Adaptation

The most common, well-meaning, question I get regarding my short-term memory loss is, "Will it get better? Will you get your memory back?" I just kind of want to be like, "I was electrocuted seven times. I feel like you are asking a lot of my brain to recover memories and keep new ones stored in there," but I usually just say, "I don't know". The actual truth is that the doctor's don't know what my brain will remember and what has been permanently erased. To be honest, if everything in life is on a bell curve, my memory loss seems to be two standard deviations away from the mean on the right hand side. Meaning folks in the know seem to be a little surprised that it's so severe and continues to be a problem. Either that or it's only old people who usually comment on ECT and they don't notice a difference in the quality of their memories so they can't report either way on what effect ECT had.

I am two weeks out of treatment and I keep getting told by mental health professionals that I need to be patient. Six weeks out seems to be a more magic time when my "neurons start forming new mental pathways in the brain and the chemical reactions start normalizing". I put that in quotes because I don't really believe that science has advanced far enough to fully understand the human brain. If it did, we would have cured epilepsy, autism, and depression by now. I feel like doctors, with their medicines and their talk therapy, are still essentially stumbling around in the dark trying their best through trial and error to see if some combination of something will actually work. At least that's been my experience and I have 10 years of treatment under my belt so I feel I've earned the right to talk with authority.

Life has required some adapting. Let's start with the positive. Here are things that I remember, every time, no matter how obscure: 1) passwords, which in a computer generation where I do most of my bill pay online is somewhat amazing and definitely appreciated. 2) My kids' birthdays. I'm pretty sure this was in my long-term memory so probably doesn't count. 3) How much sleep I got the night before. Yeah, I'm looking at you Ben. Was it really necessary to be up from 3:30am - 5:30am? 4) What I wore the day before, so at least I don't have to color-code my hangars or anything or go to a standby "this is what I wear on Thursdays" system. 5) Most things regarding Zac, including what he said, how he acted, and how is day was in school yesterday.

Without fail, here is what I forget, on a day-to-day basis: 1) television series plots. Usually this occurs when I can't remember what happened at the end of last season and I'm trying to piece together what is going on this season. On really bad days, I can't remember what happened the week before. On the plus side (see all this positivity I'm putting out? It's like I'm vomiting rainbows), there are no reruns for me! Everything is a new episode. 2) Plots in the book I'm trying to read. If there are too many characters and too many locations that the plot is set in, every night it's like picking up a new novel and trying to figure out from context what the hell is going on. That's been probably the hardest to deal with in my personal life because I get so much joy from books and I read every night. It's also affected Zac the most because I can't remember the plot to the "Wrinkle in Time" books that we are reading. Let me just say, in my defense, with a fully functional brain, I'm not sure that I would ever follow the plot to "Wind in Time" and pronouncing the word "farandolae" every other sentence is hard. Those books seem to be written directly to an 8 year-old psyche and feel like the literary equivalent to "The Neverending Story". Adults aren't meant to understand. On the downside, Zac told me he didn't want to read with me if I couldn't remember what happened in the book the night before and we had to work on his empathy button for a good twenty minutes. 3) Whether or not I spoke to someone outside my family the day before. 3A) If there is a record of me speaking to them, then I can't remember what I said or what they said back to me. This is the most challenging aspect of memory loss professionally. My job is to form relationships with new people, which involves remembering small details or even big details like, "Stop calling me you crazy psycho. I hope you crawl into a dark hole and die of a respiratory disease.". Do you know what happens when someone says this to you, you forget to write it down, and then you call them back the next day? Profanity. That's what happens. A shit storm is unleashed on you making you question the worth of your very existence.

Professionally is where I've had to adapt the most. I basically talk on the phone for a living. Sometimes I make trades on a computer, but I have to be on the phone to do it. The obvious answer to my problem would be to take detailed notes on every conversation so I can pick them up the next day. The only problem is sometimes I talk to 100 or more people a day. There are only so many notes I can write. I've developed sort of a system. It's like that scene in "Memento" (a movie that I now identify with in scary and slightly heart-warming ways) where he's looking at polaroids in the back of his trunk and he says, "You learn to trust your own handwriting (because he would write on the bottom of every picture he had some important detail). You trust your instincts". It's a little like that. Sure, sometimes I get in the car at the end of the day and I forget where Ben goes to daycare, but I just start driving by instinct and eventually something will feel right and I'll remember where I'm going. Same with going to the grocery store. Sure, a list would be helpful, but if I don't have one I just walk down the aisles until it occurs to me why I came into the store. Other adults do this one.

I think it's not actually me that's had to adapt the most, it's KGII and Zac. Being asked the same question three days in a row would get unbelievably annoying and would challenge anyone's patience. I recognize that. But I can't stop the behavior if not only I don't remember the answer to the question I've asked, but I don't even remember that I asked the question to begin with. There are a lot of sighs and, "I've told you this three times now..." around my house. Fortunately, KGII in particular, has been very kind and loving and will repeat himself. What he doesn't like is when he tells me about an event or a conversation that has happened in the past and I try to argue with him that it never happened. That's awesome. Here's a pro tip: if you are going to argue with someone with no memory, bring hard evidence to back up your claim. Once he can verifiably prove that it did in fact happen (pictures, text messages, or third party verification have all been used as evidence) I feel bad apologize. Living with me must be hard. Living with very little short-term memory is hard, but I'm adapting. It just takes time.

Irony

The irony of the concern people expressed at my last post was that I had to be healthy enough to write the post to begin with. While I was going through ECT, I was scared shitless that my brain was going to be permanently fried. When I was inpatient in the hospital, I didn't call anyone. I was too ashamed. Even if I had, who would have answered their phone? I don't blame anyone. I keep my phone on vibrate and even if I had left a message, there was no phone number to call me back. I was stuck in a place that purposefully isolates people from the stresses of the outside world. KGII tried to sneak in my check book so I could pay some bills and was stopped at the door. I can't really say how many bills didn't get paid while I was in the hospital. My Dad and KGII tried to cover most of them, but it's incredibly hard to cover the job of the primary bill payer, especially when most of the physical copies of the bills were sitting on my desk at work.


Like most depressed people, I'm in the stage where I'm isolating myself from others. I think about the reason I started this blog to begin with back in 2005. I wanted an easy way to update people on the progress and details of my pregnancy with Zac. In essence, I didn't want to have individual conversations with people where I relayed the same information. In so many ways, I'm still doing that. I'm hiding behind my writing because I want to avoid individual conversations that are too painful, too embarassing, and too uncomfortable (for both parties) to have. So I write and I publish.


There are reasons that most of my friends don't live in the same city that I do. Even the friends that live in the same place that I do, think about how long it has been since you've seen me. Even better, think how long it has been since we've talked on the phone and had an actual conversation that didn't involve text messages. I excel at isolating myself. Really, it's an art form. I realized a long time ago that if you don't reach out to people, they stop reaching out to you. Again, I don't blame people. I know that people that care about me would reach out to me if it occurred to them or if they had the time, but who has the time? Life is busy and complex. Sometimes it's just too much trouble to reach out to a friend in crisis and tell them that they matter; that you want to get together with them, even though they struggle to get out of bed.


When I don't hear from people, it's an easy mental step to say I don't matter. From there, the next step is that no one would miss me if I was gone. That's not to say that I'm actively suicidal right now. I'm not. My family, my parents, my children, and KGII keep me from harming myself. I've been in enough therapy to know how royally fucked up kids of sucidal parents are. Trust me, that's something kids never really recover from. Well there is that reason and although I'm an overachiever in many areas of my life, I'm exceptionally bad at hurting myself. Part of me wants to live. It's that part that keeps me from coming up with the right combination of drugs or physical pain to actually be successful at killing myself. Besides, do you have any idea how angry people get when you try and hurt yourself and fail? People take it as a personal afront to their friendship, to their place in your life. I know that if I were to die there would be beautiful eulogies to my life about how smart I was and how much I made people laugh. I know it would be considered a preventable tragedy and people would say that depression took another vibrant soul from this Earth. But sometimes depressed people need to hear that they would be missed. They need to hear that they matter. They need to know that their isolation won't be tolerated because their friends and family have reached out to them enough to spur them into overcoming their social anxiety or apathy. For now it's enough to know that people are reading my writing.


What I remember most from my ECT sessions was fear. Seven times I had to walk into an OR and feel the prick of an IV being started on the back of my hand. Seven times I felt the gel against my temples and the rubber band being strapped down against my head. I always struggled against the mask that would go over my mouth and nose, the one that would ultimately put me under, into sedation. I knew when I woke up I wouldn't know where I was. I could figure it out because some things are obvious. My thought pattern usually went something like: "I have an IV and I'm in a hospital bed. There is a nurse offering me apple juice. I must be in a hospital. I want my Dad. Where is my Dad? Oh, there he is. He's telling me that I'm ok and he loves me. I can move my arms and legs, I must be ok. Why can't I remember anything? Why don't I know what year it is or what hospital I'm in? They are telling me I can get dressed and go home now. I don't remember where I live. I have to be driven everywhere. Why am I doing this?"


