no mountain high enough

i feel a little better today, a little more hopeful. we'll see how long it lasts.

milo was a little sluggish to start the old NST this morning but then came through with some fabulous accelerations. i love, love, love seeing those big, dramatic humps on the monitoring print-out.

while i was on the monitor, we heard the fabulous NST nurse saying that my gd gd peri was buying lunch for everyone today. we joked with her that we'd stay around if he was buying lunch...which turned into a conversation about what a lovely person the peri is...which got us into his differing view of milo's delivery from my ob's, and how badly the conversation went with my ob.

it turns out the gd gd peri was the one overseeing NSTs today, and he came in to chat after he reviewed the NST results, and we had a good talk about the delivery and about differences in opinion, and he was just wonderfully sympathetic. he felt my ob wasn't as sympathetic as he could have been to my anxiety and is going to talk to him. woohoo! he also was wonderfully reassuring about the amnio not being risky but rather being the responsible thing to do under the circumstances, and said my ob's concern may be about his own skill at doing them. i wonder if my ob felt his ass starting to smart when the peri said that...

so, i know the peri may not change the ob's mind, or there may be further skirmishes - but at least now i'm not fighting any battles alone. this knowledge will make the next few days much more comfortable for me.

meanwhile...my fabulous, perfect, to-die-for mother-in-law would like to come to our ultrasound next week, and we're trying to decide what to do. we have not told her (or any family, other than my mother, a former RN and current regulatory compliance analyst for a hospital chain) about the gd gd, because she would worry even more, and for nothing, because there's nothing she can do about it and it will all be over soon anyway. if she comes to the ultrasound next wednesday, she will have to be informed, because it will be discussed heavily in the office.

when we talked about it last weekend, i told her something along the lines of: you know, with me being so old and having a history of loss, my ultrasounds aren't shiny, happy celebrations of fetal well-being. they're long, and highly technical, and involve much measuring and other diagnostic things, and this next ultrasound will involve all sorts of technical crap to help formulate the delivery plan. it will not be like my sister-in-law's mid-term ultrasound. it won't be an oh-look-he's-waving-at-us funfest.

she would still like to come. i'm okay with her coming if i first sit down with her this weekend and lay out all the gd gd crap, and after knowing the nitty-gritty she still wants to come. justin isn't sure, though, and i certainly don't want her to come if we're not both okay with it. as of this morning, justin was leaning more towards telling her all the nitty-gritty and that the nitty-gritty is why she can't come - if it's hellish, we want our hell to be private. he reminded me of something i said this morning, during the NST, when the woman in the next room came in with her three older kids; i was appalled and commented to justin that, knowing what i know can happen, i would never, ever take a child to an NST. the chance of horror is minute, but i wouldn't want to chance exposing my child to that horror. he felt the same way about the chance of exposing her.

we're thinking it over today. either way, we've got to talk to her tonight or tomorrow. i wish there was an easy answer.

in which i start to get a little more loony

it's started. you know, where everyone - family, friends, co-workers, people you see all the time but have never, ever spoken a word to you ever, complete strangers on the street - asks you how much longer.

"not soon enough," i sometimes say, with a half-chuckle, before looking away, when i don't want to get into it.

"three to six weeks," i say other times, which confuses the heck out of people, but i save that one for people worth making the effort to confuse.

if it's someone about whom i give a damn, i give the short version of the long story: "it depends on which of my doctors you talk to..."

i hate that question. everyone asks it, like they're the first person who wondered. and you know why they ask it, don't you: because i am gigantic. i am the whale who walked on land. no one can imagine anyone would be this big and not be on the verge of exploding. i guess people want to be prepared, so they can jump behind a copier and avoid getting hit with blood and birth matter when i do explode.

the thing is: besides it hurting my feelings a little that people are awed by my awesome size, it pains me when people ask because i don't know but i really want to know, far more than any of those nosy nellies. my mental health is a bit more closely tied to the answer to the question than it is for most of the rest of the population. being asked three times an hour how much longer i have is like rubbing a wound with sandpaper; it just reinforces the uncertainty of it all, makes the anxiety more and more raw. it makes it feel like it's taking even longer than it really is.

i wish i could wear the end-of-my-rope ticker on my person. someone should rig up a hat that could flash the ticker all the time. and they should pay me 10% of their profits for thinking of it.

satisfaction

i couldn't take it any more. i was feeling blechy, malnourished, completely unsatisfied. i needed beef, baby, and i needed it now. i had been reviewing the gd gd food log and realized i had devolved into a diet of apples, natural peanut butter, graham crackers and unsweetened soymilk. variety was severely lacking. no wonder i felt so crappy. i called justin from the car.

"have you started dinner yet?" i asked, crossing my fingers.

he hadn't. then don't, i told him. he came out to the car when i pulled up at the curb, and i didn't even put the car in park. we drove to siam cafe, and got the only empty table, and filled up. i started with the beef satay (with so-so peanut sauce but to-die-for apple relish) and then i ate the jumbo shrimp with vegetables in brown sauce, with carefully portioned out rice on the side. the beef was cooked perfectly, the shrimp were plump and fresh, and even in my anti-vegetable state i can eat anything green when it's in a good gingery brown sauce. i ate more vegetables than i've eaten in a week. maybe two. i ate all the shrimp, since they don't reheat worth a damn, and had the rest of my beef packed up with the rest of the veg, and i'm going for round two at lunch tomorrow. by the time we left siam, i felt like a new person.

then we went to see the perfect niece, who has gained half a pound but is still so, so tiny, and who is fabulously snuggalicious. when she started to feel damp in the seat, we left and went grocery shopping and - woohoo! - bought newman's ginger creme cookies, and when we came home i ate two of them with a glass of soymilk (and still kept under my bedtime snack carb numbers!), and i feel so damn satisfied.

at last.

el toro! also, the case of the missing thingy

another tuesday, another NST. it took the little man some time to get going, but after one of my two favorite ob nurses in the whole world poked at him, he got good and angry and let her have it. i could imagine him snorting in there, like a cartoon bull, with clouds of indignation flaring from his be-ringed nostrils. he charged the hockey puck of a monitor over and over, pushing it off of him and making big blank gaps on the monitor's print-out. i love this kid's personality. hans always felt quiet and watchful; milo feels fierce and fearless. it would have been interesting to witness the dynamic between them.

