Introducing...

Piper Austin J.

May 17, 2008 @ 10:43 am

5 lbs. 14 oz.

19-1/4 inches long

Many thanks to everyone for your wonderful comments and your patience! Sheesh. It took us long enough to post the details.

Because of her preemie status, Miss PJ stayed in the hospital an extra day under the tanning bed lights trying to rid herself of jaundice. We came home for a day-and-a-half but then ended up in the pediatric unit for another spate of tanning.

We are now home and on a strict every 2 hours breastfeeding schedule, which is working wonders on the jaundice (and her weight) so far.

Labor came fast and hard. I will post the birth story soon. Cowboy rose to the occasion and in true Cowboy fashion had tears in his eyes when she let out her first wail.

She's a very mellow baby (part of this is preemie-induced mellowness). We have to wake her to feed her and she mews like a little kitten. She has her dad's eyes. Brown hair with blond highlights. Her mom's petite frame with the beginnings of some serious yoga shoulders.

I am beyond smitten.

It goes without saying, but she is well worth every single heartbreak, pee-stick throwing, prometrium-induced headache and tear shed in frustration.

The Best Intentions

I had planned on posting this past Sunday, when I would have hit 36 weeks (9 months) that I had had my first - ahem - internal exam heading into the home stretch.


"You might want to get the car seat in the car over the weekend," my OB had suggested. I was 75% effaced and 2 cm dilated.


I had planned on driving out to a spot on the Columbia River on Saturday so I could snap a picture of a very snow-covered Mt. St. Helen's for Miss JJ's birthday on Sunday, May 18. Happy belated birthday, JJ!


I had planned on attending a second baby shower in my honor on that same Sunday. Mrs. Super Planner had flown up from Texas to attend as well.


That was the plan...


Instead, I spent the weekend giving birth to a gorgeous, healthy little girl.


Proving - once again - that nothing, I mean, nothing ever goes according to plan. But somehow life always turns out beautifully in the long run.


Pictures, name, birth story, etc., all coming soon.




And she already has Cowboy wrapped around her tiny little finger.

Score one for Cowboy

Cowboy got the job! The dream-with-a-capital-D job.

I am so happy for him. I remember us taking Gus for a walk one February night in the college town where we lived for grad school. We had just started dating and he was discussing the three job offers he had received.

"But what do you really want to do?" I asked.

"I want to be a CFO someday," was his reply.

"Well then choose the job that is going to put you in the best position for that future," (oh, I thought I was such a smarty pants first-year back then.)

For the first 7 years of our relationship, I can definitely say that my job came first. We chose the town we live in based upon my job offer. He transferred his job with the bank so we could be in the same city. I traveled extensively. Usually over weekends. For long periods of time. Always surrounded by a cadre of guys. He had the local job. At the bank with its regular hours. And took care of the house, the bills, the dog, etc., while I galloped around mountain towns. He never gave me shit or grief for any of it.

Um, honey, I know we just bought our first house but I need to go live in Park City for 6 weeks during the Olympics. Where will I live? Oh in a townhouse with the rest of the marketing department. I guess that’s right. They are all guys. Hmm. That will be strange. As an aside, that townhouse became affectionately known as The Delta House. I coined the name the night I slept on the couch because some unplanned visiting big wig was staying in my room. I had counted well over 2 cases of empty beer bottles on the coffee table and thought, "I am so too old for this shit."

Heck, we almost moved to a freakin’ backwater Mo’ town in Utah for my job. (Not PC. We so would’ve moved to PC.)

Now it is his turn to have his job put first.

First because the commute is a wee bit longer. And the job is his first in the executive-level ranks = long hours. Long days. Stretches of days where – once she gets on a schedule – he will likely not see Missy awake. Please Lord, let her be one of those babies that sleep through the night sooner rather than later.

Did I mention that they want him to start before June 16. And we have that pesky little thing in June called a DUE DATE, which, falls on June 15.

Which is code for "Of course you can have some time off when the baby arrives. Will three days be okay?"

New baby. New job. Now we just need to buy a new house to completely stress us out. Actually, the new house will probably come next year when he gets sick of the commute and wants to move closer to his new gig.

We looked at each other this morning and nodded, "Yep, we'll both be in boot camp for a solid year."

And, we decided, all of this puts me in a new job, too: stay-at-home mom.

Wow.

Part of me is secretly pleased with this new job – I already bought a book on making homemade baby food. Title of mom is one of my dream jobs. I just never thought "stay-at-home" would come in front of it. That I would be on this side of the Mommy War.

But the reality of it is that any new job I get will require those long, pay-your-dues hours, too. And it is just not fair to us, to the new baby and to our employers. Everyone will lose under that scenario. Something had to give.

I don’t want this to come off as whining. Please. Dearly wanted baby scheduled to arrive in a month. Husband with his dream job. We are beyond lucky. And I am beyond grateful.

I’m just a little freaked out about this radical change in my career path. I have to have faith that I will figure something out so I can build a bridge between two sides of the divide.

That and trying to manage the web of changing health insurance coverage so close to the end of the pregnancy.

Thoughts on yesterday

Hope abides; therefore I abide.
Countless frustrations have not cowed me
I am still alive, vibrant with life.
The black cloud will disappear.
The morning sun will appear once again
All in its supernatural glory.

- Sri Chinmoy

# # #

I copied down this poem off the blog of another (who no longer blogs and has removed her site so I can't even point you in her direction). I've never had the urge to get a tattoo, however, if I were to get one, it would be this poem. But maybe in Sanskrit or in some other beautiful-fonted language.

I think this poem is so appropriate for the ambivalent feelings many might have towards Mother's Day. For whatever our reasons.

Maybe it reminds us of what we are going through now.

Maybe it reminds us of struggles we've conquered. Or are in the process of conquering.

Maybe it reminds us of someone who is no longer there and the sadness that enveloped us after their departure.

