Comparisons

On the way home from the first vaginal ultrasound at eight weeks, circa mid-November:

Me:  Holy cow!  I can’t believe Broodling is less than an inch long. I’ve eaten packs of gum bigger than him!  How can something less than an inch long make me so bloody sick!?
Aaron:  I know of several things less than an inch long that can kill you.
Me:  Huh?
Aaron, ticking them off on his fingers:  Bullets. Grenade shrapnel. AIDS. Blood clots. Cancer.
Me:  Ooh, what about 1/2 inch doses of arsenic?
Him:  Um, I guess.
Me:  In retrospect, being sick isn’t so bad.

Dear Broodling (part 6)

Dear Broodling,
We’ve come a long way, baby. You’re still making me sick (really sick), but you’re growing fine. You have a heart with four chambers that pounds away at a solid 148 bpm, a fully developed mammalian brain, long, strong legs with thick femurs, cute toes and cute fingers and-and-and … what we think is a tiny little penis.

In short, you’re not a molar pregnancy–quite the opposite–you’re 10 oz. of “perfect” baby boy. You’re fully formed and large and normal and, so far, healthy. You’re laying low and resting your head on my bladder, which explains why I now have to pee sisxteen times per day as opposed to twelve.

You’re also super active. Holy cow. With all of the stretching and contorting about you did on the ultrasound screen, I’m thinking gymnastics might be a sport to steer you into. Also, what’s with the bladder-punches? I’m starting to feel them and there isn’t anything remotely “fluttery” about these sensations. It just makes me have to pee. Again. *scoff*

Anyway. Now that there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you, the focus is on me. Why am I sicker at nineteen weeks pregnant than I was at seven? The current theory that’s being bandied about is that my nausea is psychosocial, which means it’s stress-related. Considering the fact that I have anxiety levels that could choke a cow 60% of the time (and yes, that’s after seeing an absolutely fabulous therapist for close to six months), that’s entirely possible. My body also tends to respond to mental and physical stresses much more intensely than others’ do, which could explain away the fatigue. I’ve been prescribed yoga (which I have yet to join) and plenty of massages to reduce tension.

A contributing factor to the nausea is the newly acquired heartburn, which can only be described as a tireless, low-quality blowtorch trying to force open my esophageal sphincter. Broodling, If I’d known you were going to breathe fire, I would have christened you Crouching Fetus, Hidden Dragon. I’ve been told that this is a perfectly “normal” sensation for pregnant women to experience, which is reason #107 to make me question why no one has perfected embryo incubators yet. I’ve been prescribed generic-brand Tums, which work beautifully for all of five blessed minutes. My OB is hesitant to move on to the “big guns” of over-the-counter Zantac, saying that I should wait for two weeks before switching. I think I’ll follow her advice–until I wake up in this agony tomorrow. I was never one to sit around in physical pain.

So, now that I’ve seen you practicing for your spot as the captain of the synchronized swimming team, are the nausea and heartburn and peeing and hemorrhoids (Lord have mercy) worth it? The polls are leaning yes, and everyone (except those New Hampshire folks) knows how accurate polls are.

Love,
Your contented-but-still-nauseated mom.

 P.S. Penispenispenispenis!  (Yes, I’m immature.)

Water, Water Everywhere and Not a Drop is Warm

Tomorrow, Aaron and I will be having some people over for dinner at our apartment for the first time (!!!), which means that today is the day I’m deep-cleaning the house for the first time since we moved in. Which was like, September. My bathroom is health-hazard nasty, and I know this only because it smells like ham. Yes, I know I’m the worst housewife ever, and will probably give my future children every disease known and unknown to man, natch. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…

So, in order to get cleaning, I decided I -needed- a shower first to wake up. “But wait!” my corner-cutting brain says. “I have a dishwasher! If I load it, I can take my shower and then unload it when I get out. No wasted time! And while we’re at it, why not do a load of laundry, too?  Brilliant!”

So, after sorting the clothes and loading the respective washers, I jump in the shower. I crank the knob all the way to the left, feeling smug that I can accomplish so much cleaning in so little time.

And nothing happens.

My shower, never a deluge to begin with, has been reduced to a mere trickle. And a COLD trickle at that. By the time the drops splash on my shoulders, they’ve lost all heat, regardless of where the knob is on the H spectrum. In short, those washers are sucking up all of my water, and the shower has no more to give.

Curse you, efficiency! Curse yooooou!

The Pursuit of Happiness

So, an update: I’m feeling better. A lot better. In fact, over the past week, I’ve felt absofreakinlutely fantastic. The past week has been better physically than the past month or so (which puts me back where I was in my first trimester. Pretty bad compared to non-pregnancy standards, but much more manageable than it has been recently).

Mentally, I feel better than I have felt in months years. (Yes, years.) I have energy, and patience. I have zest for life. I’m struck, for the first time in what seems like FOREVER, by creative story ideas I want to pursue. I want to start a blog–a “real” one, and write about issues that are important to me. I want to get out there and be politically active (vote Obama!). I want to have people over to my home; I want to get out and socialize with people again. I’m much less dependent on Aaron being here to entertain me (which is huge, since he works from 8am to 9pm. HUGE). I’m dancing around in my underwear because I feel like it. I feel strong, beautiful, and articulate. I’m still lonely, but the desperation I felt is no longer here. I’m laughing at almost everything.