of all the things we packed away after hans, we have yet to find the hooded towels and washcloths, the big bear bath sponge, and the contoured mattress-thingy for the changing table. my sister e-mailed me to ask if i wanted my nephew's towels, which he's outgrown, and we bought another bear sponge saturday, so the only thing we still must recover is the changing table pad. i fear it got packed in garbage bags, as many other things did, but got mistaken for garbage and thrown away. either that, or when milo is 12 we will find it in some remote corner of the basement and have a good laugh and then take it outside to use as a snow toboggan. we do have the changing accessory thingy on the pack-n-play that ought to contain him for a few months, so i guess we've got time to dig.

otherwise, we're ready to bring milo home, more so than we ever were with hans. we would have gotten along fine with hans, but we're better prepared. we should have fewer runs to the store and more time to hang with him. lovely thought.

now we just need to get the hospital bag packed, but not tonight. we were going to go visit our niece, but justin has a little of the crud i had last week, so we're going to go swimming instead. i love swimming because (1) i can stay cool, which happens never, and (2) no one judges a pregnant woman in a bathing suit. afterwards, we're making un-beef stroganoff for dinner...mmmmmmmmmm. mushrooms, sour cream and swimming with my favorite husband - as close to perfect as it gets - without adding a glass of wine to the menu. maybe i can get justin to open a bottle so i can sniff the cork.

no whine before its time

today's dilemma: so many things about which i want to whine, but do i really have the time to expound on all of them?

let me start with food: for one thing, i made a giant pan of brownies for my in-laws with the new baby, and despite my wish to eat many, many brownies, i ate exactly one, about 1.5 inches square, and saved two for justin, who was at work, and sent the rest to my new niece, and it hurt me. it physically hurt me to hand the platter to my father-in-law and watch him walk out the door with it (i didn't go to visit because i would be pissed if someone with a sore throat who had a fever the day before came over to paw over milo when he was less than two weeks old). that one little brownie reminded me of what i am missing (namely, taste and fat, glorious fat) and it has been downhill ever since. like today, when i ate the black bean soup and steamed brown basmati rice justin made and packed for my lunch. it made me want to throw up. there was absolutely nothing wrong with it. those foods are two of my favorites. justin did nothing wrong. i just had an overwhelming urge to purge them from my gut and go eat a steak (with a side of brownies). poor justin: when i talked to him on the phone and told him they made me want to throw up, he paused, and then thanked me; he hadn't eaten his beans and rice yet. sorry, darling.

let me move on to the gd gd (because you haven't heard nearly enough about it lately): my fingertips are so uniformly bruised (from the constant pricking of them to test my blood glucose) that i cannot type without some agony. i work on a computer all day, and agonized typing is making me complainy. that complaininess is compounded by the fact that one of my co-workers is on vacation all week, and i seem to be getting ALL of her calls, which are all from people who should be committed to institutions with good drugs and art programs. and while i'm on the subject of the vacationing co-worker, let me also complain that while she is my primary workplace confidante, she last week expressed to me that she thinks i should "let nature take its course" and not worry about when milo is born. i let her have it, and, god bless her, she took it, but i'm still a little sore from that one.

which leads me to the subject of mental health, and my lack thereof: milo moved very little yesterday, and when i woke up from my afternoon nap, i started to freak out about it. i found his heartbeat, but it stayed pretty constant at 120 - a little low and not indicative of good aerobic movement. so i ate some granola and laid down on my side, and in an hour i counted six movements. clearly, he was functioning, but the standard is supposed to be at least ten movements per hour, and he usually kicks ten times in ten minutes and then i jump up and move on, and decreased movement precedes stillbirth by a few days, and i so didn't want to go to labor & delivery but i even less want another dead son - so i called instead. my own ob was actually there, and we talked and he asked me to count for another hour and then come in if we didn't do better than six. this time, we got to ten movements in about 50 minutes - not milo's usual movement, but an improvement, so we didn't go in, and of course today, he's behaving like a prizefigher in training and using my cervix as a punching bag. but i hate, hate, hate that should-i-go-in/i-don't-want-to-be-chicken-little/but-what-if-my-paranoia-is-right? roller coaster. i suspect a before-and-after brain scan would reveal that my brain now operates in panic mode as a matter of course rather than panic being an event. ugh.

moving on to physical health: for days now, my pelvis has felt like samson himself is standing between my legs, forcing the two sides of my bone structure apart with all his might. (you know, if he were a little person. or if i were a giant.) it's making me waddle and ache. sometimes it takes my breath away. i thought this sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen so much after the first baby, but what do i know? well, i know it's affecting my ability to sleep through the night (as much as my bladder will allow). i might have gotten three hours of sleep last night, and i am paying dearly for it today (as are you, if you're still reading my whines). i need some f'ing sleep. i cannot function much longer without it, dammit, or someone's going to have to pay, and on a much larger scale than this one.

and then back to my mental state: i know i had more things about which i wanted to whine, but my pregnancy-induced stupidity is clouding my ability to recall them all, dammit. i just can't win. i am happy about one thing, and that's milo's room, which is full-to-the-brim but will work. we hung his french seasonal calendar and the pictures of the torres-garcia wooden toys we love, and it feels so ready for him. which of course increases my paranoia that now he'll die for sure.

well, that one didn't turn out to be so happy, so here's another stab: i started the end-of-my-rope ticker just before we hit 100 days, and now we're at 50! woo-hoo! plus (or rather minus) however many days early i'm induced, depending on when my medical team unites behind a common date, means i'm well below 50. it's almost enough to make me lighten up. almost.

milo goes material

the crib is in the...crib. we got it home, justin's dad put it together - with no swearing! - and it's in milo's room, ready to go. it's basic but beautiful - maybe because it's milo's. we made a beeline for the basic model, and justin's dad tried to get us to look around and consider others, but we said no. this is a one-baby crib. we're not going for family heirloom furniture. the truth is, if we got anything in the world we wanted, it would be one of several modern design cribs in the four-figure range - and we're not asking my father-in-law to drop a grand on a crib. if we're not going that route, anything fancy is wasted on us. so we got the crib loaded in the family wagon - and the mattress! and the tub! and assorted other little goodies! - and brought it all home.

the crib is the one big thing that won't be a hand-me-down from milo's brother. i'm kind of glad we didn't get around to getting one for hans. it will be nice to put milo in it and not have any previously-imagined pictures of hans in it floating around in our heads. it will be only his.

