I Chose Life

In the pro-choice/pro-life debate, I've always fallen squarely on the pro-choice side. I will gladly fight against anything and anyone that makes it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, for any reason. I abhor Texas legislation that makes it mandatory for a woman to get a transvaginal ultrasound and listen to the fetal heartbeat before terminating her pregnancy.

With that being said, I've gotten pregnant now, twice, unexpectedly. That's putting it mildly. The first time, I thought there was no way in Hell I could get pregnant because I was on the Pill. With my second pregnancy, although people don't believe me, I got pregnant on accident. It was the rhythm method gone awry (see: ovulated a week late). My Dad blithely noted, "Now you know why there are so many Catholics in the world." Another friend told me the old joke, "What do you call two people who use the Rhythm method? Answer: Parents". Each time I've been pregnant, I've been faced with a choice whether or not to terminate the pregnancy. With the FOB, he told me he wanted the baby and would grow to be a wonderful, loving father and we would raise the child as a family. Clearly, that didn't happen, particularly when I left New Hampshire at three-and-a-half months pregnant and moved cross country to Texas in a 1995 Honda Civic. He wouldn't stop drinking or smoking pot and I wasn't going to raise a child around him.

With this second pregnancy, it's been a much harder choice. I wanted the baby, but I'm only half the equation. The Father of the Baby Part Deux (or King George II, as I will refer to him), has been wildly confused about his wishes and desires. At first, he said we should get married, so he didn't have to be a single father and pay child support. I basically told him those were the worst reasons ever for two people to get married. We agreed that he would move in and rent a room in my house.

That was up until my first ultrasound. Where KGII saw nothing, not even a clump of cells, I saw the beginning of life. The gestational sac was present and my uterus had started expanding. Although it wasn't life yet, it was the beginning of one and I wanted to give it a chance. He asked the doctor about my risk of miscarriage - less like it was a risk and more like an opportunity for a spontaneous abortion. If I could have bottled the look she gave him, I would. Then I'd sell it to single Moms. She looked at him like, "Who the fuck are you and why are you in my exam?" She said that there was no evidence to indicate I would miscarry and everything looked normal for 4-5 week gestation. The hard part is some of my friends with kids encouraged me to bring KGII to the first prenatal appointment. "He'll have a change of heart," they said, "It will be a turning point in his relationship with this baby," they murmured.

It was a changing point, alright. Just not in the way they, or I, predicted.

He said we needed to abort before the embryo's heart started beating. That defined "life" to him and I had approximately five days to end it. And I just looked at him and thought I had never been so alone. I suddenly became histrionic. I started crying and shouting, "Why do you want me to kill my baby?" which basically just adds guilt to a toxic emotional soup. Rationally, I can recognize that. Emotionally, asking me to live the rest of my life without knowing whether or not my child would ever have a beating heart was asking too much of me. The thread of the conversation never really ended, though. When I would get sick or my back would start to hurt, he would say, "It doesn't have to be like this. You could get this taken care of. You don't have to be sick," and I would continue vomiting, suddenly about twenty times more sick than I had been thirty seconds before.

Then other people started to weigh in on the contents of my uterus. After a delay, KGII finally told his parents and they asked if I was going to "keep the baby". He said yes and from what I gather, they had some strong feelings they expressed to him about me NOT keeping the baby. Then, suddenly, KGII's parents were in my house doing home renovation while I was at work and it started to bother me more and more. I got home from work and told them that I didn't think KGII should finish moving his stuff in without knowing how he was going to pay his August rent and they should stop all construction immediately. They quickly offered to pay his rent for him and I went to lay down. They left shortly after that and KGII said I had been ugly.I think I was just defending my territory, both inside my house and inside my body.

Although 90% of his things are over here, KGII, with his parents' support, decided to not move in tonight. I went home early from work because I was so unbelievably sick and tired and he woke me up to tell me that he will be living somewhere else. My Dad came over and we changed the locks on my doors and arranged a time for him to come get his stuff with supervision. Again, he said he didn't understand why I was being so ugly. I just felt so abandoned. So hurt and so abandoned.