I thought this poem should live on in this circle.

I look at my hand-scribbled version on the back of my notebook everyday.

95% there

...With the room.

I hemmed and hawed over bookcases and then found this antique pine armoire, which was marked down for a song. I have a thing for old pine armoires. This is the 4th one in our house. It holds toys, books and a pile of clothes that have yet to be washed and hung. Next weekend.

Here is the vintage secretary's desk I painted. The attached changing pad can come off when Missy is out of diapers and then we'll use it as her desk. We still need to hang the Shaker rack over the changing table.

Those effing curtains - lined and all - are 9 freaking feet long. Each.

Sorry I haven't been posting or commenting. As you can see, I've been on a mission this week.

Coming Soon: The Room

May 1. In most Western cities, May Day is reserved for workers' rights protests, strikes, parades, etc.

In our house, this May Day really means, "May Day!" As in...oh-my-god-I-have-less-than-six-weeks-until-this-kid-comes-and-I-am-so-not-ready.

Like most who have gone through pregnancy loss, I didn't even accept that I might actually have a baby until about halfway through the pregnancy. As such, no planning happened until 5 months in.

Then - I confess - I made a spreadsheet. (Hangs head).

It was the only way my linear mind could grapple with all the stuff we needed to source, buy, research, do. Most people think of spreadsheets for finance, but when Micr0soft launched its Excel program, it used famed mountaineer Ed Viesturs' need to manage supply logistics for an upcoming expedition to Mt. Everest as a marketing story in how to use Excel for planning purposes. If it worked for Ed and Everest, I figured it was good enough for me.

Only back at 5 months when I developed our baby logistics plan, I had all sorts of 2nd trimester energy and failed to incorporate the 3rd trimester brain drain into the plan.

As such, I am behind on the nursery. The ROOM. The room that has so much significance in our journey. The room that I visualized decorating. For years.

The room that has been alternately cleaned out then had the door shut on it with each pregnancy and subsequent loss.

The room that caused a huge fight between us when I refused to move my new work office into it because just in case we might get pregnant. (Ironic but we ended up finding out about Missy a few weeks after that fight).

The room that has sat empty and undecorated since we bought our house in 2001. I referred to it as the "mayonaise room" due to its off-white walls, off-white wooden blinds and off-white berber carpet.

Here, take a look.

I can't believe I'm behind on it after I have pined to decorate it for years. I mostly need to sew and hang the curtains. And sew the crib skirt. And a duvet for the down quilt (even though I know you aren't supposed to use such things until Missy is much older).

The fabric has been sitting in the room for ages. Again, damn that 2nd trimester energy kick making me think I could put this off until now. I need someone to seriously kick me in the ass and get my sewing machine cranking.

You'd think the six-weeks-to-go countdown would be motivation enough. Or just the sheer satisfaction that - finally - THAT room would be done.

Now, I'm locking myself into the house this weekend until all that sewing is accomplished. I don't care if it is sunny outside. My loss for procrastinating.

And because pictures of a boring-ass-white-room are so what no one wants to see on a blog, here is a fun picture from Missy's first shower.

I ate 3 of these.

Blogoversary: In the Course of One Year

Below is an excerpt from my journal entry of April 25, 2007 – one year ago today. I was 6 days post miscarriage #2. I had just posted my first blog entry on That Was The Plan. I kept this entry private at the time because I did not want to start out my blog with too much negativism. Clearly, I needed an outlet. Big time.

April 25, 2007

My whole freaking soul hurts. I am scared. I have that sick feeling in my stomach. I look at my future and it seems so bleak and scary. I want to punch something so hard. I want to throw my laptop out the window. I mean, hurl the damn thing. (I never thought I would have anything in common with Denise Richards, but there you go).

And with this feeling, I am supposed to be networking and being helpful to might-be-influential people and looking for a new job. Oh yes, did I mention that the job I have had for 6 years and love is going away in September because my company is moving to Utah. I mean, UTAH! WTF!

And – guess what, because life wasn’t fun enough – that Cowboy had $4 million in deals fall out of his pipeline yesterday, which means that all of the hard work and long hours he has put in recently, that despite all valiant efforts, his job is in jeopardy, too.

Which puts the anxiety level up to here. And the sadness level up to there. And all of a sudden I can’t see so clearly.

I feel like Cowboy and I are in boat looking at each other like, "I thought you brought the freaking life preservers!" I seriously don’t know if we will survive this: his job, my job, IF. Somebody, please. Somebody cut us a break.

# # #

Whenever I go through hard times, I try to remind myself of their impermanence. "Life will look so much different in six months," I’d say. I said that back in December 2006 when I was still sad about my first miscarriage and the jury was still out as to if we would be moving to a new state with my job.

Cowboy had stepped up to a vacant position in the bank that needed to be filled. We didn’t know if it was going to pan out either.

Flash forward to late April 2007 and boy how things had changed. Only now they were worse. Where before we had uncertainty, now seemed to face a series of dead ends. I'd turned down a promotion with my company in Utah and would be out of a job come end of summer; we realized that Cowboy's new gig at the bank was of the churn-and-burn variety; not only were we not pregnant, but we were staring down the barrel of recurrent pregnancy loss testing and whatever those results might bring.

For the first time in my life, the 6-month rule hadn’t worked in the positive way I’d always meant it to. I felt duped. And terrified. The above journal entry clearly reflects the space we were in.

Last night, a full year later, I woke just before the alarm. Cowboy was asleep with his bedside lamp still on. The Birth Partner book lay open across the duvet. He had been reading it since waking at 2:30 a.m. (he always wakes at this time). I note this and smile because it is the first I’m-having-a-kid book that Cowboy has cracked.

