Experiences

I still hate snow.  Not only did the 2 storms bring all normal activity to a halt for 12 days, but somehow being housebound caused Sammy to stop using the potty.  Not only is she back to pooping in her pants 5-6 times per day (I’m not exaggerating) but she has started peeing on the floor as well.  It’s a nightmare.  This is not regression.  She was never this bad, even the first day we took off the diapers.  This is devolution.  Anyway…

We did have a lot of fun playing in the snow.  Here are the best photos from the past 2 weeks.

We know it’s a bad storm when the garbage can turns into a garden gnome:

These are cars:

This was taken before our neighbors so kindly gave us their daughter’s old snowsuit for Sam.  We never bought her any real snow clothing since it doesn’t snow more than an inch or two in Virginia:

The walls of snow were so high that Sammy could make vertical snow angels, especially once she had her new snow suit:

This one is just plain cute:

Someone built a snow fort (and a snowman) in the park across the street:

This is our next door neighbor, H.  He’s 8 years old and likes to dig big holes in the snow and then climb in.  In the background you can see the blue street sign with the snow piled up almost to the top of it:

Ok, so I don’t really hate snow.  We had a great time.  Going outside was like joining a big block party, but instead of drinking and grilling, there was snow shoveling and sledding.  It just all went on a little bit too long, and it ended with a pre-planned “mid-winter” break at Sammy’s school, which brought the total consecutive days off of school to eight.  I can now say that I fully relate to this old commercial.  (It’s one of the pleasures I’ll have to forego as a homeschooler, but hey, everything has its pros and cons):

I’m going in to lockdown mode.  Sam is sick (which means I’ll be sick soon too), we’re in the middle of moving her to a new bedroom, I need to design, buy and install shelving for her new closet, we have to finish painting the room, we need to buy a mattress and set up her new “big-girl bed,” we have to move all her stuff (much of which is in the hallway right now), we’re having the whole main level of our house painted starting on Sunday and we haven’t completely decided what colors we’ll use yet, one of the kitchen cabinet doors broke and needs to be glued, the handle on the dishwasher is not working right and I know that at any moment it will not open at all so I need a new dishwasher NOW, and I just went down to move laundry from the washer to the dryer and found the clothes in a tub full of water – again.  If the washer goes and I can’t do laundry, I might have a nervous breakdown.

It’s 11:41am and I haven’t even considered eating anything and Sam is planted in front of a movie.

And before all of that, I was already too busy.  I keep cutting more and more, but now I have to cut out the blogging until I can regain control.  Wish me luck!

Jewish Christmas Dinner was a success, although I got a bit tired of all that beige food.  (Why is it all beige?)  But I enjoyed cooking it and everybody had their favorite dish.  I think Sammy ate most of the latkes, Adam loved the apple cake, and I, of course, loved the brisket, although the matzo ball soup was surprisingly good, too.  Only the broccoli souffle was a disappointment.  Luckily, it was much better for breakfast this morning!

Unfortunately, we’re all sick.  Adam and Sammy are on the tail end of a bug but I think I muscled through those two days of cooking only to crash hard today.  And Christmas Day is not a good time to be off your game.  Well, not for me, anyway.

I’m not so sure I like Christmas Day.  It’s so chaotic and messy.  There are a million presents mixed up with wrapping paper.  I’m constantly paranoid that gifts will get thrown in the trash.  Also, I’m generally very uncomfortable when there are too many objects around me.  I feel like I have to keep track of every object and it overloads my system.  So after a while I freak out and make everyone clean up before moving on.  But where are you going to put all the stuff?  Nothing has a place yet because it is all new, so there really is no putting away.  And you really don’t want to put it all away, right?  That would not be fun at all.  You want to pile it up and go back to the pile over and over throughout the day.  But that pile of stuff, oh my god, it just drives me nuts.  Does anyone have a system for an orderly Christmas morning?  I fear that when we have two children that I might have to just excuse myself from the whole event.  I mean, I’m exaggerating here, but I do have a real problem with too much visual input.  I’ve been meaning to write about that for some time but now it will have to wait until next year.

