second trimester…

… is officially underway. in most pregnancies, that means the window for loss has narrowed considerably, and the chances for success have just jumped to some great number. of course, this isn’t most pregnancies, and (in my mind at least) this past week marked the beginning of our navigating the scylla and charybdis of gestation.

i thought i’d be a wreck going in to this phase: a little over a week till 17, when we lost earl; 4+ weeks til 20, when ruby’s membranes ruptured; 6+ weeks til 22, when ruby couldn’t wait any longer; and some 9 or 10 (or 8 or 12 or 16, depending on whom you ask) weeks til the magic moment of likely viability. all kinds of bumps in the road, and maybe i’ll hit them hard when they pass: find myself exhaling a little more deeply each time one passes; feel pain in my shoulders when i start to relax; and so on.

but so far, i’ve been pleased that instead of becoming more anxious, i’m becoming less so. it may have something to do with spring sproinging, with the daily onrush of crocuses and daffodils and new grasses and bulbs and the general rebirthiness of the season; it may have something to do with carole emerging from her fog of nausea and reminding me what it’s like to hang out, and go for a walk, and talk to each other, and enjoy each other’s company again; or it may have a lot to do with the consistently good news we’ve recieved — from the perinatologist, our OB, and (to my mind) from carole, who remarks regularly how similar her feelings in this pregnancy are to the ones she recalls from her pregnancy with mairin, a similarity that we (in our medical expertise) take as a really good sign.

it’s probably all of these, but i think it’s a little more, too: i feel calmer now, for the most part. i’ve been hit in the head and had my heart kicked and pummeled in all the metaphorical ways you can imagine, and i’ve made it through so far. and as i do a self-check, and assess the damage, i find, to my occasional amazement, that i still have the capacity to hope. plus, there’s nothing i can really do, so why not hop on the positive thought train?

of course, my scars are such that i can’t write something like that without thinking rather wryly, “well, bud, hope, huh? that means you’re just about primed for the haymaker.” right now, however, i choose to hear that voice as coming from the “superstitious caveman” corner of my psyche as opposed to some doom-and-gloom delphic part of my brain. it helps.

keep the good thoughts coming — we’re headed back to the perinatologist this afternoon.

carole on npr

for those of you who may not know, or may have missed it, carole’s essay for this i believe was broadcast on npr’s weekend edition this morning. Here’s where you can find it on the web:

• the full link at npr (audio link available there)
• on the this i believe frontpage

random mutterings

carole:
good god i’m huge.
can i please have a latte with some actual CAFFEINE in it? pretty please?
why in the world doesn’t this kid like choclate? i like chocolate. i want chocolate. aw, hell.

shannon:
good god she’s huge. oh, i mean, honey, you look beautiful.
hey, now that you’re not hiding out in the bathroom all the time, could ya start helping out around here a bit?
is it bike season yet?

mairin:
yellow! yellow!
ian! ian!
bubbles! bubbles!
ap!

not my daughter!?!?!

a couple nights ago, mairin had one of those sleepless, miserable nights the kind of which we haven’t had (except when she was sick) since before she turned one. she cried mewlingly from her crib, built up some steam with the occasional sob and moan, and then hit a crescendo of needy “mama”s — finally, we brought her into bed with us, at which point she proceeded to thrash and whine for about four hours, throwing herself across her mother’s throat and repeatedly kicking me in the head. we slept great.

the next morning, when we dropped her off at playschool (i just feel better deluding myself that it’s not really a daycare, it’s playschool!), carole warned the caregivers, sr. k and miss r., that mairin had slept badly and seemed to be a little out of sorts. we attributed it (and still do, given the absence of a fever and other symptoms) to the last push of her eye teeth as they burst through gum. mairin cried a little more on drop-off than usual (any crying is more than usual), but she headed off for the snack table and we assumed she’d be fine for the day — maybe she’d even take a good long nap.

heh.

[at this point, a bit of backstory seems appropriate: whenever we pick up mairin from day care, miss r. is usually there, and miss r. loves mairin. for all i know, she may love all the kids and say so to all the parents, and that's okay. but she always makes a point of gushing over how much mairin helps to pick up after playtime, and how affectionate she is with the other kids, and how she has different kinds of play with her different friends -- m., for instance, is a roughhousing friend, while d. is the object of her affection. even when she gets in a little scrape, like the time she scratched young master d., it's because she wants to show affection and her affections are rejected. okay, you get the picture -- mairin is a doll in playschool, gets along with everyone, and is a great helper to boot, right?]

that afternoon, when carole went in to pick up mairin, miss r. was shaking her head before the door closed. mairin, she said, had been a bit of a terror today. she’d had numerous run-ins with other kids, had to offer a handful of apologies to her playmates, and even had to do hard time in a short time-out. she, miss r. said, smiling a bit sadly, had been a bit of a bully.