He woke up because he is feeling guilty and nervous. I know this because he has just found out he is the front runner candidate for his dream job. I mean, dream with a capital D. This is the kind of job that he set his sights on back in business school. This is the kind of job that kept him hanging on at the bank for 8 years. Because of some bank regulations that govern his dealings with three new clients, today he has to face his boss with the news that he may be leaving. If nothing, Cowboy is a loyal employee. He has only worked for 2 companies since graduating high school.

I woke up because I have to go to the bathroom. Again. Because while last year I was reeling from m/c #2, now I am 8 months pregnant with a by-all-accounts healthy baby. I, too, have just found out that a local creative agency is interested in hiring me for freelance marketing consulting, which means I can continue to work from home for the remainder of the year.

The word grateful springs to mind. But it feels so inadequate. This is so beyond simply being grateful. This almost feels like a different life. But it is not. It is our life. Our life last year replete with all of its sadness and worry. Our life this year at 180 degrees opposite with breathing room to spare.

I try to be perfectly content. But I am on edge. Because I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because we don’t deserve this much good fortune. The fates will surely punish this much good fortune by taking something we counted on away.

Which, I know, is both completely paranoid and glass-is-half-empty.

That I have such thoughts shames me. It leaves me to ponder how can I ever pay this much good fortune forward. How can I pass it on so I don’t hold it too tightly and lose it.

This is what can happen in the course of a year.

Week of April 21: 8 months, 8 weeks to go.

Busy, busy week ahead.

Sun: L&D tour at the hospital. Hang head when Cowboy asks if we can bring Gus into the waiting room. In his defense, the lady giving the tour made a big deal about our ability to invite as many family members and friends into the waiting room as we want. Find out that they have flatscreens in the labor/delivery/rest rooms. And cable. Neither of which we have. Is it wrong to kind of hope that Missy will oblige her mama and come late in the week so I can watch "What Not to Wear" on TLC?

Mon: Interview pediatrician. Decide I like her when she says she doesn't mind if I space out vaccinations so Missy won't get several in one day. Bonus points for her saying that she believes that rising rates in autism are probably linked to bad things in the environment.

Mon: Texas Independence Day. Hang out Lone Star flag. Check.

Tues: Earth Day. For the past several years, I celebrate by adding one thing each year to minimize our impact on the environment. This year it is going paper towel-less. We've been paper towel free in our house since January and it hasn't been that hard at all.

Wed: My birthday! Last year I celebrated by recovering from miscarriage #2. Am hoping for a much better day this year.

Thurs: nothing.

Friday: My one year blog-a-versary! What a difference a year makes. I've been thinking a lot about how changed my life is from last year to this year. Will post my thoughts as soon as I suss them all out.

Would love to hear from others as to how you celebrate Earth Day. Do you celebrate it? What, if any, are some things you've done this year to contribute in a positive way to the environment.

Or you can post a "shut up, you hippie" comment if you want to instead. It will make me laugh. I love that word. Hippie. It's funny.

Dear Diary

What the fuck am I going to do? I am going to mother a daughter. And recent events have made it quite clear that I am in way over my head.

Current exploits to acquire childhood toys and books from my parents' storage shed also yielded not one but two diaries.

The first, started when I was 8. Here is an excerpt from the second entry: Today in school Bryan M**** atted (sic) very serious about kissing me. You can tell when he feels like kissing you. When he runs around and atts crazy, that means he loves you and wants to kiss you, BUT he doesn't.

WTF!! I am 8 and writing about boys already. Kissing boys. I can't even properly spell "acted" (for some reason, however, I can spell "serious" correctly). Although I should point out that I didn't technically, really kiss a boy until I was like in the tenth grade. It was all wishful thinking up until that point.

Oh, it gets better. Every few entries begin, "Dear Diary, Now I think I have a crush on so-and-so." Sheesh. I was an 8-year-old jezebel.

The second diary - with Hello Kitty on the cover - gets even better. Started in junior high, it goes all the way up to my senior year in high school.

In it, I went through my mean phase with harshly written critiques about everyone and everything. Although I had just read Harriet the Spy and I remember deliberately trying to copy the prose from the book.

There is the awful, awkward phase of comparing myself to other girls: the pretty, popular ones and the not-so-pretty, not-so-popular ones. It is hard to read now. There is the ridiculous, trying-on-other- personalities phase whereby my friends and I referred to each other by names and persona other than our own.

There is the entry written toward the end of my junior year that begins, "Dear Diary, I think about sex all the time..." Mind you, I hadn't had sex yet either, but still. Oy.

Does anyone else think it ironic you can find a sentence like that one in a diary with Hello Kitty on its cover?

I AM IN WAY OVER MY HEAD.

The most disturbing entries are in the back of the awkward-years-Hello-Kitty diary. It is a food and weight diary, which I began in 8th grade and kept up sporadically during times of *crisis*. Daily, I listed my current weight, my desired weight and everything I ate that day - along with supportive comments like, "pigged out" and "gross. must eat less tomorrow." In the 8th grade, at age 14, I weighed 79 lbs but wanted to get down to 72.

Okay, I should point out that I am short to begin with and was from ages 7 to 20 involved in a sport that dictated small-ness. But desiring to be 72 lbs. as a 14-year-old ?!? WTF?

Old habits die hard. I still keep food diaries from time to time. Although I have not done so while pregnant (too dangerous for me to do). I can't even keep a scale in my house as an adult. I am totally not in the position to pass along good body issues to my daughter. Or, for that matter, equipped to handle the crushes of an 8-year-old or god knows what else of a teenage girl. Holy frick!

Good Lord. I AM SERIOUSLY IN WAY OVER MY HEAD.

I 've got to save these diaries, although kept under lock and key, so I can refer to them when Missy is 8 and then in junior high and so on. That way I can remember what I was going though. It's the only way I can think to put them to good use as a mom.

Any ideas for a terrific hiding place?

It's not all bad

Just when I was bitching about the cold and the rain, today and tomorrow are calling for sunny and warm. Finally, a taste of spring up here.