following are a few peeks at milo's stuff, including the cowboy outfit alysse sent him and deadbabymama's penguin cup (with ski cap on and off, and with a paper towel stuffed inside, so you can imagine it filled with milk):

the friday report

had a kind of weird NST today; milo's heartrate stayed pretty high. the peri was okay with it; they were more concerned with my heartrate, which was high at the beginning and the end, but sent me home anyway, so who knows. it may be because i've been sick. the sore throat with which i woke up the other day turned into a full-blown something by the end of the day wednesday, and i spent most of yesterday in bed, in a fog, fighting a fever. today the fever's gone, though, so it's back to work for me. i would just like to feel less blechy, you know?

after the NST, we ran into justin's old girlfriend ("the one who isn't nuts") in the vestibule, which was kind of weird - not talking to her (she's lovely) but just that we would run into her there. she told us another of justin's old girlfriends (probably the one who was most nuts) had just moved back to town, and has a young daughter. she's the one i'd least like to run into. thank god we don't live in a small town.

justin's dad is due in any minute, and tomorrow we're going crib shopping...followed by crib assembling. much swearing is expected.

perry como vs obi wan kenobi

to ease any confusion, here's a helpful table to help keep the peri and the ob straight:

• peri: really short. ob: freakishly tall
• peri: hair plugs, or maybe mid-treatment w/rogaine. ob: full head of hair, often needs haircut.
• peri: kinda cute, except for the uneven hairline. ob: kinda attractive, except has beeker-from-the-muppets-like head.
• peri: about my age. ob: about 10 years older.
• peri: favors dark blue shirts. ob: favors dark purple shirts.
• peri: favors black loafers. ob: sometimes sports ill-advised multi-colored pastel topsiders.
• peri: doctor of my dreams, in terms of manner. ob: subject of an adult dream during my first pregnancy involving a lab coat.
• peri: favors amnio at 36w to test lung maturity and induction around 37w. ob: staunchly opposed to any induction before 39 weeks but might agree to strip membranes at 38.
• peri: thinks biggest risk of c-section caused by waiting too late and letting milo get too big. ob: thinks biggest risk of c-section caused by stalled labor if inducing before 39w.
• peri: thinks risks of amnio minimal. ob: thinks amnio too risky.
• peri: thinks my anxiety is a good reason to have milo soon. ob: not taking my mental health concerns seriously, thinks all will be solved by having a healthy baby.
• peri: hasn't talked to my ob. ob: hasn't talked to my peri.
• peri: thinks my rash is ringworm. ob: thinks my rash is PUPPS. (me: thinks both of them are wrong.)

i hope this information will be helpful. also, please note the peri referenced above is the gd gd peri, not to be confused with the fetal diagnostic peri, who has not yet weighed in on the delivery plan, and who is a female and french-canadian. the fd peri is the peri i see next, on friday after the NST. i saw her briefly yesterday but hadn't seen her before then since the nuchal fold translucency scan at 14w or so, although she told me she has been kept informed about me, so no doubt she has formulated an opinion, too, although probably in french, so no one will understand a goddamn word of it.

mental poop

this morning's ob visit went badly. nothing's wrong, per se, except that i woke up with a sore throat and a white tongue, but the delivery conversation went horribly wrong. the peri apparently hasn't talked to my ob, and i was out there alone, fighting against his determination to hold off until 39 weeks and his not taking seriously my mental health concerns about the effects of waiting on my ability to function as a mother. after he said he thought i was "creating a situation where there wasn't one," i dissolved into crying and a complete loss of dignity and the battle was pretty much lost.

i am worn out from holding it together. justin sees the doctors' difference of opinion as being about two weeks, and two weeks as not being a big deal. but from where i sit, two weeks is a hell of a big difference. two weeks is a long time to maintain this mental state of ambush. i need some relief.

my cup runneth over

and i'm not just talking about the bras i've outgrown.

a list for today:

• we got a little box from alysse of things she had gotten for julian, and it was the clown car of boxes: you wouldn't believe all the incredibly cute outfits she had packed in there! justin is especially enthralled with a cowboy-themed romper; if it were in his size, he would want to wear it when he went to shows. i am not kidding. i'm also not kidding when i say how honored we are to have some of julian's things for milo. there will be pictures galore, i promise.
  
• there was a card from my mom in yesterday's mail, with brightly-patterned origami pinwheels on the front and a baby store gift card inside. since his nonna is the cleanest person i know, i'm thinking it should go for milo's bathtub and grooming/first aid kit and hooded towels. whatever we decide on, i can't wait to go shopping this weekend!
  
• justin's dad is coming back this weekend and has begged, begged, begged for us to wait and let him buy milo's crib, so at long last we're going to get a crib. mmmmm...getting to go shopping while someone else foots the bill is my dream come true. actually putting it together i'm guessing will be somewhat less dreamy.
  
• justin tells me we have a package in today's mail from deadbabymama with a penguin-themed eating set for milo and the new futureheads' cd for us. it's like christmas!
  
• our favorite engineer/music geek friend recorded the futureheads live at their show in san francisco sunday night and e-mailed us his bootleg today, with a cd to follow. i've never been a bootleg owner; i'm not sure if i'm hip enough to have this recording in the house. but i'm going to try to live up to it.
  
• my brother (to whom i have not spoken in months) called today and wants to come to visit after milo's born and after all the grandparents have gone home....so he can have milo to himself. my brother is certain to have as an ulterior motive a plan to de-wussify his nephew; he worries - probably justifiably - that any boy justin and i raise is guaranteed to be a tad too arty-farty for his own good, and he considers it his responsibility to make sure his nephews don't get their asses kicked too often.
  
• our chef friend called a few minutes ago to ask if we'd like to come over tonight (to their new, old house by the lake) for dinner. uh, does bush pee sitting down? i'm going to get fed so damn good tonight it might put me in a coma.
  
