We have achieved viability, people

Five months ago today I went to my clinic on a wing and a prayer and had to make a very tough decision as to whether to spend $1000+ on my third IUI or not.  “The egg’s in play,” my nurse practitioner said, ultrasound wand in hand.  And as has often precipitated my most life-changing decisions, I thought, “what the heck?”

And here we are.  I’m having a boy, and his name is Robert.  Everyone, including my two estranged parents, knows about it.  When I lay in bed that night and pictured the sperm meeting the egg and an amazing miracle about to happen, it actually was happening.  Somehow my crusty old one-week-shy-of-39-year-old ovaries produced one viable egg just two weeks after my first pregnancy ended so soon.  It may be the first, and last, viable egg I ever produce.  I’ve had spectacularly good timing in my life, and spectacularly bad timing.  Just once, timing was on my side.  I’m not a religious person, as you well know, and I don’t believe in miracles.  But knowing what I know now about how this whole conception thing works, it is certainly the closest thing to a miracle I know of. 

To say I have viability today on the 24^th week mark to me is a bit “premature” but it is technically the first day the baby *could* live without me.  Which is kind of mind blowing.  One lady on my March 2012 board had her baby – probably not THIS early (she’s probably a week or two ahead of me at least), but very early nonetheless, and he’s alive and hanging in there.  So it can happen.  Is this going to be me?  Am I going to have a tiny little preemie in the next few weeks?  I don’t know but somehow I doubt it.  I have no warning signs of this, and I sort of more picture myself of the type to go late – huge, manatee limbs flapping – getting to that 41^st week in just misery and hell. 

Speaking of manatee limbs and late deliveries, so I made the mistake of reading ahead all the week-by-week round ups on the WTE app.  I have to promise myself to never do this again.  Starting this week it’s all how uncomfortable I’m going to be, all the horrible things that are going to happen to my body, how awful I’m going to feel for the next three months.  As with most of this pregnancy stuff, I’m going to just put my hands over my ears and sing “la la la!!!!”  Because really, much like childbirth, there’s nothing I can do about it, so there’s no point of stressing about it.  I’m glad I didn’t know how awful my morning sickness was going to be – then I would have had a lot of anticipatory anxiety about it, instead of just being “in it”.  Every day of that hell I just felt like I was in a marathon – just get through it, was my mantra.  Someday it will end, and this is an absolute guarantee.  So that’s the tack I’m taking with third trimester woes – I suffered horribly for the first three months, and the last three may be similar (but different).  Honestly, I’ll take varicose veins, trouble sleeping, and feeling like the side of a house over feeling like I’m two seconds from projectile vomiting 24 hours a day, any day.

If you were to ask me today, I would say I’m enjoying the pregnancy.  I like my cute round body, I feel good, and feeling the baby move is amazing.  I’m kind of limited in my abilities and movement, sleep is kind of weird, and I have this ever-present worry that I’m gaining the appropriate amount of weight, but right now is a really good time.  I see myself in other people’s eyes and even I am weirded out by it – I mean, of all the things people imagined me being, pregnant is not one of them.  Especially at my age, when all the new moms around me are quite a bit younger, and all have husbands.  All of this just lends to the unrealness of it; still, every day, I wake up in the morning and sort of forget any of this is happening, and have to remind myself, “oh yeah, that’s going on.”

What will my life look like in five years?  Will I really have possibly two little red heads running around this house, after living here alone for ten years?  It’s incomprehensible to me.  Yet I know for sure there will be at least one, which is crazy enough.  Well, now that I’ve hit viability.

Are We Not Men?

My painter guy is still working on the walls.  I’m so glad I’m doing this now, even though it’s going to totally mess with my finances and officially put me in the red.  The fact is, this kind of work should have been done when I moved in ten years ago – the walls were bumpy, uneven, and covered in layers and layers of wallpaper and paint.  Eventually you just have to have someone scrape everything down to the plaster and start over.  So, that’s what’s happening.  The good news is from now on I can slap a coat of paint on very easily if I decide to change colors.  So, it’s an investment in the future.  Right???