I feel like the countdown has begun. And even though I still have days of doubt and terror, each day finds me feeling a wee bit happier about Missy’s arrival.

Last week brought it all home – literally and figuratively. I went to Texas to visit my parents. It was wonderful. Great food. Good weather. A fantastic pedicure. My brother visited, too, and we spent an entire day going through my parents’ storage shed, which contained 40+ years of family history in the form of scrapbooks, baby books and favorite story books and treasured toys from when we were young.

My mom, Mrs. Super Planner, had each large box labeled by child. Inside each box was a list of the contents. Items were carefully wrapped in paper. I don’t call her Mrs. Super Planner for nothing. Our goal was to purge items: keep things we wanted for our children or prep items for a mega-collectibles tag sale my mom will hold in the fall.

It was like going through a time capsule of your life. There were the two baby dolls I received as gifts when my sister and then my brother came home from the hospital (replete with entire wardrobes of doll clothes sewn by my grandma). A Depression-era handmade doll cradle used by my grandmother when she was a girl. My first kiddie rocking chair. Hardbound Dr. Suess books (do you have any idea how much those cost now?). A vintage – at 30+ years old, they sure are vintage now – Fisher-Price barn and schoolhouse with all the non-toxic, Made-in-the-USA plastic animals and wooden people intact. My collection of Little House on the Prairie books.

Missy scored.

I love that she’ll be playing with some of the toys and reading some of the books that we spent hours with. And I appreciate that my family is re-using these toys so we don’t have to buy new. Some people might freak that they are older toys but I feel safer having a few pre-made-in-China pieces around.

Missy received some of her first gifts as well, including a pale pink felt cowgirl hat. By a few days into the visit, I actually felt happy and confident enough for Missy’s Nana (that would be Mrs. Super Planner) to buy a sweet little coming-home-from-the-hospital-outfit from Janie & Jack. I went into Pottery Barn Kids for the first time since I started trying to become pregnant. It was a new me, for sure.

I guess my point in all of this is that I am glad that I’ve let those who love and care for me into this process. At first, I was so paranoid and scared about everything. I put off every kind of celebrating. I didn’t want to lose another pregnancy and then be ashamed to face everyone with my sadness.

But the more I open up and let others celebrate – where sometimes I still cannot yet – is absolutely healing to the soul and affirming to my spirit.

The Crabbiest Month

After living in the Northwest for 8 years, I've come to realize that April is the crabbiest month. It's still cold. It's still rainy. The beginning of April is like Ground Hog Day for us - minus the ground hog. We don't need one because we flat out know to expect shitty weather for the next 6 weeks.

The cold and damp imbue every living thing. It makes Gus sulk. It makes people crabby and rude.

Or maybe it is just that I returned from a trip to Texas, where people call you ma'am (and not because they think you are old) and hold doors for you. Unlike the airport parking security asshole at PDX who threatened to write Cowboy a ticket because he left his car for 5 seconds to help open the door to the airport exit for me as I struggled with 2 suitcases, a carry-on and a big belly. Sigh. Because no one else offered to help hold the door.

For as much as I love where I live, the everyone-is-free-do-to-his-own-thing-and-I'm-content-to-be-in-my-own-world ethos is one thing that gets me down when it takes the form of aloofness.

I am just being old-fashioned that I think it is simply a nice gesture for men to hold doors for women? Or that it bothers me that our friends and neighbors let their kids call me by my first name. I do not like a five-year-old calling me Ms. Planner. I prefer Miss Ms. Planner or Mrs. Ms. Planner.

Poor Missy. She'll be the only freak in the neighborhood referring to grown-ups as Mr. & Mrs. and routinely using "Yes, ma'am" and "No, sir."

Now who's crabby? Hormonal, maybe?

In other news, you can tell how great snow season has been by how long it takes Cowboy to file our taxes. We still haven't done them yet.

Our snowpack is like 200% of normal. I didn't mind being the snow sacrifice this season. Really, I didn't.

I have ten weeks to go.

It was our third anniversary yesterday. Because the traditional gift for a third anniversary is leather, I hope Cowboy wasn't embarassed in front of the other restaurant patrons when he opened the leather riding crop I bought for him. Just kidding. I didn't buy such a thing.

But I thought about it.

7th Inning Stretch

I don't know why I included a baseball reference in the title. Other than it is the only reference I can think of right now related to the #7. Seven being the number of months pregnant I will be on Easter Sunday.

As this blog is my journal and my blog, thought I would take a minute to jot down some recent stats (more baseball - and I'm not even a fan):

I've gained 24 lbs so far.

I'm still doing yoga, but mostly at home. When I was recovering from a miscarriage and trying to get pregnant, the yoga studio was my safe space. I'm sensitive about interjecting my obvious belly into someone else's safe space, so just in case, I explained to my instructor that I'd be practicing at home for the most part. I do a very slow, modified Ashtanga practice or a kick-ass prenatal yoga DVD. Bending over in yoga is getting tough, so I may be trying out a prenatal class soon.

I passed my gestational diabetes test.

Since I am Rh-negative, the antibodies test came back as predicted. Yet another shot of Rho-Gam.

I failed my anemia test and now must take 325mg (!) of iron a day. At first I thought this was no biggie, but then quickly realized that most iron supplements come in 25mg doses, which equals a heck of a lot of iron pills each day.

We signed up for a 529 college plan.

We have started working on "the room." Will post pictures when there is more to show than paint on the walls and pieces of a crib stacked in the corner waiting for assembly. Right now I am re-finishing a vintage secretary-style desk to use as a changing table. It is slow going because I cannot use any chemicals (hand sanding is so fun!) and wear a mask and gloves for safety. I will be pestering this blogger soon for curtain sewing tips.

Frienemies

Do guys have frienemies?

I’m beginning to think that one of Cowboy’s close friends might qualify.