My neurosis didn’t cause too much trouble though, because Sammy seemed overwhelmed as well.  The mess didn’t get too bad because she only opened about half her presents, and that took all day.  She’d go off to play with the latest thing and then she’d forget about the presents and want to color or wash her hands for a half hour (her normal activities).  Also, the only thing she really seemed to want was candy.  She begged for candy all day.  Candy was the number one thing on her wish list when she visited Santa at the mall.  I swear, we said this last year but I’m saying it again:  I will never again make the mistake of allowing so much candy at Christmas-time.  Sugar turns my daughter into an unpleasant creature, to put it kindly.  Next year, we will not do an advent calendar with candy (maybe I’ll write cute little notes or find tiny toys), there will be one small piece of candy in the stocking, and if we make cookies, Sammy will get one.  One cookie, and then the rest are given away or go in the trash.  But we cannot have cookies available in this house for an entire month, along with chocolate and Pez and all the candy that is given out at the stores.  No, no, no!  I swear, never again.  Will you remind me, please?

So anyway, we’re off to New York tomorrow, where Adam has a conference.  We decided to make a little family trip out of it and stay a few days.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to The City, and I’m really excited.  We’ve got a list of fun activities planned, but really, I just want to soak up the unique energy of the place. 

So long for now.  I’ll be back in 2010, reporting on all the Little Things going on in my world.  I wish you a Happy New Year!

Well, we didn’t make it to the Tea Party here in DC this weekend.  It was a very rough week – rough enough that, if not for Facebook, I would have completely forgotten about it.  And I’m not really in the mood to even read about it right now, especially with the focus on health care, which you’ll understand shortly.

Finding out I was pregnant was the only good news.  Adam’s grandmother died.  We’re all out of grandparents now.  Adam went to the funeral in Pennsylvania on Friday but Sammy and I stayed home.  I didn’t know her well, but I did feel a strong connection with her, just as I do with all of Adam’s family whom he is close to.  He’s told me so many childhood stories about the time he and his sister spent with their grandparents each summer, and Adam and I are so much a part of each other, that I guess I feel like they are my memories as well.  So it was a sad week.

Then there have been all kinds of smaller troubles.  I had to go on antibiotics for an infection – not exactly the first thing I wanted to do after finding out I was pregnant.  I’m also trying to work out what medicines are ok for me to take for my psoriasis, and making my ob-gyn appointments and thinking about health insurance issues.  Sammy had her 3 year old checkup, which was no big deal, but just another doctor, which is not what I particularly wanted to do this week.  The potty training is going well, but it is very draining.  It’s kind of like a smaller version of having an infant: you have to get used to the mess and the hassle and the focus and all the new stuff to haul around.  We’re gearing up for Montessori which Sammy starts tomorrow.  It’s exciting, but we had 2 open houses and lots of new information to take in and some shopping to do.  Of course, Sammy also had her last day at day care this week, and that made both of us very sad.  I started doing some volunteer work for the Ayn Rand Institute this week, which might have been good, but in my frame of mind was just another thing to think about.  Then I received news of 2 acquaintances and 1 friend having serious medical problems.  What’s up with health issues this week?  Adam was already behind with his work after the long potty-training weekend so he’s been heroically working his ass off through all of this, while somehow keeping his sanity.  This week was much tougher on him than on me.  But at least he got to have a gin and tonic at the end of the day.  (There, I made a joke!)

To cap it all off (this had better be the cap!), this morning Sammy fell off the couch backwards and banged the back of her head on the floor–hard.  She got her first real goose-egg.  We were literally walking out the door to the emergency room when we finally got a nurse on the phone who said it didn’t sound bad enough to warrant a trip to the ER.  We’re still watching her for dizziness, nausea, and all the rest.  It scared me much more than the bloody cut she got last month.  Maybe it’s the pregnancy or all the stuff that has happened this week, but it just really rattled me.  She’s napping now, with no signs of a concussion, and I’m starting to feel like she’ll be ok. 

