I'm about ready to make like a baby ... and head out!

Lot's of you have been asking, so I'm updating what I know, as it is, for anyone interested. Perhaps a friend (DBM, David? - I'll call you both at some point tomorrow) might update info via comments, good news, any news later on, as may need be.

I'm currently sitting at work - how in the world can anyone expect me to get anything done!?! - 10, 12 or 16 hours from now; I'm to spontaneously tell whomever is near the office; "my word! wife is in labor, i'm gone!" and then ... I may very well be screaming "PUSH" and after long last (too many of you know all the bloody details) I shall finally meet my boy.

It's going to be the absolute most bittersweet moment of my life; the events of the last two years (miscarriage, stillbirth, the complete insanity of all of this ...) unfolding all at this one beautiful moment.

My heart is completely torn; on one hand, this should be (and is) all about Milo. It's his day. Our day. On the other hand, his siblings are forever part of our lives, how could we not be obsessing over this? Lives, intertwined.

Let's hope that he's blessed with a much smoother transition into this world. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Anyhow, it's on, no matter how smooth the transition - at some point today. Laura goes in for a test at 300pm; results to return 2 hours thereafter. If the lil tyke's, from this day forward known as Milo, lungs are set, we'll induce at some point later this evening for a birthing some time mid night or morning next.

Laura and girlfriend are together now; they plan to go and have a nice breakfast, then if time and circumstance permit, something girly to help relax themselves, perhaps a pedicure. Trust me, no one has earned this little bit of indulgence more than Laura.

It looks like I'm set to get a free pass from here at 200. Not sure if Laura will see this or not before my mother arrives, so I may very well be surprising her at l&d... I'm a nervous wreck: I can't wait to be with her. I can't wait to be with them.

Stand by for details....

the dying gasps of the nesting urge

between yesterday and today, every surface with which milo could potentially come in contact has been cleaned. our bedroom and bathroom, the living room, milo's room, the other bathroom, and now - at long last - the kitchen: all spotless. the car: cleaned on the inside by me and on the outside by the good fellows at bruno's hand wash. both bathrooms and the kitchen and the basement are stocked with all paper goods and cleaning products that could possible be needed for the next year. the freezer and pantry are full of quick-fix goodies. all laundry is done and done. and so am i. i am so fucking hot and sweaty and gross and pooped, if my water were to break rightthisverysecond, i would have to put off going to the hospital for an hour or so until i had time to at least shower, because if i went to the hospital as is, they would stand me outside on the sidewalk and hose me down before they'd let me in.

but i'm all done with anything work related (except for changing our sheets, which i will do when i get up tomorrow), so i can focus on getting my personal hygiene in order and generally coasting into this time tomorrow. in mere moments i will de-funk in the shower, then i'm headed out to buy strawberries for dessert, then to my mother-in-law's for dinner, where i will be fed and not allowed to lift a finger. i plan to take advantage of everyone's goodwill for me by hogging my niece all night. if anyone else thinks they will be holding her tonight, they should guess again. unless she shits herself, in which case i will forego my possession, although i will maintain my option to retrieve her once her diaper is changed.

tomorrow i will go out for breakfast, get a manicure and pedicure, finish my season one of the gilmore girls marathon - and then i'm off. my mother-in-law will be here at 1:00, and i have to be at the hospital at 2:30. if things are not too horribly backed up at the end of the hospital day, we hope to have amnio results by 5:00 or so, and then - please, please, please - i will be admitted to labor & delivery and justin will run to the hospital like his hair's on fire.

and it does seem like the scheduled events will be the schedule we follow. i've had few contractions this weekend, although yesterday i could have sworn milo's head was engaged, but today - who knows. he's been nice and fluttery all day, but there's no indication that he's going to get the ball rolling on his own today. and why should he? he's got a good gig in there, with a constant food supply and nothing to harass him. i'd make them drag me out kicking and screaming, too.

the last goodbyes

i've worked my last pre-milo day and said good-bye to everyone there (who threw me a lovely shower yesterday, complete with streamers and balloons and tons of homemade food - rigatoni and meatballs and salads and every kind of dip and dipper and brownies and banana bread - and a big fat gift card for target). we've made our last baby-free trek to the lake this morning to walk and run (although we did make a date to come back next saturday morning to the lake, and bring our breakfast, and i'll sit with milo in the stroller in the shade and watch the swimmers and kayakers while justin runs). and we've had our last cereal in bed.

we've gotten into a routine this pregnancy of having cereal in bed together every morning. sometimes, it's something other than cereal, but mostly it's trader joe's organic granny's apple granola, with soymilk, and our vitamins, and spearmint tea for justin and my one coffee (half a cup of instant coffee with splenda, in a tall glass filled up with soymilk) of the day. we get good and awake and formulate our gameplan for the day (which dr's appointment today? what should we do for dinner?), and then i jump in the shower.

justin works at 6 am tomorrow and monday (and we don't do the cereal in bed thing at 4:30 am - that would be inhumane), and then we'll be in the hospital, and then there will be milo. i suppose we could still eat cereal in bed, as milo allows, but in six short months he will be eating cereal, too, and i don't suppose he will understand why we can eat cereal in bed but he can't. of course, he's not the one who would have to change the sheets every freaking day after he smeared cereal and who knows what else all over the bed. so we've gotta start eating breakfast at the table, for the good of us all. i'm sure we'll still talk about the day and have our vitamins, and it will be nicer because milo will be with us, but i'll miss having my cereal upstairs.

