A Little TMI Otherwise Known As The Return Of My Period (I Think)

I think I am having my period. There are little drops of blood in my underwear. So must be, right? It has been so long. I think November of 2007 was my last sight of the bloods. Except, of course, for the massive soaking that comes after giving birth.

And then there was also the scary bleeding I had in the first trimester. When I saw the blood on the toilet paper this morning, my heart sank right back to that horrible morning I started bleeding. I remembered crawling back into bed after my 4:30 AM trip to the bathroom and whispering "No,no,no no, please God, no" and then rushing into the Ob/Gyn, my face stained with tears, my hands trembling, wanting to run into the ultrasound room and shove the wand up there myself and see that little heart beating and be relieved. It would take one more bloody scare for the doctor to tell me it looked liked the bleeding was from a low lying placenta and to take it easy but the baby was going to be fine. And she was. Better than fine. Perfect, she is.

The next time I would bleed would be the night I woke up to go to the bathroom three days before my due date and found blood on the toilet paper. As I went to lay down, I felt crampy and realized I felt like sitting up and as I sat there, I noticed that the crampy feeling was coming on rhythmically. I was having contractions and was at the beginning of labor.

My second thought this morning went to implantation bleeding before even considering it could be a period. I was all, "Oh hell no, I can't possibly be pregnant." Then I was all, "Hell no, you idiot, you are not pregnant. You are crampy and bloated and craving chocolate and salt. You are having your period." I think, anyway. It seems so much of my life has been punctuated with blood or the lack thereof over the past few years.

I Didn't Know I Was...

No, I am not pregnant. But do you watch that show on TLC, I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant? I mean, there are actually enough women that this has happened to that there is plenty material for a whole show. And it's not, I didn't know I was pregnant until I was five months along, or I didn't know I was pregnant until I started puking three times a day at work and needing to pee constantly. No, these stories are about real women who don't know they are pregnant until they are in labor. Let me clarify that. Actually, they go into labor but still don't know they are pregnant. They go to the hospital because they think they are dying where the doctors ask if they could be pregnant, and these dilated contracting women protest, "no, no that's impossible" but no no it is not impossible these women are pregnant and within in minutes, give birth. Sometimes they don't even make it to the hospital. After incredible pain, they feel the need to push out a giant poop so they go to the toilet sit down and push and out it comes. Except wait, that is not a poop it's a BABY! OH HOLY HELL!

And a lot of the women seem totally normal. OK, quite a few seem like drunken skanky dumbasses or really really obese women with a host of medical problems which keep them from having normal periods. But many of them seem just like ordinary overworked moms who contribute all their symptoms, back pain, exhaustion, etc., to the stresses of their lives. After watching the show I have this intense urge to run out to the pharmacy and buy up a bunch of pee sticks. But I am a rational person and so I resist the urge. There is no way I am pregnant. Or could I be? Due to breastfeeding, I haven't had a period in closing in on two years. Would I know the difference between exhaustion from lack of sleep and chasing after superbaby all day and pregnancy exhaustion? Would I contribute morning sickness to not paying attention to my diet? Could I be so out of touch with my body that I miss the signs that there is another human being living inside me? I hope not. I like to think that I know myself and my body well and that I wouldn't have ignored myself so much that I overlook something as momentous as pregnancy. But who knows. Who am I to judge? I guess it could happen. Anything is possible. But seriously, I am so NOT pregnant.

Tummy Time

This is my muffin top.

I don't think these pictures quite do it justice but it is the biggest tummy I have ever had.

aside from when I was pregnant.

Part Two Summary

The next part of the labor story is more difficult to write. Partly because I get a bit hazy on the details because the last five minutes or so are really all that matter in the end and partly because much of it was painful and scary. It involves having to wait in a tiny triage room for three hours until a labor and delivery room opened up. Having insane back labor, throwing up, and not getting the epidural I requested for an hour and half. Having the epidural wear off when I was at eight centimeters, having to wait an hour to get some relief and then finding out the machine delivering the meds to me was off! Then pushing for over three hours. Then there is also a side story about how I got wickedly constipated--actually impacted and had to go to the emergency room the evening after we went home from the hospital. At about the same time my milk came in and I was engorged I had a nurse (my hero) pulling shit out of my ass which was more acutely painful than the labor itself.