To preface, since pre-Ms. Planner, Cowboy has maintained a close group of friends from college. Many of them live nearby. I’ll come home to find one of them in the garage or drinking a beer in our kitchen after a round of golf. I like this about Cowboy and his posse.

All have wives and children. As such, we congregate every so often for birthdays; summer holidays at someone’s cabin or lake house. We are the youngest and last couple to add children to the mix. Some of their children are old enough to babysit ours.

I would not have chosen to be friends with most of these folks were it not for Cowboy. We get along. They make me laugh (mostly). But we don’t have much in common save for our love for Cowboy. That being said, I respect his bond with his friends and don’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.

HOWEVER…

He has one particular friend – a stay-at-home dad – who is starting to drive me insane with his negative comments about child rearing. Here I am, trying - after a long time of sadness – to be genuinely happy. And he seems intent on imparting on a steady stream of "let’s get a rise out of Cowboy and bring down the pregnant lady" with his sage stories about raising his only child, a girl, now 7.

Let’s see. There are endless stories of baby excrement. Especially related to changing the diapers of little girls. The story – told on several occasions - of when his daughter puked and it got in his mouth. Don’t ask. Stories about leaky swim diapers. Scoffing when Cowboy and I bring up the concept of maybe using cloth diapers. Badgering me as to when are we getting a playpen for the boat. Although he knows Cowboy absolutely doesn’t want a playpen in the boat (I know you had a playpen in your boat but I prefer to hold my baby in our boat – thankyouverymuch). Generally how our lives will suck after having a kid.

Our theories and desires (and, admittedly at this point, they are just theories) are met with the proverbial: ha-ha-ha-oh-you-new-clueless-parents-just-you-wait attitude. Yesterday, his unrelenting spew took me to a point I hate in myself: I let loose a snotty and indignant comment, something to the effect of, "yes, I believe I’ve heard that story from you ten times," which brought the conversation in a large group of people to a complete halt. Nice one.

I don’t want to surround myself with people like him. I prefer positive-thinking these days. I need positive thinking. There is so much stacked against a new mom what with the hormones, the questioning of one’s self confidence, the inevitable sleep deprivation, the changing body, etc., that I need those who will build us up not bring us down.

Stay away from this guy is the easy answer. Except that he and Cowboy go water skiing once a week. Water skiing season is just around the corner. I watch his daughter while the guys go out on the river after work for a ski session. No one can figure out why his wife can’t leave work at 5 pm just one night a week so the guys can have guy time. So I watch the child for Cowboy’s sake because he is annoyed to no end by her behavior on the boat. Sigh.

Any ideas on how I can stem the tide of negativity without impacting my husband’s long standing friendship?

You know, writing about this seems very self-indulgent when there many out there close to me who are suffering in ways that are so much more poignant and real than this. I guess with all the sadness afloat, I am just feeling a tad more sensitive these days.

There once was a cowboy from Nantucket...

There once was a Cowboy from Portland.
Blood, needles and gore, he could not stand.
So imagine his chagrin,
When his knocked up wife said to him:
As I see it, you will be in L&D holding my hand.

# # #

I am bit late posting my limerick. Oops. This limerick was inspired by our recent hiring of a doula to assist with Missy's birth.

It may sound like I am picking on my husband at bit. And I am. For as rough and tumble as he is, Cowboy does not do messy, medical stuff well. The guy doesn't watch Grey's or ER, and House - forget it. He doesn't even like to take Gus to the vet.

Although we both know deep down that he would regret not being in the delivery room, he is downright terrified of it.

In fact, part of him would be secretly happy to play out the 1950's father-to-be in the waiting room, handing out bottles of local microbrews that read, "It's a Girl!" instead of cigars (smoking anything but mary jane is so not PC in Portland).

I confided this to my OB during my first pregnancy. Oh how naive of me to be thinking of such things in the first trimester, as I learned the hard way. Anyway, she said you'd be surprised at the number of dads who excuse themselves from the room during the sketchy parts of birth. She suggested hiring a doula, as much for Cowboy if not for myself.

I had never heard of a doula. My informal canvassing for those who have had a doula assist at their births turned up a slew of local friends and acquaintances who have used them with success.

While I was doing my canvassing, turns out Cowboy was doing his. He began offering some of his male friends who are firefighters (and therefore must have been trained to deliver a baby, right?) cases of beer to be our doula.

Nice.

No way, I told him. Besides you'd probably have to at least buy them a fifth of whiskey to make the offer even remotely attractive. But, I reasoned with him, if we had a real doula helping out, it would free him up to take ocassional jaunts down to the restaurants on NW 23rd if it all became too much and he found himself needing a break. (Conventiently, our hospital is adjacent to one of the hottest restaurant and bar streets in the city).

He spent an afternoon mulling this over and then announced he wanted a doula - and not the firefighter kind. Whew.

So we found one that I think will be a good match for our style. She comes to our house twice before the birth for personal birth classes. If I want, she will come to our house when I am in early labor. She will advise us when to head for the hospital. And will stay there for the entire birth. She then does two more visits to our house to help with breastfeeding and any other post-partum issues immediately following the birth.

Sounds like a party for her.

The point of us hiring a doula is not to abdicate our responsibility in the process, but to create the best odds of having a positive experience. Again, this might be our only chance to have it. I don't want to snap at Cowboy and make an already tense situation worse. I don't expect him to get all mushy and cut the cord and look in the mirror (good Lord, no mirrors, please). I just want him to never regret that he was in the room when his daughter arrives. As much as I don't want him to regret that he wasn't in there because it got too intense.

And if that means he stays "uptown" only and gets the random PBR break, I'm all for it.

Tagged: 6 Non-Important Quirks

My new friend from Still Passing Open Windows tagged me to share "Six Non-Important Quirks" about myself. After last week's imperfect-day post, it is high time for a light-hearted antidote.

