The New Girl

Fun Fact Friday!!

* Although I am not AS sick this pregnancy as I was the last, that is VERY LITTLE CONSOLATION when I am STILL FEELING SICK ALL THE DAMN TIME.  Hem.  Just an announcement, in case [people who keep reminding me that it's not AS BAD this time] you were wondering.

* Here's what the food deprivation does to me: I have dreams that I am EATING. Total EATING DREAMS.  How sad is that?  Want to hear something even sadder?  In these dreams, I'm not eating beautiful four course meals.  Last week I was eating a piece of peanut butter and jelly toast.  Last night, I was at a party at one of my old college friend's houses (Hi Laur!), parked in front of a table full of cookies and chocolate covered pretzels. *Sigh*

* Also in that dream, Laurie had secretly stolen/hidden everyone's cell phone.  People were getting anxious, patting their pockets, looking all around for their phones.  It's not that far fetched, though, really.  She's a trickster.

* Back when I was in college, I used to take a regular old clothespin to parties.  When I spotted a good mark, I'd clip that fucker to their sweatshirt or their jacket or whatever.  That person would walk around with that clothespin on them until someone was like, 'What the hell is that?' By the end of the night, about 78% of the [drunkards] attendees at the party had that clothespin on them at one point.

* Reading about Swistle's friend's Chicken Game made me remember a game that I played with my friend, The Kid.  She and I used to hide one of these things on each other:

We would put it in all kinds of places, the medicine cabinet, the washing machine, the freezer.  That last one made The Kid scream at like 6 in the morning.  We also hid *hem* other items too.  But I don't need the BAZILLION pervo hits I'd get for discussing the HUGE joke dink pildo that had two, err, front ends.

* The Little Sister recently bought a toilet seat that has a child's potty seat integrated into it.  She is certain that her toilet seat is better than at least 85% of the toilet seats in her neighborhood.

* Back in the [Paleolithic Era] day when I went out to bars, I used to go with my friend Non-Asian Kristen.  We went to this bar in which there were tables to sit.  Unfortunately, the design was bad and the place was always PACKED and so, people would stand RIGHT NEXT to your table, facing away from you.  Thus, putting their ASSES squarely in your FACES.  You want to know what I did?

* I used to poke these people in the ass with a swizzle stick.  I'd jab 'em, nice and hard, and then look at my friend and continue talking like nothing happened.  I'd do that two or three times to the same person, before my friend and I would D I E from laughing.  (No one EVER asked me about it.  They just eventually drifted away from us.)

* The Little Sister compared her toilet seat to her neighbors in homage to The Man and I, who will very often do that same thing. For instance, in our last neighborhood, we had better landscaping than at least 80% of the neighbors.  In this house, uh, not so much.

* I would find it hilarious if I was at a party and the host somehow managed to take everyone's cell phones and hide them in the laundry room.  I'd turn off the ringers, though. That's how Laurie got busted.

It's Like Blondie Said

I am not a worrier by nature.  I don't do a whole lot of 'What if' kinds of thinking.  I don't obsess or ruminate about possibly scary and/or horrible outcomes or situations.  Obviously, I'm not saying that I am free of mental glitches (as you KNOW,) I am just saying that worrying about things over which I have no control isn't one of mine.  My dial is just typically set to 'things are going to work out, one way or another,' (a fact which, btw, drives The Little Sister around the bend and/or makes her love me--depending.)

That being my norm, I did no ruminating about miscarriage, birth defects, etc. during my first pregnancy.  I trusted that because I was so sick that things were progressing as they should.  Thanks to my AMA status, I got the genetic testing but really had decided that there was no use obsessing over it.  I was thankful that the tests came back as they did--giving me no extra reason to worry.

This pregnancy was a little touch and go at the beginning for me, what with the bleeding.  At first, I was overwhelmed, SURE that I was losing the pregnancy and trying to keep my expectations LOW.  I was preoccupied with it.  I eventually got to a place of more acceptance and there was less fretting then.  And now, it seems, that the sickness is again a reassuring pain in the ass.

But having a child already has changed the inner landscape of my mind, in a way that I could not have fully predicted.  Before having a child, stories of child abductions and murders, sick kids, women experiencing still birth, stories of families losing their children used to make me sad.  Now, they can wreck me.  Literally make me cry.  Like these posts, by Poot and Cubby.  Like, LITERAL TEARS.

