This Hormonal Train I'm Riding

Oh, my darlings. It has happened. I'm pregnant. Now, I'm sure that those sentences came across with a positive vibe with them, a happy tone to the words. Sadly, nothing could be further than the truth. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm way excited to be expecting and that come St. Patrick's Day I'll have a little leprechaun on my hands! We've been trying for another baby for a few years now, so this is very much a happy thing! There is just one problem . . . and that is PREGNANCY. *Dun dun duuuun!*



I was sooo not prepared for the onslaught that has occurred these past two months. Like, whoa. With my first pregnancy, I was one of those women that every other pregnant woman in the world hated: I had a perfect, easy pregnancy. My morning sickness was like 15 minutes of vague nausea every other week or so. That's it. My aches and pains were limited to my pelvic bone disliking it when I first got up in the morning, a charley horse I got one night, and a brief struggle with prenatal vitamins because they are of the devil. (Don't worry, I won the struggle . . . but I still had to take the pills. So maybe that's half a win.) My whole pregnancy was this bubble of happiness, because I got to ENJOY it, unlike a lot of women who pretty much suffer from day one. And lemme tell ya, first time pregnant women have it so easy. Because NOTHING is expected of a first time pregnant lady. "You can't lift that! Do you need a nap? Oh, come sit down, you must be so tired! Are you sure I can't help you with that?" All day, every day, it was awesome. No, I did not take advantage of this in any mean ways, because I was in a pregnant bubble and had no bad symptoms and nothing could hurt me but it was still nice to have zero expectations on me!

Second pregnancy? Psh, the bubble is over. I am so not this woman. Even if I wasn't suffering every bad side effect and symptom IN THE FRIGGING BOOK, second pregnancies are so not the zero-expectation cakewalk the first one is. Number one reason? Because if you are pregnant a second time, know what that means? You've already been pregnant. And you now have a little rugrat running around that sooo does not care that you are going to throw up if you have to sit up and put Barbie's shoes on one more time. And once you have kids, it's like the magic goes away and people assume that psh, so you're pregnant, whatever, you've already got a half-grown kid that can help you. Except, well, five year olds can't exactly haul the 50 pound bag of dog food out to the car, now can they? Nope. They are really good at holding the cart still while you try and shimmy said bag onto the bottom of the cart in an extremely ungainly way, though.

So yeah, second pregnancy, and I presume following pregnancies, just don't have that magical glow that the first one does. It's so unfortunate. Because I could totally use a zero-expectations cakewalk this time around. My first pregnancy, I worked the whole time! Yeah, it was just part time, but still! I could totally have handled full time! This time around, I'm lucky if I manage to get all the laundry through both machines in one day, and I'm even luckier if I get it folded before I need to do it all over again. One day last week I felt really good and not only got it all washed, but folded and put away in one day! I felt like Super Woman! Which is extremely, really sad because that's just a typical Monday for me when I'm not experiencing the joys of being "in the family way".

Maybe it's because my body remembers this pregnant thing, remembers where it's going to end up at the end of this. And it's surrendering early. My lower back is under the impression that I'm already massively pregnant, because every time I do something that aggravates it, it sits up and complains right off the bat. I'm not even going to discuss my boobs, but let's just say they're acting very immature. I've got this tiny little fetus in me that isn't even the size of a lime at this point, but my pelvic muscles are putting up this huge fit like I have a bowling ball strapped down there! But the worst part is the nausea. Holy balls, it is insane. Morning sickness, ha. ALL THE TIME SICKNESS. Morning, noon, night, and every hour in between. I am sick when I eat, I am sick when I don't, I'm sick when I'm full, and I'm sick when I'm hungry. I cannot win! My best friend right now is my bottle of Tums, and I've had more Tums in the last month than I've ever had in my entire life, times ten!

Thankfully, I have one saving grace and that is my amazing control over my gag reflex. I do not throw up unless I give myself permission. Not even kidding. I was once playing in a concert in high school (clarinet), had to throw up since I was sick, and not only did I walk out of the gym entirely, but I walked AROUND to the OTHER SIDE of the commons to throw up in the women's bathroom. I also locked my stall door behind me before I gingerly knelt on the floor and made my offering at the porcelain altar. So, when I say I don't throw up unless I want to, I sincerely mean it. I've only thrown up once while pregnant this time around, and I only did because I figured it would calm my stomach faster. Which it did. So at at least I'm not throwing up all over the place all the time, which I'm very grateful for. I really, really hate throwing up. I'd take almost any ailment over throwing up.



I think the part about this morning sickness that sucks so much, is that there's nothing I can do to get rid of it or settle my stomach except lay down. Not sit down. Not lay back and lounge. But full-on LAY DOWN. And lemme tell ya, there is not exactly a lot of stuff that you can do while laying down, except for sleep and stare at the wall. I got so bored that I figured out a couple contortions that still kept me lying down while I got on my laptop, but when you're laying down for half the day, even having the entire internet at your disposal is not enough. You still get bored. Extremely bored. "I'm gonna go whine on my blog because I've already annoyed everyone on Facebook" bored.

Yeeeeah . . .



Pregnancy. The miracle of life. The misery of enduring it. Now, don't misunderstand, I wouldn't change my mind about having this baby, and there's no way I'd trade him or her for feeling normal again (and we did have a close call). But I am very desperately looking forward to the day when I am able to feel normal again. I'm counting down the days to my second trimester when the morning sickness SHOULD ease up or go away entirely. And if it ends up not happening . . . I will cry. Big, fat, pity party tears.