I have decided to wrest control of another aspect of my event, this one being the online registration page that attaches to my website (which I took over a couple of years ago after being royally ripped off by a friend who designed an almost completely non-functional site for me).  The online registration is complicated because it’s all coding, which I don’t know at all; you have to set all kinds of parameters (prices for the weekend passes, price increases by a certain date, etc), integrate it with PayPal so you can get your money, send confirmation e-mails, etc etc.  But the guy who’s been doing it for me the last few years does kind of a sloppy job; last year the price increase dates were all wrong and everyone freaked out, and there was some bug that prevented certain people from registering that he never could figure out how to fix, which I’m sure at least cost me a few customers.  And he always waits until the last minute and stresses me out.  So I found this do it yourself system (also set up by a fellow dancer, so he understands the business) which I’ve been wrestling with for weeks now.  Boy, is it a pain in the ass!  I had hit a real roadblock yesterday and somehow managed to find him on Gchat (he’s in Britain).  He very kindly walked me through the problems I had and I learned a lot about how the system works, so I feel somewhat like I can handle most issues from now on.  But he did one funny thing that I’ve noticed all the men I’ve ever worked with as far as web design, flier design, or anything like that, has done, which is not listen to my wishes and insist I do it his way, for no other reason than “that’s just not the industry standard.”  I remember last year I had a guy design my flier and I absolutely wanted to wring his neck – he vetoed everything I wanted, again for no reason other than “it’s just not done in the design world.”  For example, I had promised some photographers to give them credit in exchange for using their photos on my flier.  And this guy WOULD NOT let me credit them – just kept insisting that you never credit photographers on a flier, it “just isn’t done”.  I literally had to twist his arm to make him listen to me.  I was like, fucker, I’m the client, DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD.  He did acquiesce finally, but with much grumbling.  And like I’ve said, I’ve had this experience every single time I’ve hired a man to design a flier, website, or anything else regarding the business.  Is this a man thing?  Is it an uptight designer thing?  Is it because I’m a woman and not a man, and men just hate taking direction from women and have to be right all the time?  I don’t know, but it SUCKS.  Kind of used to it, though.

In other news, the baby is on the move!  Last night he was bouncing all over the place, and it was hours of entertainment watching my belly bop around.  Being me of course I had to Google “can there be too much fetal movement?” and found a bunch of horror stories about babies being strangled by their own umbilical cord, etc.  Good times!!!  Thank God for the Doppler.  Whipped it out last night and heard a nice strong heartbeat.  I seriously don’t know how women – certainly women with anxiety issues – lived without these things. 

Milestones & birthdays

Today is my mother’s 70^th birthday.  Considering the fact that she belongs to a religion that doesn’t really encourage birthday celebrations, I’m fairly certain she’s ignoring it.  I know I am.  But I am thinking about it.  In a normal family, we’d all throw some big bash for her (as we did for my aunt last year).  But, well…so it goes.

Last night I had my first ultra-real labor dream.  To be honest I’ve dreamed very little about the baby or any pregnancy stuff.  I know a lot of ladies have dreams where they picture themselves with a baby or a child, see their child’s face, etc.  But I don’t, which further encourages my fear that the baby and I won’t bond and I’ll be a horrible mother. Still, last night I dreamed I went into labor a little early – mid-Feb as opposed to end of March – and went to the hospital.  I was in a huge open room with tons of random people wandering in and out like a waiting room (can you imagine?), and I was having no pain or feeling at all.  I kept asking myself, “how can I be in labor?  I don’t feel any contractions!”  I also had this weird, insecure young feeling that I haven’t had in ages (since I haven’t been young in ages) where I felt very unprepared and too young to be having a baby.  SO not the case in real life!  The subconscious is indeed a strange beast.  I can guarantee that a) my labor will NOT be pain-free, and b) I will not feel like I’m too young to have a baby.  Hopefully I will also not deliver in a hospital waiting room with random people watching.

Plans are forging ahead for my baby shower, which will be Feb 19^th.  I was deeply touched that apparently there is a whole team of people involved in this effort.  I don’t know why, but I always assume nobody gives a shit about anyone but themselves and I’ll just have to do everything myself.  I’m certainly not like that – I’ve hosted several showers over the years, and gotten a big kick out of it – so why would I think nobody would step forward to host mine?  Yet another lingering aftereffect of a narcissistic mother?  Absolutely. 

Currently having a guy peel off the badly applied (by me) wallpaper in my living room.  It’s a huge, messy job, and I am SO glad I didn’t think I could tackle this myself.  It involves chemicals, scraping, and sanding.  And I hate all of those things, which is why I never dealt with this project until now.  It’s going to cost but it’s going to be SO worth it to not have to stare at droopy wallpaper edges anymore.