*****

it appears justin's family will be with us for milo's birth (and by "with us" i mean "out in the hall leaving us the hell alone") but my family will be absent. my mom's situation has gone from bad to worse, and my dad's not traveling anywhere - probably ever - and my brother and sister have both decided to come later, maybe in october, for various extremely sensible but nonetheless disappointing-to-me reasons. we'll be going to florida about two weeks after milo's born, and he will be loved and adored by both my immediate and extended family, but i never pictured giving birth without my mom, at the very least. she made it here miraculously before i delivered hans, and the rest of my family came soon thereafter, but this time i will be alone.

of course, justin - the person i most want to be with! - will be there, and his family is magnificent and lovely and has made me one of them (i am so, so lucky in the in-law department), but i've been sad, and a little angry, the last few days about my family.

yesterday, when i lamented my family's absence to justin, he said the most wonderful and profound thing: "but you will have your family there. milo will be there."

he's exactly right, of course.

and then there was natalie

i was going to make a whiny post (i know, i know - shocking, isn't it?) about how we discussed at least three times before justin went out tonight him keeping his phone turned on and on vibrate so he could it hear it in the bar while i went to trader joe's to stock up on homebound-with-milo goodness, yet he still didn't answer any of my calls and i had to go get him out of the smokey the smoker smokers' pit-o-smoke at which i left him to heft it all inside, all the while it was pouring rain.

and then i got home and got the wonderful news that natalie is here and all is well. there is no limit to my pleasure over this news. i can't wait to see her pics (hint, hint, alysse) and to hear the whole damn story. it makes the six soggy boxes of granny's apple granola seem pretty insignifcant, doesn't it?

still...aw, you know

contractions galore? check. aching pelvic floor? check. relief? no, of course not.

despite my nausea, and headache, and aching hoo-ha, and bladder under siege, i let justin drag me out for a walk tonight. and yet, here i still am. so fucking past ready. burning up (while freezing justin out with the a/c and fans) and unable to sleep. if i'm going to go out for a walk under these circumstances, there should be significant payoffs. ice cream doesn't count (although i did enjoy it, thank you, justin). they should be discussing my canonization at the vatican.

and now justin is telling milo to stay put until monday, because he wants him to be born late monday or on tuesday so he can have the maximum number of straight days off. well, guess what - if milo comes between now and monday, i am not pushing him back in.

two more days of work, then two endless weekend days (in which justin has to work all day), then monday. if i'm still hanging around then, i'm allowed to have a "good breakfast, early on" per my ob, so my friend kath and i are going out. after breakfast, a long, foodless day which i plan to fill with a good soak in the tub and - well, i've got nothing else. maybe a gilmore girls marathon. so i hang out alone until 2 or so, when my mother-in-law is coming over and we're heading to the hospital. then the amnio at 3, then hanging around the hospital waiting for the results and then...either i call justin at work and he gets to yell what he's been practicing for a couple of weeks ("oh my god my wife's in labor i have to go!") or i go home for an even longer week. i'm voting for the former.

and then life changes forever. let's get on with it.

still standing

stayed home yesterday, or at least, stayed home between the a.m. monitoring and the p.m. check-up. i felt fluish - which is often a sign of the onset of labor...except for me. had the most-intense-so-far contractions all evening and night, intense enough to wake me up all night...but still nothing consistent. dammit.

milo settled in for a long nap yesterday morning, so the non-stress test took longer than usual, and then when he did deign to wake up, he had to show off and do the hula for everyone. no internal yesterday - my ob felt it wouldn't make any difference, as far along as i am, and would only irritate me, so i was spared that indignity for the day.

the peri is going to be the one doing the amnio monday afternoon - and it looks increasingly likely that i'll be going that long, since i'm still here, aren't i? - but everyone feels pretty confident that we'll go right into the induction afterwards. if we don't, they're going to have to sedate me for the next week until the 39w induction is "legal" (as my ob puts it) regardless of the amnio results.

i'm getting in the shower to go to work now. suddenly, three more days of work seems like an insurmountable obstacle.

monday morning quarterback

yesterday, i was certain my next post would be post-delivery, but here i am, still pregnant. i had a multitude of contractions yesterday, but every time i said, okay, i'm going to start tracking times, they stopped - only to start again a short while later. for the record, i did follow the prescription many of you have given for getting labor going (the method most favorable for justin) in a pain-free window yesterday, but apparently repeated applications are required. we also did much house-cleaning and stocking up on paper goods and granola bars - we are as ready as we can be, dammit.

this morning i am exhausted, as i woke up about a million times during the night, thinking that it would be time. my appointment this morning was standard: blood sugars good, milo's growth perfect, and my hoo-ha expanded to 4 cm and about 50% effaced. we discussed the chances of me going into labor before next monday's amnio (50-60%), the chances the amnio wouldn't give conclusive enough evidence of lung maturity to go ahead with the induction (20%), and the chances of me still having diabetes after the placents is delivered (<5%). and because it wouldn't be a dr's visit if i didn't cry at least a little, i got emotional when we discussed future pregnancies and advised the peri there wouldn't be any. it's not that i was crying because i wanted to get pregnant again - i am at peace with not doing this again - but the thought of the stress involved in going through another pregnancy was overwhelming, which when you think about it is a good sign that i've made the right decision.

i wish this monday was next monday. apparently, my mother-in-law does, too, because she thought the amnio and then likely induction was today, not next monday. i am beyond ready. it occurred to me while i was on the exam table this morning that if i don't go into labor before next monday, this could well be the longest week of our lives. crap.

end times

i think my dad is about at the end. i talked to him last night by phone and could hardly understand him. he's stopped eating, his digestive system has stopped working, and he's back in the hospital. they were originally just going to keep him until those things were back in gear, but his white blood cell count is too low, so they're keeping him for the duration.

my aunt called justin last night to ask me to call my dad. apparently he has been having nightmares that something has happened to milo and me. he's told people that want to pray for him not to pray for him but to pray for us. and he's hallucinating - he's convinced his wife and relatives have been talking about what's gone wrong with me while they think he's asleep but keeping it from him - nevermind that i don't talk to any of them and they wouldn't know anything in the first place.

i don't know if he just doesn't have muscle control over his speech, or if he was fuzzy from medication, or if his mind is going, but our conversation was bizarre - even more so because of the strangely high pitch of his voice. he's been talking about milo for months, but in the middle of our conversation had to stop and confirm his name. i understood the gist of some of what he said but much of it was lost on me.

i talked to him about when we would tentatively be coming down to florida for him to meet milo, and he seemed excited, but i have no way of knowing if he understood or will remember. i had hoped that knowing that our visit is about 6 weeks away will motivate him to eat and to stick around, but it felt like a foolish hope after we talked. i will not be surprised if i get the call that he's gone at any time. i do hope he can hang on for a while, without too much suffering, because i would like him to meet milo - it will likely be his only chance - and because if he dies quickly and i'm not able to travel to his funeral, it will be a bit more difficult to get the closure i've looked forward to for a long time.