A bully? how dare you?! i thought. but then i thought, of course — she hasn’t slept, her gums hurt, her brain’s firing and misfiring in the ecstatic chaos of toddler development — who wouldn’t get a little prickly in such circumstances?

but still…a bully?!?!

things take a turn for the, um, normal

on monday the new kid and the perinatologist met each other for the first time. they seemed to hit it off: said kid proved to be quite photogenic

(see?)

and the doc pronounced everything just fine. normal. which is great.

the new kid has (despite shannon’s worries) four limbs and no tail. a beating heart, a working bladder, and a big ol’ abdomen. and possibly a bit of a shy streak — during the 4D part of the photoshoot ultrasound, the kid actually brought her hands around to cover her otherwise not-so-private parts. (not that they’re visible yet — the kid is still too young — but this cuts a striking contrast to mairin, who had no problems giving good old doctor hallman what he used to call “the money shot.”)

the photos have sent the nicknaming in a whole new (but still fruitless) direction. is the kid an eddie munster look-alike or what?

the new kid also has what appears, so far, to be a good looking and healthy placenta. it’s either anterior or fundal, or perhaps both, or somewhere between, but it is a) present and accounted for and b) not blocking the cervix. these are good things. (we’ll have to wait to pass judgment on the question of fibrin deposits, but we’re taking the good while the good comes our way.)

the new kid is also being kept company by the not-yet-vanished twin sac, which seemed to fascinate both the ultrasound tech and the doctor. so much so, in fact, that the doc took extra special 4D shots of a cross-section of the sac just to make sure it “was not in communication” with the new kid. (no communication my patootie. who’s to say the new kid isn’t going to come out speaking her own private amnio-language?) anyway — that’s the sac, down in the bottom left corner. trippy, ‘eh?

the new kid’s mama has a beautifully long and still-quite-obviously-closed cervix. this was the first time i’ve ever had an official u/s cervical check; i marked the occasion by panicking the whole time — is that funneling i see? holy cow! it’s only 2.5 cm? since i had no idea what i was seeing and even less of an idea how to interpret what i was seeing, i was wrong on both counts. no funneling. and it measures >4cm (closer to 4.5), which the doctor calls “upper normal.” he explained that over the next ten weeks (and 5 visits for peeks at it) we would likely see it shorten to somewhere around 3.5 cm as the baby adds pressure and weight. but everything’s ok, he said, until we hit 1.5. i know we’re only talking a few centimeters, but i feel like that’s a long way to go. and that makes me — dare i say it? — happy.

and speaking of having a long way to go: as i lay sleepless in bed this morning i realized that we are more than halfway to probable viability, and exactly halfway to viability with a pretty decent chance for good, maybe even normal, health. obviously we hope this kid gestates longer than 28 weeks, but just knowing that we are halfway to having a child who should be able to breathe on her own feels huge.

huge.

positively gigantic.

(that’s right, sing it with me: gigantic! GIGANTIC! a big big love! a big big love!)

cincinnati continues its campaign against us

i have been called bossy, bitchy, cold, and cynical. but never pessimistic. whence this streak, then, of believing that somehow cincy is fighting us?

i was so excited to spend superbowl weekend with our friends in st paul, visiting the remains of the snow sculptures for the winter carnival and seeing the torchlight parade. even the packers’ loss — no final superbowl for brett favre! — didn’t squash my delight at the prospect of drinking beers and eating nachos in front of the t.v. on grand avenue. (yes, mh, i KNOW you won’t let me eat on your couch. but a girl can dream, can’t she?) this was closer to a vacation than i’d been since september of last year, and i couldn’t wait.

and then mairin got sick. for about five days she ran a temperature that topped out, we thought, at 105, until we learned that our thermometer runs low. (LOW!) and then i got what appeared to be mairin’s flu, which meant shannon spent his days cleaning up after the both of us. and then abby — poor abby — lost a little more bladder control than usual and we thought this was the beginning of the end (truth be told, i’m still sure it is) but much to our surprise we were able to increase the dose of the meds she’s already on, which meant shannon was back to only cleaning up after mairin and me.