Two Good Things-Shoes and Babies

I miss clothes. At this point my maternity clothes don't even fit. I miss shoes too. Shoes with heels.

I made this polyvore back in December. It seems like years ago. Part of me feels like pregnancy is my new body and I could just stay this way. What will it be like to not have a baby squirming around inside me? Will my intestines be lonely? It will be so strange to have an empty belly. I am so used to the heaviness now. I am so used to having her inside of me. Pregnancy is a long time. I can't wait to have her in my arms but it will be strange to no longer have her in my belly.

38 Weeks!

36 weeks

Are You Ready?

People keep asking me if I am ready. The baby's room? Ready enough. The hospital bag? Thinking about it. Birth? It's not really up to me. A baby? Well, My boobs and diapers will be the most important things at first, so I guess I am as ready as I can be at this point.

Oh, and the carseat. We have the carseat. Though it is not in the car yet.

34 Week Belly

Why Can't it be the Weekend Yet?

I thought it was Saturday when I was waking up this morning. That sucked. I dreamed I had the baby but kept forgetting and then couldn't find where I put her down. I knew I needed to feed her but I'd forget and there was something about driving around with her on my lap Britney Spears style. Oh lord.

An Experience Beyond Words

Big D and I have been together a long time. I mean a loooonnnnngggg time and by LA standards even longer. When you have been married as long as we have or, to be more exacting, when you have been a married woman without children for as long as I have been you hear a lot of comments such as,

"I thought people only got married to have kids"

"When are you having kids?"

"Oh you have to have kids, it's the best."

"When are you getting pregnant, it's the most amazing thing ever!"

I could go on but you get the idea. When people who I know and care about inquired, I generally didn't mind the probing. In fact, whether or not you are going to have kids has been and continues to be a topic of conversation that I have with many of my close friends and family members because it is such a big part of the human experience. But when people who could care less about who I am as a human being, like women from the work pit, asked, I often wanted to retort something like, "Well, I'm infertile, if you must know" or "Well the cocaine habit isn't so great for fetuses I've heard and my husband has low sperm count" I mean, what if I really did have a fertility issue or a drug habit or my husband had low sperm count? Wouldn't these questions then be considered incredibly insensitive? Fortunately, none of these were an issue for us. In fact, having gotten pregnant after one cycle off the pill after being on it my entire adult life pretty much squashed my long held fears of infertility and Big D is clearly a stud in the sperm count department and my drug habit was generally limited to red wine and dirty martinis.

But now I realize that there is something more to the questions. Pregnancy is something you can't quite put into words. You can talk about the growing belly, the morning sickness, the aches and pains, the kicks and turns, but it is impossible to fully explain what it feels like to have your body become an incubator for another human being. Before I got pregnant, I knew it would be something to experience but I didn't get the glow in the eyes of mothers asking when I was going to have a baby. I never really got the way they would tear up when recounting their own pregnancy and motherhood or why they would have such an interest in my own reproduction timeline. But I get it now. My cynical rational side tries to keep me in check...It's something any woman can do. It's not like it's finding a cure for cancer or running a business or being a gold medal athlete. But I am in the club now and I get it. It is powerful beyond description and women inquire about other women's pregnancy status because it is their way of sharing this experience beyond words.

I have to admit that I have caught myself recently doing the same thing in conversations with couples who don't yet have kids. I've actually heard lines such as this come out of my mouth:

"Do you guys think you'll have kids?"

"Pregnancy is the most amazing thing ever"

"It's really something you have to experience"

I've limited the conversation to those people that I actually know and care about and who are interested in taking part in a conversation about this. I'm not running up to recently married co-workers and asking them to get on the baby track. Although I did give an extra copy I had of What to Expect When Your Expecting to a co-worker who was just about to get married. But she had informed me that she was on the baby track before I offered so that's OK isn't it?

Where I'm At

The Belly

27 Weeks

28 Weeks

The Belly As It Was

This was my belly at 21 weeks. I'm now 26 weeks.

Sundance

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Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)

So I am finally getting around to posting some of our picks from Sundance. January was a crazy month. I found out I was pregnant right before we left for the festival so the whole trip took on monumental status for me. It was the culmination of the project that Dylan had worked on for so many years, the fulfillment of the dream of every young film student to get a movie into Sundance and, on top of that, the beginning of my pregnancy.