it would be easier in some ways if we had a better relationship, i think - but maybe not. i'm worried, but i'd probably be much more stressed if i were more invested in him. it's sad that it's come down to the end for him and i don't care more. twenty years ago, i never could have pictured his end coming the way that it is.

i had the strangest thought this morning: his torment about milo and me could be his karma. how odd. i'm not sure i believe in karma in the first place, and i am way past the point of wanting to punish him or avenge the pain he caused me. but isn't it weird that after so little contact for so long it would be me, and my son, that would haunt his dreams?

as i get more and more joy about milo, and more confident of his live birth, so much else is headed down the toilet. not only is my dad's death imminent, but my mother is the most stressed i have ever known her to be. she got a new boss last fall that is punishing her for squealing on his misdeeds by systematically working to break her down. judging from her tone this morning on the phone, he's damn near accomplished his mission. his bomb du jour was to suddenly decide that she couldn't take any time off - knowing full well she was headed here as soon as milo is born. one of her awful boss's peers has intervened this afternoon and is interceding on her behalf with hr right now, and she seems a bit less despairing, but it sucks she should be going through this now. and it sucks for us, too.

conversely, milo is better and better. his NST today was stellar. his movement is nothing short of extraordinary. i am expelling copious globs of mucous at a disgusting and alarming pace, and the contractions are gathering steam: at least once a day now i have three in a row. the gd gd is perfectly controlled. everything is ready for him. he seems ready for us.

do things always happen in this kind of cluster? does sorrow always occur in conjunction with joy? or do i just notice sorrow - or joy - all the more when its opposite throws it into relief?

i've been catching up on back issues of the new yorker, and the other night i read an essay by calvin trillin about his late wife alice. when she had cancer, a friend's daughter was raped, and alice wrote the younger woman about what she was experiencing. she understood that what they were experiencing couldn't be compared - except that their horrors made both their lives so much more ripe, and she encouraged her to embrace the ripeness that people with simpler lives could never know. that thought struck such a chord in me - i felt something of that ripeness, of the fullness of experience, as i grieved for hans.

perhaps that same ripeness will afford me greater joy than i could imagine at milo's birth - greater joy than parents with uneventful reproductive lives will ever know. it seems cockeyed that sorrow could breed joy, and yet it seems to be true. life is so strange.

better than castor oil

i couldn't help but notice that many of you are pushing for me to, ahem, get busy with bringing on labor, which makes me wonder: has justin been paying you all off? because he is the only person in our house currently desiring wild donkey sex. i, on the other hand, with the tectonic plate shifts in my underwear, feel like i have already engaged in punishing sex with eight burly men in a row; when i described my pelvic discomfort in that manner to justin, he curiously asked if i had any experience with that scenario. how could i not love this man???

you bloggers are not the only ones convinced i can hump my way to an earlier delivery. yesterday two different co-workers felt the need to pull me aside and extol the merits of nookie to get things going. and this article came out this week, as if i needed further reminding. sheesh. i get the message. but it's easier said than done. it's hard to get your freak on while concentrating on limiting your painful grimaces. unless you're a pain fetishist, in which case, you're on your own.

it did occur to me that if the key to labor-inducing sex is to get the goo and the hoo-ha in touch with each other, then there are other ways to get'er done, namely involving a cup and a turkey baster. of course, we don't have a turkey baster in our vegetarian kitchen, but maybe we should get one. we do have to stop at the grocery store tonight; i'm sure they have one on the gadgets aisle. something to consider...

*****

also in the category of things justin says that remind me of why he is the love of my life: we were discussing potential improvements to our home when he suggested a picket-y fence around the front of our house. i squinched up my nose and asked him if that wasn't going a little too far. wasn't that a little too all-american-y for us? he patiently explained that we already were the all-american family; afterall, we do have 2.2 children.

i could never love anyone the way i love him.

...two for the money, three for the show...

more progress: almost 2 is now 3 whole centimeters! in just 48 hours! no wonder i've been in such agony the last couple of days - i've got a major case of continental drift in my pants. which reminds me to not dither with this wait-and-see crap when i do get admitted to the hospital but to go straight for the epidural.

more progress still: i'm waiting for the confirmation call now, but we will do the amnio on either the 31st or 1st with induction to follow as soon as we get the amnio results, to which i say, hallelujah! i snapped out of my 18 month coma of not caring today and put on my game face (i.e. mascara and lipstick and so forth) as a way of armoring up to face my ob, but it turned out to not be necessary. so now i will have to deal with the removal of mascara for nothing - but i can't even work up much energy to complain about it, i'm so happy. as to the possibility of going into labor sometime in the LESS THAN TWO WEEKS before the induction, let's call it 40%. the ob hesitantly gave me a 50/50 shot before saying it was maybe more like 30%. whatever - if it doesn't happen first, i have a definitive date!!!!! what this event does for my mental health is nothing short of miraculous, i tell you.

still more: from the more-than-you-wanted-to-know department, the quality of the pinkish/brownish matter emanating forth from my hoo-ha is fairly impressive.

i'm beginning to believe this thing is actually going to happen. what a contrast from where i was at this point with hans: i was laying on the couch most of the time, believing (despite all indications - false ones - to the contrary) that it was never going to happen. when we were out walking last night (translation: while justin was running up a month's worth of recyclables up to the market and i was dragging along slowly behind, moaning), it occurred to me how far we've come: 36 weeks ago yesterday, my first post-tadpole period started and i was raring to get back in the game (if you'll pardon the mix of metaphors). just five short weeks before that event, we were morbidly laughing at justin's unintentionally choice of music-to-absorb-the-shock-of-another-loss-by, "and you will know us by the trail of dead." and now here we are, scheduling inductions and wondering if, at this pace of dilation, milo won't just fall out while i'm walking around.

i can't wait to see his face, to see if he looks like hans, or justin, or me, or someone else (like a relative - i wasn't suggesting there were other potential sperm suppliers). i can't wait to see what his personality is like, what his temperament is, to hear what his cries sound like, and eventually what his voice sounds like. tomorrow night, we're going to go see my not-quite-so-new niece, who i hear has grown so much i won't recognize her. i wonder if she and her cousin milo will look anything alike.

meanwhile, tonight is one of the last carseat-free social engagements of our lives for a while. we're headed to the art museum for their jazz program, where david and toni and zelda and orson will be saving us seats. it'll be great to kick back (and eat!) with people who understand the roller coaster we're on and to run with zelda and orson, who no doubt will have grown outrageously since we saw them last.

someday, milo will be giddy with the excitement of getting to hang out with "big kids" zelda and orson. and further on, someone else's kids will think that about milo. amazing.

progress!

