasiness feel a lot better, and meant that I've had a few nights now of better sleep. Not great sleep...but the getting up twice to use the bathroom sort of wakefulness, not the waking up every hour because my heartburn and tummy felt so awful. That being said, I have pretty much slowed to a screeching halt. I am tired all the time. Not sleepy, necessarily, but my body is slow and cranky. I don't really bend anymore, and I go through stretches when my belly just feels sore from doing routine things, like rolling over in bed. I'm super-slow, and having a harder and harder time doing any physical sort of stuff, which is frustrating, because lots of my routine house chores are far more physical than I ever gave them credit...

Most people make plans on Saturday evenings. Dinners out, get-togethers with friends, pizza and Netflix date night, you get the picture. Saturday nights are prime weekend real estate. I'm not sure what you did with your Saturday night this weekend, but unless things took a turn for the worse at a pretty wild party, I'm going to guess that you didn't spend two hours on Saturday evening in the hospital. Ahem. It was shortly after 4pm on Saturday afternoon. I had just arrived at church in advance of our weekly 5pm worship service. I needed to set up for communion, unlock outside doors around church, and do any last-minute tweaks to my sermon. I always start by unlocking doors. I have a pattern. Start with the door across from my office, and make a big loop to catch the main office entrance, the kitchen entrance, both handicap-accessible entrances, and then the courtyard entrance. I've done this many times. Well this time, I was walking down a half-flight of stairs...

There are always plenty of things to be anxious about while you are pregnant. It's just the way of things. Even for the most normal pregnancies, there will always be anxiety. Have I gained enough weight? Have I gained too much? How do I know the baby is there before I'm showing and before I can hear the heartbeat? Am I going to get bad morning sickness? Will my ankles puff up to gigantic proportions in the third trimester? What will labor and delivery be like? Will I be a good mother? I am pretty sure that there is not one woman out there who, while pregnant, didn't encounter a little bit of anxiety about something, anything, at some point. But I have to be honest here. When you've lost pregnancies, anxiety stops being something normal, small, or usual. In the early weeks of this pregnancy, I was one constant ball of anxiety. Both of my losses were early and unavoidable. And so I counted every week. Six weeks put me farther along than either of my previous losses....

As usual, the anxiety ramped up leading to this month's doctor appointment. To my credit, I made it three and a half weeks before feeling anxious this time around, which is pretty good. Three and a half weeks of happiness and planning and enjoyment, and only a few days of crazy. The crazy came in three parts, though, so it's been intense. 1. The crazy kicked in last Thursday morning, when I thought that I maybe saw some faint pink spotting after using the bathroom. It was vague, at very best, and only once, and I'm not sure that it was even pink, but I started to panic. Couple that with some very low-grade, low abdominal cramps off and on over the next couple days, and I was absolutely sure that things were over and done for. I've pretty much gotten over myself on this count. No bleeding, no heavy cramps, really, no reason to get all crazy about this. 2. On the days when I felt decidedly good and non-crampy, I still made myself crazy trying to figure out whether m...

...good. Today I feel very good. Great, you might say. And in any other stage of my life, I'd totally appreciate it. But here's the thing. I am (supposedly) 11 weeks pregnant. Over the course of these 11 weeks, I've felt more tired than usual, and I'm a little annoyed by just how huge and unruly my boobs seem. But that's it. I haven't felt sick at all; an occasional over-active gag reflex, but nothing serious. No heartburn. No significant bloating or weight gain. In fact, today, I put on a dress that I bought for my seminary graduation, seven years ago. It fit me really well when I bought it. It fit me, but not as well, three years later when I wore it to Matt's law school graduation. I've kept it around because it looks decent, even if it doesn't fit like it used to. I put it on today, and it fit. Maybe not as well as the first time I wore it, but seriously, better than it has fit in years. Which probably just means I've lost a few pounds in ...

So on Saturday, I woke up and decided, last-minute, to go ahead and participate in our local Color Run 5k. No real training to speak of. Only a handful of runs and walks in the last few weeks. And yet I decided I'd regret it if I didn't do it. I've been dying to do a color run for a long while now. And it was cool but sunny, and lots of fun, and even though I didn't run the whole thing, I still felt pretty good, and it felt AMAZING to be out and moving. Not sure where I found the energy to get up and jump into the race. Maybe getting close to 11 hours of sleep Friday night had something to do with it? And if we're being totally honest, I crashed on the couch late that afternoon. But still. The whole decision to run felt very much like a decision made by a not-pregnant person. I'm still stuck in this space where I don't feel pregnant. Not really at all. I'm overeating and oversleeping, but that can be explained away by stress and the gray weather an...

Let's set the stage. One week ago, I went in for an ultrasound, and it was the first time they checked for a heartbeat. Not more than five minutes into the exam, the ultrasound tech showed me the screen, assured me that there was a heartbeat, and that she'd measure it later in the exam. Today, I went in for my ultrasound, and she was quiet. I peeked at the screen as best I could, which wasn't very well, and thought I saw a big, empty sac. She didn't have me do the hold-my-breath-to-check-the-heartbeat thing like she did last time. She didn't turn the screen. She didn't say anything, except to periodically ask me if I was still doing all right. Twenty minutes of this. I was devastated. From what I could piece together in my very non-professional opinion, the ultrasound must have revealed an empty sac, and no heartbeat even to measure, and I felt so dejected and sad. I was pretty worked up by the end of the exam, trying to figure out how to gracefully slip ho...

Anybody out there have advice as to how to keep THE CRAZY at bay? It hasn't even been a week since learning that I was pregnant, and I am already going out of my mind. I constantly think about whether my boobs are as sore as they were yesterday, or if I am feeling more cramping, or if I'm too tired or not tired enough. My heart races every time I use the bathroom because I'm sure I'm going to find bleeding. As I type this, well, WOW, how's that for a lot of TMI...but if you've been there, you know what I mean. Every day, I am sure that THIS will be the day that I'll lose this pregnancy, and every night, instead of feeling thankful for making it through another day, I feel anxious about what the next day might bring. I hope against hope that my crazy brain will quiet down after Monday morning's ultrasound. I'm going to be a huge ball of nerves between now and then. All three of my losses have been early. Within the first week and a half of knowing...