How could I describe that to people? Is it any wonder that I hid, that I continue to hide? I'm only talking about it now because the memories of being in the OR come to me when I'm not expecting them. I'm talking about it because it's hard to be in a constant state of 20 questions in my head. Like, "I know I've talked to this person before, but I can't remember what they said or what I said. Maybe if I ask enough general questions I'll remember something. I know their name is familiar to me. Did I take notes of our last conversation? Please tell me I took some notes. No, fuck it, I'll tell them I have problems with my short term memory and maybe they will repeat themselves. Oh, I've already told them that the last time I couldn't remember what we talked about and now they are looking at me like I'm crazy. Awesome. Guess I should take notes this time."

PPD

I didn't write a whole lot about my post partum depression with Zac because my family was so worried about his family, or more specifically, Zac's FOB finding out about it and using it against me. I was largely undiagnosed with Zac and my post partum depression (PPD) took the shape of destroying my sense of self. I was convinced that Zac was better off without me and did everything in my power to destroy myself physically so he could be raised by someone else. The crime of this is that it lasted for years. Literally, I think my last episode of self-harm was when Zac was four years-old. Between his birth and then, I was in and out of hospitals, in patient, partial patient, and out patient. What finally broke the cycle for me was dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) going once a week for group therapy and once a week for individual therapy. I was lucky because my therapist's office was close to where I worked so I could go at lunch (although my co-workers, who didn't know where I was going, were more than happy to mention to my boss when I took longer than a 60 minute lunch break).

Everything was hidden and shameful. I once wrote a post about the amount of medication I was on in terms of sheer pill bottles and my Dad asked me to take it down. I embarrassed them. They loved, and continue to love, their grandson fiercely, and were completely at a loss at how to deal with their daughter who was entrusted to care for him, yet hell bent on hurting herself at every juncture. They were never fully confident that I could be left alone with him and for two years I lived with them off-and-on, when living with myself with a newborn/toddler was too much for me to handle.

Then things started to settle down. I got my current job which eliminated my hour commute each way, Zac and I lived in a two bedroom apartment, he enrolled in Kindergarten, and eventually I got the house I'm living in now. KGII was in and out of the picture as we dated and remained friends, then more than friends, then friends again. I got pregnant and convinced myself it was the second baby I had always wanted. Sure, the pregnancy caught me completely off-guard. I wasn't using birth control, but who ovulates a week late? It was such a rhythm method fail as to be laughable. Even though KGII might have made a different decision, I wanted to raise the baby and grow him in my body. What a decision that was. At every turn, growing Ben inside me took a toll on my body and my mind. I had to leave work at almost 5 months pregnant and spent seven months out of work. I threw up almost every day and dealt with borderline gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and countless trips to the hospital. The only bright spot of my pregnancy was that I was able to complete almost seven weeks of IOP at my therapist's office, where I went to group therapy from 9am - 2pm every day and got to be reminded of the principles of DBT and my self worth.

Then Ben came in a rush of blood and terror. He spent 20 days in the NICU and I kept waiting for the PPD to hit me. Three months turned into six months and I kept waiting for the post partum freight train to run me over. Finally, even though I had been seeing it in the distance for almost nine months, I was powerless to stop it, or even slow down it's momentum. I want to write about my PPD because I don't think I'm alone. This time KGII has been right by my side and even my clients (which I've always been worried about finding this blog and who I refuse to friend on Facebook) know that I've being dealing with post partum depression. I'm owning it in a way that I never did with Zac.

The tipping point was KGII applying for a job with my company. There was a referral bonus of $1000, so I referred him and the recruiter called in a matter of hours to set up an appointment for him to interview for the position. The job would have literally doubled our household salary. He says the interview didn't go well and the next day I was in patient in the hospital. The pressure of financially maintaining a family of four came crashing down on me. I push myself incredibly hard at work and felt like (although KGII would disagree) that I was doing a disproportionate amount of household chores and it all felt like much too much.

I went and saw my prenatal psychiatrist and she recommended electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), which was done in-patient at a world-renowned hospital a block away from her office. She said, "At least this way you won't have to fake every second of every day". So I went and admitted myself. I had forgotten how horrible in patient is. How they take all of your belongings and catalogue them, deciding what it is "safe" for you to keep and what isn't. I had forgotten how literally crazy your roommate could be and how she could wake up screaming every two hours. I had forgotten what it's like when bipolar folks go maniac and fly into a rage. What I was most struck by in the few group therapy sessions that I went to (they made me too anxious) was how all of the people seemed to be in the beginning of their therapy/recovery journey. I'm practically a guru of psychological teaching, even though I struggle to implement it in my life.

The hospital made me watch a video on ECT and my first clue that something was amiss should have been that everyone in the video was over the age of 75. They were happy and clueless. Just some very happy old people. ECT is done when medication is either ineffective or when a person's body can't tolerate the side effects of medication. In my case, ECT was considered viable to get me off of the large doses of psychiatric medication that I was on which was causing secondary side effects and, actually, PPD is the number one indicator of ECT in women my age. It is most common with the elderly and with women who need to return to their responsibilities quickly.

Sylvia Plath documented her experience with ECT in "The Bell Jar". Ms. Plath is one of my alma mater's more notable alumna and her book is one of the definitive works on depression in the 1950s. When she did ECT, she was awake, biting down on rubber to not swallow her tongue, and she tasted copper. Now, it's considered more humane to put someone under sedation to administer ECT, although not much beyond that has changed. Memory loss was listed as a possible side effect and I was taken off almost all of my medication (early psychiatric medication was actually early anti-seizure medication and to perform ECT, you need to be off all anti-seizure medication). I had four sessions of ECT in-patient and then I was discharged from the hospital and had three more sessions. The first four sessions were done bilaterally, which means I had electrodes on both sides of my brain. My memory loss was so severe and my confusion was so profound when I woke up that they downgraded me to right unilateral treatment, which at least allowed me to know that I was in a hospital when I woke up.

It was traumatic and I still find myself thinking about it. I have the memories of going into a OR, getting an IV started, feeling electrodes strapped to my head with a rubber band, going under sedation, and waking up and not knowing where I was seven times. Think about how many times that is. Seven. I remember almost nothing for the little over two weeks when I was having the procedure done. I'm on the more extreme scale of memory loss. I might have partially contributed to it because I was on very small doses of anti-anxiety medication (because having your memories erased and living in a state of confusion causes a lot of fucking anxiety) and that might have contributed to the memory loss, although that was never explained to me. I basically can't remember from August - early November. If you tell me something happened or I said something, there is a chance I'll remember it, but it's not guaranteed. The big question people ask is will your memory come back. Basically, it's unknown right now. What I do know is that my memory is not as good as it was even before the procedures. The most embarrassing thing that happens is when I tell someone I have problems with my short term memory and then get stuck somewhere in a conversation and I'll forget that I told them about my problems, so I tell them again that I have problems with my short term memory. They look at me strangely and reply, "Yeah...I know. You told me". It's incredibly embarrassing professionally, but my friends have been more forgiving personally. My main psychiatrist said that my immediate memory problems should resolve themselves within the next six weeks, provided I stay mentally active. Whether or not I will ever recover the memories from those four months is anyone's guess.

As for Ben and I, it's a struggle. Part of what is so hard is that he's been constantly sick for the past month with double ear infections so he cries all the time. He looks at me and starts crying. He also looks at the cats and starts crying, so I try not to take it personally. He is very, very attached to KGII. He's also one of the most opinionated babies I've ever encountered. Very little happens to that baby without his complete approval or noisily voiced, rowdy disapproval. Whereas with Zac I thought he was better off without me, with Ben, I feel like I'm better off without him. Here is where the judgment comes in, hard and heavy, both from myself and from other people. I cringe when Ben pulls my hair or pulls my lips and explores my face. I want to walk out of the room when he starts crying and have to force myself to attend to his needs if KGII or my parents aren't home. He's largely indifferent to me and I'm ok with that. It's when he is on a mission to attack my Iphone or grab handfuls of pumpkin pie off my plate that I struggle most with him. I took him and me to the doctor yesterday and we are both ragingly sick. At one point, I couldn't handle him crying anymore (he screamed throughout an entire 15 minute breathing treatment) that I just started crying. KGII doesn't understand and I've been begging him to talk to his therapist about it. I know there are times I shouldn't be left alone with Ben, but I don't know how to make a partner take that seriously, other than continue to repeat it over and over. I love both of my sons, but this is very hard.

Me: At Almost 12 weeks

I'm not really sure where the last six weeks have gone. It's just a blurry haze of feeding, pumping, diapering, and trying to figure out a night schedule that allows both KGII and I to get enough sleep. Ben is doing swimmingly and he has a post coming soon about his progress at 12 weeks.