• i'm now nearly 2 cm dilated now, up from 1 cm last week!
• i'm 40% effaced, after not being effaced at all last week!
• my gd gd numbers are so good that my insulin wasn't increased at all this week!
• and i've LOST a pound! so i've been directed to "beef up" my diet, with which directive i am more than happy to comply!
• the gd gd peri and the ob finally talked! and the gd gd peri says the ob is now "amenable" to doing an amnio (probably next week) and delivering earlier than 39 weeks!
• i didn't cry or even well up, not even once during today's appointment!
  

the gd gd peri says the magic numbers for induction readiness are 2 cm and 70% effaced; has anyone out there heard those particular numbers before? i never have. anyway, i'm rapidly approaching them, so woohoo!

wow, did i need a good morning like this one. this weekend was tough; you know you're in bad shape when your husband asks you what side dish you want with dinner and it's so overwhelming you start to cry. but today's appointment was so positive, and milo is kicking like a champ today, and the heat wave is supposed to start moving out after midnight, and there is hope!

one down, four to go

the first of our little cluster of subsequent babies has arrived: nervouskitty's eleanor grace was born thursday and all is apparently well. i'm a little bitter there aren't any pictures yet (hey - it's been nearly 72 hours, people), but i'll try to hold on a little longer.

that leaves julian's mom and sillyhummingbird and pixi and me...and no offense to my fellow imminently-expectant mothers, but i really don't want to be last. i will lose my fucking mind. i'm kind of hanging by a thread as it is. yesterday, justin called from work to discuss supper, and i broke down. it was too complicated to discuss what to have with the veg sausages we planned to grill. today's not much better, and my state of mind is aggrevated by the heat: approximately 93F. there's no central air in our old house, and there are really only two windows that can accomodate individual units; i have both of them blaring, and three fans, but it's still heating up, and the more the heat rises, the more my spirits lag. i'm trying to hold very still so as not to generate any heat, but i don't think it's working.

the weekends are always a struggle, since they're the longest stretches i have between check-ups. i start to doubt the vigor of milo's movements, even when kick counts and doppler checks are good. and now that justin works weekends, i tend to sit home by myself, which is not a great recipe for positive thoughts. i haven't felt like being social; i have lovely friends, but no one relates to my anxiety. i might go to my mom's in these stretches, except that i can't exactly jump on planes now. i need to weed, but it's too hot and i can't comfortably get down on the ground to do it anyway. the floors need to be swept and mopped, but it's too damn hot. i finished one baby book and can't get into the other one. i need to do some baby laundry but that involves multiple trips up and down two flights of stairs - too much movement in the heat.

i'm going to stop whining now - even that uses too much energy.

*****

it gets more and more like christmas around here; in addition to the groovy clothes and stuffed platypus clare sent him, milo has received the following presents this week:

• a piratey romper
• four striped caps
• a fuzzy blanket that looks like a fish (complete with a tail)
• a fish mobile
• a froggy eating set, including a sippy cup with webbed feet

i must take some more pictures. i love, love, love looking at his little things. he is going to be such a lucky boy, even if he has a loon for a mother.

how i saved us all from brake fluid

it all comes down to my nose. i have an absurdly keen sense of smell. i once detected something noxious at my mother's house, something no one else could smell but that made me ill every time i entered. it took six months of my complaining before anyone else began to smell it, and she finally tracked it down to the freezer (where i had been telling her it was coming from, but nooooooo, she didn't believe me), where a very old package of frozen broccoli spears had gone over to the dark side.

my sensitive nose has always driven my family crazy, and it's been no picnic for justin, either, especially with my sense of smell becoming even more impossibly sharp in pregnancy. but today, it saved our very lives.

or it would have, had there been something actually threatening in the house.

the smell was so strong (to me, at least) that it woke me this morning, just before five. it was a horrible, toxic, chemical-y smell that stung my nasal passages and got me awake enough to realize i was awake in the dark without needing to go to the bathroom (for once) and not because i was hot (as i always am). i struggled to identify it. was the city spraying for mosquitoes, and had our bedroom a/c sucked in the clouds of poison being sprayed on the street? had something crawled into the vent hose of the same a/c and died? had the a/c itself gone haywire?

the smell only grew stronger, and while i felt fine (if tired) i began to obsess over what might be happening to milo, the longer i inhaled the fumes, so i woke up justin (much to his delight, i'm sure). he was a little stopped up (maybe from me blasting the a/c on him all night), so he couldn't smell it, but he got up to check it out. a few minutes later, he called to me from the basement.

as i went down to the first floor, the smell became stronger, and when i entered the basement stairwell, i about fell over. we isolated the smell to one quadrant of our basement but couldn't figure out what was causing it, so we got the hell out and justin called the fire department. they came immediately, lights blazing and sirens blaring (which was a little embarrassing), and three of them jumped out of the truck to investigate with justin while i waited on the front porch.

but even our burly neighborhood heroes couldn't figure out what it was. they suggested justin clear out every chemical substance in our basement (and the containers of cleaners and painting-related products and household repair substances with which we would have no idea what to do but which were left behind by the previous owners of the house nonetheless - they were legion) and see if that helped, and if not to get the city to see if someone in the neighborhood had flushed something toxic down the drain that was backing up on us.

justin asked me to call labor & delivery while he cleared out the basement - and let's be honest: he's the real hero in this story. he made multiple trips into the belly of the beast to save us from what turned out to be an old bottle of brake fluid that must have spontaneously combusted after years of languishing in our basement, sometime after 2:30 this morning (which was the last time i got up to get my piss on before the smell seeped upstairs). he cleared everything else out anyway, and dragged an old set of metal shelves on which the brake fluid had leaked out to the curb for the garbage collectors, and scrupulously cleaned up any vestiges of brake fluid from the basement to make it safe for me (and milo) to go back inside, and opened all the windows and turned on all the fans and exhaust fans and both the a/c units. did i mention he did not complain once? not about me waking him, and not about me being overly sensitive, and not about having to clean the basement at 5:30 am. okay, he did complain- once - because he got his father's day cavalier shirt dirty in the process.