But I don't regret choosing to see life. Regardless of how hard this pregnancy is and the fact that I'm alone, once again, I don't regret it.

6w 2d

It's fun that time has elapsed since my last post, but my pregnancy seems to be running backwards. I went to the Ob Gyn for a quick appointment on Thursday and received quite a shock. First, I'm down seven pounds. My doc basically doesn't take any prisoners when it comes to maternal nutrition. She said she wouldn't hesitate to hospitalize me and pump in fluids and nutrition intravenously if I lost any more weight. I'm trying to gain weight. Promise. I'm also trying to continue to exercise and I just can't seem to get in enough calories to reverse the trend that I started eighteen months ago.

And can I be very honest here? (Looking around - it is still my blog, right? It is. Good deal). If I'm being really honest, I would admit that I was unprepared to deal with gaining weight psychologically. It's going to be very, very hard to see those number creep up, even though rationally I know it's best for the baby and for me to gain 20 - 25 lbs of weight starting from the pre-pregnancy weight. I was 187.5 when I started working out with a trainer six weeks ago. I was 180.2 when I weighed myself this morning. I haven't gone back to get more fluid taken out of my band and I have very good excuses as to why this is. Excuses like all of my medical care is in the Med Center of Houston which is world-renowned, but 45 minutes away from where I live and work. My boss tracks all of my absences and doesn't hesitate to tell me about them. Excuses like it's hard to get a hold of my surgeon's staff to schedule an appointment, but that's all bullshit. The real answer is that I don't particularly want to go in and get more (if not all) of the fluid out of my band. I have a fully functional, large capacity stomach with all the fluid gone. I can eat an entire bacon double cheeseburger and large french fries with no fluid. The easy answer is: just don't eat that shit you stupid idiot. But, um, if self-restraint worked for me, would I have had to get bariatric surgery to begin with? Probably not.

But back to my first prenatal appointment. My Ob-Gyn gave me a transvaginal ultrasound and saw this:

Don't worry if you don't see anything. All I see is the gestational sac and an empty space where I should be growing an embryo. The doctor just said, "Oh" and took the wand out. She said that I must have ovulated a week late and really I was only five weeks pregnant. Which, if I do my math, means I found out I was pregnant when I was just over THREE weeks pregnant. Our technology shouldn't be that good. That's way too early to find out that your pregnant, especially since once I found out, I started experiencing all of the first trimester symptoms.

I'm scared. The Ob said what was there looked good, but she couldn't see much and said there didn't appear to be any reason why I would miscarry, but damn, not seeing a heart beat was hard. I have to go back in a week to see if it's a viable pregnancy. I'm not sure where to go from that last sentence. I just spent five minutes staring at the blinking cursor. Miscarriages run in my family. Both of my aunts and one of my Grandmas have miscarried. This baby was so unplanned and yet so wanted that I'm going to struggle wrapping my mind around a failed pregnancy if I lose the baby.

Nevertheless, my symptoms carry on. The fatigue is the real killer. I'm just so tired, all the time. It doesn't help that I go to bed at 9pm and wake up at 4:45am every morning, which is actually my second wake up. I wake up once during the middle of the night to go pee and then pray I fall back asleep until I can watch Orangutan Island at 5pm on Animal Planet. I pee every twenty minutes and seem to have lost the ability to poop. Seriously, I'm jealous of people who go twice a day. I'm taking a fiber supplement to counteract the iron supplement, but it just gives me horrible gas pain. Guess what I don't appreciate while being terrified I'm miscarrying? Yeah, that would be sharp, dramatic pain in my general intestinal/uterine area. I also have general stretching pain. It's like I can feel my uterus getting bigger and it hurts. My breasts are unbelievably tender and my hormones are definitely kicking up. I've cried more in the past two weeks than I have in the past two months combined.

I keep comparing Zac's pregnancy with this one, which I think is normal, although in no way a fair fight. I was 23 when I got pregnant with Zac and I'm 31 now. In the span of eight years, I've completely forgotten every complaint and my hypersensitivity to every ache and pain in my body. This just isn't a new pregnancy, I feel like I'm a completely different person. It's going to be a long 34 weeks.