If you’ve read along this far – I apologize.  It can’t be that interesting to anybody but me.  I try not to vent like this on my blog.  A big part of why I keep this blog is to help me stay focused on the positive, instead of dwelling on the negative.  But there are times that just putting a list of things like this on “paper” allows me to let it all go.  I’m hoping to make a fresh start tomorrow.  We’ll have a new school, a new routine, and plenty of good things going on. 

Goodbye, Grammy Harriet.

We’re still working on this getting pregnant thing.  I hate the uncertainty.  I suppose it’s good practice for me – to have to continue living and enjoying life while this weight is on me.  It’s ridiculous, really, to be so stressed about it.  But apparently, I am. 

This time around, during the 2 weeks when you’re just waiting to find out if you succeeded or not, I developed a terrible pain in my back.  It felt like I imagine a pinched nerve would feel.  It was so painful that I could barely sleep, or even sit comfortably in a chair.  I couldn’t take Ibuprofen since you’re not supposed to do that during pregnancy, so I was constantly on acetaminophen.  I couldn’t go to the doctor for an x-ray, of course, but it was bad enough that I still considered it.  I had 2 massages, which helped for about a day before the pain came back.  Then, the moment I knew I was not pregnant, the pain went away – not completely, but significantly and immediately.  It’s been getting better ever since.

This is not the first time I’ve had stress-related pain.  I’ve had almost continuous problems since 2001.  October 2001, that is.  Can you think of anything directly prior to that time that might have caused stress?  Ever since then, I’ve had back and neck pain, along with the constant need to crack my neck.  The only relief I’ve had from this problem was when I was pregnant.  I had pregnancy aches and other problems, but the old back and neck problem was non-existent. 

About 13 months after Samantha was born, however, I developed a new problem: a pain in my right knee.  We had just moved from Michigan to San Diego – a 6 week journey that was the most stressful time of my life.  The combination of living out of our 2 cars with a dog and a cat and a baby, for 6 weeks straight, along with postpartum hormones, was unbearable.  Over the next year, the pain spread to my right elbow, my right shoulder, then the whole length of both my right arm and leg, and then to both hands and feet.  I couldn’t open jars or walk down a flight of stairs (I went down backwards or on my bottom).  I was scared.  I was sure I’d be in a hospital within a year.

I had x-rays, an MRI, nerve-conduction tests, and blood tests for arthritis, lupus, Lyme disease, and all kinds of other problems, but I never got a diagnosis.  I tried yoga, painkillers, antidepressants (they’re supposed to help with pain for some people), physical therapy, and a combination of fish-oil and probiotics.  I’m sure there is more that I’ve forgotten.  I was on my way to chiropractic and maybe even acupuncture, but ended up finding relief with something called platelet-rich plasma therapy, or PRP.  It’s a cool technique:  the doctor takes your blood, separates the red blood cells from the platelets using a centrifuge, and then injects the platelets, which I guess are the part of the blood involved in healing, back into the affected area.  In my case, the doctor injected my right knee and elbow, where the pain seemed to have started.  I was sore for about 2 weeks, but then I started getting better.  I’m not cured;  I always have a little bit of pain somewhere.  These days it’s usually in my feet.  But I’m functional and I don’t take painkillers on a regular basis.  Most of the time I don’t even notice the pain.  I’ve been feeling better for about 9 months now.

I know this problem with my back is related to all the rest of it, so I’m really hoping that it doesn’t kick off the chain reaction again.  Luckily, after all I went through, I’m pretty sure that PRP would help again if I needed it.  In fact, I would have done another round of PRP a long time ago to see if I could totally knock out the pain, but there was one problem.  Getting  blood out of me is almost impossible.  When the phlebotomist drew my blood for the procedure, she spent over a half hour and was getting nothing.  My veins just move around or close up when the needle touches them.  Finally, my doctor had to come in and take over.  He needed to get a pint of blood – about the same amount that you give when you donate blood.  (Needless to say, I’ve never donated blood.)  By the time he got it, I was weeping with pain.  Remember, I’m the one who gave birth with no drugs and said that it wasn’t even real pain, but just pain like when you work out your muscles.  I can take pain.  This was torture.  I’ll do it again, but only if the other pain starts to interfere in my life again.