I can tell you what I haven't done in the past 12 weeks and that is take care of myself. Right around 7 weeks post partum, I went out with a group of friends and broke my rib after falling after a stage. I wish I could say that I was performing - either singing or guitar - when I fell 4ft backwards onto concrete, but I wasn't. Turns out that 10 months of sobriety leads to a very low alcohol tolerance and I was up on a platform with no guide rails and fell. The rib actually broke when another woman landed on top of me. Rib fractures are incredibly painful and here in week 11, it is still tender when I lay either face down or face up on hard-ish surfaces (like a doctor's or chiropractor's office). Picking up and putting down a 10-13lb baby has been difficult to say the least. Then you add in carrying a baby in a hugely heavy car seat or pushing a stroller and things are just downright painful. I had one ambitious trainer at my gym call me to set up times for my last three training sessions, but I had to cancel each time because I was still in pain. Finally, it's starting to get better.

Up through 10 weeks, I hadn't lost a single pound during this post partum period. This is me in all my fat glory at Easter, with two very unhappy children.

It looks like Ben is trying to crawl up Zac's arm and Zac kept saying he couldn't see anything because it was too bright out (but how freaking cute does he look in that button down? Ben is also in a button down as well). We are just going to label this picture "Before" on the weight loss spectrum. Here's a gratuitous picture of my boys from that day, after the Easter egg hunt, just because.

Here is a slightly better picture of us. Note the artful cropping to get rid of my arm fat a finger in the top left hand corner.

 

 

At least Zac is smiling, even if he's still squinting, and I look like a terrible mother for not supporting Ben's neck.

 

I had 5.5 ccs put back in my lap band yesterday and immediately it felt like I was swallowing my tongue. I posted on facebook that getting my band filled was roughly equated with being pregnant, a sensation that I hadn't in fact missed. With 6.5 ccs in my band, I feel like I can throw up at a moment's notice and have puked almost every time I've tried to eat something other than soup or jello. So, for now at least, I'm on a soft food/liquid diet. According to the scale, in the past week I've lost six pounds.

 

As for me, emotionally, I have good days and bad days. The intense feelings of inadequacy and failure that I had when Zac was born are only fleeting with Ben, but still present sometimes. I feel like he would be better off with anyone other than me, but then he smiles and I realize that I have it all wrong. The most frustrating part about being post partum with a history of depression is how people respond to me. One of the least helpful responses I've heard was, "Well, what did you expect?" when I feel down. I expect you to be a decent human being and I expect you to understand that no one could have predicted how I would feel during a hormonal top spin. What's been the hardest is that I can't take some medication while I'm pumping and breast feeding. Ben and I have never fully committed to learning how to breast feed, so I mostly pump and then feed him in a bottle. I'm not even sure how long that is going to last because my supply is rapidly diminishing, which makes me sad sometimes. Other times, I'm ready to end my relationship with my pump. Another pumping mother said there should be a medal for every woman who has had her nipples sucked through a funnel.

 

All and all, I'm ok. Going back to work Monday, May 6th for the first time since November 2, 2012. I've been having a lot of anxiety dreams about work and in general and my anxiety has definitely increased on a day-to-day basis, but right now I feel strangely calm. I completed a FINRA mandated continuing education course today, which has helped me feel more on top of things. It was also a good refresher on what I need to do to act in my client's best interest every day. When I was in intensive therapy while pregnant, my therapist said something that resonated with me. She said, "The best thing you can do every day is just keep doing the next best thing. Don't think about where you've been or where you are going. Just focus on doing the right thing every place you have a chance, as it comes to you." I thought about my current and future clients a lot with this in mind.

 

I feel like I'm at the start of a new beginning, as scary and unpredictable as that can be.

Me: At Six Weeks

Six weeks ago on Saturday, I gave birth through emergency C-section to Ben. I've composed so many blog posts in my head since that date, but I haven't managed to A: Find my freaking laptop since Zac uses it and moves it on a daily basis, B: Find the energy to compose sentences, C: Somehow process all the emotions that I've been feeling.

Here is what I do know: This is hard. No one goes into raising a newborn thinking it's going to be easy, but sometimes it's harder than others. Zac only spent three days in the NICU and I was allowed to visit him and nurse him as frequently as I could manage after my first C-section. Breast feeding wasn't easy for us, but it got easier once I visited a lactation consultant and got my first breast pump so I could handle engorgement. With Ben (and I know I shouldn't compare my experiences between my children. We're all unique snowflakes and every child is different. I know that...but still) I wasn't allowed to nurse him during his 18 day stay in NICU because of the medications I'm on. I pumped up to six times a day and stored all my expressed breast milk in my freezer. After 2+ weeks, I was beginning to think that I needed another freezer. When Ben came home, I couldn't get him back on the breast, even when I used the magic nipple shield that I had used with Zac. He screamed and arched his back when I tried to hold him close without a bottle. Then, I just got lazy about pumping. Pumping six times a day, or even four times (or hell, two times) while being the primary care giver of a newborn is difficult, unless you're willing to wake up in the middle of the night and pump. My supply started dropping off noticeably. My breasts weren't causing me pain anymore when I woke up and that seemed like a good development, until it wasn't.

I was unfortunately neglecting more than just my milk producing appendages. I think I was just in complete denial about my high blood pressure and diabetes. "Everyone says gestational diabetes will resolve itself once the baby is born. Besides, I lost my blood sugar testing supplies so I can't even see what my blood sugar levels are. I'm fine," I reasoned with myself. "I don't need to monitor my blood pressure every day. I'm fine." Again, this line of reasoning works until it doesn't.

I went to the eye doctor because I was getting persistent headaches again. I can pretty much tell when my headaches are vision related because pain relievers don't affect them in anyway. The only thing that works is to take out my contacts and lay down. So I went to the eye doctor and the first thing they did was take my blood pressure. It was 155/98. Not quite in stroke territory, but very high. So high that the sweet technician who was testing me said, "Ms. B, do you have any blood pressure medication on you currently that you could take?" I said no. I carry a lot in my purse/diaper bag combo, but I didn't have that. Then the eye doctor told me that my vision had changed again, in the wrong direction. Basically, the higher my blood sugars go, the less near sighted I am. At this rate, I won't even need glasses or contacts in a couple of years. It's like home lasic surgery. It turns out that there is a major glasses retailer that has a 90 day guarantee on their lenses and frames and I can change my prescription as many times within that time frame as I need and they will make new lenses for me. So, since my fourth month of pregnancy, I was able to buy some glasses. Here's what they look like:

That's Ben rooting on my neck and pulling down my shirt.

I had to go see a primary care physician about my blood pressure and diabetes. I had to do another fasting test (Yay! Not) so she could test everything from my hemoglobin level to my thyroid and cholesterol. Everything but my cholesterol was normal, which is incredibly frustrating. Now I have two doctors contracting themselves - again. This was the story of my entire pregnancy. Big baby and rapid vision change - diabetes. Three hour diabetes test from hell - negative.

It's also just very frustrating how fat I still am. I've lost exactly 10lbs since Ben's birth, even though I'm pumping and breast feeding. I gained a lot of weight during my pregnancy and I wasn't small to begin with. Here's me, probably only four or five months pregnant.

Jump forward to blurry 30 weeks:

 And an even blurry 32 week photo (and you would think that I don't live with a photographer given the amount of cell phone photos I take of myself in the mirror):

Although I get it that it's hard to see my actual body over the enormous belly I'm sporting. The best part of being post partum is that occasionally people ask me when the baby's due. Ha! Good times! I'm like, "Yeah, I already had the baby, but thanks for asking!

I started incorporating fruits and vegetables into my life because I was concerned about the health of all of the members of my family (and I didn't want to be embarrassed when I saw the Nutritionist about the diabetes I don't seem to have). It hasn't helped much, except I'm much more regular, so there's that. I pretty much hate my body and my self esteem is in the gutter. First person that says, "It took nine months to gain the weight and it takes nine months to lose the face," with get punched in the throat.

Here's me, with Ben 5 days after his birth, in the same shirt:

I look like I haven't slept in a couple of weeks, which I probably hadn't at that point. But look how small Ben is! With his eyes open for once in the hospital! Wearing a onesie! It was all very exciting at the time. I'll try to get a Ben: At Six Weeks post up soon.

Boobs: Part Deux

If I sound like I'm talking about my boobs a lot, it's because I am. I have a couple of different posts in the draft folder, but boobs it is today.

My breast milk was quite a cluster when Ben was in the NICU. The lactation consultant came to visit me and reviewed all the medication that I was taking that she was "concerned" could be transferred to the baby. When I told her that I was under the care of two psychiatrists and I was on all the medications that she was concerned about during my entire pregnancy, she looked fairly horrified. According to the Maternal Fetal Shrink, babies actually receive less of a medication through breast milk than they did through the placenta. None of that made any difference. The lactation consultant left the breast pump in my room and walked out with false promises of "looking into my situation"

Then the world's greasiest psychiatrist that's on staff at the hospital that I delivered at came into my room to "check into my situation". He asked for the name and number of my Maternal Fetal Psychiatrist to see if she would approve me giving breast milk to Ben. Then it came down to, "Well, B is no longer a patient at my crappy local hospital so I can't give the NICU any medical direction. Perhaps you can write a letter and fax it into the NICU." When I went to see her one week post partum, she said she would write the letter once Ben no longer had jaundice, because his liver wasn't metabolizing fast enough. Finally, we just came to the conclusion that I would nurse when he came home from the NICU.