It's like I now have a face, a sweet face with giant blue eyes, to superimpose on those stories.  I can take the gale-force love that I feel for my own girl and lay it overtop of the images of loss and devastation and FEEL the depth and the breadth and the weight of them.  I don't love it.  It's uncomfortable, the intensity of the empathy that I feel now. (Let me note that I'm a therapist and so I started out pretty empathic to begin with.)

Some of it is hormonal for me, for sure.  The pregnancy, the sickness, and finally going through the last stages of weaning are wreaking havoc for me, emotionally.  But as TLNG grows, as she develops, she only sinks deeper and deeper into me.  As she becomes and reveals more of who she is, I find that I am helplessly in love with that person.  All of her.  Even the fresh and sassy parts.  And it reminds me of so many of the comments that I heard at my mother's funeral from her friends and her co-workers.  They all said basically the same thing:

'She loved you girls so much.  You were all she ever talked about.  She just loved you so much.'

Maybe that's what everyone hears at her mother's funeral, I don't know.  But I do know that it was true.  I always knew it.  My mother WAS a worrier, a ruminator, an obsessor.  And I knew that it was her worst fear that something horrible would happen to The Little Sister or me.  I knew that, like me with my own child, she loved me as a person as well as a daughter.  That her heart, like mine, was transparent glass after I came into the world. 

And just as I am doing now, she freely and willingly handed it over to a toddler with sticky fingers, an unsure grasp and an unsteady gait.

But, really, what's the difference?

Sometimes, my heart wants to shatter into a million pieces from just looking at her.

Haikus Me

On Friday, A New Duck wrote a haiku in the comments of a week old post (now that, my friends, is dedication.)  I appreciated the effort (and loves me a haiku) and so--here is mine:

Languishing in hell
One day it will be worth it
Not so much today.

If it's not too much like homework, why don't you write a nice little haiku in today's comments?  I don't think it will LITERALLY make me feel better about being CHAINED to the COUCH in DIGESTIVE PREOCCUPATION-slash-AGONY, while my kid is running amok with the television on, but it will make me feel LOVED and that's like, super important too.

Sidebar Saturday: Attack Of The Redneck Mommy

You all know her, right?  As a TITAN of blogging, she doesn't really need a whole lot in the way of [plugs from me] introductions.  You may have been invited to her shower.  Like I was.

I RSVPd and EVERYTHING.

And then?  I didn't show up.

I didn't get to amuse you all by showing you the pictures of my Redneck Lawn Ornimentation Situation.  (Oh, and The Man would've KILLED me, too.  They were THAT GOOD.)  But what was worse, was that I didn't get to toast my buddy Tanis' SUPER-GREAT-FANTASTICAL-FINALLY-FINALLY-FOR-A-CHANGE-FUCKING-GOOD-NEWS.

And I really, really wanted to do that.  Because if ever there was a bigger heart, a warmer smile, a stronger will to broaden and widen a family, I've never known it.

Congratulations, Tanis.  Your boy is so lucky to have you and your family to call his own.

And your family is so lucky to finally have him.

xo

P.S. The title of that one post oughta be '7 weeks and NO EFFING MORNING SICKNESS,' though.

Fun Fact Friday!

* I have a first cousin named Maria (more than one, actually,) who lived two doors down from us when we were little. We are close to the same age and I always, always called her Ria, sometimes shortened to Ri.  As is the way with your childhood pals, I SEE her as Ria and that's just the way it always was.  It wasn't until we were both adults that I found out she HATED that moniker. 

* Ria had an aunt or an uncle (on the other side, obv) who kept skunks for pets (they had their, uh, sacs removed, so they were no-smell-em skunks.)  When their favorite one died, they had it--err--stuffed.

*  Taxidermy freaks me out, as a rule.

*  The Tool I dated for a long time was an avid hunter (he wasn't that great at it, though, so I didn't have to deal with taxidermy on the reg.) 

*  The place where I grew up has the day off of school on the first day of Buck Season.  Srsly.

*  The Tool had a friend whose father was a Big Game Hunter.  We went to his house one time and I stood in his father's Trophy Room.  In that room, was a Taxidermy Zoo, and I'm not kidding.  There were LIONS, and WATER BUFFALO, and BEARS and COUGARS and antlers EVERYWHERE and OMFG!

*  TLNG still has only FOUR TEETH.  Which means that she has about SEVENTEEN TEETH coming in at the same time, which is RIGHT NOW.  Oi.

*  I don't have a philosophical objection to hunting, it just skeeves me the fuck out.