i suppose now i must keep him.

the attending in labor & delivery quickly cleared up my concerns, thank goodness, but it was scary. in the end, it wasn't such a big deal, although if we had sniffed it long enough i suppose it could have been a problem. but the thought that it could have been a big deal - a big fat hairy smelly deal - rattled me. to have come so close and to have lost milo through something so absurd now: just unthinkable.

it was 6:30 before it was clear to go back in the house. the alarm was set for 8:00, but we weren't going to get much sleep now, so we went ahead and showered and then we went out for breakfast to a strangely festive IHOP that was blaring old kinks songs at 7 am, where we had a big breakfast to fortify us for our sleep-deprived day and then went to the hospital for today's NST, which went fine ("i can always count on your baby to cooperate!" - the fetal diagnostic peri).

i have barely stayed awake all day; frankly, i probably shouldn't have driven myself to work considering how hard it was to keep my eyes open. but it's just starting to rain now, and we can sleep in tomorrow, together, with the rain as a backdrop, and we are both still breathing, and milo is still kicking.

it's official

i am miserable.

my spine and pelvic bones have entered into a permanent separation agreement. my skin burns as though raw, sliced jalapenos have been rubbed all over it, from the inside out. despite my attempts to relieve the pressure in the ladies' room, i am stuck with the sensation that the world's largest natural gas emission is bottled up in my colon, acting like an overtired toddler and refusing to do what will make everyone feel better: in this case, exit.

it is painful to stand. it is painful to walk. it is painful to sit. in any type of chair. it is painful to lie down, on either side, and even on my forbidden back. there is no angle in which i can lean that relieves the pressure on my lower ribs. the spasms in my lower back and upper leg joints that suddenly spring up without warning while i'm driving actually take my breath away.

my belly button is raw from me scraping away the crust that has formed from the excess gel that is constantly being applied to my belly for monitors and dopplers and ultrasound wands that i can never completely get out of there.

the skin tags that spring up nightly in every part of me that folds over in any way are driving my inner obsessive-compulsive mad.

no matter how much or how little sleep i get, i feel as though if i don't get a nap right.this.minute. i may not be able to go on, like one of those sims people who crumple into a cartoon heap when they've been deprived of sleep by an incompetent gamer.

i was feeling a little cuter, pregnancy-wise, this time than the others until the other night, when i was standing on our front porch waiting for justin to come out of the house, and i turned to call to him, and caught my reflection in the glass of our outer front door, and saw just how far spread my hips have become of late. frankly, i don't know how my pants contain them. i am diamond-shaped, with dangerously-sharp side points.

i sound ungrateful, i know. i'm incredibly lucky to be at this point, at my age, with my history: weeks - maybe days - away from the birth of my beautiful, healthy son who may or may not look slightly like a turtle. but all that luck doesn't take away from the fact that the state of being 35+ weeks pregnant is almost physically impossible to sustain. no wonder i was so fucking depressed at about this point with hans. no one is built to withstand this kind of constant misery.

i whisper to milo throughout the day the prayer the early christians prayed to their recently-ascended leader whose imminent return they eagerly anticipated: maranatha. even so, come quickly.

i hope i don't have to wait as long as they've been waiting.

off the wagon

i caved this afternoon. i had a half-pint of chocolate milk: nirvana in a waxed paper carton. and i had a chocolate cookie with reese's pieces in it; actually, the cookie wasn't that good - it was so sweet it made my tongue curl. but the chocolate milk - oh! it was worth every gram of sugar. i will have to eat burlap with a side of raffia (undyed, of course) for dinner to make up for it, but i will be able to recall each slurp of chocolate milk with every chew.

i had to do something. i've been wanting a giant iced chai all day - for days and days, actually. and when we ran into the bodega for sandwiches between this morning's monitoring and going to work, i left a puddle of drool on the floor in front of the cooler with the bottled frappuccinos (the large size of which, incidentally, is equal in carbs to the largest of my three meals each day). i've been trying to deal with my sweet-drink cravings with home au laits (a third of a cup of coffee with splenda, filled up with unsweetened soymilk) and the occasional fresca, but it's not the same.

when milo is born, i have my order ready for the first one of justin's aunts who asks what she can bring me: fatty tuna sushi from kimo's, and an apple cinnamon roll and at least two iced chais from the west side market. i don't think that's asking too much, under the circumstances.

*****

when i dropped justin at home this morning, there was a big envelope sticking out of the mailbox, all the way from the land of oz. inside was a soft toy platypus and the cutest set of clothes in turquoise and chocolate brown, from the lovely and too-kind clare. justin was so disappointed to find that the knit pants in turquoise and chocolate horizontal stripes were size 000; i'm sure as i write he is hunting them down on the internet to see if they come in adult sizes. i'm overwhelmed by all the people pulling for milo, so excited by his imminent arrival. it's like the twelve days of christmas at our house, several times over.

with the addition of the red/blue/yellow/green platypus, he now has something in his room from every continent except antarctica. he will be quite the international baby. god, i hope he gets our love-of-travel gene. i will be oh-so-disappointed if i birth a home-body.

*****

justin ordered some books for me from the library on baby-related topics i requested, and he picked them up this afternoon, so tonight i plan to cozy up with them and - ugh - a nice cup of decaf tea (which almost makes me wonder why i should bother, but i digress) while justin goes with his buddy to the konono no. 1 show, for which he excitingly won tickets from one of the local college radio stations while we were en route to the hospital today.

while i'm focusing on all things milo, please enlighten me on your experiences with membrane stripping. i had it done with hans, but only after i had just learned he was dead, and probably because i was in shock i have no memory of how it felt; plus, it was just to get the ball rolling while i got admitted to the hospital and got the epidural put in and so forth until they could start administering the misoprostol, of which i had several doses. have you or someone you know had it done? how successful was it? how painful was it? did it have to be done more than once, and if so, how long did you go in between strippings? if it worked, how long was it between the stripping and labor or delivery? please help me manage my expectations, which i'm sure are presently unrealistic.

c'mon, doc, give us an inch!