Fast forward to Monday, when Ben was released from Baby Boot Camp. I started giving him my breast milk and trying to get him to latch on. What felt like an eternity, but was actually only two days, Ben latched on and will do so on a regular basis if I give him pep talks during nursing sessions. He's also quite partial to warm milk and will outwardly reject room temperature breast milk yet seems to gobble up the room temperature formula bottles that the hospital gave us.

Yesterday, Ben didn't poop all day and his stomach was rock hard. He was constipated, in a big way. I didn't really know what to do because I never encountered it with Zac. Like a Mom with a guilt complex and an issue processing shame, I blamed my milk (I almost wrote, "myself" because it's hard to separate myself from my milk, but I'm working on it). I didn't know if it was something I ate on the day the milk was pumped (since I've been pumping and freezing for two weeks) or something directly coming from me. All I knew was that I felt like I deserved the blame for making my child miserable, tired, and cranky.

Of course, that's just not true. Rationally, I know that. Emotionally it's a different story. I have a firm belief that parents should do whatever works for them, regardless of what parenting books, strangers, or "helpful" family members say. The basic tenet of this philosophy is don't do whatever makes you crazy - do whatever keeps you sane. If pumping and bottle feeding works for you, do that. If attachment parenting works for you, by all means, wear your kid proudly and invest in a "Snuggle Nest". You get the picture. This is a long way of saying, I'm just trying to make things work around here. Breast milk, formula, whatever makes the kid poop, I'm happy.

As for Ben, we had one of his self-proclaimed Auntie's come over last night to babysit so KGII and I could attend Zac's musical debut in the 2nd grade musical (Zac was smashing...and very dramatic, which leaves me using adjectives like "smashing"). Ben shat three times in his Aunt's arms and then slept for two hours. We came back to a sleepy, clean baby. I told his Aunt that next time Ben was constipated, that we'd be calling her first. She did this magic belly rub and all his poop came out. I was tempted to ask her to rub my belly, but I wasn't sure she would go for it.

Such a shame, though. My belly doesn't still have the umbilical cord on it.

Snuggle Nest

Remember when I wrote about sharing a family bed with Zac? Well that problem just cleared itself up when one day my baby bird left the nest and decided it was more fun to sleep in his room and listen to books on CD in the dark. That left the nest open for hoarding invaders. KGII was sleeping in my nursery on a blow-up bed until his complaints about his back got too loud for me to drown out with the clacking of my laptop computer. I also had a very, very urgent need to nest and experience the joy of my pregnancy, which involved evicting him from the room dedicated to all things baby. Eventually in regards to the bed, KGII and I came to a "don't touch me and you can sleep on half of the bed" kind of detente. As my pregnancy progressed, we got to, "Ok, you can spoon me and feel the baby move, then move back over to your side, and make sure your foot doesn't touch me." It's a small understatement to say I don't like to be touched while I'm sleeping. With Zac, I erected a pillow fort to separate our sides of the bed. It helps that I have a king size bed the size of Arizona and Zac really likes to sleep on pillows perpendicular to the head board.

So, I had a rude awakening to co-parenting. I wanted this post to be up on my blog before I write my next post so when I say things with KGII are "complicated" it sounds like something more serious than a vague Facebook status.

Ben has been in the NICU for 15 days, with Monday being Day 16. In one of the early days, when I was still in a lot of pain from the emergency C-section and had only recently relearned the skill of standing on my own, KGII had a rush of male hormones while holding our child. Since this is my first go-around with a male partner (or any partner, of any sex), I didn't know that bonding could be such a physical experience for someone who didn't gestate a child. He felt a surge of pride, joy, and the feeling that our child was the most gorgeous human being that has ever graced this planet. He said he was having chest pains because he was so happy. I just kind of pitched my head to the side, squinted my eyes, and said, "Huh. That's good. Yes, he is very beautiful. You realize you're acting crazy, right?"

For some reason or another, we ended up at Babies R Us immediately following the hospital. It was like taking a hemophiliac to a blood bank. He was putty in the baby industry's hands and wanted to show his love for Ben with his wallet, which I can appreciate. I've been feeling like for at least four months. He had seen this product at another baby store and decided he needed and yearned for a snuggle nest. The snuggle nest is best explained via photograph.

This has been in a box for 12 days now, only making an appearance tonight since Ben has a glancing chance of being discharged from NICU tomorrow. Tonight is "practice". If that looks like a rush basket that Moses floated down the river in, you would be correct, except this one is plastic and covered with fabric and light padding. It also cost $60 and can only be used from 0-4 months. It has a light and musically sounds, including a beating heart beat, which is a little creepy for a product that hangs out in an adult bed. The snuggle nest also comes with its own requirements of co-parents: we are never allowed to let adult bedding touch it or cover it and each adult has to commit to only sleeping with one pillow and, I assume, not pushing the pillow up to sleep on your stomach with your head smashed against the flat sheet.

Now let's just take a step back. I'm not speaking for all of femininity here, but I'm guessing that there is no way in Hell most second time Moms would pay $60 bucks for something you can only use for 4 months. Plus, I'm not sure how I got talked into having my child that close to my head (I'm the white pillow). KGII thought it would be all snuggly and close and so! super! convenient! for me to breast feed. I think I was just excited that he was excited because I let him buy it. If you're thinking, "If he's so excited by it, he should buy a bed and then he can share half of it with an overpriced baby-holding basket" and then we'd be thinking the same thing. We're working on converting a formal living room to a bed room and it's slow going, what with me making KGII stop every 40 minutes and download Netflix and show me how to use the Wii. He also sometimes gets called into service and construct Legos with Zac and bring me water. We also go to the hospital 2-3 times a day and there are just projects that get shunted to the side when a kid comes six weeks early.

On the upside, there is no way I can get an errant elbow to the face with this thing in between us. On the downside, Ben snores...and hiccups...and sighs...and I'm not sure how I'm ever going to sleep again.

Hold me. On better thought, just stay on your side of Arizona/New Mexico border and I'll hang out near Nevada and maybe one day we can road trip to California. They clearly don't make beds big enough for this kind of situation.

The Wall

If at the end of this post, you want to bitch slap me, I'd be ok with that. I just want to put that out there at the beginning. I understand that babies die and women die in childbirth and people who are born with no legs and no arms go on to become motivational speakers. I acknowledge that I'm not made of the same kind of mettle as these people. I'm grateful that my child and I made it through an emergency situation with all body parts as intact as they can be after major abdominal surgery. My baby is alive and getting better, even when he takes two steps forward and one step backwards.

Right now, I'm sitting on the couch wondering how I'm going to feed myself if KGII doesn't come home from work soon. I'm too tired to contemplate going to the fridge and actually preparing food for myself. It's not like I'm running extreme marathons in my spare time or, I don't know, going to work every day. No, none of that is going on. Here is what is going on:

I usually wake up twice a night to pump. Right around 1am and 4am. I'm told that I can carry on legitimate conversations at these times of which I'll have no recollection I don't wake up to martyr myself on the alter of breastfeeding. I wake up because my boobs make me. They're hard to ignore, even when I sleep on my side. I've also been waking up multiple times a night for the last seven months. Even extreme fatigue can't seem to shake that habit.

I get up for good around 5:30am and do the dishes or if I'm feeling really ambitious or particularly sad, I'll try and make Ben's 5am feeding at the hospital. I have to be home by 6:40am to wake Zac up and force his reluctant seven year-old ass to get ready to go to school. I literally kick him out the door to catch the bus by 7:20am. Sometimes I'll go to Ben's 8am feeding because he's been inadvertently admitted to Baby Boot Camp where they feed kids every 3 hours, regardless of preference, hunger, or consciousness. I try to find something to do outside the house until his 11am feeding. Then I run errands. Yesterday I tried to take a nap from 2-3:30pm, but I ended up having crazy hallucinations, except my eyes were closed and I wasn't asleep. Is there even a word for that? Twilight nightmares? Awake terrors? Someone should really come up with a word for that. Let's just blame our good friend Vicadin for that.

It's 7pm and I'm wondering if it's too early to go to bed, except Zac doesn't go to sleep until 8:30pm and I haven't eaten dinner. I'm apparently still anemic from the blood loss at Ben's birth, even though I take prenatal vitamins and iron supplements. I've lost 20lbs, but I still look like I'm 3-4 months pregnant and well-meaning people (Bless their heart!) keep asking me when the baby is due. Then I cry. Repeat 2-3 times a day.

This is what a wall feels like. I was wondering what parenting a new born would be like. I never expected that I would be parenting from the NICU. Now I know. It feels just like ramming your head, repeatedly, into a wall and waiting for someone to come pick you up and feed you. Day 11 -  you can suck my ass.

Day 10 (Boobs)

In honor of this post, I thought I'd write about my boobs, since my world seems to revolve around them. I have a lot to write about with my recovery and Ben being in the NICU for ten days and counting, but I have to honor my reality that some things are still too painful to write/talk about and Zac doesn't need to have Mama hunched over a laptop computer sobbing...again...ok three times this week. Let's just say that my coping skills are being stressed in ways that I couldn't imagine before Ben's birth.