*  My kid has been watching Caliou every morning, while I lay on my nauseated side and contemplate the fucked-upness that is going to be the next EIGHT MONTHS.  I try not to feel guilty about it because I don't have the mental energy for GUILT.

*  A friend of mine took a class with a taxidermist.  He had the hots for her and told her that she would look great, eh, taxidermied.  She switched seats after that.

*  As a result of my policy against sick-posts, I think I'm going to have very LITTLE to write about.

*  I was very touched by the de-lurkation situation yesterday.  I keep to my policy of never trying to de-lurk lurkers but it was very, very nice to hear from you all. xo

*  My kid is watching Caliou right. this. very. minute.

Have a great and nausea-free weekend!

A Beating Heart

I held my breath as she squirted the warm goo onto my abdomen, my full bladder groaning in protest as the pressure of the ultrasound wand bore down.

'Your uterus is tipped.  I can't see anything.  I'm going to do an internal.'

The upside of that, folks, is that you get to pee.  The downside, in case you were wondering, is another set of minutes that feel like forever until you find out if all of the bleeding was nothing...or...something.  I spent the time trying to keep my head blank, trying to keep from imagining a somber 'I'm so sorry,' trying to concentrate on nothing in particular.

After the instructions and a little comic relief at the first viewing of the PROBE, it was down to business.

'We'll find your little baby.'

I haven't referred to a baby at all.  Not since the day, two days after the positive test, that I started to see the blood. It was then that I boxed up any and all of those thoughts and put them away..until.  I called the doctor and went in, worried.

'The sickness is reassuring,' said the midwife, 'we'll think happy thoughts and get you an ultrasound.'

And while the sickness was reassuring, no one could tell me how long it might take to wear off if I was to, you know, lose the pregnancy.  And I'll tell you this: Any blood looks like a lot of blood when you're pregnant.

As the ultrasound technician moved the wand around, I watched the screen, numb.  For the last few weeks, I've worked toward trying to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.  It hasn't been too hard to prepare for the worst, as sick as I've felt.  As worried.  And as sad.

'There.  You see that little heart beating in the middle there, right?'

And there it was.  A beating heart.

She printed out the pictures of the Fava Bean for me, handily labeled 'Baby.'

I took them and left the office to go and sit in my car.  I texted this message:

Beating heart.  Measuring 8 weeks!

Then I exhaled.

And cried my eyes out.

Yeeeah, So..

You know that awkward moment at the beginning of a conversation when you haven't seen or talked to someone for a long time and now, here you are, having gone so long without talking that there's so much to say but, really--how do you decide what to say first? And so, despite the OBVIOUS FACT that there's been shit going down, you just make some idle chit-chat for a while, warm up a little and just wait for the opportunity to spill your guts, so it's not all like this:

'Hey! I've missed you!  My mom died!' 

[Edited to add: ZOMFG, dudes!  I'm sorry about that particular wording there...my mom died almost FOUR YEARS AGO, I was just, you know, using it as an illustrative example. AAAACK. Am a TOOOOL.]

Which is, you know, SUPER-AWK.

So, I guess this post would be that awkward moment.  Me making idle chit-chat, without going on and on about the shit that's been going down because, really, I don't quite know where to start.  It's been difficult here and I've been handling it like [a turtle] [a snail] I tend to handle these situations.  I think that what may be partly responsible for this particular glitch is that I have absolutely NO ability or inclination to 'fake it' and so, if there's shit going down, I'm not equipped to 'pretend' that everything is normal, so I just cut out.

Tomorrow I'll know more and I'll share.  I'm all right, so don't worry.  I just want to have things a little situated in my head. 

I really have missed you, though. 

It gets cramped in that shell.

Breaking Radio Silence For This Very Important Message

New nieces are NIIIIIICE.

I highly recommend them.

The Niece

Born 1/31/09 at 9:31pm

7.14lbs 20.5in

Beautiful and Perfect

The Little Sister was a trooper and had her at HOME.  Despite a few tense minutes there, where it looked like the baby may be delivered by [The Three Stooges] TLS, The BIL and me, TLS held on until The Nurse and The Midwife came screeching into the driveway (The Doula missed the WHOLE THING.)

When the team arrived, I went into the basement to warm some towels in the dryer (for the wee baby bum, cute!) and when I came back?  CRYING BABY!

Everyone is happy and healthy and it was an awesome experience.

You know what's NOT AWESOME, though? Being up from 3:00-5:00AM THINKING about it.

xo,
TNG