so we didn’t go.

and i wailed and moaned in true biblical style. the gods are against us. my life is turning to shit. i never get anything i want. wah, wah, wah. and then mairin got better, and the twin vanished, and abby quit soaking her bed, and things seemed back on track.

so we planned a trip to columbus to see our other good friends and to celebrate janice’s birthday with her and meet all the friends she’s been telling us about.

we baked cupcakes and packed a bag and bought birthday beverages to share. as we were heading to the freeway entrance i called janice to tell her that we were on our way, but were delayed by mairin’s (unprecedented second) nap, but that we’d be there for the 5:30 party at the fashionably late time of 5:45 and not to worry. i hung up, turned around to give mairin the thumbs up, and she looked at me and puked.

so with whining and stinky toddler in tow we turned toward home, where we bathed mairin and cuddled for the rest of the afternoon and evening while she sat, listless and silent, on my lap.

now, seriously. st. paul is a long drive and it would take us (gasp!) out of the state. but columbus is not that far away. i know people with longer commutes. so really, cincy, can’t you let us out? just for a day?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

edited to add:

shannon just found a website with humorous pro- and anti-cincy t-shirts. perhaps this one explains everything (h/t cincy blurg):

 

a nickname?

the new kid’s thirteen weeks today — well, 13 and one day if you use the widget, but early calculations pointed toward wednesday as our first-day-of-the-next-week day, and we’ve kinda stuck with it.

hooray for the end of the first trimester! hooray! (that means you, carole — you can stop with the nasuea already).

in honor of the end of the first trimester (eo1t), we may be a little closer to settling on a nickname for the new kid. aptly enough, it emerges from the name we’ve been using all along. also aptly, we can’t seem to agree on how to “work” it.

what do i mean? well, the other day carole emailed me from work — update on her day, etc., and near the end she mentioned that “tnk is working me over.” you see where this is heading, right? i, reading quickly if not accurately, wanted to know who this “tank” was that was working over my ol’ lady. i reread a little more slowly, realized my error (“oh! t.n.k. — the new kid!”), grinned, and murmured “that’s it! we’ll call the new kid ‘tank!’”

but when i told carole, she grimaced slightly, and my enthusiasm faded. later, she told me: “‘tank’ is just so…assertive. i like ‘tink.’”

but ‘tink’ haunts me (and the more i think about it, the more i think carole must’ve known this) as my own infant nickname — short for, believe it or not, ’stinkybottom.’ (give me a break — i was my parents’ first kid, and they had no idea what they were getting into. molly was way smellier.)  i worry about saddling this little ‘un with an inglorious legacy of malodorous nappies. of course, i could be overreacting, and neglecting the chance to rehabilitate the name ‘tink’ with my own lucky, rosier version. i do kinda like ‘tank,’ though…

so whaddaya think? ‘tink,’ ‘tank,’ or back to nicknaming square one? (i’m not saying we’ll take your advice, only that we invite it.)

a medical update, most of which we are trying to find not alarming

we find that we are alarmed easily now — gun-shy, you might call us — but really, there is no cause for alarm. well, there is little cause for alarm. well, honestly, we can’t gauge the appropriate level of alarm. somewhere between green and red, i guess.

first, the heparin thing.

those of you who follow medical news when it’s not related to you may already know that heparin has been having some PR problems. manufactured from pig guts, the basic components of the drug are procured predominantly from china, and not infrequently from small family-run operations that are not fda approved or even, if pictures tell the truth, even remotely sanitary. well, last fall patients in hospitals who were given heparin started having “adverse reactions” (anything from nausea to low blood pressure to, um, death), and now above-mentioned yucky & unclean practices are being publicized and investigated, and lo and behold, the primary pharmaceutical distributor of heparin — which provides, i’m told, roughly 75% of the heparin supply in the u.s. — recalled ALL its heparin. (somewhere in there i’m pretty sure the alert level started rising to orange.)

so?

well, i take heparin during pregnancies and it’s supposed to do two things that i have only an overly-anxious maternal undertanding of: 1) clear the blood clots out of my system (which apparently arrive daily, thanks to a fun acquired auto-immune disorder of indeterminate origin), and 2), prevent the sinister-sounding “perivillous fibrin deposition” — which is a naturally occurring deposit of fibrous-y type stuff (all you medical doctors out there quit laughing at me, i’m a humanities girl) that eventually clogs the placenta but not really very noticeably and not really until it’s so late in the pregnancy that it doesn’t matter — but which in MY case happens early on and can cause, oh, um, let’s see, PRETERM PREMATURE RUPTURE OF MEMBRANES (abbreviated hereafter as pPROM).