• justin bought a new bike pump today and aired up my tires (as well as the stroller tires!), and after dinner (if i'm not comatose yet), we're going to ride along the lake, which is about as perfect as things get.
  

could i be any luckier???

another monday, another visit to the gd gd clinic

regarding the gd gd:

• still doing fabulously with the diet and exercise and daytime control
• still can't control the nighttime surges, but i get to inject even more insulin now
• still hating the jabbing and pricking and bleeding and injecting
• blah blah blah

ugh. on to other things.

so, i have this rash. (you can keep your fingers on your keyboard - it's not contagious.) it started late in my pregnancy with hans, came into full bloom a few days after i delivered him, and went away after a couple of months. it's a big, bumpy, itchy thing, with an unknown viral cause. it can't be cured, but it runs its course and then you're on your way...except it started again, with just two tiny welts, when we were in oaxaca in march. i recognized it, knew it hadn't related to hans's death, didn't have a gynecological connection, and it would run its course. in the last couple of weeks, it's reached fever pitch, so i've been scratching it like a mangy dog. when it gets scratched, the bigger welts thin out and spread out - which makes them look like ringworm.

i forgot to bring it up last week when i talked to my ob, so justin made me promise to bring it up today. of course, the peri and the resident saw first the biggest welts that had been scratched out and said, oh, ringworm! i told them the whole story (in much more detail than i'm boring you with here, believe it or not) and made them look up last year's outbreak in my chart, which gave the resident pause but didn't sway the peri, who wants to treat it as ringworm until it doesn't respond to ringworm treatment. okay, whatever. on the plus side, he admitted he wasn't absolutely sure, but he said it definitely wasn't any of the rashes that would but milo in any danger, so yea for that. i'm going to go fill the prescription, but i'm not holding my breath. i've read all about ringworm this afternoon, and it's so not ringworm.

and then we got to the good part!

the peri wants me to initiate a delivery plan conversation with my ob if he doesn't bring it up wednesday at my check-up. he disagrees with my ob's conviction about waiting until 39 weeks and is going to tell him so, but he wants me to jump in, too. he'd like to set an induction date after my ultrasound in two weeks, and he'd like to do an amnio for lung maturity testing around 36 weeks and induce at 37 or 38 at the latest. (i wanted to get up and dance at this point; it's not like i had any dignity to lose, since i'd already dropped my pants twice today, but i did manage to keep my butt connected to the chair.) given my previous successful induction (successful in that induction worked in a timely manner to deliver my dead son vaginally), he thinks i'm an excellent candidate for another induction, and placed my risk of c-section at 4-5% at that point - which is significantly below the general population's percentage of c-section, so i'm not sure how my ob can argue with it.

this development is most conducive to improved mental health on my part. to have a scheduled date, in only 5-6 weeks, makes me so, so happy. and to have someone besides me telling my ob i really, really need to get this show on the road is such a relief. a burden shared and all that. if i wasn't pregnant, i'd go drink now to celebrate.

the rest of this week's schedule:

• tomorrow: non-stress test
• wednesday: ob check-up
• thursday: phone check with gd gd resident
• friday: non-stress test

and so it goes every week until milo is delivered. or i'm delivered of milo. however you wanna look at it.

to my favorite baby-daddy

i don't think i realized, when we slogged through mother's and father's days last year, that we could go through another round of holidays without a child at home, or at least without one that was doing something besides sitting on a shelf collecting dust or kicking me from the inside out. maybe it was too horrible to imagine. yet here we are. we're not exactly in perfect shape, but we've survived, together, dinged up but together, dammit.

i just went back to re-read where we were this time last year, and it made me so lonely for our first son, our hans. this time last year, his death was so fresh, our feeling so raw - it's like reading letters from two old friends we know but have lost touch with over time. but that raw feeling maintained my connection to hans, something that feels tenuous now. it's not that i don't think of him, but i have so little overall energy, and so much of it goes to just surviving this pregnancy, that poor hans gets far less than his due.

he was so beautiful, looked so much like you, with a tiny little bit of me and a bit of your grandma, oddly, too. he loved the music you loved, jumped to it - like you. milo, on the other hand, i think will be his own person. at the last ultrasound, i thought his profile looked like yours, but he seems to have his own schedule, his own rhythm, his own taste. and he will be so lucky to get what hans lost - to grow up with you as his dad.

milo will be in awe of your ability to tie shoes so they don't come untied and to run distances that would tire him (and me) and to sign with him fluently (just don't laugh with him at my rudimentary signing, okay? i am practicing.) and to operate big, noisy things like the lawn mower. i think he will love music, and books, too, but i think he may pick things we wouldn't. that's okay - we can grow. :)

i wanted to get you a father's day card from him - but then i thought, what about hans? and the tadpole, for that matter - how many people can i sign a card for because they can't sign it themselves? you and milo will have many father's days together in the future - i can't wait for next year - but hans will have to do with looking down on you from his perch above the stereo. he missed so much, but he was lucky to have you for his daddy.

te amo, mi amornino. i'm glad you're the father of all my children.

father and son

my punishment for bragging about not cooking all weekend: slaving over a hot stove in 90 degree heat last night (that would be 90 degrees inside). oh, well - for the first time, my father-in-law ate something i cooked, even if it was only spaghetti. he did eat whole wheat noodles and soy "meatballs" for the first time, so maybe he's branching out a bit. probably not, but still, he ate it. we're making progress.

i shouldn't rip on him for his taste (or lack thereof). he is incredibly lovely to me. i really have the best in-laws ever. i just don't understand how he could be justin's father (other than the obvious similarities in appearance). and the poor man could use some sympathy today.

when he left here for semi-retirement in vermont six years ago, his girlfriend moved with him. they both had multiple previous marriages and bonded over their mutual resolve to not re-marry. despite that foundation, the girlfriend decided to propose to him - in a greeting card - 2 1/2 years ago at thanksgiving. he thought it was a joke and responded accordingly, wounding her pride severely and starting a downward spiral that culminated in him driving her back to cleveland for good when he came in this weekend to meet his new granddaughter.

at 7:30 this morning, the phone rang - it was the girlfriend, sounding pitiful and desperate, wanting to talk to him, but he took justin to work this morning and was going to do i-don't-know-what before flying home late morning. as soon as we hung up, my cellphone rang; i missed that call, but i have no doubt she next called my brother-in-law (home of the sleeping newborn niece) and proceeded to call every relative of his for whom she had a phone number. it's way too late to beg for a last-ditch effort to work things out and go home with him, but her mental health has deteriorated of late to the point that she probably doesn't realize it. it's just a sad situation all the way around. it makes for a sucky father's day for him, no doubt.

justin could use a little love, too. father's day is weird for him - he has two sons but no kids with whom to spend the day - a strange sort of limbo. he's working a double shift today so his co-worker can have the whole day off with his two sons, which is nice of him, but i know it's a challenge, especially with all the old biddies at the airport wishing all the known fathers a happy father's day and clucking over them for having to work on their special day. justin plans to get through the day by watching all three world cup games in the employee breakroom, but he deserves better.