Below are the rules for the meme:
1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules.
3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people.
5) Be sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting what you did.

Six Non-Important Quirks About Me

#1. The undergarments I wear on a given day must match in color. No beige bra / black panties combo. All black or all beige.

#2. I pre-wash the dishes and silverware in soapy water before putting them in the dishwasher.

#3. More dishwasher anal-ness: I load it a certain way and have been known to re-arrange dishes if they don't pass organizational muster. Insane, I know.

#4. I cannot stand litter and pick up pieces of trash in my neighborhood as I walk Gus.

#5. I own more pairs of trail running shoes than street shoes.

#6. I always buy a package of Swedish Fish when I shop at IKEA. I know they sell them at Target and other stores, but - for some reason - they don't taste the same to me.

I realized after reading the first four quirks that I sound a lot like Bree from "Desperate Housewives." Oh well. It is what it is.

Now I tag:

Precious Little (hopefully this will provide momentary respite during your 2WW)
Waiting Amy (to see how well she is going to fit in with life in L.A. - ha!)
Weebles Wobblog (because I am sure they will be entertaining to read)

Now I am off to work on my St. Patrick's Day limerick. Pity I can't use "Nantucket" in it.

Of loss on this imperfect day (Feb. 29, 2008)

Back in late October 2006, I planted daffodil bulbs in our front yard. I’m actually a tulip-kind-of-girl, but daffodils bloom earlier in the Northwest. After months of grey, rain and cold – and even during spring when it is still grey, rainy and cold – the flowers provide a welcome harbinger of the warm weather to come. So I picked a species that would come up early.

I was just barely pregnant with Junior #1 at the time of planting. As I planted, I imagined what I would look like when these daffodils bloomed.

A few weeks later, I miscarried. My OB confirmed this at my ultrasound after seeing a barely-there heartbeat.

I miscarried naturally and had nothing left of this so-very-much-wanted pregnancy. So I wrote a letter to "Junior" (our code for the embryo) and buried a copy amongst a nest of daffodil bulbs right by our front door.

As I buried the letter as one would a pet hamster, I said a few prayers. My first prayer was for Junior the Embryo. My second was that I would be pregnant again by the time those daffodils bloomed in spring.

By March 2007, the daffodils were up and the sun was starting to shine again every few days. I was not pregnant. At first, the blooms sagged and then the stalks grew strong. The daffodils flourished and looked delightful in our front yard.

March came and went. No such luck.

By mid-April, the blooms started to wither. "Great," I thought, "There goes that prayer." Yes, I am a horribly selfish person when it comes to religion (which I know is terrible and is something I have promised Him I will work on).

A week later I was out for a walk with a friend’s 6-year-old. She’s a flower fanatic, quite knowledgeable for her age about all kinds of flora. Returning from the walk, we surveyed our lawn and sighed over the dying daffodil blooms.

"But Ms. Planner!" screeched my charge, who has a habit of invoking really high little girl pitches in her voice, "Look, there are two flowers still blooming!" And indeed there were.

She desperately wanted to pick them for her bouquet of weeds we’d brought home, but I wouldn’t let her, because then Junior’s daffodils would be no more.

And, although it sounds mean, I am glad I didn’t let her pick the remaining blooms.

Because a few nights later, I got a positive HPT:

Junior #2.

My wish had come true. I was pregnant again with the daffodils.

Shortly thereafter, the remaining two daffodils faded. Almost as quickly as they faded, so did the pregnancy. My RE called it a chemical. My sweet OB said that any pregnancy is a pregnancy. And gave me another shot of Rho-Gam in my ass.

Late winter 2008 has brought a spate of warmish, sunny weather in the Northwest. Hence, Junior #1’s daffodil stalks are again pushing their way to reach what little sun is to be had during the day.

This year, I waddle past them every morning and say a thank-you to whatever powers that be that I am pregnant yet again. My wish did come true. Just a little later than I wanted. But it came true nonetheless.

For fleeting moments, I sometimes wonder about the almost ones. Junior #1 would be a chubby 9-month old today. Junior#2, an infant, who had hopefully just gotten into a schedule.

Today perhaps I will go to the store and buy a bouquet of daffodils for their little sister-in-waiting. My prayer these days is that I will have the chance to let her pick as many of those blooms as she wants from the yard.

Housecleaning

I've done a little organizing on my blog.

When I first started reading blogs in the late fall of 2006, only one blog author that I faithfully read was pregnant. And she was just newly so.

By the time I started That Was The Plan in spring 2007 - after my second miscarriage - there were a handful of ladies, maybe three or four, who were on their way.

Undoubtedly I initially connected with blogs where I "felt" I had more in common with the author. Sometimes our commonality was recurrent miscarriage. Or maybe I sensed an author had similar life experiences to my own. Oftentimes, I just enjoyed the way a person wrote and could feel a personality that jibed with my own from her posts. Hence, I read more blogs of people still struggling than those who had already hit the jackpot.

Sometimes the disparity between those with success and those still struggling seemed downright futile. But I loved reading the success stories. It gave me hope.

This past weekend, I realized that almost one-third of the blogs I read are written by women who have stared down the barrel of IF and have come out still standing on the "other" side. Another third are well on their way.

What amazes me, too, is how different their paths are.

My college roommate (who does not blog) struggled with IF for 5 long years. The birth announcement she sent out last Christmas heralding the arrival of her son read simply, "Believe."

Trust me. Believing is hard to do when we've been conditioned through our experiences to not believe. I still struggle with believing.

Another friend asked me the other day if I was more relaxed now that I am in my second trimester. I told her I was starting to become more chill now that I was getting closer to the point where they would try to save my daughter if I delivered early.

You mean, you are still thinking that way? She wanted to know.

Her rhetorical comment made me realize that she just didn't understand. But I was okay with it.

So here's my deal:

For those who feel they have made it to the other side, I will continue to rejoice with you and help heal the wounds by understanding what you've been through.