Or even half a centimenter! Yes, dialation has started and I'm told that it was "hot doctor" that discovered this, this morning. That's supermodel hot female doctor, not to be confused with hot peri, or doctor knee boots.

I've never met supermodel hot female doctor, as she's a monday morning visit anyhow, but wow, am I pleased to hear that she found something exciting while she was "down there" this morning.

Ofcourse, 1/2 centimeter means that we could still be waiting 2 to 6 weeks, but it's something. Anything. Shit, this could actually happen in 2 to 6 weeks!

how we missed our own 15 minutes

apparently justin and i were on the local news last night (although not, as you might expect, because i gave birth in target). we thought we might be, as the local nbc affiliate's cameraman set up his gear right next to us in public square at the end of the cleveland orchestra's annual concert and fireworks display, and we called justin's mom and grandma to let them know. but we rushed home to watch the news and found that when the "story" aired we weren't in it, so we turned off the tv and went to bed.

this morning, however, we learned that at the end of the newscast they showed more highlights and we were the final shot. of course, we were upstairs by that time, laughing about how we always get our picture taken at events but never make it into the paper. oh, well.

the concert is a local tradition and we go every year. the downtown streets are closed off and about 100,000 people bring their lawn chairs and tow their kids in wagons and camp out in public square and guys with messenger bags sell those neon necklace thingies and the hot dog vendors do a brisk business under their red-and-yellow-sectioned umbrellas. the orchestra does the usual patriotic numbers and a little gershwin and the local public radio/tv culture guru emcees and it's a lovely cross section of cleveland.

last year's concert sucked hard-boiled eggs, to put it nicely. we seemed to be planted in the section where everyone with toddlers was situated, and i cried the whole night. the pain of hans's death was still so raw, and i was in that phase where i saw him everywhere anyway, and that night was particularly haunting.

last night was bittersweet but much easier than last year. the fireworks were staged differently than usual (i don't know enough about fireworks to explain how), but as a result we were closer to the noise than usual, and as the fireworks went off milo expressed his irritation. we'll have to have earplugs for him next year, i suppose, but i wonder if he'll be interested in the visuals. i can't imagine at 11 months they'll maintain his attention for the whole show, but it might be interesting to him for a few minutes, and by the following year or so i imagine he'll be old enough to be delighted by them.

i hope to god there's a next year for milo. i'm overwhelmed by how close we are to his birth but at the same time increasingly terrified and convinced it's all about to go down the toilet. i've never given birth to a live baby. i can't imagine what it will be like. it's not for lack of trying. i've read and re-read everything i can get my hands on about the subject, and i try to visualize it, often. but my experience is only with dead babies. a live birth is unfathomable.

elbow room

milo seems to have discovered his elbows, and boy, are they bony. like spikes, i tell you. it's fabulous. it seems a shame i need to be sitting down to work, because being hunched over does not give him much room in which to swing those bony knobs. i'll try to make it up to him tonight with a good walk.

i could use a little mental elbow room myself. it has suddenly hit me how soon milo could be out, and i'm feeling a little panicky. if something were to happen and he were to be born tomorrow, i would hate, hate, hate to have to send my mother-in-law to my house to get my things, because she would have to go up to our bedroom, with the nightstand overflowing with used syringes (good thing you don't have to have a home study before you're allowed to give birth), and the truly serious ring in the bathtub, and the alarming number of polka dots on the floor (why is our yellow carpet a magnet for sock fuzz???). justin cleaned up downstairs yesterday, so we're neat and tidy, but we're not clean in the way that i'd like to be. floors need to be scrubbed with vinegar solution (tempered with lavender, so milo's nose doesn't twitch), and cabinets need to be wiped down and the refrigerator cleaned and the radiators hosed out with the little vaccuum attachment thingy, and all things porcelain need to be washed with a bleach solution. is this the nesting urge? it doesn't feel happy and hopeful; it feels more like desperation fueled by an overwhelming desire to not come home from the hospital to dirty sheets and the certainty that if the house isn't clean when we come home that it won't be truly clean again for a long, long time. the whole thought is depressing and makes me feel tired...which isn't conducive to actually getting the cleaning done the way i want it.

and look at the ticker: 40 days! and that's just if we stick it out to the 40-week due date, god help us all. i'm pretty invested in 1 august at this point, which is the 38 week mark and only 26 freaking days away. i don't want to rush milo, but i'd be okay with 37 weeks, too...except that 37 weeks is LESS THAN 20 DAYS AWAY!!! how did this happen? how did i all of the sudden become imminently expectant???

it's weird - i never felt this way with hans, not at this point anyway. i never felt this close. i was so fucking depressed those last weeks of that pregnancy - did i not feel any hope because i was depressed, or did i understand on some level that i was not going to get to actively parent hans and that understanding depressed me? sometimes, when i lean toward the former theory, i feel weighted down by a certain guilt that it was my loss of faith that killed hans, that somehow my depression was chemically communicated to him, killing his will to live. it's not rational, i know. but in my gut i sometimes suspect it's true, that my crazed ponderings are right and science as a whole has got it wrong.

and maybe it's that suspicion that fuels my current optimism, my hope for milo's safe arrival: i shoulder the responsibility of expecting him into a live birth. if i don't plan on him, expect him, visualize his live delivery like some kind of junked-up victim of a sports psychologist, i will not experience a successful pregnancy outcome. and here i thought i left the spo mentality behind a year ago. aw, shucks. i felt pretty good about my optimism until i realized it was fueled by my underlying and crazed sense of fatalism.

will milo's birth make any of it any clearer? i know fellow parents-in-loss whose subsequent babies have made the loss of the earlier child more acute, while for others a subsequent birth has been incredibly healing. i hope to fall into the second camp. i could use the clarity.

what i did on my summer vacation

we are officially grillers. we own a grill, and we have used it to satisfactorily cook our food. how weird is that? it feels so domestic and conventional and dang self-reliant.