I can’t believe I’m just a few days short of “viability”.  This is another one of those things I never thought about until TTC – the fact that there is a point in your pregnancy during which the baby *might* be able to survive on his own; that if some emergency happens you might be able to birth a live baby, rather than in the early part where there’s not much point in rushing to the hospital because there’s no saving it.  I just read a fascinating article in the New Yorker about the ethical dilemma of saving such early premature babies, given the physical/mental challenges some of them end up facing.  As with many of the ethical dilemmas we face today, there are no good answers.  However, I’m pretty excited to be coming up on this milestone.  To me every week thereafter means the possibility of having a baby that’s that much bigger and healthier.  Bring it on!

A very pregnant Christmas

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs today, and it seems like a lot of people are having some  major depression issues around the holidays and TTC.  So if you’re one of those people I would advise you to not read this post – you’ll probably want to skip ahead and read me rant about my mother, smug married people, or whatever of my usual gripes may come up in the next few weeks.

Are they gone?  Ok.  So here’s the deal.  I freakin’ love being pregnant during the holidays!!!  Or rather, I should probably say I freakin’ love being in the 2^nd trimester during the holidays, because being in the first would (for me) mean lying on the bath mat holding a small piece of cardboard while all my friends worry that I’m not showing up to their parties, and being in the third trimester (I’m assuming) would mean lying on the couch like a vast beached manatee, unable to get up and clean between my folds of flesh, while my useless little manatee limbs flap helplessly.  So, hurrah for being pregnant while simultaneously not being sick (God be praised) AND not being a beached sea mammal (yet).

I’ve always loved Christmas.  It dawned on me the other day that, barring some horrendous incident (and we won’t go there…happy thoughts!!) this will be my LAST EVER childless Christmas.  Don’t get me wrong – with the exception of the year my mother and I “broke up” during December, I’ve always had good Christmases and been welcomed into the bosom of various friends and family members.  But some time ago I read a blog that really summed up how I had started to feel about Christmas as I got older – that it gets to be a real drag always being the single, spinster aunt, still coming home for the holidays alone like a college kid, while all your relatives bring significant others and then children.  And yet year after year you’re the same – alone, no boyfriend, no husband, no kids.  Holidays are such a family time, and Christmas especially is such a kid time (much like Halloween), that let’s just say underneath the fun of it there is a slow moving stream of melancholy.  I know that last year I had a hard time dealing with one Christmas event I went to where all the spouses exchanged gifts and stood around holding hands all night…it made me feel hideously lonely.  This is indeed the all time hardest time of the year to be single.  And I’m not saying that having a baby is going to take all of that away – I’ll still be single.  However – I’ll have a baby!  And then a kid, and then an adult son who hopefully will still like me enough to visit at this time of year and hopefully will give me some grandkids (and hopefully his wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend won’t be some psycho I can’t stand). 

I won’t be doing a tree this year because I don’t dare haul a six foot tree up three flights of stairs by myself, nor back down the stairs when I’m in the third tri.  So I’m a little sad I won’t get to play with the ornaments this year – but thinking about looking at them and telling the stories to my son in upcoming years makes my heart burst with joy.  All of this is going to mean something now – and as I’d so hoped when I was TTC, there will be someone to live on and tell our stories.  And there will be new stories to tell, which is even better.

Lately I’ve been returning to one of my favorite fantasies, which is owning a cabin in Big Bear.  They are so cheap right now, they’re killing me – several decent little ones for under $40,000.  If things were different I could spring for one; it would be like buying an expensive car.  Of course this is totally out of reach for me at the moment, but might not be in 5-10 years, you never know.  The idea of spending Christmas up there with one or more kids, sledding and skiing and doing all that wintertime stuff, just sounds too wonderful for words.  So I peruse the real estate listings and dream.

So I feel bad for everyone who’s struggling right now.  December is the suckiest time ever to feel alone, sad, depressed, or like you can’t get what you want, whether it be a man or a baby or both.  Having to deal with everyone else’s joy only makes it all the worse.  I’ve had MANY horrible New Year’s evaluating my life and wondering what the next year held for me, knowing that more than likely the following New Year’s would look exactly like the one before (as has been the case for me since…oh, since about 1993), ie, not in a relationship, no kids.  This is the first one ever that is in fact different than those that came before, and will be different from those that are yet to come. 

Last year I made it my New Year’s resolution to have a baby.  On Facebook I wrote my resolution was to start composting.  Didn’t start composting.  But hey, I still have a few weeks left – maybe I can hook that up, too.