After Sundance I got outrageously sick with the flu and that merged into morning sickness and extreme exhaustion. I am now climbing out of that and entering the "golden" trimester of pregnancy. I have a belly now---a nearly perfect basketball. And I have found out that I am indeed not carrying a chihuahua but a little girl! The main problem with work at this point is that I just don't care. I am daydreaming about a pink and green nursery, longing to hold this sweet little baby, and waiting impatiently for every kick and swimmy movement in my belly.

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Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)

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Taken in a place with no name (See more photos or videos here)

14 Weeks

So, yeah, it's been awhile since posting anything. I'm 14 weeks---YAY! The first trimester was really difficult. I had a horrible scary flu at 7 weeks and was out of work for a week then felt like a zombie for another. The flu just merged into morning (all day) sickness and incredible exhaustion. Then I started having spotting episodes. I found out at 10 weeks that the spotting can be attributed to the fact that the placenta implanted in the wrong place and is covering my cervix. This is not considered a high risk situation this early in pregnancy but it is enough of a concern that I have to go to the doc twice a month rather than the regular once a month visit. I am also supposed to rest as much as possible and considering the insane business of my job that is a laughable idea. By the time I get home, I am so tired that I crash out and then can't sleep well through the rest of the night. Not to mention that my bed has become so incredibly uncomfortable that it is something akin to a torture device. I need to get a mattress pad to give the mattress support but the decent ones are outrageously expensive and I can't afford anything right now because Big D is still unemployed. I also don't fit into ANY of my clothes anymore and again, can't afford to buy anything to fix this situation. If I stayed at home this wouldn't be a big deal but the two pairs of sweats that I can fit into and comfortably wear at home would not go over well at the office. UGH.

I am so looking forward to the second trimester and thrilled that I finally hit 14 weeks. I wish I could just run away from the rest of my life and just enjoy being pregnant for a while.

The Weeks of Our Lives

My life is being measured week by week at the moment. I'm at nine weeks or am I supposed to say in my ninth week? I haven't quite figured out that nuance out yet. Week seven was scary because I had the flu and was sick for ten days. Then during week eight, I had light brownish spotting on Tuesday and totally freaked out. My doctor's office was not concerned and told me this is pretty normal during the first trimester. I haven't had any spotting since and my other pregnancy symptoms (nausea, sore boobs, extreme exhaustion) seem to be progressing right along. One of the weirder aspects so far is that I welcome things like nausea and indigestion because they are my only markers right now that everything is going right.

Jason brought his one-year-old daughter over yesterday afternoon. We sat outside (well we sat and little A explored our yard--she is fearless) and enjoyed the SoCal weather--70's and clear blue skies. They are moving out of state soon, which makes Big D and I pretty sad, but we are really happy for them. Big D and I have also had some serious conversations about leaving Los Angeles. My work schedule is so crazy that I know things will have to change. And frankly, I've waited long enough to have kids, I really have no intention of turning my baby over to a stranger for ten hours a day while I go off to a job I hate. The main reason that I am still there is because my health insurance is through my job. Our hope is for Big D to find a new job with health insurance so that I can be on his plan. But even still, Los Angeles is so expensive and our modest home i.e. mortgage combined with outrageous student loan debt make it necessary for both of us to work to survive. Out of state, we would have so much more wiggle room financially plus the possibility of living near family, which is something that I crave more and more the older I get. With many of our friends leaving Los Angeles, it's starting to get a little lonely around here.

Eight Weeks

Well, it's been a month since returning to work so that accounts for my absence from blogging. I thought my first posts back would be about Sundance. And I'll get to that eventually. But the big news for me is that I am pregnant. I am very early--eight weeks, and I know that means that I am not yet supposed to be sharing the news. But the fact is it is all I care about right now. As you know, turning 34 was a huge wake up call for me. In light of everything I read about infertility, I got really concerned about having been on the pill for my entire adult life and having no sense of what my cycle was like without hormones artificially regulating it for me every month. I worried about difficulty getting pregnant and figured it would be best to go off the pill and get real with my body. Well, I had one cycle off the pill and then got pregnant. I took a pregnancy test in January and it was positive. Last week, I had the first ultrasound and saw a heartbeat. I am feeling nauseous and extremely tired. My doctor says these are good signs.