So I guess the moral of the story is:  I need to take a chill pill.  If only there was such a thing that was safe to use when potentially pregnant.

• Decided on the spur of the moment to go to the local water park with Sam
• While waiting for it to open, went to the park where we observed a traditional water balloon toss
• Swam for 2 hours
• Ate lunch on the grass
• Fed the Canadian Geese
• Went on the carousel, twice
• Took a little ride in a boat on the lake
• Swam for another hour
• Cooked and ate a delicious dinner
• Watched So You Think You Can Dance finale
• About to go read the latest Lee Child thriller

All Little Things, but they add up to one heck of a great day.

A couple of years ago, Adam and I (with a 3 month old Samantha!) went to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, for a wedding.  One of the events was a catamaran ride with a stop for snorkeling.  While we were all filing on to the boat, a few of us were making some small talk with one of the tour guides, a tan, smiling young guy who moved with the kind of energy that says, “I’m enjoying this.”  Somebody said something that prompted him to say, “I haven’t worn any kind of shoes except flip flops for years.”  He said it with pride.

This is the kind of statement that, ten years ago, I would have seen as either dishonest or a sign of laziness.  Now, in my new role as parent/blogger/future homeschooler, I can say proudly that I, too, wear flip flops or nothing at all on my feet.  At least, that is, during summer.

That was a crazy post I wrote last night but I’m finally rested!  The cat meowed and I woke up about 4 times, but it was still the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a long time.  Ambien rocks!  Sam slept better too, only waking up a half hour early this morning.  Whew!  You never know, those hallucinations might just have been from sleep deprivation.

One thing I get to be happy about after finding out that there is another month of uncertainty ahead of us as we continue on this baby-making journey is that I get to take my sleeping pills for a couple of weeks, while I’m sure I’m not pregnant.

Prior to chucking the birth control pills, I’d been taking Ambien (or the generic, Zolpiderm) for about 6 months pretty much daily.  It was wonderful.  It was so wonderful, in fact, that I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop taking it when the time came.  I was sure that I was addicted, even though it is supposedly non-habit-forming.  But I did stop, that first month, and although I had some trouble sleeping, it was nothing worse than the same insomnia that drove me to take the pills in the first place.  Maybe it was even less severe than that. 

I get the lowest dosage of this drug that you can get, and I cut the pills in half, and they knock me out like a … like a … like a two ton heavy thing.  (Anyone? Anyone?) And before I fall asleep, I get a sense of well being, along with minor hallucinations that amuse me.  That’s pretty good shit, doc!

Tonight I took a full pill and now the words are swimming on the screen in front of my eyes, and several rows of type are highlighted in orange (oh, no, it’s blue now).  My keyboard appears to be covered in snow. I wouldn’t be surprised if I started smelling the fishy scent of the Pacific Ocean any time now.  You couldn’t pay me to get in a car and drive right now. 

I took the full dose tonight because I am actually more tired than usual.  Sam has been keeping me up at night.  Well, in the morning.  She is waking up an hour or two earlier than usual, and not napping well either.  It’s wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule, because I’m one of those night people.  I just can’t get my butt to bed early.  As soon as it gets dark, I’m awake.  And this has been going on for a couple of weeks now, and even after sleeping in until 11am this morning (thanks, hon), I am still a walking zombie.

So every night I’ve been saying, “I have to get to bed earlier,” but now I have my miracle pill that will make it happen.  Still, I took the pill and, instead of getting right in bed, I came downstairs to write this post in an altered state.  Anything, anything to stay awake longer.  It’s a curse, I tell you!

And now I must go get a snack and watch a little HGTV, because, of course, I’m all wound up and need to chill a bit before actual sleep arrives.  But at least I know that I’ll be asleep the minute I turn off my light, and nothing will wake me.  Not that damn bird that tweets outside my window at 4am, not those crazy sounds I heard last night that sounded like a combination of something breaking the sound barrier, followed by a gunshot, twice, at 3:45am, not my dog puking under the bed, not my daughter waking up at 6, and then after she quiets, the cat meowing at her door to wake her (and therefore, all of us) back up.  And not that strange lady peering at me from inside the closet, oh, but she disappears when I look in her direction. (Serious hallucinations, I tell you!)