But my boobs...man, boobs. It's fun to write, but not fun to live with. I was worried my milk wouldn't come in because Ben came early in an emergency situation, but bodies are smart. A lot smarter than we give them credit for. With Zac, my milk came in on Day 3 while sitting in a chair waiting for pain medication at CVS. With Ben, my milk came in on Day 4, while leaving Red Lobster. It's funny that I can know the exact moment my boobs go from aesthetic to utilitarian. It's also incredibly painful to have your boobs suddenly fill up with milk and swell to a size that you didn't think was humanly possible.

I've been having a huge problem with engorgement over the past six days. My breasts get so rock hard and painful that I can barely move. Since I didn't end up at the hospital where I had all my prenatal care, my Maternal and Fetal Psychiatrist doesn't have privileges at the regional hospital where I delivered and where Ben is staying. The NICU has decided that the medications I'm on (and was on my entire pregnancy) are being transmitted through my breast milk and are too dangerous for Ben. So, I've been pumping and freezing my milk. And I pump. And pump. And I take hot showers and drip onto the bath mat and put cold cabbage leaves in my bra until I start to smell and then I pump some more. I can't even tell you how much milk I have in my freezer. Enough to run a small infant daycare center.

Pumping with no baby in sight is a soulless enterprise though. I've been doing it for ten days now (I started in the hospital). I try looking at pictures of Ben while I'm doing it and I even bought a hands free pumping bra so I can read or check Facebook, but I still know that I'm hooking myself up to a small machine that pumps milk out of my breasts. My breasts are so sensitive now that I can track time by them. I know when it's been two, three, or four hours since my last pump. It's just hard. Pumping with Zac was always something I did at work to continue him on breast milk while he was at daycare. Right now, I just feel like I'm biding time until I can get Ben home and I pray that he'll go back on the breast after weeks on a small Similac bottle.

I went to the ER on Sunday when my blood pressure spiked and I had a head ache. I was there for close to five hours with an IV that didn't work (that's another story) but by the time I got home, it had been 12 hours since I had pumped. When the nurses and doctors asked me about my pain level, I had to ask them which pain they were referring to: my head? my uterus? my incision? or my breasts?  KGII drove me home at 1am and I just wanted to go to bed, but I knew my breasts would be so full and hard that I wouldn't be able to go to sleep. I started to cry on the short ride home and told him that I didn't know if I was strong enough to pump long enough to wait for Ben's release from the hospital. I don't think he realized what he was saying (and I'm not always trying to paint him in a bad light on this blog) but he told me that I had to continue pumping so I would be ready when Ben came home. I realized at that moment that he and I had never had a conversation about breast feeding vs formula feeding. It was always assumed that I would breast feed because I was lucky enough to do it for eight months with Zac. This just feels so much harder, emotionally and physically. I was ready to give up that night. KGII got all my pump parts assembled and helped to my chair and I pumped, while crying. I wake up in the middle of the night needing to pump. It's the last thing I do at night and the first thing I do in the morning and I'm tired. I just want to sleep and my boobs won't let me.

It feels like pregnancy and motherhood is a process of acknowledging that my body has to come before my mind, at least for a while. You can't rationalize with huge boobs. You can't make a pump any more friendly. A uterus does what it wants to when it's carrying a child. So much is out of my control and some days it's easier than others to accept that.

Benjamin Jon - Part 2

...the on-call Ob Gyn agreed with the nurse's assessment that I needed an emergency C section, especially after she found out that I had C section with Zac. They had put an oxygen mask on me and started asking me 15,000 questions, which were difficult to answer through the mask and while contracting. KGII and my Mom pitched in where they could. At one point, when a nurse was using an electric razor to shave me and I was staring up into the lights I thought, "This is it. This is the worst case scenario that I've been fearing." I felt naked, exposed, and very vulnerable. I was in a lot of pain and could feel the blood continue coming out.

Within 45 minutes, they had rolled me back into the operating room. Getting my epidural was unbelievably painful, which is probably why they don't let partners in the room for that. I actually cried and I kept apologizing to the nurse that was holding me upright because I thought I was bleeding on her (I wasn't). The doctor told me later that she was so concerned about the situation that she went into surgery before the labs had come back on my blood. Basically, she went in blind. The epidural didn't take immediately. She tried to make a tentative cut but I started screaming. I was very scared about feeling the surgery after the horrible experience I had with Zac's surgery. The doctor said we needed to go immediately and get the baby out, so she called for general anesthesia. One nurse started attacking my throat, which was really scary, while they put something in my IV to knock me out. Apparently she was keeping me from aspirating because I had eaten at 5am and the surgery was at 7am.

By 7:26am, Benjamin Jon was in the world. The doctor told me later that my placenta had uprupted possibly up to 50% and by driving to Clear Lake ER rather than the hospital in Houston, I had probably saved Ben's life. KGII wasn't allowed in the OR because I was under general, but he saw the NICU team cleaning him up and snapped the first pictures of Ben's life. Ben still had blood in his mouth when KGII saw him

I woke up around 8am to KGII rubbing my arm, no longer dressed in scrubs, and my Mom in the room. My Dad came later with Zac to see me. I was back in the triage room in Labor and Delivery and my legs were completely numb. I couldn't move them at all and they tingled. That epidural finally kicked in. They put the massaging cuffs on my legs which alternated and helped quite a bit. Within two hours, I was able to barely move a little and the longer time went on the more mobility I got back. I was taken to an ante partum room where, yes, even though you would think that I was done bleeding, more blood was coming out (this time it was supposed to happen) and my incision was weeping. I had a hard time managing my pain that first day. It just felt like my epidural pump wasn't working so I had to wait for IV pain meds once every six hours and morphine, when all of my planets were aligned and the nurse felt like it.


My pain became more manageable as each day passed. I had two friends come and visit me on Day 3 after surgery and they were really surprised at how mobile I was, since I was out of bed. I think C sections are easier the second time around. Certainly not "easy" by any means and I don't want to downplay the fact that they are major abdominal surgery, but I'm recovering faster than I did 7.5 years ago.

Later on the first day, I was able to go and see Ben for the first time at his 8pm feeding. They were only giving him 10ccs of formula, but I got to give it to him.

This picture shows how small he actually is. He has an IV in his right arm and the board to immobilize his arm so he doesn't pull it out. For the first couple of days, his feet and hands were turning blue unless he was under the warmer. He has jaundice and what started out as one light has morphed into a three light showing tanning bed extravaganza. You can see his bed from two rows away because he glows. Right now, we can only hold him for 30 minutes every 12 hours, which is hard. My Mom and Dad can go in alone without KGII or me because we signed a Grandparents waiver. My Mom, on her 62nd birthday today (Happy Birthday, Mom!) went after work and they made a special exception and let her hold him for 10 minutes and change his diaper. She was so happy.

That's where we are. They had to put in a feeding tube in his nose because he was breathing too fast to drink from a bottle. They extended his antibiotics for a full seven days (he's on Day 4 now) to try and slow down his breathing. Like I said, they have three lights on him for jaundice. Otherwise, he seems like a healthy baby boy that needs to come home and be with KGII and me. Zac hasn't got to see him, other than in pictures, and he really wants to show how excited he is to have a little brother.

Here he is in he hospital with his "I'm a Big Brother" sticker on his shirt, sitting next to my Dad. Zac has offered to read books to Ben that we can record and play for him while he's in the hospital. I just went with my Dad to pick up Zac from school and then set up an art project for him while I cleaned and pumped. My Dad said that was the most activity he's seen from me in months and it's true, I am feeling better. I haven't puked since Ben came out and I've only taken Zofran two or three times.

I have new respect for NICU Moms and I desperately want my family, my whole family, to be under one roof. Now I just need to wait until Ben is healthy enough to come be with us.

Benjamin Jon - Part 1

Name: Benjamin Jon

Birth date: 2/9/13

Time: 7:26am

Weight: 6lb 13.5oz

Length: 17 inches

Gestational Age: 34w 3d

I realize that you don't chronicle a pregnancy for 34 weeks, take a break for a couple of weeks, then show back up with newborn pictures and say, "Surprise! Look at how cute my baby is!!" There is usually a step in the middle where the woman details out her birth story. I struggled with how much to write because there are parts of this story that are just graphic and if this week has taught me anything it's how messy labor, delivery, and post partum really are. So, consider this your warning. This story is not one of the pretty, cute stories that you see on TV. It's also written in two parts because of how long it is.