6.5 Weeks

I didn't mean to drop a bombshell with my last post and then not post again for a week. The basic mechanics of day-to-day living have completely exhausted me. Zac is on vacation in Pittsburgh with my parents and I've been coming home from work and napping for two hours, staying awake for a couple of hours, and then going to bed by 9pm. I haven't been awake enough to blog.

The fatigue is overwhelming. Compounding this problem is my diet and calorie restrictions. As I mentioned, I started an intense exercise program six weeks ago (I know...the irony). When I started, I wanted to lose 50 lbs and get to my goal weight of 135lb. I started tracking my calories on myfitnesspal and I realized that when I cut out the daily cheetos and diet coke, I was hovering around 1000 - 1150 calories/day. That explains how I've lost about a pound a week for the past 18 months without any form of exercise. So the problem comes in when I start exercising and burning 400-800 calories a day. Suddenly, I'm so low on calories that I'm struggling to exist. About three weeks I was complaining to my trainer that I hadn't felt any more energy as a result of working out. It turns out that I had a good reason to be tired, but I was making the problem worse by not eating enough. Even when I was eating, I was focusing on protein because I have such a hard time with carbohydrates.

So I started trying to eat more, but instead of eating crap, I was eating as much wholesome food as I could manage. I got up to about 1300 calories. Then I found out I was pregnant and I realized I couldn't go on the way I was. I went and saw a maternal dietitian yesterday. She wasn't worried about the baby at all because the baby will take whatever nutrients it needs and give me the rest, but she was worried about my health. She said my extreme fatigue was a direct result of not putting enough nutrients in my body to fuel it, especially since I'm continuing to work out while pregnant. She recommended I go up to 1800 calories. Coincidentally, I had an appointment with my bariatric surgeon today and he removed 1cc of fluid from my band to allow me to eat more.

I'm down five pounds from my pre-pregnancy weight, but trying to change the course. All I really want to do is sleep, rather than cook for myself or clean up afterwards. Without Zac being here, I don't have any excuse to cook whether I feel like it or not. I added an Ensure nutritional drink today to up my caloric intake and that's where I am right now. My first Ob Gyn appointment is Tuesday, August 7th. I can't really process how I feel about this pregnancy right now. I'm just trying to get up and go to work every morning and make it until I go home at night. That makes for horrible blog fodder, but an excellent way to continue being employed.

Oh This is Awkward

The photo is blurry because I was in the bathroom at work and too cheap to buy the digital pregnancy test. So I took a picture of the test with my phone and starting texting it to a couple close people going, "Does this look like a cross to you? I don't know. It might be a cross, but I might be seeing things".

So..yeah. I'm pregnant. We are going to completely gloss over how it happened  and focus on the current moment. Currently, my first trimester symptoms have decided to ALL come on at the same time. It's hit me more than once that it's been eight years since my 23-24 year-old body did this last. I'm tempted to go back into archives, but I know I didn't start writing on the last blog until I was four months pregnant or so. It's fun to think back on the "Pregnant in Texas" days.

I'm somewhere between 5 and 6 weeks pregnant. I keep telling myself this is what I wanted, even if I had stopped wanting it. I want this. I want to do it differently than the last time.

Why I'm Not Preggo

So, damn, I suck. I had a great streak there of writing on my blog and finally found a topic that I was interested in (albeit slightly controversial) and then I just upped and stopped. What gives? Well...I'm not sure what happened. It wasn't like I woke up one day and decided to stop pursuing pregnancy, although I'll tell you that since I'm single, not pursuing pregnancy is basically my normal operating mode. I don't have a good answer to why I'm not pregnant other than I stopped trying.