*Sniff*

Jeremy

This isn't a happy post, unfortunately. Nor is it a sarcastic or a witty one, because that would have been a lot more enjoyable for me to write. Actually, this particular blog post is kind of an "in memorium". And it probably won't be important to anybody, but for some reason it is important to me.

I went through a miscarriage this month. Jeremy is the name that my husband and I picked out for our baby. We don't know for sure that it was a boy, but . . . that's just what we feel. And we've been calling it a him.

I got pregnant in April after about a year or so of me being off birth control. I'm not really surprised it had taken us so long, since my husband's job requires him to be away from home literally almost 90% of the time, and we actually had to make special arrangements for me to go with him so we could conceive. And I did.

I took a pregnancy test in May which confirmed I was pregnant, and my husband was absolutely thrilled. He couldn't stop smiling, he posted it immediately on Facebook, and told everyone in the family that he was going to be a daddy again.

About a week later went in for my first prenatal appointment. I was almost 9 weeks along, and despite me being so early in the pregnancy, my doctor did an ultrasound anyway. And there it was, just a tiny little shape tucked in there, and yet despite him being so young we still got to hear the heartbeat. And due, of all days, on Christmas Eve.

All this time, and over the next couple weeks, we made plans. I had the names all picked out if it was a boy or a girl, although we and most everyone else still thought it was a boy. We figured out where to put the crib in our cramped bedroom, got it figured out how to work around Pete's work schedule when it got time for the baby to be born, and even got it settled with my doctor that since I'd had problems with my last labor and delivery, this time we'd just schedule a c-section.

Long story short, I started spotting and then cramping about a week after my appointment. I called my doctor in a controlled panic when the spotting hadn't stopped after a couple days, and I was put on bed rest for the weekend. Unfortunately, at that point it was already too late. After a very long afternoon of tests and ultrasounds at my doctor's office, it was confirmed that I had miscarried. The baby was too small for me being 11 weeks along, and there was no heartbeat.

I had called my mom the day before to have her come and be with me for my appointment because Pete was at work. And I had bawled to her on the phone when I did, because I just had this horrible, sinking feeling that I had lost our baby. I sobbed about it, trying to be quiet so I didn't make Pete worry, but he caught me anyway and just told me over and over that it was ok, and I tried so hard to try and be hopeful for him.

Telling Pete that it was a miscarriage was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. I didn't want to tell him. He'd been texting all day, asking how things were going, keeping up with what was going on, and for a few minutes I just didn't have the heart to tell him that we'd lost our little one. When I talked to him on the phone a little while later when I had some privacy, it was undoubtedly the worst phone call I've ever had. The sheer . . . grief in his voice made my heart break, even more than it already had broken.

I had let myself get excited for our baby. With our first child, it was easy to hold back a lot of the emotion and attachment, to wait until she was here until I let myself fall in love with her. I wanted to make sure we would actually get her before I loved her, just in case. So I wouldn't be so hurt if we lost her. But we got her, and I loved her, and she was perfect and healthy, and she still is. It was harder this time to keep emotion out of it. I had already had a baby, I knew what to expect and I had already gone through this before. So it was easier to love the little life I was growing inside me, the little piece of me and my husband that we were looking forward to.

So it was devastating for me to have lost him. It hasn't hit me as hard and as abruptly as it hit everyone else. Pete was still talking about it as if everything would be fine, even the night before my appointment. But I was very worried long before I got confirmation from my doctor that I had miscarried. I had an entire week to dwell over the possibilities, and due to my extremely rational, often pessimistic mindset, I had plenty of time to consider and even expect the worst. Even though I hoped, and prayed, that everything would be ok, I still tried to prepare myself. Just in case.

I was doing ok, and Pete was doing ok, until this week when my sister in law had her first baby, a little boy. Pete got to see and hold him yesterday morning before he went back to work, and I got to hold him yesterday evening. It didn't surprise me that both of us have suffered a sort of relapse. Pete mostly. I've been so overwhelmed from my body going through this and even being in the hospital because of it last week that I haven't had a lot of time to be able to just think about it. To just let myself feel the emotions I need to feel to be able to move on again.

I guess this post is a part of that. I tried to write it over a week ago, I tried to just get it all out, but I couldn't. I couldn't find a way to say what I wanted to. But last night, Pete and I were talking, and something he said made it easier for me. Both he and I have been independently struggling and wondering if, with how young the baby was, if he really was someone or if he was still just an empty body waiting for a spirit. He died shortly after my first appointment with my doctor, so that heartbeat that we heard in her office ended within days or even hours of us hearing it. And both times, he was very small, and only measured about 7 weeks. Is that long enough for a body to exist before they are a real person? Did we actually have a little child in there, a baby with an identity and a mind and a character all his own, or was it just an empty shell waiting until it was more mature before it got its soul?

We don't know. And that was what was tormenting my husband the most. So he asked me if we could name him. For me, it gives a little bit more of something, I don't know what, but something to my own grief and mourning, to be able to miss and feel the loss of a real person, not just the possibility of someone. Someone real, with a name, that I can wish I could have known and held and been able to watch grow up.

We named him Jeremy. I suggested two names to Pete, and we both liked Jeremy. I had actually thought of this name before, on the day of my appointment with my doctor, and had considered writing it on the ultrasound pictures we got during my first prenatal checkup. And now I can for certain.

We had a son. A little boy named Jeremy that we never got to actually see or hold or have as our child, but we was ours, and we miss him. And we loved him. We were looking forward to having our Christmas baby, and we would have given a whole lot to have been able to have him. I just wish he could have been able to know his daddy. To have that relationship with the most amazing man I know. That's the worst part of the whole thing, is that he is missing out on a family that would have loved him dearly.

We love you, Jeremy. And I'm so sorry.