i gave him his father's day present earlier this week, because he was going to be gone all day today, and because with our niece being born and our father-in-law visiting i knew we would't have any time to ourselves. that, and because he wore me down begging to know what i got him; i can only take so much, you know? his present was a cavaliers shirt, which he really liked and thanked me for...and then he casually rifled through the paper in the box to covertly see if there was anything else...and he found the tiny cavs jersey for milo. he got appropriately choked up. :) this winter, when we watch their games, he and milo can wear their shirts together while they root for lebron and big z and anderson varejao and all the rest. he also wants to take milo to a game this year in the snugli, so milo will be appropriately outfitted for the event.

damn, we just gotta get milo here in one piece, so he can go to his first cavs game.

weekend pass

my father-in-law is arriving in town, probably about.....now, which means i will not be cooking the rest of the weekend. he politely pushes my cooking around the plate but he cannot restrain himself from making faces at my coffee (which coffee, for the record, everyone else on the planet loves). i have learned to not even try to cook for him any more; it's useless. i cannot cook things as blandly, as plainly, as boringly as he likes them, try though i might. so when he comes, we go out. and when he wakes up in the morning (hours and hours before any decent person), he walks up to the corner and gets coffee at the gas station while we sleep in, and everyone is happier this way.

to be honest, it's not like i've cooked up a storm all week. justin's new hours have him home several nights during the week now, and he has been doing the cooking. he cooked last night, too, but when i got home i smelled the brown basmati in the steamer (smells like popcorn!) and the tofu and veg in soyaki on the stove - one of my favorite meals - and my stomach said, "NO! absolutely not! it will be cake or nothing for me!" i just had a complete gd gd breakdown. the only thing i wanted (besides cake) was french toast. of course, we were out of syrup (sugar-free or otherwise), and the two eggs we had in the house expired over a month ago, but i didn't let it stop me. justin kindly packed up the food he had thoughtfully cooked into containers for our lunches, and we went to (ugh!) denny's, and i ate french toast - and sausage! - and sugar-free syrup. and it was good. i didn't eat all of it, and i didn't go nuts with the syrup (which still holds some peril with the gd gd), and my blood sugar went up only a little and was back within the usual range by this morning. it was totally worth it. i can make it a little while longer now.

the breakfast of champions

i slept well and then woke up hours early, convinced that something was very, very wrong. a nerve-wracking doppler check finally, finally nailed down milo's heartbeat...and of course, shortly thereafter he began to hula in there, but a panic attack and generalized sobbing are a horrible way to start the day. i feel exhausted already, and i haven't even hit the shower yet.

how am i supposed to live like this? i could be looking at almost eight weeks more of this, but even in the best case scenario, i have at least four more weeks. it's inconceivable.

i'm so frustrated by the lectures i got monday about coming into the hospital if i feel something is wrong. if i did what i was told, i'd be there every other goddamned minute. i'm pretty sure none of those scolding doctors would be willing to just keep me in the hospital on continuous monitoring for the next month or two. fuck them all.

ta-da!

both our niece and her mom came through beautifully. the induction started at 1:30 this morning, and she was born at 9:59 am - after about 10 minutes of pushing. is it wrong for me to be jealous of that kind of delivery? well, tough titties, because i am.

but i am even more in love with my niece, who is tiny and pink and perfect and let me hold her for a long, long time. she fussed a tiny little bit at one point, and justin's grandmother said milo must be kicking her. actually, he was kicking a bit; do you think he sensed his cousin sitting on top of him, getting all the adoration, and got jealous? maybe jealousy runs in the family.

and now, we pause for the birth of milo's cousin

tonight at midnight, my sister-in-law is being admitted for the induction of labor. this time tomorrow evening, i could be at the hospital holding my new niece! woohoo!

i'm nervous, because my sister-in-law is so tiny and her belly is so freaking huge, and because she's having a non-medically-necessary induction (she's 39 weeks, but her doc is going on vacation later this week), and because her mother had a late loss. on the other hand, she's 22 - she will never be lower risk than she is right now. i'm also torn - i want to take tomorrow off and spend it at the hospital with her, but she has her own mother, and her sister, not to mention her husband, and our mutual mother-in-law, and does not need me brooding over her, spreading my high-risk vibes around the place. but i can tell you - it will be very hard for me to not hog the baby once i've got a grip on her.

so instead, i'm working later tonight (well, i'm at work later tonight) to make it easier to leave earlier tomorrow so we can get to the hospital earlier in the evening, and i'm thinking about what we should take to the hospital: flowers? (too formal?) balloons? (useless, but they're young.) something pink and frilly? (would fulfill my deep-seated desires, but not theirs.) something soft and stuffed? (probably a good idea for them, but something extra for them to cart home.) what do you think? help me fill the time.

why not take all of me

today's quick check with the gd gd peri turned into a 3 1/2 hour test-apalooza.

everyone jumped on the increasing variance between my first-thing-in-the-morning and my late-in-the-afternoon blood glucose levels. my reward? a bigger dose of insulin at night, and an all-new additional dose in the morning when i wake up! because i looooooooove to shoot up. dammit. at least, it will help keep milo in the middle range, size-wise, and it should correct the roller coaster i've been riding the last few days which crashes every afternoon, leaving me completely wiped out.

we tested my blood sugar (nice and low for an hour after breakfast), measured the ute (at 32 cm, i am in good shape for 31 weeks), tested for a urinary tract infection (negative!), and drew blood to determine whether i've had diabetes for a while that's gone undetected (still up in the air). i didn't have it with hans, but i suspect it might already have been in play at least earlier in this pregnancy than when gestational diabetes usually kicks in, based on the swings i've been experiencing. i wonder if last summer's weird protein problem wasn't the beginning. who knows.

and then the big 'ol king-o-tests - the NST. i'm not scheduled to start them bi-weekly until a week from tomorrow, but in response to the movement question, i related yesterday's experience - which earned me a trip back to the fetal diagnostic center and no less than four lectures (from the gd gd resident, the gd gd peri, the NST nurse, and the fetal diagnostic center peri) for not coming in yesterday. for the record, milo performed beautifully. i, on the other hand, was shitting my pants.

some footnotes:

• one of the NST nurses noted on my chart that the goal of the powers-that-be is to get me to 36 weeks. i think she slipped up, because no one is sure as hell saying such a thing to my face; all i get is the 39 weeks talk. it's all 39, all the time. i'm not bringing it up to any of the docs because i don't want to jinx myself or get her in trouble, and there's no guarantee of getting induced at 36 weeks, but it's nice to know it could all go down in as little as FIVE weeks. holy cow.
• let me reiterate how much i despise the two people who work the front desk for the gd gd clinic. may they rot in the morgue, or medical records, or wherever it is that people least want to work in the hospital.
• the fetal diagnostic peri-of-the-day was usually the l&d attending on the night shift last year when i was going to l&d when hans didn't move and getting a load of attitude for my trouble (not from him, but from the nursing staff). justin and i always got the giggles because it was clear he wore his scrubs and his clogs and nada mas, as they say south of the border. lots of blond body hair sticking out and some gold jewelry and a pretty thick moustache and a bit of a combover and - that was it. today, he was wearing an actual dress shirt and tie and dress pants, and the 'stache has become a full-fledged goatee, and they must be passing around the rogaine up there in obstetrics. he gave me the hardest lecture about not coming in yesterday (in response to my home dopplering, he explained i could mistake the baby's heartbeat for my own if he was in distress - as though if the highest rate i detected was a 70 i wouldn't be hauling my ass immediately in to l&d...but i digress), but i didn't do much to defend myself, as i might otherwise have done, because i had to focus my energies on keeping a straight face. it's very hard to take someone of whom you think as "dr commando" very seriously.

barring any freakouts, i don't have to go back until next monday, but then the real fun begins: i will be going to the hospital for scheduled events at least three times per week, if not more, for the duration. are we having fun yet?

this is how it begins

it had to start sometime: the interruption of normal events by me having a freak-out. hey, i'm a little sensitive these days. give me a break. if this was hans, i would be at the hospital now, enduring the eye-rolling l&d nurses while waiting for the attending to release me. at least, thanks to the doppler (which is thanks to the sweet, sweet coalminer), i can save my dignity to be taken away another day.

we went to justin's cousin's daughter's christening this morning, which was a little weird - it's been a while since i've been in a normal church service. quite the heathen, i've become. the baby was lovely and mellow and ridiculously gracious in allowing a myriad of people to hold her and pet her and splash her with water. afterwards, we stood for the family photo without grimacing and then went to the potluck dinner, which i survived without too much sugar craziness - no small feat at an event where there were as many desserts as non-desserts (someone needed to better coordinate the menu, dammit). my treat: one piece of cheesecake, one-inch square - a total of three bites, and only because i dissected it into tiny pieces to make it last. oh, so, so, so good. i could have eaten twenty of them. but i didn't.

afterwards, i was practically falling asleep in the car (or i would have had it not been for justin's grandmother, cracking jokes the whole drive home from the back seat). i could blame it on the emotional drain of the whole family gathering thing, but i've been this way for several days - in the afternoon, i crash hard. my glucose numbers have been sort of wild, regardless of how strict i am, and i suppose it's the downward plunge of those numbers in the afternoon that leaves me feeling so drained, but it kind of sucks. the knowledge that my numbers have been more extreme doesn't help my mood, either.

so i had a nap and then we got up to feed me and to go to the lake for a walk, but on the way there, i started to have a weird feeling. i felt milo move this morning at church, but i hadn't noticed him since, and late afternoon is his big activity time. when we parked at the lake, we sat in the car while i poked at milo, trying to get him to poke back. finally, i turned the car back on without having gotten out and we drove back home. this sort of action doesn't do much for my pride, i must say, but what else could i do?

we came right upstairs and i flopped down on the bed with the doppler - it took a little bit to find him, but his heartbeat was there, faint, but in the right range. i don't know what position he's gotten himself into, but it is not conducive to finding his heart or feeling him move and he had better make some changes or we are going to be dealing with some serious stress hormones, and he does not want to make me do that to him.

relieved, we got back in the car and headed back to the lake, and he punched me hard the whole way there (milo, not justin), as if to say, "you want to poke me? you want to feel me move? you want to disturb my nap? fine! i'll show you poking! i'll show you what awake is like!" it was fucking fantastic. he dug into my bladder, making me have to use the icky park bathroom. twice. to which i say, great. bring it on, little man. show mommy what you've got. it's the only way we're going to survive another 8 1/2 weeks. or less.

i'm a little sunbeam

my blood sugar numbers continue to creep up, regardless of what i do, and wow, do i feel great about it.

i find myself increasingly reliving the events around hans's death. for a long time after he died, i kept reliving the moment on the ultrasound table when they confirmed there was no heartbeat, but now i get to re-experience other good times, like the breakfast the hour before that last ultrasound, when i still hoped the ob would say, "let's have a baby today," and when i mistakenly thought i felt hans kick. another greatest hit: just after i delivered hans with a final push, when i saw but couldn't hear justin say, " the cord's wrapped around his neck!" then there's the one where i was sitting on a disgusting couch in the L&D "special" waiting room, waiting for them to admit me, in shock, holding justin's mom's hand while justin and his brother went to get the suitcase that was waiting in the car.

why didn't i think to have pictures taken? what a great scrapbook these events would make. we could look at them over and over. "remember, honey, when i was mid-labor, and your grandma kept telling those crazy 'we were so poor' jokes? wasn't that a hoot!" "ha, ha, ha, dear, those were good times!"

reliving those good times is interfering with my sleep, and with my ability to actually get any work done. this afternoon, i spent a good 15 minutes on the throne in the ladies' room, crying about hans's cord - followed by another 5 mintues of pressing cold, wet paper towels to my eyes and nose to try to make them less red. life is good.

i'm going to go buy a christening present for justin's second cousin we've never met and a birthday present for his stepsister that we see on holidays - feel the excitement - and then i'm going to go see somethind mindless ("the break-up" seems a likely candidate) and let my brain empty out for a while. have a nice weekend.

too blechy to blog (much)

survived yesterday's checkup. my ob did not, in fact, turn me loose, and he increased my nightly insulin dosage. this morning's number was still out of target range but down a few points, so we're making progress, although my daytime numbers crept up a bit today.

milo has been making the earth move. he does what seems like this whole body swishing thing that makes me seasick. he did it for most of tuesday and yesterday, and since last evening the pressure on my bladder has been ultra intense. i suspect he was turning downward so he could use my bladder as a pillow. if so, i'd like to respectfully request a little less pressure on my bladder but appreciate him doing his part to get into position.

justin and i have been in intensive discussions this week about future birth control - and maybe the more permanent options. my ob thinks i'm an ideal candidate for the mirena iud, but if i'm going for something more permanent recommends a relatively new sort of tubal ligation where they go in vaginally, which avoids the surgical cutting. he is one of four people in the region who perform the procedure, so he's got practice, which would be a plus. justin is also open to getting snipped. we have much to talk about.