we had just finished putting the grill together (with only one small swearing session!) when the rain started. okay, we probably should have taken it out of the box and assembled it at home before going to the park, but the sogginess did not keep our charcoal from ashing nicely and from cooking our veggie sausages and ears of corn and buns and, yes, even our sorta-s'mores. we were soaked but we were well-fed. and justin kindly hauled everything back to the car while i tiptoed through the horrifyingly-well-used park restroom (so grateful for travel toilet paper and wet wipes and that i remembered to bring them along), and we got our chairs planted at a prime spot on the lakefront just as the fireworks started. downtown cleveland looked damn good from just across the inlet.

we capped our lovely mini-weekend-in-the-middle-of-the-week off with an absolutely stellar ultrasound this morning. milo's weight is estimated at 5 lb 4 oz - the 53rd percentile, right down the middle, beautifully average. we saw his beautiful, chubby-cheeked face and his fairy dust hair, and his slightly large-for-age belly and his slightly short-for-age legs (could he turn out to be a turtle?), and it was fabulous. we got the best picture of his face that i will attempt to reproduce later. it's sitting on my desk, where i can keep looking at it and grinning. objectively-speaking, this kid is damn good-looking.

and, what a relief: my ob had a whole new attitude this morning. i don't know if something changed, or if someone talked to him; when i went to my gd gd appointment monday and they told me the peri would be in shortly, in walked the chairman of the whole department, boss of both my peri and my ob, who doesn't see many patients. maybe the disagreeing doctors dragged him into it, and maybe he brought about the change in my ob - who knows, but either way, the department head is now taking a personal interest in my case and my ob is being conciliatory, which can only work in our favor. my ob is now agreeing to attempt stripping my membranes at 37 weeks (up from 38 weeks) and is talking about "negotiating" where we go from there if the stripping doesn't work, which is a far cry from my last visit with him.

he also confirmed that milo has moved into head-first position, which is one more worry to check-off the list. and in other developments, i'm having daily contractions (not just braxton-hicks) that i can feel. judging from yesterday's NST, i'm actually having many more of them than i can feel, but i've gone from feeling one or two every few days to feeling a few every day. i know it may mean squat, but i'm holding on to those pinching peaks as evidence milo may be ready sooner rather than later. please, please, please.

one of our out-of-town friends just popped in, and we're going to return to the lake and pull out the grill and dazzle him with our newfound skills tonight. this grilling thing could become habit-forming.

let freedom ring (but not too loudly - we're sleeping in)

thunder rumbled all night, and the sky is getting dark again, darker at 8 am than it was at 6. i'm sure it means a non-sunny day and much soggy grass at all the parks, which may mean we do our picnicking at home today and just take chairs or sit on the car to watch fireworks tonight (if they don't get rained out). but i don't care. i love rainy days, especially if i get to spend them with justin. there's something very cozy about being shut in with him when there's rain for backdrop noise. i did buy a groovy tabletop grill last night and cookout food galore, but worst-case scenario is we cook it all in the kitchen and sit on the porch to eat it and save the grill for another time. it would be okay.

we have so many fantastic things to eat over the course of the day: boca italian sausages with whole wheat rolls and fresh mozzarella, fresh sweet corn, fresh organic strawberries and sugar-free cool-whip, veggie riblets, whole wheat garlic bread, broccoli slaw, sugar-free lemonade and cherry limeade, and the big finish: trader joe's old-fashioned graham crackers and miniature sugar-free hershey bars (minus marshmallows, which justin won't eat for vegetarian reasons and i just plain despise) for s'mores. how could it get any better than that???

i suppose i wouldn't have the opportunity to have this day if it weren't the fourth, but i have a hard time thinking about the meaning of the day. it's pretty hard to celebrate freedom from tyranny when i feel like there's a certain amount of tyranny reining over this country these days. i know that i do have freedoms i wouldn't have elsewhere. i'm not naive. i've been lucky to travel as i have, and even in some supposedly free societies, there are some with much tighter social strictures than we have here. i do appreciate my luck at being born in this country. but i'd like to see my country behaving a little better, which is pretty depressing. so i'm focusing today on my freedom, and justin's, to spend the whole day together. next fourth of july, with an 11 month old in tow, i'm sure we'll pine for freedom in a whole new way.

it's definitely breakfast in bed weather, so i'm off to put something together with which to wake up poor justin, who's worked two sixteen-hour days in a row but still has to get up to go to this morning's NST. happy 4th.

happy monday (no really)

i'm actually excited about a monday. what was in that extra insulin i took???

when justin got up at 4:30 this morning, he emptied the tank on the portable a/c in our room and got it humming again for me. i hate being hot and i spend much of the summer with no bed covers and both a big fan and the a/c blowing directly on me, but this morning it was cool enough to have the best of both worlds - i was cool enough to pull the heavy comforter over me. why does that feel so luxurious? i don't know, but it's ideal for sleeping. plus, once justin was up, i could use his pillows between my knees and behind my back: my last two hours of sleep were nirvana.

i'm off to gd gd clinic, which - after i get past the nasty admin staff - i actually enjoy. maybe because my relationship with my ob has deteriorated somewhat, the high risk doctors seem ultra-sensitive to my anxiety, and when i meet with them feels like a 30 minute safe haven each week.

then i'm off to work, which is not great, but the co-worker i loathe took today off, plus those of us still hanging around are having a food day, and at last look the sign-up sheet was far more weighted toward things on which i can nibble than on desserts. and a food day, sandwiched between a weekend and a holiday, means no one will be getting anything done. woohoo!

after work, i get to do a little shopping: okay, refilling my gd gd prescriptions isn't exactly a barrel of laughs, but after that i'm going to go buy a tabletop grill for tomorrow and boca italian sausages and assorted other supplies for the holiday, and even grill shopping is shopping, baby!

back in 2000, we spent the weekend leading up to the fourth in boston. we ate in a tiny little restaurant in little italy and went on a whale watching cruise and laid in the grass in boston commons and talked and talked and talked and drank fresh lemonade made by a vendor in the park. on the fourth, i had to get home, and that night, as we flew from newark to jacksonville, we watched the fireworks displays of a dozen cities along the east coast from overhead. it was lovely and magical.

tomorrow, for the first time since that first fourth together, justin and i will both have the day off! the whole day! we get to sleep in a little, then go into l&d for an NST, then we're going to do all holiday things, just the two of us, no family obligations. we're going to one of the lakefront parks to grill our boca sausages and our veggie riblets and throw a frisbee and watch fireworks and maybe get in a swim. who knows - we might even take along a couple of eggs, just so we can toss them.