It all started with an ear ache. On Friday, February 1st I went in for my second gestational diabetes test. It's the one that takes three hours and usually ends with my puking. It was awful. I was miserable and felt really sick. To make matters worse, I was convinced that I had an ear infection or an abscess tooth. So after my test I went to see the dentist. There are things pregnancy books don't tell you about dentistry. Like that you need a permission slip from your Ob Gyn to actually be seen by a dentist. I procured one of those and then waited for an hour and a half in the dentist's office to be seen. The dentist poked hard on my back teeth, then on my front teeth, then had me open and shut my mouth and pronounced that I had pregnancy-induced TMJ (Note: I don't really). After securing another OK from my Ob Gyn, she prescribed anti inflammatory steroids and codeine. I got about three days into the steroid regime and my ear still hurt and I was feeling more and more sick. On Tuesday, February 5th. I stopped at what I thought was an urgent care facility (it was really a freestanding ER, but no one without access to my checking account would know that) so they could look at my ear. They thought I was ridiculous but since I had paid the ridiculous amount of money they asked, they humored me and looked in my ear. No infection. They thought maybe I had a sinus infection (because really, I wasn't leaving there without antibiotics) and prescribed a round of antibiotics for my sinuses.

By Wednesday, February 6th, I was just out and out sick. I couldn't drink enough water, I was going pee every 20 minutes, my glucose levels were high and I couldn't focus. All of my medically inclined friends said that I needed to go to the hospital for insulin because my blood sugar was too high. I had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, but was told to just monitor my levels at home and wasn't given any insulin. Unfortunately, I was so sick that I had been fasting for 9 hours, but nevertheless, KGII and I went to the hospital in Houston. They put a fetal monitor and contraction monitor on me and tested my blood sugar. It was 94 (Not high at all, but slightly elevated for a fasting condition). But the nurses noticed that I was contracting every four minutes like clockwork. Contracting so much that they wouldn't let me go home. I noticed that the contractions started to hurt and KGII and I had never gone to a labor class because we assumed I'd have a C section. I told him to hold my hand and talk to me and he started talking about the stock market. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. I told him to stop talking then and just watch the contraction monitor and tell me when it was over. They gave me three doses of an intradermal medication to try and stop the contractions. It didn't help. It did make my heart race however. Finally they put in an IV and gave me two bags of saline and my contractions went from every four minutes to every seven then finally every nine minutes. They checked my cervix twice and I was high and closed. They sent me home, exhausted after five hours of non productive contractions.

On Saturday, February 9th, I woke up at 4am. I just felt uncomfortable, but that wasn't unusual for me in my third trimester (or really my first or second). KGII had stayed up all night watching movies and was awake. I took a bath and read the first book of the Game of Thrones series. I went back to bed, trying to sleep, and ultimately deciding to read more. At 6am, I stood up to go to the bathroom and felt a pop and a gush of fluid. I thought I had peed myself and hurried to the bathroom, except when I went to wipe my legs, all I saw was blood. More and more blood kept pouring out of me. Now I didn't watch my water being broken with Zac, but I knew this was not just a bloody show. I thought maybe that my water had broken and there was blood in there, but something was wrong. Unfortunately, you can't sit on the toilet in my bathroom and scream to someone in the living room, so I tried to stand up, but every time I stood up, more came out. I ended wrapping a towel around me and screaming to KGII that we had to go the hospital immediately. He called the hospital in Houston and waited for the on-call doctor to call us back. They asked how much blood we saw and there was really no way to describe it other than, "A LOT" so they told us to go to the closest Emergency Room.

So there are bloody towels everywhere, blood on the floor, I'm looking around for pads, but I don't have any, KGII comes back from the nursery brandishing three newborn diapers and tells me to put them in my pants and I do because I didn't have any better ideas. We pack the car with more towels for me to sit on and we take off. KGII is running red lights and going extremely fast. I'm screaming, "I can't make the blood stop, It just keeps coming out" and he's telling me it's goingt to be ok and not to worry, while speeding up. I call my Mom because I'm scared. We get to an intersection and we see the arms of a train crossing coming down and (this part has been supplied to me because I don't remember anything other than screaming), I turned to KGII and screamed, "Turn on the service road before the road! We can outrun the train if we get ahead of it". Apparently, KGII took my advice and we ended up driving parallel to the train. At some point, we see a small crossing and he brakes. I yell at him to go, he pauses for a moment, and then floors the gas pedal. The train starts honking and all I can see is the train light and I don't think we're going to make it, but we do and we end up in the ER five minutes later, somewhere around 6:30am.

They brought out a stretcher for me and take me to Labor and Delivery on the third floor. I'm still gushing blood. The nurses start working on me immediately, but I've started contracting again, this time it's every 1-2 minutes and it's extremely painful. They take off my clothes and I remember one nurse turning to a head nurse asking if she was going to check my cervix to see how dialated I was and the nurse looked at my bloody mess and said, "No, no I won't be checking her. Call the doctor for an emergency C-section". My Mom comes in and holds my hands through the contractions while we wait for the on-call Ob Gyn.

To be continued...

34w 2d (Facts of Life)

Just another day. I threw up three times today and just ate some great fried rice and Chinese noodles. "You mix the good and the bad and you take them both and then you have The Facts of Life! The Facts of Life!"

What's been so surprising this week is how tired I am. It's like I got hit with the fatigue stick. I skipped therapy yesterday and slept from 8am - 2pm and then again from 3pm-7pm and finally 10pm-5am this morning. So I wasn't kidding in my last post when I said I'm sleeping more than one woman should. I'm grateful for this time that I have where I can honor my body and trust my instincts. I'm not Zen enough to not be annoyed when I'm awake from 2am - 5am, but I'm just so thankful that KGII and my parents are in my life and are willing to support me and help me with Zac.

Speaking of Zac, he is now officially sleeping in his own bed. This has less to do with my amazing parenting and more to do with KGII rolling up his blow up bed to make room in the nursery. KGII and I reorganized furniture a couple of weeks ago and took the giant desk that was taking up most of the space in his room. We put in a new bookcase and moved out his old dresser and put it in Baby Bean's room. We also moved the sofa that was in my room into the living room in preparation for the baby shower on February 16th. Hopefully I can handle a party at my house better than I can handle a party at someone else's house.

I spent Superbowl Sunday with my friend, J, at her new place in Houston. My all measures, it was a great party. Good food, a lot to drink, great people, fun games, and football. Except I spent the evening on the couch contracting constantly and not speaking to anyone. Occasionally, one of J's friends would look over at me and say, "Are you ok? How's it going?" and I could only answer, "Um. Not ok, but thanks for asking." Right after Beyonce's fierce half time show, I crawled upstairs and laid on J's bed until I felt up for the 40 minute drive home. That very well may be the last party I attend without an escort until Baby Ben's arrival. Honestly, it was ridiculous how physically uncomfortable I was, even though I really wanted to be social and get to know the people at the party.

Sigh. Five more weeks, if everything goes the way it's supposed to. My first non-stress test didn't go very well. Baby Bean wasn't "perky" enough for the technician's liking. That means that his heart rate wasn't accelerating with every kick like it was supposed to. She kept me on the fetal monitors for the full 40 minutes and had me drink two bottles of cold water and even used some medical equivalent of a vibrator on my uterus to "wake him up". Then I went in for the ultrasound and Bean wasn't moving at all. I think he was tired from all that kicking earlier and maybe think they should lower their expectations of what kind of gymnastics a giant baby in a small uterus is capable of doing. Reluctantly, they let me leave the Maternal Fetal Care Center and go see my regular Ob Gyn. I go in once a week for monitoring and my Ob Gyn said that if they don't like how the baby is performing that they'll keep me for longer monitoring.

Every Thursday is an adventure from here on out. Right in between naps that is.

33w 5d (Reasons)

Here is a (not-so) complete list why I don't update my blog more:

• I've become enamored with other people's blogs. With my pregnancy-induced ADD, coupled with a suspicious lack of ADD medication in my system, I can handle very few novels right now. Novels are usually my staple reading of choice, but now I love nothing more to zone out to blogs read on my phone. I should point out that I've steadfastly refused to adopt any kind of electronic device for reading novels, preferring the heady weight and smell of paper (until a notable encounter with an 850 page Tom Clancy hard back almost gave me carpals). I love that I carry my phone everywhere with me and there are my blogs. My favorite activity is to find a blog and read through every post in the archive, starting in reverse chronological order. The more entries the better. I'll post a blog list soon of blogs that I've read.

• It's frankly annoying to have every third blog post talking about depression/mental illness/ or vomit. I don't like it in the blogs I read, yet for this to be a factual account of my pregnancy, I would have to include sentences like, "I only vomitted twice today, but I took three doses of Zofran and fell asleep at 8pm". Considering that the pukefest started around Week 5, no one wants to read about puking at Week 33. (If you do, message me on facebook or send me an email and I'll hook you up).

• I beat the system. My HMO finally approved me for short term disability (oddly enough, for medical disability this time, instead of behavorial health). I'm sure it had something to do with the 49 pages of hospital records I sent them. In my defense, I didn't even realize I was sending that many pages since they were two-sided, but oh well. At first the Man only approved me from November 2 - January 15th, leaving me in limbo as to whether or not I would actually get paid on January 31st (I did). I got a voice mail today that they have subsequently approved my case through February 25th, but reminded me that since I was due in mid-March that I would need all four providers to submit follow-up clinicals (Whee!!)