so as you can gather from all this, heparin is supposed to be my friend. it prevents two things that can cause the baby to die. (green!) well, it was not my friend in 2005, when it hadn’t been prescribed to me and my membranes broke at 17 weeks and earl died. it was my friend in 2006, and we can thank its efficacy for our lovely li’l budgie. once again, it appears it was not my friend in 2007, when i took it but somehow still had heavy fibrin deposits and my membranes still broke and ruby still died. (rising past orange to some rich sunset-y color….)

and then we find out that heparin has been wreaking havoc in hospitals, and that batches of it were at best ineffective and at worst contaminated. (red. definitely red.)

so i’m off heparin and on its sister-drug, lovenox — which i’m told a) is synthetic and b) comes from pig guts, so i don’t really get it. (are the pigs themselves synthetic?)  anyway, it should work. (ahhh. green.) never mind that it costs FIVE TIMES AS MUCH because i have insurance that will accept, for my monthly supply, a manageable $50 copay.

but all this is only good only up until a few weeks before delivery, when i have to quit taking lovenox (it can cause spinal hematomas in women who are given certain pain relieving drugs in labor, and those hematomas can cause temporary or permanent paralysis) and go BACK on heparin. (shit, maybe turning orange. paralysis? not what i asked for. maybe by then there will be some clean heparin in the country?)

but really, we’re cool. what’s to do except take the drug that’s supposed to work and hope for the best?

second, the whole doctor thing.

 my OB wants me to see the perintalogist at week 17. hello…? i’ve already had pPROM at 17 weeks once in my life. since the whole point of seeing the perinatologist is to do extra-special exams that help screen for possible problems that could cause pPROM again, shouldn’t i be seen earlier? like, now? OB says no. (red! definitely red!) so being the pushy broad i am, i went over his head and called the perinatologist directly. i’m not happy that i’m waiting for answer, three business days later. grrr. but i’m a great nag, so i’m confident i can expect an answer soon.

eighteen months

as life returns to our weird semblance of normal, activity around the house has started to finally pick up. usually for the better. mairin has been especially busy.

but she’s not even two yet…

mairin has become a whiny, insistent, truly irritating little gnome. i blame her eyeteeth, which are poking through on the bottom and whitening the gums on the top, and must hurt like heck.

but i think there might be something else at work here. over breakfast this morning, mairin kept insisting things should be just so, and by insisting i mean whining loudly if one thing was not just so. of course, she was too busy whining loudly to tell us exactly what just so might be, and her signing ability is inversely related to her level of agitation, so we were left guessing. finally we reached some approximation of her platonic ideal of breakfast: all the breakfast dishes (including her parents’) on her high chair tray, along with the pink febraury schedule from her playschool (so she could pick it up and smear yogurt on it) as well as a cute little torn-paper collage of mittens that she made (as a placemat); oh, and a spoon (real stainless, not plastic baby thank you VERY MUCH!!!) in each hand. she even had to review our coffee mugs to make sure she didn’t want them on her tray, in reach, as well.

she’s getting plenty of sleep, her cough and cold have abated nicely, and she’s eating well (very well). and this is just too much to blame on teething. but then carole and i remembered something carole had read a while ago: before each developmental milestone in infant and toddler development, there’s an intense phase of mental disorganization before everything (rather suddenly) *clicks* into place.

and when i think about her, and her little brain overflowing and overfiring and maybe even misfiring in confusing ways, i realize that it must be a little scary and disorienting, and it makes sense that she would want things to be just so, if only so she can feel a little bit of control over her rapidly shifting world; and it makes sense that she would desperately want to hang on to familiar things like her green blanket or her pink towel or even the two dinner napkins she took to bed with her the other night, one in each hand, precisely because they are familiar, and so very little else is right now.

so we try to make things just so, and grit our teeth through the fits and fusses, and try to distract and amuse her (often a disastrous tactic), and try to modulate our tone of voice (any raised voice makes her cry despondently, with full, real tears — “it’s not my fault, dad, i can’t help it, my brain’s all funny and mixed up!”), and hang on for that *click.*

yup, here we are, hangin’ on…