For those still struggling, please know that I will stick by you until you reach your other side. On the days when you can't, I will continue to believe for you. Because I know in my soul that everyone will make it one way or another.

The rock and the hard place

I realize that this blog has morphed from tackling loss, infertility and now pregnancy after loss/infertility. This past weekend I reached 22 weeks (5-1/2 months) of pregnancy. As such, I find myself making that inevitable transition between the this-one-may-also-not-work-out and holy-shit-I-better-get-my-ass-in-gear-because-it-looks-like-this-may-happen lines of thought.

Yesterday, I saw The Business of Being Born documentary at a community screening. (Warning: the link flashes to a trailer featuring pregnancies and babies, but you can quickly click off the trailer page to get more information about the film without seeing this.)

I don’t intend to write a review of the film – because it presented so much opportunity for discourse – other than to say that I am SO glad I saw it. I highly recommend those of you approaching a birth see it, too.

It really got me thinking about my journey thus far and the direction I want the remainder of the journey to take now that I’m midway through it.

If you had asked me a year ago, I would have been happy to have a child in my life by any means necessary. But now that I am actually knocked up with support of modern medicine – read: progesterone, early ultrasounds, CVS testing, etc. – I find myself wanting to reclaim a bit of "natural-ness" in this whole process. Seems a bit two-faced to me. But part of me wants to make up for the horrible, shitty anxiety and poking & prodding of the first trimester. And the other part of me wants to test myself physically and emotionally with the birth process, which may be my only opportunity in my life to do so.

I’m not going for a midwife-assisted home birth in a bath. But I am leaning toward trying to accomplish this by more natural means than pitocin and an epidural.

A few years ago I rock climbed the East Buttress of Mt. Whitney with a friend. At 14,800-feet, Mt. Whitney is the tallest peak in the Lower 48. The ascent and descent took 16 hours of long, physical effort. It snowed on our first pitch and proceeded to get colder and grayer as we ascended. The weather kept the handful of other teams off the rock. But both my friend and I hate rappelling with a passion and by the time the weather got bad enough to make it miserable, we had climbed too far to warrant a rappel.

My friend forgot the guidebook and we got lost en route. We found our way back to the right pitch but it took over an hour of route finding while I sat on a tiny belay pitch at 14,000 feet. I was tied in, legs dangling over a sheer face. I couldn’t communicate with my partner. It was freezing. Every part of my body hurt as I alternated between feeding out rope and holding the rope in brake position. I felt utterly alone, scared and beyond sore. Climbing big walls is a lesson in isolation and self-reliance. You see your partner for a handful of minutes as you make the transition onto the next pitch. Mostly it is all about you. And your demons. And your effort. And your confidence in yourself. And your pain.

We finally made it and the clouds cleared miraculously to give us a grand view of the Southern Sierras. We took a few minutes to eat a Clif Bar and re-rack our gear for the descent, which was a 2000 foot hike down a craggy 50-degree route comprised of small granite boulders that required us to scramble. Getting lost earlier on the wall meant we were losing sunlight fast.

And I had forgotten my headlamp.

The descent sucked more than the climb up. I dislike downclimbing. Period. The sun was almost completely gone as we made it to the steepest part of the descent. My only light was a tiny hand-held LED light in my bail out kit like the kind you keep on a key ring, which lit up when I pinched it between my thumb and forefinger. We descended slowly. Partly because we were exhausted and sore. And partly because it was so dark that our lights only illuminated the next 10 feet in front of us and we didn’t want to head over a boulder with an 8-foot drop on the other side.

A few teams at base camp saw our lights blinking down the route. They lit lanterns so we could find our way back to camp. It should have been gratifying to see those lights, but they were so tiny and seemed so far away. My fear got the best of me and I found myself between a rock and a hard place – literally and figuratively. I was scared to go on and thought seriously about parking myself on a rock ledge about 2 hours above base camp, shivering all night long while I waited for the sun to come up. That would have taken hours. The other option was to keep going through the cold ache, the exhaustion and the utter fear of a painful or deadly mis-step in the black darkness. Keep going just 2 more hours to base camp, with its bliss of a cup of warm soup and my zero-degree down sleeping bag.

I kept going. And it sucked. But I made it. And had one of my best nights of sleep ever that night. The high I had for the next several days didn't fade either. Even when we hoisted our 50-lb. packs on our aching backs for another 5,000-feet of steep singletrack to the cars.

Climbing that bitch – and making it down in one piece – is one of my proudest achievements to date (forgetting my headlamp notwithstanding).

So while the pain of labor is sure to be more intense than the pain I felt on this climb, I think the emotional response may be similar. I’ve pushed myself physically – on more than one occasion – to the point of the rock and the hard place. Scared to go forward. Scared to go back. It is that space of utter isolation, fear and pain that I think women are most scared of when in labor. That and that something might happen to the baby.

But, as this movie points out, for the vast majority of women who have the confidence that they can get through labor without drugs, everything works out okay for them and the baby. And the result far outweighs the pain they went through.

I know the premise of this film is not for everyone. And we all know there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to family building. But – for me – I really think I can do this without drugs. And I want to give it a go.

Coming Out

One of my favorite business trips of the year is a trade show whereby all the retailers of outdoor gear come to buy next year’s products from the manufacturers – a veritable "Grown Ups Toys-R-Us." In my ten + years in the outdoor sports industry, I’ve made several lifelong friends most of whom come to this show. It’s like an annual high school reunion.

A few of the women in this circle knew of my struggles to start a family.

I kept this pregnancy under wraps from most of them. I just didn’t want to write those emails if it didn’t work out. This past trip, however, their genuine joy over my obvious belly was a wonderful thing to see.

Except for one woman. I met her last year. Over the phone. She wanted to hire me for a great job in Colorado. She wanted things to move fast, explaining that she just really needed a break from the pace she was keeping.