on top of contemplating sterilization, the whole drama of the gd gd is wearing us both down. for me, it manifests itself in depression. justin has his own shit, which he can discuss here if he so chooses. i am increasingly tired, increasingly less able to maintain my excitement, increasingly more desperate for both more sleep time and more exercise, but i just finished a round of prenatal yoga and now am going to capture what sleep i can.

and i'd like to thank the academy

sitting on my bedroom couch with the a/c blowing on me, freshly showered, newly bug-free (damn midges!), the night's insulin injection behind me and three lovely mini cinnamon donuts in my system, i have some clarity i haven't had in a few days. i have a number of things for which i can be thankful - or rather, a number of people. here is a short sample from the list:

1. justin, who continues to earn his "best husband ever in the history of the universe" crown by doing things like spending an extra half hour at the grocery store so he can read cereal boxes and salsa jars to figure out which ones have the least sugar. without being asked. and he sooo dislikes shopping.
2. catherine, who has prevented my public nakedness by sending me her maternity clothes (yes, they're fantastic - on deck tomorrow: the lavender blouse!)
3. all my fellow bloggers, who keep reading my whines and rants and support me anyway.

at the ballgame tonight, i was talking to a friend of a friend's fiancee (we were the only two chicks in the group) about social work (she's a social worker and wanted to know what i was most passionate about), and in telling her about my educational plans i found myself telling this stranger that despite the lack of local professional support, my husband and i had found a support group of people all over the world on the internet, and how that group had made such a difference for us.

it's true, you know. my mother loves me, and she sometimes has flashes of insight, but she doesn't understand much about me these days. i have good friends who support me and check up on me when i drop out from time to time and who mourned hans with me - but they do not really understand. it's my fellow bloggers-in-loss who understand the insanity, the doubt, the confusion, the petulance and childishness, the ecstacy and preciousness, and everything else that goes with this pregnancy. people who love me and whom i love but who have not been separated from the child they wanted more than anything in the world simply cannot provide the support i have here.

i am one lucky-ducky to have you all in my life. thanks for being you.

the gd gd good news/bad news edition

you would not believe me if i told you how long it took me to figure out that i had to tip the vial of insulin over so that the needle could actually come in contact with the fluid. (answer: too long. believe it.) look, i am not dumb. i was a national merit scholar. my iq would qualify me for mensa membership. but i had no idea. it was utterly ridiculous.

after much weeping and gnashing of teeth, i picked up the phone to page the on-call gd gd doc, but justin had the better idea of calling my mom, who would know what to do and would answer the phone rather than requiring me to page her and wait for her return call. she did know what to do, of course, bless her heart, and then it was nothing to do the injection. well, it was nothing physically; it hurt less than my practice injection in the gd gd clinic, and less than the finger prick i perform five times daily (thanks, folks, i'll be here all summer!). but it hurt me mentally. there are trackmarks on my psyche.

so yea for me, i did it anyway, but boo!, because it didn't work. my numbers this morning were as high as they are every other morning. of course. can i hear a big motherfucker? all together now.

also in the bad news bracket - i was pukier than ever this morning. i threw an all-new, bigger and better than ever puke-apalooza in the bathroom. i would do anything to ensure milo's safe arrival, but is it too much to ask that if the insulin is going to be so puke-tastic that it at least work? someone is not pulling their weight, and it's not me.

so more bad news - i am now even more depressed, more demoralized, more fearful of even more drastic measures and more certainly about to be permanently deported from happy shiny ob-for-insurance-holders land to gd gd clinicopolis.

i'm headed to jacobs field for a baseball game now and will execute my plan to self-medicate with mini-donuts at section 149. i'm parking at the west side market so i can walk from there to the field (1 mile) and back (another mile) to get my insulin cooking and have planned my overall food day to be able to afford the carbs and sugar. dammit, i deserve a few mini-donuts at this point. you do not want to be the person ahead of me in line for those donuts.

tomorrow at 8 am: what will probably be my last regular ob visit. i will miss him and even his ugly-ass multi-colored pastel topsiders.

in which the gd gd becomes a real mf

are you tired of hearing about the gd gd? because lord knows, i sure am.

nonetheless, i'm chronicling life in the aftermath of hans's death, and this gd gd is the biggest feature of it at the moment, so i'm going to keep talking about it. don't say i didn't warn you.

i arrived at the perinatal gd clinic already emotional from my weird dream and my aching tailbone and lack of sleep, which didn't help. if i had a dollar for every time i've cried today (including well-ups and voice break-ups), milo's college fund would be off to a nice start.

the gd clinic is inside the hospital's ob clinic for patients without insurance, and so it is (unfairly) a very different environment from the practice where i see my regular ob, right next door. the desk staff is imperious and condescending and unnecessarily brusque, which just pisses the crap out of me (try to picture that miracle of modern science!); it pisses me off to be treated rudely in the first place, and it pisses me off that they treat their patients generally without respect. the aide that took my vitals wasn't much better; she acted like i was a giant imbecile to not know that after i pricked my finger and squeezed out some eau de lauralu that i was to wipe it away, squeeze again, and then test that sample.* well, thanks to my insurance adventures last week, no one actually showed me how to do it, and you don't even want to get me started on the horribly illogical paperwork that came with the glucometer (someone hire those people a real technical writer, stat!).

the medical staff (doctors, nurses, dieticians) in the gd clinic are definitely much better, but not a damn one of them today could tell me what i wanted to hear, i.e. that i was doing so well i wouldn't need insulin, ever, for all infinity. i saw a post-doc fellow (actually a post-doc gal) first, and she was lovely: warm, friendly, compassionate, direct, and already familiar with my history. i'm always amazed at the people who do not even read the top line of my chart before walking into the room with me, which is frankly disrespectful, but my pdg was already all over it. she was thrilled with my recordkeeping and notetaking and foodlogging, thrilled with how great a diet i've kept, thrilled with how well i've controlled my blood sugar throughout the day. yea for me. in fact, i've kept the diet a bit too well, so well that i have lost three pounds and am pissing ketones. so i went back to the dietician who added some more carbs and protein into my daily routine.

but the night is another thing. my blood sugar when i wake up is always higher than when i went to bed, which is the opposite of what would be expected. apparently, at night my liver is betraying me, manufacturing sugar beyond what i conscientiously consumed during the day, but without the benefit of me being able to exercise it away. well, i could exercise off the sugar my body is producing at night, but i'd have to give up sleep. what the hell - it's not like i'm sleeping much anyway, right?