I feel, for lack of a better word, happy, during a time where I thought I was going to be anything but, considering the fate of my baby is undecided.

Frankly, I’m weirded out, too.

So, like any introspective, self-absorbed writer, I have to look at why I feel this way. A lot of it has to do with Aaron. He is ridiculously optimistic that everything baby-related is absolutely fine, even to the point of ignoring all other possibilities. “Your body just takes longer to get over nausea than most people, that’s all,” he says. “Oh, hey, I was thinking we should get some headphones for your belly. I have some Chopin I’d like to play for the kid…”

At first his positive attitude was annoying as crap heck, and I was angry that he could be so happy when there might be problems. (Honey, I’m trying to be emo over here, do you mind?!) But then it happened–I contracted his upbeat-ness like the infectious disease that it is. When he’s grinning and making stupid puns and connecting to me and the baby (You guys! He’s connecting to the baby! Ayieeee!), it’s hard to be Sad Panda in Snow.

And I’m realizing… Regardless of whether or not this baby lives, we’re going to be okay. We have family and friends who love us. I have a bright future ahead of me. Aaron has a bright future ahead of him. And it brings tears of joy to my eyes to think that, thank God, those futures are together. We can do anything we want to do with our lives, parenting or otherwise. We’re together and we’re in love.

[Note: I am by no means this mushy and romantic in real life. Last night I "remembered" that our six month wedding anniversary was supposed to be coming up soon, and I wanted to plan something exciting to commemorate the occasion, just because we'd never done anything like it before. And hey, six months! That's a long time, right? I probed Aaron for his opinion on celebrating at, say, a bed and breakfast.

His response: "Um, I think it's a little too late to celebrate."
Me: "What do you mean?"
Him: "Our anniversary was in November."
Me: "WHAT!?"
Him: "Honey, we were married in May. Not August."

I mean seriously, who forgets that kind of thing?]

High Drama

Want to know how to scare the ever-loving crap out of a pregnant woman?

It’s pretty easy: have her listen to the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh heartbeat of her 17-week-old fetus and THEN tell her that you suspect that she may have a malignant tumor in her uterus which will crush the life out of it in a few weeks.

According to my OB/GYN, the fact that my nausea has not improved with the advent of my second trimester (in fact, it has only increased in intensity over the past few weeks, which I didn’t think was friggin’ possible) means that I may have a partial molar pregnancy. Now, if you don’t click on the link, there are two ways partial molars throw down: 1. Instead of having 23 chromosomes from each parent, the fetus has 23 from the mother and 46 from the father, meaning that it develops abnormally and eventually dies; and 2. This isn’t elaborated on in that specific link, but rarely, a malignant tumor (quite possibly a dead twin) develops along with the normal embryo and eventually kills it. Symptoms of a partial or complete (no embryo, just a tumor) molar pregnancy are: intense nausea, vaginal spotting/bleeding, high levels of hCG, elevated blood pressure, hyperthyroidism, and a large uterus.

“But what about hyperemesis?” I say. “Out of that list, all I’ve had is the nausea. Right?”

“Yes, BUT,” she says. “Nausea isn’t supposed to increase during the second trimester. Even in cases of hyperemesis, the nausea does improve somewhat. … Also, that ultrasound we did at 12-weeks, where you had a completely normal looking embryo? Yeah, that may be wrong.”

What this means is that my low-risk, relatively “healthy” pregnancy has been catapulted to the realm of “oh shit, there’s something seriously wrong with you. Plz to be coming back in two weeks so we can find out what it is.”

Now, IF I have a molar pregnancy, I’ll have to go in for a D&C procedure (known in layman’s terms as an abortion) to remove the tissue so it doesn’t turn completely cancerous. I may also need low-grade chemotherapy, depending on how much the tissues are spread around. I will be forbidden from “falling” pregnant again for a year, as the likelihood of my having a molar pregnancy again will be 1-2%. I’ll probably go get my nursing degree, or something. I’ll also need to take an antidepressant of some kind because I can already tell I’m not going to be able to handle a miscarriage halfway through what I thought was a healthy pregnancy gracefully.

If I DON’T have a molar pregnancy, the general assumption is that there’s still something wrong with me. I have an ultrasound and a hell of a lot of blood work scheduled for Jan. 28th, so all I need to do is wait (and not stress, because stressing out is the worst thing I can do if the pregnancy ends up being viable… *insert hysterical laughter here*). Because the ultrasound will be the last one I’ll be having, the likelihood that we’ll be able to determine the sex of the fetus is virtually nil, which is annoying but fine. I may go on antidepressants anyway because, holy crap, how does this drama keep finding me?

If my tone seems harsh and detached, well, it is. I’m in the pissed-the-hell-off mode of grieving right now (which is normal for me because I tend to look at anger as an active process). I’ve already flirted with denial and depression, bargaining never helps, and acceptance is at least two weeks away.

There is, however, a brief spot of good news: my sister has quit her job and will be flying out next Friday to make sure I’m not alone during the day, which is definitely going to prevent large amounts of stupid on my part. I can’t ever say my family doesn’t love me.