I knew from a colleague that this woman had struggled with miscarriages and a failed IVF. She is a few years older than me. We are similar in that we believed wholeheartedly that we could easily start families in our late-30’s only after netting the grad degree, the spouse, the house and paying it all off with a management-level position. (Suckers).

In one of our final conversations last fall, she had all but hired me and bought our plane tickets to Colorado when I put on the brakes.

"The truth is, I’m a stirrup queen," I admitted over the phone, "And I don’t think I can fairly commit the time and energy you need for this position right now because I’m struggling to start a family."

With that, we launched into an hour-long discussion about our fertility struggles.

She admitted that she had scheduled IVF #2 for the fall and wanted to reduce the stress and the level of hours she was keeping before embarking on round 2. She cautioned me not to wait to try IVF and even offered up a referral to her RE in the Denver-area.

It was the strangest and most satisfying interview I’ve ever had. It was also the first time I publicly put my personal life before my work. I declined the offer. A few weeks later I found out I was pregnant with Missy.

Flash forward to January. I would see her face-to-face at an event where it would be too difficult to dodge each other. I hoped that she, too, would be pregnant.

I knew her cautious and detached "congratulations" all too well as she stared at me in disbelief. Had the shoe been on the other foot, I know I would have behaved somewhat similarly. I felt so bad. I wanted to give her a hug. And apologize for getting pregnant when she had not.

After a bit, she warmed up and then peppered me with questions. What had I done? Had I used acupuncture? Herbs? A traditional Chinese medicine diet?

When asked, I’ve always been open about my journey. But this conversation really forced me to think about and articulate why this time might have been different from the others. Aside from whatever mystical connection to the universe or God’s "Plan" or whatever, what had I done or not done to contribute to this pregnancy’s success?

In a nutshell:

Yoga. Each of my BFPs was preceded by a spate of dedicated yoga practice. Even after "experts" told me that Ashtanga was contributing to my lack of progesterone issues, I never got pregnant when I wasn’t practicing Ashtanga yoga regularly.

Progesterone Supplements. Even with Missy, who by all accounts is healthy, I had falling progesterone levels. My thoughts on low progesterone and pregnancy are so long-winded that I will save it for a separate post, but I firmly believe that the three suppositories a day saved this pregnancy.

Diet. I did follow a TCM yang-deficiency diet for several months before this pregnancy. And after I got pregnant and was weaned off progesterone, I nearly ate a pint of ice cream to make up for it all.

Chinese Herbs. I ditched using these 2 months before becoming pregnant this time. I think they were hampering my emotional state.

Acupuncture. I ditched this 2 months before becoming pregnant this time. However, I did resume acupuncture for recurrent pregnancy loss right when I found out I was pregnant and continued weekly treatments until the end of my first trimester.

Work stress. While I don’t advocate quitting one’s job if you truly love it, but it is pretty ironic that we achieved a successful pregnancy on the first cycle where I wasn’t imbibing in a daily dose of sadness and stress as my company prepared to move to another state.

Letting Go. Yeah right. Someone with the blog moniker "Ms. Planner" can never just let go. But I had resigned myself that this was our last month of trying before moving on to IVF or adoption. We would never have timed sex again, I promised us.

Clear Blue Easy Fertility Monitor. Fuck those OPKs and obsessing if I was one of those women who ovulated 12 hours or 48 hours post-positive stick. I brought out the big guns and discovered that instead of being a CD 13 & 14 girl, I’m a CD 14 & 15 girl. Now that I think about it, we always got pregnant if we timed things for the evening of CD14 instead of morning. I never was a morning person anyway.

That is my journey. But everyone’s journey is different and uniquely their own. I borrowed a little from my intuition, a little from Western medicine, a little from Eastern medicine, a little psychotherapy. And crafted my own little Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang of a fertility vehicle. Thank heavens it didn’t sink this time.

At the end of our conversation, the woman who wanted to hire me held out her hand and asked me to pass some baby vibes her way. I don’t believe in that baby dust hooey but I extended my pinky finger and gave her a pinky good luck shake. I wished her all the luck in the world on her journey. I hope she finds what will work best for her, physically, emotionally and spiritually soon.

I hope that for everyone.

Back home

I am back from my work travels. Tired and with a bit of a cold. I worked 14 days straight at two back-to-back trade shows in two of the U.S.'s most diverse cities in which to be pregnant: Salt Lake City, Utah (the nation's most fertile state with its youngest population) and Las Vegas.

Being 5 months pregnant in Salt Lake just means that most people assume I'm on baby #6. Pregnant women (umm, really girls - they all look so damn young) and small children abound here. Infertility sucks in itself but to be infertile and living in Salt Lake would be a double burden to bear. Fertiles are everywhere.

Las Vegas. A completely different story. Being obviously pregnant in Sin City is tantamount to being a circus freak.

I don't even like Vegas. It is so opposite my style to begin with. Suffice it to say that being pregnant + Vegas = majorly no fun. For instance:

Men obviously staring at my chest and then my belly. I felt like I was on display.

No sushi at Nobu. Sigh.

No Maker's Mark and ginger ale at AJ's Steak House.

No Hard Rock Casino for people watching - as a general rule I don't gamble. Too much second hand smoke.

One night I attempted to rally and go to the Mix, a fabulous nightclub that looks out over the Strip on the top floor of the Hotel with some colleagues. Okay, it was crowded but I swear the bouncer took one look at my pregnant belly and informed us it would be at least an hour before we would even be let into the bar.

Apparently no one wants to disturb the carefree vibe that is the very lifeblood of Vegas with a visible reminder of a knocked up gal.

Thank goodness for the Bathhouse spa and pedicure. And room service.

In the end, I am glad that I was fortunate enough to be dealing with those minor inconveniences. Missy handled the long days like trooper. Now, we rest for a few days. And do the laundry.