I just felt overwhelmed and unbelievably alone. I didn't have anyone I could talk to about sperm banks and why one bank cost double what another bank cost. I couldn't bounce any ideas off someone about the benefits of a Croatian/Israeli heritage vs a Greek/British one (and in my mind, iit all comes down to one variable: body hair. How hairy is that nationality and how much heart burn would I have while pregnant? Can you see why I needed another individual to weigh in on the process with, I don't know, actual legitimate reasons). Then there were the profiles. Sweet mother of God, the profiles! I have no idea how to pick out a good genetic match for unborn on the basis of a couple of sentences (that usually weren't written by the donors). Like I said pretty early on, once I stepped foot into this realm of solo pregnancy, I could quickly see why people start putting ads up on Craigslist. Here's what mine would have said:

Wanted: 50% genetic material required to procreate. Not wanted: Any contact with you. I'll pay via Paypal and you leave the goods on my doorstep in a cooler. Don't send any pictures, particularly of you as a baby, and don't make me read any evaluations of you, either written by yourself or by a third-party. Be drug and disease free, over 5'10 and less than 275lbs. Prefer Western European heritage and the ability to go two days without shaving.

and no, I didn't post that, although the thought amuses me. Every day that went by when I didn't make a decision, I was making a different decision. That decision didn't involve me knocking myself up. So here I am, not knocked up. For all of you who were rooting for a baby, I'm sorry to disappoint. For all of you who thought that I was making the worst mistake of my life, you can exhale now.

Here is what I did do, however. I joined a gym and got a personal trainer. If I'm not planning pregnancy, then at least I can do is get back into shape. Working out allows me to move my slightly obsessive focus onto another pursuit and unlike solo, queer pregnancy, I can actually bond with others about working out. Everyone seems to have a working out/trainer story and almost everyone in my office is on a diet. Really, I just caved to the social norm because it was healthier than drinking my body weight in Diet Coke and scarfing down Cheetos twice a day.

I'm in my second week of working out five times a week and, honestly, I thought I would like it more by now. I loved it in college. Working out twice a day, sometimes six days a week, was such a break from academics that I craved it. I had friends and girlfriends on the Crew team. I looked forward to going there. Now, going to the gym feels like some insane form of self punishment. Where is the high after a good workout? Where is longing to look in the gym mirror and see my biceps flex? It's just not there. I continue going mostly because of my trainer, which I knew would keep me accountable because: 1) I don't like wasting money; 2) I text him after every workout. For real. I'm basically the most high maintenance client he's ever had. He says he's into it, but I don't know. I pay him so I'm basically suspect of most things he says. I think that makes me a horrible person. I try and make up for it by keeping a food journal and hiring his beautiful German wife to be my grossly overqualified morning nanny. So, let me put this into perspective. I work out with him 2-3 times a week and his wife reorganized my pantry and told me that my food told a very sad story. I believe the plot of the story involved a fat woman, but I'm not sure because I was too busy bouncing quarters off the bed she made to pay attention to what she was telling me about my food. At least she didn't throw anything away! I suspect that might come next week.

So...that's where I am. I work out. I get my period. I talk on the phone at work. I take care of Zac and basically lead an incredibly boring not-pregnant-at-all life. I tell myself that I have time. According to Repro Guy, I've got eggs for days and that's at least a little bit of comfort.

I Catheter You, You Catheter Me

I can't really make up a story that is as entertaining and embarrassing as the one I'm about to tell. That's my disclaimer. Well, that, and I'm a complete moron with little to no functional medical knowledge. There's that. But I know my sister loves it so much when I call and tell her "I've got this rash..." and ask her diagnose me over the phone so much that I figure I'll never have to actually bust out WebMD anymore. Why do I need a website when I have a live call operator standing by that actually cares about me? In truth, if you really want to piss off a doctor-in-training, call them with a medical question, be unsure about your symptoms, have all of your complaints lead back to a rash they can't see, and wait for hilarity to ensue.

Anyways, I've well established on this blog that I'm thrifty (read: very poor for a very long time. Even when I have money, I still feel poor. A sociologist would call it a mindset). I happen to be in a medical supply store in my town this morning (don't ask why. The answer would really confuse you) and I was like, "Hey! I'm in a medical supply store! I didn't even know we had one of these in this town. I bet they have the perfect answer for that catheter/syringe combo that I posted about yesterday". Yes, I tried to out-DIY the DIY home insemination kit that the sperm bank was charging $23 bucks for (not including shipping and handling).