Power Outages

So I’ve had no electricity since midnight Wednesday due to massive wind storms here in southern Cal; it finally popped on at about 3 AM last night, meaning I spent two days and three nights in the dark and cold.  The sound of all the electronics clicking to life this morning was music to my ears – our neighborhood had been told we’d have no power until Monday, so I was preparing for the long haul. 

In nineteen years in this city (LA) I’d never seen anything like this.  I mean, I’ve seen power outages before, but they never last more than a few hours.  And always living in an urban center, with the exception of earthquakes (which are so rare they’re not really worth considering) I’m usually immune to the usual SoCal natural disasters that tend to happen in the far-flung areas, such as wild fires and mud slides.  But this one time I happened to be in the hardest hit, last to get the power back on area.  The odd thing was as of the morning after the storm (Thursday), the people behind me and in front of me had power.  The street lights were on, and the electric train that runs right in front of my house was running just fine.  So much of the time the last few days were spent in this utter frustration of “um…why does everyone else have something I don’t have…?” which is a very familiar emotion for me!

The worst was having to throw away all that awesome food I JUST bought.  That killed me.  I hate wasting food, and I was extremely agitated about it.  But by Friday afternoon it was quite obvious that everything in the freezer was gone, and I’d better dump that full ½ gallon of milk and juices.  I was able to save the couple of things I’d cooked by putting them on ice, but I’ll admit I’m a bit nervous about eating anything that’s been in that refrigerator.  I mean, now’s not the time for a bacterial infection, you know?  Tomorrow I’ll head out and spend all the money I just spent on food to replace everything I just bought, plus all the stuff I’d had already that now needs to be replaced.  Trying to take a deep breath and get over it, but it’s hard.

Luckily I had a lot to get out and do the last few days, so the times spent in my cold, dark house were fairly minimal.  It’s amazing to think our ancestors lived like this all the time – once the sun goes down (about 4:30 these days), you go to bed, because it’s cold and there’s nothing to do.  It was too dark to read, my phone couldn’t get internet in the house (and I didn’t want to run the battery down in case I needed it as an actual phone), no TV, but luckily a battery operated transistor radio which was my lifeline.  But boy was it boring!!!  I’m convinced the reason our ancestors dropped dead at 35 was because they were BORED.  

One of the most unpleasant aspects of this was worrying about looting - it was SO obvious to anyone who drove by that all of our houses are empty and not guarded by our burglar alarms; every time I left the house I was worried I'd come home to a ransacked mess.  I don't care about the stuff (I don't have anything of value, believe me) but I was worried about the dog.  Last night I came home late to a homeless guy rummaging through my garbage with a flashlight, pulling out some of the food I'd dumped.  We always say hello to each other and he seems harmless, but you'd best believe I loaded up the .38 and stuck it under my pillow.

I was, however, extremely grateful that a) I have a working fireplace (although I ran out of firewood after the first night), b) the stove worked so I could cook, c) I just bought a car phone charger so I could drive around and charge the phone, check e-mail, etc, d) I have a dog that doubles as a portable space heater, and e) the baby is somewhere where he’s fed, comforted, and kept warm without me having to worry about it or do anything.  Going through this with a newborn (or a kid at all) would have been a lot more stressful!  I also had many friends check in with me and offer their homes for me to stay in, which was lovely.  I would have taken some of them up on this offer had this gone on much longer. 

In other news, kicking ass and taking names around the house here.  I am determined to get all those long-standing, pain in the ass house projects done before baby time.  A guy comes over tomorrow AM to start stripping the wallpaper I applied so badly back in ’04 so the walls can FINALLY be painted and I can FINALLY start hanging some pictures and be done with it.  It’s going to cost, but it’s a huge job and something I couldn’t possibly do myself, so it’s worth it.  Before the power went out I spent a couple of days deep cleaning and rearranging things – the office is delightful now, freed of all the papers and boxes and dust, and the previously out of bounds area in the service porch is now spic and span and ready for stroller parking.  I took a carload of crap to the Out of the Closet thrift store yesterday, and today I’m doing a toxic waste drop off of some of the 8,000 half empty paint cans from various projects over the last ten years that have been piling up, plus some of the many broken electronics that have been malingering around here.  So now it’s just setting up the nursery (scheduled for this month, with some help from my friends) and I believe I’m pretty much done around here, although I’d like to do a couple more thrift store drops – tons of useless kitchen crap, leftover crap from home remodeling projects, old VHSs and books to be sorted through and disposed of, etc etc.  I know I’m not a hoarder because I LOVE to purge – it’s pretty much one of my favorite things in life, getting rid of crap.  Got to make room for baby crap!