my pdg, though, and the peri (who was also prepared and lovely) disagree with my plan to give up sleep, as well as my suggestion that we see how milo's doing first before taking drastic steps. they do not want to let the horse out of the barn, so to speak, and let him balloon up before taking action. they were not dissuaded, not one little bit, by my tears. i suspect they would not buy into my latest idea, either, that they remove my liver. in fact, they seemed determined to make sure that milo comes out healthy and alive and shit. imagine that.

so i am doing what i thought was unthinkable, what i and my ob were both so sure i would avoid with meticulous diet and begrudged exercise. i am injecting myself nightly with insulin, starting tonight. i don't even have the words, sarcastic or otherwise, to express how this development pains me. i know people do it every day, but those people are sick.

and if despite my best efforts i still have to take it, then my best efforts suck. it feels like failure. the pdg and the peri were very kind and assured me repeatedly that it was not punishment, not a sign of failure, not anything i could help, that i was doing all i could - and doing a great job of it - to keep it at bay. but it still feels in a very puritanical way like: i was bad, therefore i must be poked with sharp objects.

did i mention the needle hurts like a motherfucker? if not, let me clarify that it does. let me also state that it freaks me out that the place in which i must inject myself is in my belly. is it just me, or does that seem horribly wrong to you, too? and to add insult to injury, i must now also prick my finger an additional time per day: at night, when i get up to get my piss on, to make sure the night's insulin isn't overeffective. motherfucker.

other things that seem world-shattering today but about which i hope to be able to laugh, eventually: insulin is crazy expensive, even with my very good coverage. and i dread seeing my ob on wednesday, because i greatly fear that now that i'm on insulin he will cut me loose and turn me over full time to the perinatologist, who is really, really lovely** but has not been with me from day 1, and i need some stability. also, now that i'm on insulin, even if i get to stay with my ob, i will still have to go to the gd clinic weekly - and gd clinic is only held on monday mornings - when justin now works, thanks to his crappy new schedule.

so here's my new (wishful) plan: milo will come on his own, fully cooked, at 36w1d, sparing us all any more gd gd drama. please, please, please. i don't have an exactly stellar mental health history to begin with; i don't think i can take 10 more weeks of this gd gd nonsense.

*turns out, the wipe and re-squeeze is totally unnecessary. so there. hmmph.

**the gd gd peri is actually a bit more lovely than when i last saw him, when i was about 32 weeks with hans and had to go to l&d after i slipped on an icy sidewalk and did a bellyflop. he has given up on the combover, gotten himself some rogaine, started working out, and gotten a bit of color. or some sleep. or both. whichever, definitely a bit lovelier than previously noted. and every little bit helps.

good morning!

i must have awakened every 15 minutes, all night long. i took a tylenol during the night but i can still hardly move this morning (mental note: certain, ahem, relational configurations should probably be shelved for the duration of this pregnancy). and i had a horrible dream in which a restaurant next door to the hospital ruined my birthday plans for justin and then had the nerve to be just horribly rude to me about it, and now i had no way to give him the awful polyester voile (!) shirt i had for his present - plus my beloved was wearing a horrific jean jacket! the horror! - so i tried to cook for him at my co-worker's house, but there were old meat carcasses and maggots all over the stove, and i ended up sobbing in the hospital hallway for hans while people stared at me, like that sort of thing never, ever happens in hospitals. i'd like a re-do for the last ten hours.

and after that good start, i'm off to the gd perinatologist.

i'm just tired and bored with myself

really, justin's new schedule will be fabulous when i go back to work after maternity leave, as it will allow him three days home with milo alone, but for now it sucks rhinoceros balls. we had just sat down to breakfast together this morning when justin had to jump up and leave. and breakfast was damn good, too - whole wheat waffles topped with greek yogurt, warm sliced peaches (sprinkled with cinnamon and splenda) and crushed almonds - who wants to rush over something that fabulous? i suppose how i felt is how justin has felt the last, oh, three years on weekday mornings, when he fixes me breakfast, of which i gulp down half, and then i run for the door. wow, does it suck.

i'm used to a few hours alone on sunday while justin works, but two whole weekend days? it's too much time to spend on the couch watching tv and napping, as is my custom - i would die from the boredom. so i've done two loads of laundry and folded three, and picked up the whole house, and made up the guest bed for the next occupant to come along (probably my father-in-law, when my niece is born some day this month), and - now what?

i have a stack of new yorkers and parentses and gourmets awaiting me, but i'm not in the mood. i'm 3/4 of the way through ian mcewan's "saturday" and today would be an ideal time to finish, except i haven't touched it since my plane ride home from jacksonville, which was weeks ago, so now i have no idea where it is. i want to paint my upstairs bathroom a crisp apple green, but we haven't gotten paint yet, and i'm not supposed to be painting anyway. i could call kath or dyan, but frankly i don't feel like being social. if i was capable of knitting or some other crafty thing - well, if i was capable of such a thing i would be an entirely different person other than me, let's be honest.

i've checked my blood sugar twice today. i've planned dinner (cheese ravioli in marinara sauce, salad of mixed greens, pears and pecans). i've looked at hans's pictures. i've listened to milo's heartbeat. there's nothing to be done in his room. i've tossed out the flowers we cut last weekend for the house that have wilted. i could sweep and mop the floors, but i have to save something for tomorrow, when justin will be at work again.

i sound like a spoiled brat. or a smug one. poor me, my house is so fucking clean and i have a myriad of leisure possibilities but i just can't be bothered to pick one. ugh. extreme self-loathing and disgust is setting in.

pros and cons

it sucks that justin is working weekends now. it sucks to prick myself four+ times a day. my fingertips are purple and bruised. it sucks to have the elephantastic ankles suddenly kick in today.

but it's nice to come home to justin, already waiting for me, on a weeknight. it's nice to walk together on a perfectly temperate afternoon to our neighborhood brewery for dinner, and to sit outside and eat mushrooms and put my feet up and catch up with a friend leaving for a month of work in nagoya and hong kong tomorrow. and then around the corner, sitting outside the belgian beer bar, putting my feet up, another friend joining us, telling bawdy jokes and making fun of steve perry and of cheap trick and of the strokes, and dipping my finger in justin's rohrbach and making a mental note that after milo's born i'd like to actually have one in a glass - perfectly divine.

milo kicked like hell today (according to justin, in honor of the opening round of the world cup), and i'm keeping my blood sugar within safe range. the world keeps on spinning. 68 more sleeps.