junkie

when i woke up this morning, i od'd.

first thing every morning, i have to test my blood sugar, and then i shoot up with insulin. i have the same exact routine at bedtime, except i take more than twice as much insulin at night as in the morning, since it's at night that my liver betrays me and manufactures the excess sugars that milo greedily demands, while the placenta plays his accomplice and fights off the insulin that should be keeping that sugar in balance. or something like that. so i take a pretty big injection at night, and then a little one when i wake up to ward off the last of the nighttime sugar surge.

this morning, i was on autopilot, i suppose, and after i tested and recorded my blood sugar, i shot up and then went to record how many units i injected - and realized i had taken my much larger nighttime dose. doh!!! there are different speeds of insulin, and i take the slow kind that works gradually over 10 or 12 hours, so i wasn't in immediate danger, but i wasn't in a good place, either, so i went downstairs and started tucking into a bowl of granola before my blood sugar got any lower while i paged the gd gd service.

twenty minutes later, no one had called back, so i paged again.

twenty minutes later, no one had called back, so i paged again.

twenty minutes later, after no answer in AN HOUR to three pages, i called good old labor & delivery. by the time the attending got on the phone, i was good and freaked out, but she was kind and reassuring (we refer to her privately and affectionately as "dr knee boots") and asked me to double the monitoring today (i normally test before meals or after meals, on alternating days, so today she wanted me to do both) and call her back after my after-lunch reading.

my next reading was unusually high (not low, as expected), then the next reading was lower than i've ever had, a few points away from hypoglycemia, then the next reading (as the insulin was peaking) was unusually high again - not in the danger zone, but with as controlled as we've kept the gd gd it was a bizarre number for me. i talked to the l&d attending again, and she felt the numbers were fine, under the circumstances, and will talk to me again at bedtime to determine what my nighttime dose will be. and the thing is - i'm fine. i'm a little freaked out, but physically i'm fine. and milo has been moving like a champ (thank goodness for that).

but the gd gd was supposed to be the one thing i could actively work on, the factor i could control, to ensure milo's safe arrival, and i can't even count on that control (between my dumb mistake this morning and my bizarre reaction to it). is this good practice for raising milo, when i will drive myself nuts if i try to control every aspect of his wellbeing? i suppose yes. but do i really want the drama of practicing the release of control right now? not really, no.

i'm going to go take a walk and have some dinner and read one of the many six-month-old magazines stacked on the ottoman waiting its turn and pretend to be totally zen about it all.

notice:

if you should find yourself in the western suburbs of cleveland, and stop in at the big mall there, and think to yourself, maybe i'll see if there's anything good on the infant boy clearance rack at the gap: don't. it will be a waste of time. because, you see, i have cleaned them out of anything worth having (except for a 12 mo white courdoroy blazer, which could be funky cute if used well but, being white, and for a toddler boy, would probably end up being mostly funky all the time, from all the crap that would be staining it - so i left it for you).

i went into the mall last night with the intention of walking for an hour before picking justin up from work, and - hey - i did get 30 minutes in. but i also got me some retail therapy (and better still, discount retail therapy), which did much for my lagging spirits last night. i believe in a holistic approach to health: i took care of both body and spirit last night. my favorite thing is a pair of swim trunks for next summer, with groups of yellow or blue fish clustered at their noses to form tropical flowers on a pale blue background. when i saw them, i could immediately imagine his chubby baby belly spilling over the drawstring waist of them, and at $4.97, it would have been irresponsible of me not to get them.

last night's therapy session isn't helping much today, though. after breakfast we went to edgewater park to walk (me) and run (justin), and it was demoralizing how uncomfortable i felt. usually, a good walk works out all the kinks, and my increased exercise of late has been keeping me much less uncomfortable than i was with hans, but it just wouldn't work this morning. the more i walked, the more pressure i felt and the more crampy i got, so i slowed down, but it didn't help. i sat down on a picnic bench until justin finished running, and as we got in the car justin was telling me about something hans-related that had choked him up, and i lost it. i sat in the car and sobbed.

i am tired of being pregnant. i am tired of the momentous effort it makes to do something as simple as turning over in bed. i am tired of waddling. i am tired of the crampiness and the pelvic pressure. i am tired of nothing tasting right. i am tired of dealing with the gd gd, and the pissing match between my ob and my peri. i am tired of all the uncertainties.

and i miss hans. he should be befuddled by my size and by all the preparations for milo. he should be discovering the joys of soy nuggets and bananas and grilled cheese sandwiches and all the other foods he would be big enough to hold and feed himself. he should have been running beside me this morning until his little legs got tired, and then relaxing in the jogging stroller while his dad pushed him around. he should have howled when justin passed him off to me, because i wouldn't have given him as fast a ride as his dad did, and when i was sobbing in the car, he should have been the one sobbing, because he didn't want to be put in the car but be out there getting more stroller rides. he should be hollering at me now to come get him up from his nap, and pronto - and he should be putting on fish-flowered swim trunks to waddle down the block to the pool to splash with all the big kids. i miss him so much.

i took justin to work at 11 with big plans for loading up at trader joe's and running errands, but i realized on the way to the airport that my wallet was not in my purse, and as much as they seem to love me at trader joe's, they're not going to just give me stuff for free. so i came back home after dropping him off and have laid in bed ever since and moped. i also slept for a couple of hours, despite sleeping more last night than i had in weeks. i need to get up and eat, but i haven't been able to summon the drive to do so, especially when the prospects for eating are so grim: more of the low-carb crap of which i am so very tired.

i think i need to get out of here (this time with my wallet) and see a movie or something. i need something to jolt me out of my funk. drugs are no longer an option, and exercise is becoming more difficult and less effective. getting a re-do on the last year and a half, in which hans was actually born breathing and healthy, seems unlikely. i've already talked to my mom and my sister, and i'm avoiding justin's mom until after wednesday's ultrasound (since we decided against her coming, and justin doesn't want to be the one to tell her, and i don't want to tell her, either) so hanging out at her house isn't an option. there must be some trash at the multiplex next to trader joe's that would give me a break, even a little one, from this desire to burst out of my skin and not be me.