• I go to a lot of therapy. I have yet to make it all four days to therapy, but the place where I go is about 50 minutes away and I'm there for 2.5 hours, then I drive home 50 minutes. I usually try to squeeze in a nap before Zac gets home from school and then I'm tired again by 8pm. Repeat daily. On Thursdays, my day off from therapy, I've scheduled all my ultrasounds, Maternal and Fetal Pscyhiatrist visits, and non-stress tests. One big medical day that also tires me out. This Mama gets tired easily.

• I'm worried about how much weight I'm gaining. Between weeks 29-31, I gained eight pounds. Between weeks 31-33, I gained anouther seven. That's horrifying to me considering I'm creeping up on the weight that I was at when I had lap band surgery. My Ob-Gyn is completely non-plussed by the whole thing and tells me its fluid retention and moving my blood pressure medication from "as needed" to twice a day will reduce swelling and water weight. For me, every visit is filled with self loathing. "How did I let myself get this fat? I don't feel like I"m eating that much more. I still puke all the time. What the hell is going on? Exactly how fat am I going to be before this baby comes out?"

• I'm worried about my giant baby. Although it has not been for lack of trying, I have not been officially diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I've taken three, one-hour glucose test and two, three-hour glucose tests. This all started at Week 19 when my eye doctor noticed a dramatic change in my vision, which precludes me from wearing my eye glasses and precipitated my buying a whole new set of disposable contact lenses. Since I can't wear my contacts 24 hours a day, I spent a lot of time squinting at things, like the keyboard and the television. The second three-hour glucose test I did today was almost my undoing. I fasted for 12 hours (and didn't cheat this time), got my blood drawn four times while simultaneously fasted for another three hours after consuming a sickly sweet beverage. I was seriously tempted to just eat a donut before the test today, but I decided to stick it out and see what the results would be without it. At 32 weeks, Baby Bean was measuring over 6lbs. We could take about how inaccurate ultrasound measurements are and yadda yadda yadda, but that's still big. I already had one 9lb kid and it turns out KGII was a 9lb kid himself. KGII keeps telling me that it's genetic since he's 6'3 and has never been small. I keep telling him to shut it.

• It makes me sad that my friends in real life and on the Internet all seem to have had their babies already. It makes me feel like I'm in some kind of holding pattern where time moves for everyone else, but stands still for me. Some women remark on how fast their pregnancy moved for them and how it felt like it was over in a blink of an eye. These women probably left morning sickness behind in their first trimester, that's all I can figure out. On a day to day basis, I have no idea how sick I'm going to be. Most days, I'm fine. I get up, get Zac ready for school, go to therapy, come home, get Zac ready for bed and go to sleep myself. Then there are days when my blood pressure spikes, I get a headache, and vomit almost continuously. I've also taken to asking my friends to kill me and take the baby, emergency C-section style while leaving my carcass on the side of the road. Apparently this kind of talk is "disturbing" and I'm told to keep a positive attitude because "pregnancy can't last forever". No, but it can be a very long 10 months. I am working on being positive.

• I've always struggled with self validation, relying instead on my over achieving, competitive personality to be validated by authority figures; teachers, coaches, parents, mentors. Back when I made the decision to leave work at 20 weeks, I was wrecked with self doubt and recrimination, especially when all the worst case scenarios like preeclampsia, bed rest, and early fetal viability didn't come true. The high risk doctor explicitly told me that if I continued to get sick, they would take the baby at 34 weeks, trying to hold out to 37 weeks if they could. My regular Ob Gyn doesn't want me going past 39 weeks (which would be March 13th). Next week will be my 34th week and I am still able to leave the house on my own, go to therapy, and take care of Zac to the best of my ability. I'm proud and to use therapeutic language, I'm grounded in my reality that this never would have been a possibility if I had continued working. I don't need external validation. I look down and see my uterus moving with Baby Bean and I know that I made the right decision. I did what I had to do to protect my health and my baby's health.

So, more belly shots to come. Hopefully a return to more blog postings and happier topics like nesting, decorating the nursery, and finally getting a car seat. Things aren't all doom and gloom around here. There is a lot of lightness and happiness and way more naps than one woman should be allowed to take.

32w 2d (I'm Tired)

I encouraged one of my friends to speak up recently and to keep speaking up and speaking out until someone listened. After today, I realized that I need to take my own advice.

I've been living off a 401k loan since December 1, 2012. I took half of everything I had accumulated in two years of working for my company and KGII, Zac, and I have been living off that. On Friday when I got the call that my HMO had approved my short term disability I thought all the answers would fall into place. But then I got sick today. I have a persistent headache, my nose is running, my blood pressure is high, and my stomach is upset. I've laid in bed all day, feeling horrible. To cheer myself I've been picking random blogs and reading all of the archives until I finish. I was in the middle of doing that when I got the call from my HMO that I was waiting for to tell me more about my payments.

Then the ball dropped. My HMO only approved my disability from November 2nd - January 13th. Did that mean I would get a paycheck on January 30th? She didn't know. Did that mean I would have employee benefits for February? She didn't know. All she did know that was it was in "my best interest" for me to revoke my HIPPA privacy rights so my HMO disability can access my behavioral health claims for the next eight weeks to provide an "on-going review of my claim". The HMO claim lady wished me a speedy recovery to getting over my cold, even though I told her two times that I didn't have a cold. I was just pregnant, and sick. She ignored me.

The next call I got was from the medical pavilion where my doctor and hospital work out of. The parental growth scan for 32 weeks would cost $322 and did I want to pay for that with a credit card or check? I panicked. My company's payroll department wouldn't have any information about my back pay for at least seven days. I can't afford an ultrasound just because the calendar switched from 2012 to 2013 and suddenly I've gone from 100% coverage to 80%. I canceled the ultrasound and started crying. I texted KGII and he texted back, "Why can't we just catch a break? Why can't this be easy?" I said I didn't know.

I have an appointment on Friday to meet with my Maternal and Fetal Psychiatrist and I'm going to ask her about low cost alternatives for prenatal care. Certainly a 32 week growth ultrasound can't be that diagnostically important. That's what I tell myself when I'm not crying. I don't know what to do. I'm trapped in this body and my support system is so tired of listening to me being sick and freaking out about money. I just feeling like I'm screaming and I've been screaming so long that my voice is getting sore. I don't know what else to do. I'm just screaming that EVERYTHING IS NOT OK but no one is listening.

32w 1d (Best and Worst)

It's been a little while since I've written because my 31st week will go down my pregnancy as my best and worst week.

First the best news that overshadows everything else: my short term disability appeal to my HMO overturned their original decision. I have been approved for short term disability dating back to November 2nd! By far, the best, best news that goes along with this is that I go back to employee benefits including health insurance. On COBRA, my health insurance was $350/month. I had to ask for help paying that for December, January, and what I thought would be February. But since I've been approved (and effectively over payed for two months), I'll have a health insurance "credit" from here going forward. I can pay for February and March's health insurance myself :)  It's really brought into focus how much I've taken my employee benefits for granted up to this point. I've always assumed that, of course, I would have health insurance and a 401k. I didn't know how much I valued that security until it was gone. I got the call on Friday at 2pm while waiting in my psychiatrist's office and I almost jumped for joy. I was told that the HMO will call me within 48 business hours and detail my payment plan. This is just so, so good for my family, me, and the baby.

Now for the worst news, my blood pressure spiked suddenly while I was in group therapy. I could literally feel it happen. My wrists, fingers, calves, and toes started to swell noticeably and suddenly I could barely move my watch or ring. It felt like I didn't have enough skin to cover those parts and I would split open at any moment. I drove myself home and immediately took my blood pressure. It was 158/98. Not the highest that it could be, but certainly well within the risk category for preeclampsia and stroke. I called my doctor's office and they told me to take a dose of the blood pressure medication they prescribed me and lay down for 30 minutes, then taken my bp again. My blood pressure went down to 130/90 and I was told to rest more and drink more water. The next day, the same thing happened, only when I went to retest, my bp hadn't come down far enough - it was still 140/100. I called the doctor again and was told that I could take the blood pressure medication once every eight hours or three times a day. Considering this bp medication bottomed out my bp when I took it twice a day, I can't imagine what taking it three times a day would do. I've yet to take it that much.

I'm also still really struggling with vomiting, nausea, and heart burn. Even at 31 weeks, I usually puke 1-2 times a day. I try to stay as hydrated as possible, but it's just hard. I'm so tired of puking. I implemented a "mind over matter" campaign to see if I could do deep breathing exercises and distract myself when I felt like I needed to puke. It didn't work. I lasted four days before exploding. KGII and I end up eating out in restaurants a lot because I'm too sick to cook and he pretty much refuses to most days. I can eat about 1/4 - 1/2 of my meal before I start getting sick. Most of the time I just take the food home so it's not a big deal, but when I'm really feeling sick and the baby is doing somersaults inside me, it feels like I'm being assaulted at all angles.

As of today, I have seven more weeks to make it to 39 weeks. I'm not sure how long I'm going to continue going to group therapy since it makes me tired, but in a weird coincidence, there is an Ob Gyn in my group. I feel safer being in that space just knowing that he's there. I'm really thankful that I've been allowed to restart therapy, even when I couldn't afford it and was allowed to go for free.