So, I'm walking around this store with Clicker (don't ask) and he says, "Hey, there are some catheters over there. You should check them out". I did a little happy dance and walk over to a shelf that has probably 30 or so catheters in an unceremonious pile. I pick up one that was easily 24" long. It looked something like this:

This looks like something that would work, except it would bust right out of uterus and probably hit my bladder, which I think is the point of a catheter (minus the uterine eruption I assume).

For the record, I did see catheters that looked like this, and I immediately recognized they wouldn't work:

 I ask the guy that we're talking to if he thinks it would be ok for me to cut a catheter down to size. Because really? How much of that do I need? Maybe six inches? He looks at me like I've just asked him if I can take a shit on a walker and leave it there. He says, "Why would you want to cut it down?" and I'm faced with the horrible decision of either telling this man who already distrusts me, "I'd like to shoot sperm into my vagina with it" or completely lying. Only problem is that I'm a horrible liar, especially when put on the spot. I mean, I'm really, really bad. Crazy shit just pops out of my mouth. I decide to tell a half-truth and say, "....umm....it's for a....home procedure". Guess what you shouldn't say to a medical supply salesman while holding an apparently very large, very male catheter? Yeah, don't say that you are going to use it at home on someone. Just trust me on this.

To this guy's credit, he gently takes the catheter out of my hand and shows me where the female catheters are, while saying, "Well, you probably tell people not to trade stocks by themselves. I tell people not to catheter themselves at home," which honestly sounds like good advice all the way around. The female catheters are much more reasonably sized, although now I have this guy peppering me with questions: "Do you need an intermediate catheter? Does someone in your house need a permanent one like they use in a hospital or do they just plug it in when they have to go? Did you technician tell you what size you need? They come in all different sizes."

I wish I could say that I had a witty comeback, but I'm just staring at this guy wondering how I could make a quick exit and not sound like I'm committing elder abuse on someone that can't go to the bathroom by themselves in my home. I put down the catheter, walk away and smugly think, "That bitch only cost $1.40. Totally worth the embarrassment and humiliation. I just saved $21.60".

If this is what winning looks like, you can only imagine how horrifying it must be to be me when I lose.

Breaking News

The biopsy results came back very vaguely. All the pathologist wrote was that it was NOT herpes or HPV (Thank God!). The report went on to say that I had "inflammatory tissue", but there was no known cause. So, good news, the cells weren't precancerous or disease-ridden. Bad news, my cells are pissed off and they can't figure out why.

You know what pissed off cells feels like "down there?" It's like someone is trying to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together...for a good four or five hours. In even better news, I'm on my third period in 8 weeks. All this ovulation and disintegration down there makes me tired. I also have a severe bacterial infection in my throat and nose so I'm on antibiotics. On the upside, I got a strong dose of ibuprofen that really works on my cramps, even if my throat still hurts.

In other news, I'm narrowing down my reproductive options. Clicker received a call from his Mom based off my blog post (Hi Mrs. Clicker!!!) where she learned that her son might help me. His reasons and his decisions are solely his alone to disclose, but I will say he has opted out of the process.

I've been looking more at alternative insemination at home. The cost is less because I would be purchasing intra-cervical insemination sperm (ICI), which has been washed less than intra-uterine insemination sperm (IUI). I can also do ICI sperm at home, with the help of handy kits. No, I'm not kidding. They actually sell DIY insemination kits. They look like this:

Its fairly horrifying at first glance, but upon closer inspection, it's all relatively innocuous (ok, if you aren't squeamish and the catheter like attachment to the syringe doesn't freak you out.) I'm positive these supplies aren't worth $23 + shipping and handling, but I really don't know where I would purchase the catheter besides the site I was looking on. I actually own that exact brand of cup to collect the sperm that gosh darnit, tried really hard, but couldn't make it to the egg. The pregnancy test looks like a generic from CVS.

I have further thoughts about doing this myself, but I need more time to think about them. I just thought that I would announce in the "Breaking News" post that I'm heading in that direction, for better or worse.