Yeah, I’ll sleep tonight.  Thanks again Modern Medicine.

I peed on a stick this morning.  That’s 2 months of failure now.  I’m not surprised this month, though, since Adam was away on a business trip during the crucial time.  I have more hope this coming month because we were successful in month number 3 both of the previous times.  The other key ingredient was the ovulation predictor kit, which worked on the first try both other times, so I’m pulling that tool out of the box next time too.

If you’ve done the math you may be wondering what happened to the other pregnancy.  Something bad happened.  Something really bad.  Not a miscarriage.  At twenty weeks, I had the ultrasound that told us we were having a girl, but there were some anomalies.  So, I had an amnio.  Waiting the 10 days for the results was hard, but they came back normal.  Then we had to wait through another 3 weeks of torture to have another ultrasound, and that’s when we found out that the baby was horribly disfigured.  We got a second opinion just in case, but we knew what we had to do.  I would never give birth to a child with Down’s, and this was probably worse, although we couldn’t know for sure since it wasn’t a recognizable condition or syndrome.  If the baby made it to term at all, it might have even endangered my health to give birth – at least that’s what the good doctors told the religious nuts on the Board of the hospital, who would presume to tell me what the rest of my life must be.  You see, I was just about to enter the 3rd trimester.

The doctor gave the baby a lethal injection and I gave birth to a dead baby the next day.  I was so scared to look at her, but I did.  She never could have lived – not a real life – but she wasn’t a monster either.  I’m so glad I looked at her or I would have had a black hole of terror inside me forever.  The autopsy didn’t tell us anything about why it happened.  It could have been a combination of our genes, which would mean that it could happen again, or it could have been something that went wrong after conception, in which case it would be very unlikely to happen again.  We waited 3 months and started over and ended up with Samantha, who is perfectly healthy.  Still, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that we have a lethal combination of genes; it just makes it less likely.

I’ve had to work really, really hard at not allowing that experience to cripple me with fear.  I’d had very little experience with death before that, and it was a hard way to join the club.  I didn’t feel like I was truly pregnant with Sam until we had a clean 20 month ultrasound, which was a shame because I did love being pregnant.  I know if I get pregnant again, it will be the same.  Most people wait until the 12 week mark to make any announcements because the chances of a miscarriage are so high up until that point.  I figure that by the time I’m 20 weeks along and feeling comfortable, I’ll be as big as a house already anyway, so I might as well lay it all out from day one.

Since nobody likes to be pitied and we hide early miscarriages, I had no idea how common they were.  After our experience, it seemed like every woman I knew told me about their miscarriages.  If they hadn’t had a miscarriage, they had fertility issues.  Despite all the racy jokes to the contrary, the process of making babies is a terrible, difficult thing.  And now, I’m 39.  Doctors call that, “advanced maternal age,” and it comes with all sorts of fun stuff to worry about.  I was in that category last time too, but at 36, it was borderline.  Now I’m clearly past the time when making babies is supposed to be easy.

So I’m excited to try to make another one, but I’m going to be on-edge for a while, no matter what happens.

I want to conclude this story with one observation.  As bad as our first pregnancy experience was, I thank my lucky stars that I was born in this age of modern medicine.  My baby’s problem was diagnosed before she was born, allowing me to save her, my husband, and myself from the unimaginable misery that would have ensued should she had lived.  I had an abortion.  I’m proud of it, and so very thankful for the doctors who helped me through it.  And now when I hear anti-abortion advocates calling abortion immoral, I get angry.  I get head-spinning, stomach-churning angry because I remember the 3 hours I spent in the doctor’s office, waiting for the lethal injection.  The 3 hours that it took to clear the procedure through the Catholic Board of Directors.  The 3 worst hours of my life.