Finally, a huge congratulations to ss and s who had their baby girl Zia on January 14th! She's beautiful and I'm so happy for them, even though I feel like I'm falling behind the child birthing curve considering all my friends have had their babies before me. Soon it will be my time and soon I'll get to meet Baby Bean.

30w 4d (Nesting)

If we're friends on facebook you might have been wondering why I've suddenly become obsessed with setting a bonfire in my front lawn. If you guessed it had something to do with KGII, then you would probably be correct.

To be honest, I'm surprised that I've lasted 7.5 months with him living in my nursery. I didn't realize how much it was impacting me until I was in therapy yesterday and they were talking about honoring our private reality. For me, I've known logically that pregnancy is essentially a nine month long fantasy. You can't see or touch the baby that you rationally know is inside you, so you imagine the baby that will come at the end of the high blood pressure, acne, pelvic pain, and shortness of breath. My nesting instinct is starting to kick into high gear and I have almost nothing for the baby. I have a crib and changing table that I bought when I was working. KGII is currently using those as storage chests. Last weekend, in a marathon of shopping (ok, three hours a day, which is my max), I bought a bouncer, replaced the ceiling fan in my room to prepare for bed rest/post C-section recovery, and more baby clothes. Yesterday I bought an ottoman for the living room, which seems odd, until I tell you that it has a shelf underneath the padding where I thought I could put baskets and hold toys in the living room. All of my purchases have the baby in mind.

KGII doesn't understand this biological need at all. He thinks since we can't eat baby supplies, that we shouldn't buy them right now. I'll admit, that finances are tight (ok, incredibly tight) and most of my purchases have come from me returning Christmas gifts and buying baby gear. KGII keeps saying that it's only a problem that we don't have anything for the baby in two months. I am scared to death of post partum hormones, baby only sleeping two hours at at time, and not being able to drive or move after a C-section. I've had to remind him several times that the hospital won't let us leave with the baby unless we have a car seat (which we don't have).

Sometimes I look at crib sheets and I get sad because I can't even see the crib mattress, let alone imagine washing a sheet and putting it on the crib. I think about decorating the nursery, but it's stuffed with a queen size inflatable mattress. My therapist encouraged me to see that with all things, there is both the negative and the positive and KGII living in my nursery was taking the possible joy I could be experiencing from my pregnancy. I don't blame him, per se, I blame the situation.

We had a blow out fight the other night because I felt like he wasn't doing enough and he felt like he was doing more than enough. I don't know what is going to happen. I have an empty front room that he can move into or he can move out. I'm fairly neutral except that I know I can't go on any longer having my fantasies of my baby stolen by the reality of my house. Waiting until the baby is born to buy any supplies makes me feel panicky and full of anxiety. I've never been known for my skill of waiting patiently.

The next 8.5 weeks feel like a county jail sentence. My friends keep telling me that I'm almost done and I should be excited. Right now I'm angry and I want my nursery back. Anyone in the mood for a bonfire?

29w 5d (Blogging about Blogging)

This is one of those meta posts where I blog about blogging. Feel free to ignore me. In fact, that goes for all of my writing. If you don't like what I write, perhaps it's better not to read at all. It reminds me of that movie with Howard Stern that came out in the 90's. It said that Howard Stern fans listened for X minutes (let's say it's 60 minutes), but the people that hated him listed for X+30 minutes (say 90 minutes). Basically, the haters will also pay more attention to you than the people that care.

Except when I piss off the people I care about. That's hard. I feel like my list of things I can't blog about grows month by month. I can't blog about: my family, the people I thought were my friends, my actual friends, my job, how I feel about my job, my company, and only very limited talk about my depression (mostly because it freaks my family out). I live in fear that one day one of my clients will find my blog and I'll have to explain that I have emotions outside stocks and bonds and some of those emotions are not pretty and do not fit into neat little boxes. I also live in fear that one of the people I blocked on facebook book marked my blog (and if you're reading, HI!!!) and print out this page and show it to my boss and my compliance manager (true story). Then I'll have a long, awkward conversation about why I chose to write about my life on the Internet in a semi-anonymous blog and why I don't just journal and have I reread the Social Media Policy in the past 60 days, because maybe that would be a good idea?

So I try to just write about myself, Zac, and Baby Bean, but there are people who make more than frequent contributions to my life like KGII (who also reads this and cringes most days), and my sister, Aunt Jen, and my Grandma, like my last post. I want to write about what really bothers me, but it seems like I'm more and more constrained to the point where I wonder if this is really just an exercise in frustration. But then I think about the people's blogs I read that inspire me, that make me feel more connected in the world, and I wonder if I bring that to anyone. Or if anyone gets to see another side of my personality from the blog and gets to know me a little better. I wonder about all of that. Besides my driving need to write and express myself, sometimes it's those thoughts that keep my going.

So besides blogging about blogging, I thought I send some links of people I've recently discovered and sharing them with you. Some of them I know personally and some of them just make me laugh when it feels like that's hard to do.

• Some Assembly Required, written by ss: http://heteroqueerarchitecture.blogspot.com/
• Parenting, Project Pregnancy, written by Melanie Rosen: http://www.parenting.com/blogs/project-pregnancy. Much to my delight and slight jealousy, Melanie just welcomed her baby girl into her family.
• Crack You Whip: http://crackyouwhip.blogspot.com/
• Mommy Shorts: http://www.mommyshorts.com/
• Oh Noa: http://ohnoa.com/

In the interest of full disclosure, all of these talented writers are women and most are either pregnant or have recently welcomed a new baby. What can I say? I'm in that place in life. I hope they can make your day a little lighter and make up for me blogging about blogging.

29w 1d (Grandma)

(My intent with this post was never to reveal my Grandma's personal medical information, but rather express how I feel about her, specifically, and how sad and upset I am and how much it hurts to think about letting her go).

She had lost so much weight and was walking so slowly, and with so much difficulty. In March 2012, the Texas family decided to go to Seattle to see Grandma. In the process, we saw all of the extended family that I grew up spending holidays with and I felt so connected. But Grandma, she looked like sitting there was difficult for her. When she hugged Zac and I started crying.

This wasn't the same woman that I took me on my "honeymoon" six years ago (now seven). When I first told her I was pregnant with Zac, I told her that the FOB and I were going to try and make it work. She took that to mean that we were getting married and said she wanted to send us on a trip for our honeymoon. Eight short weeks later, I left the FOB in New Hamsphire and drove cross country to move in with my parents in Texas when I was 3.5 months pregnant. But we still had these tickets. She changed the name on one of the tickets and I ended up, six months pregnant, in Hawaii with my Grandma. It was almost surreal. I kept asking myself, "Am I really on my honeymoon with my Grandma?" but I was. The thing was that we had a great time. We landed in Oahu and went to all the tourist sites around the capital, then drove an hour and a half to the Polynesian Center in the northern part of the island.

Then she flew us to Maui where I saw the most beautiful tree I had ever seen. If you've ever been to Maui, you know what I'm talking about. It's a tree that has branched out over an entire city block and vendors have set up shops under the branches. It was so hot and I was so big by that time and she was already having problems walking that we could only be out in the sun for short periods. Even thought she wouldn't risk walking on the beach, I went out every chance I could in my maternity swimsuit. She took us snorkeling and I got seasick on the boat ride out to the sites from the waves and too much orange juice. She didn't get int he water, but she waved to me with my snorkel mask stuck up on my forehead, waving to her in the boat. She snapped a picture that I wish I could share of that moment.  I saw sea turtles for the first time and they were beautiful and majestic. I felt like to could see for miles in that water and on the ride back to the shore, we saw dolphins swimming next to the boat. Hawaii was just so beautiful and it was so beautiful to be there with her.

Every night, we went out to dinner and ordered fish, almost without fail. And we talked. I had never talked to her so much. We talked about everything - about my Grandpa, about my baby, about her life and how lonely she was sometimes, about how scared I was. In every restaurant was a three piece Hawaiian band that seemed to be playing the same song over and over. I ordered virgin drinks and she ordered black coffee. We flew back to California together from Oahu and her flight was the first to leave, with her going back to Seattle and me going back to Houston.  Both of us just spontaneously started crying and I was so surprised at how sad I was to see her go. I think I knew that I would never travel with her again. I knew she had given me a precious gift of herself - a glimpse into herself.

*****

I wish I could go back in time and give her the tough love talk that almost all of my friends and family gave me when I was sick. When they talked about how I mattered and how the world wouldn't be the same without me. Grandma looked me in the eye in March and told me she would keep fighting. I just think she couldn't bear to tell me what she was telling other people in the family; that she wanted to stop. 

******

I want to go out to Seattle and be with her, but my parents think it's too risky with my health. I think they have the same hospitals in Seattle that they do in Houston and if there is the slightest chance that she would recognize me, that she could hear that I love her once more, I want to take the opportunity. There has just been a lot of tears today, a lot of memories of my time with her, and a lot of reminiscing about what she has meant to my life.