september mama

so last week i bought this adorable dress, and though it was too much money, i love it! i'm wearing it today and it is so comfortable and i feel cute despite having a very visible belly now.

and while i don't think it has anything to do with the dress per se, i am feeling particularly good today. i guess it must be the fact that i am really aware of having a belly all of a sudden, but i feel... fertile... like the way i've always looked at earthy, hippie, pregnant women with a sort of awe and envy, only now i realize that it's my turn. it's empowering to really (finally) understand that me and matt made a baby and it's in my belly. we made life. crazy! i feel sexy.

so yeah. that's been my day :). i need to get some more dresses, lol!

well, i am waiting for nate to send me scans of the polaroids he has been taking of my belly. the last one was pretty disturbing to see! i don't feel that fat, but boy was the picture screaming "look at that belly!" ah well, at least i have proof the baby is growing like it's supposed to.

today someone (who knows i am pregnant) said "awww you are getting a belly!" and i wasn't sure whether to be appreciative that somebody knows it isn't fat or whine that everybody else probably thinks it is. but i am wearing this cute, kinda tight sweater/dress thing with pants under it, and i noticed in the bathroom mirror that my pants are creating an indent around the waistband because THEY ARE TOO TIGHT NOW! cue the rubber band trick (thanks karen)!

babycenter.com says: "Get ready for a growth spurt. In the next few weeks, your baby will double his weight and add inches to his length..." and apparently i am now supposed to be gaining a pound a week for the rest of the pregnancy! i only gained 1 pound between weeks 8 and 12 though, so we'll see on wednesday how much i've gained between 12 and 16. probably 5 pounds. sheesh.

but--completely unrelated to my weight gain--i need to start walking or biking again. since it's been getting dark earlier i stopped my evening walks, but i know realize i can't afford to. my legs are sore as $%^& after an early morning... ah, shall we say, exertion? seriously. my legs should not be this sore from that. and i've noticed that i get really dizzy and winded walking up stairs. my heart pounds.

i know this is all normal pregnancy stuff but i should be helping by getting more exercise. and i need to eat more veggies. this baby is really into protein and fat, so those tend to be the first things i reach for when i get hungry!

and i have become officially--and intimately--acquainted with that thing 'they' term "pregnancy brain." oh yes. like the world just broke apart into puzzle pieces and i am a monkey with 5 thumbs who can't figure out how to put it back together. logic no longer travels in a straight line. all is confusion and befuddlement. it would be funny if i wasn't most definitely frustrating the people around me... haha.

so. we're going down to west palm beach to hang out with matt's mom, brother, his new wife, their new baby, his kid, and her kid for thanksgiving. it should be interesting... the family just went from one grandchild to 3.5 in a matter of months! but we are renting a car so this might end up being the first comfortable drive to south florida i've made since lauren moved to texas. plus it will be a nice holiday just to get out of the house for a few days... maybe i will get to stick my feet in the ocean for once... *yearn*

this is supposed to be matt's responsibility--and i know he will stubbornly refuse my ideas!--but somehow, a name wormed it's sneaky little way into my head today and now it IS the boy name. kinda like lily fell from the sky. damnit!

i was listening to some goofball new age radio station on itunes and when i looked at the title of a really pretty song, there it was. Rowan. best part is, it was on my list already (just like lily) but it didn't hit me until now.

*sigh* i know matt will hate it. but it is the name. rowan matthew. yep.

i kinda like how they are both plant names :). but really, a taurus named after a tree is very appropriate. and if you look up rowan in the celtic tree signs you get this:

---
"the thinker"
Celtic tree astrology recognizes Rowan signs as the philosophical minds within the zodiac. If you were born under the Rowan energy, you are likely a keen-minded visionary, with high ideals. Your thoughts are original and creative, so much so, that other’s often misunderstand from where you are coming. This sometimes makes you aloof when interacting with others as you feel they wouldn’t understand where you are coming from anyway. Nevertheless, although you may appear to have a cool exterior, you are burning within from your passionate ideals. This inner passion provides inner motivation for you as you make your way through life. You have a natural ability to transform situations and people around you by your mere presence. You are highly influential in a quiet way and others look to you for your unique perspectives.
---

sound like the king of wands, anybody? 'burning' 'passionate' 'creative' 'inner motivation' 'transform' 'influential'...

awwww i am so bummed. i wish it hadn't come to me... i love it! and i just know matt will hate it.

ok these are really cool and SO easy:

and these blocks rock!


ok and i just found like 50thousand more amazing kid stuff sites, starting here. i need to spend some serious hours browsing!

it occurred to me yesterday that i can't just design the baby's room how i want it to be... i have to take into account the fact that this kid will (probably/hopefully) be a taurus, and they have specific tastes! my whimsical, wild faerie theme may not be the right sort of thing for a steadfast and practical earth baby. taurus like lavish, comfortable, and warm surroundings.

the elaborate and textured tree still works perfectly, so that's great, but i realize i have to modify the plan with regards to painting all the froud creatures. while a taurus will certainly "get" the woodland creature thing (being an earth sign), they are just too ephemeral, i'm afraid. and i was planning to paint them all about in a random way, which is again not very taurus-friendly.

so: rethinking in terms of structure, balance, and just-so-ness. lucky for me i share the ruling planet of venus and all her preference for comfort and beauty, so we're on the same page there. i just have to tone down the random factor. the main thing is that i'm thinking this should be a springtime woodland, not fall (as is MY preference). baby is a spring baby, not an autumn sign like me. so the tree needs new growth, pretty green leaves, and maybe even a couple of flowers.

the problem is what, if anything, do i use to create interest on the other walls? the tree will be one entire corner plus wall and ceiling space on each side... is that enough, with a few framed photos on the other walls? i don't want to crowd the space, but "lavish" is important.

the color scheme is really giving me trouble too. taurus is great with earth tones and pastels, so that's easy enough, but i can't decide whether to paint the walls a pale green (my preference) or a blue. definitely not tan; i will incorporate plenty of earth tones via furniture and other stuff. so overall i'm thinking dark browns, tans, and pale blue and greens... i just can't decide on the wall color.

i'm also thinking that hanging little birds above the crib would be good. i will have some kind of mobile strung up anyway, but i think floating birds would be a nice distracting and sweet addition. and i have to remember to add blocks to my registry--taurus "the builder" will want some to play with. what a perfect son for matt, to share his need for (and skill at) material creation.

well, we did the spread i mentioned in an earlier post and got some really interesting answers! the reading was so ridiculously clear i'm finding it hard to believe it. we used the mythic tarot, as always. best deck ever.

i'll go into the details now:

(1) father's gift to the baby - 9 of wands
... basically summed up as "the ability to keep going in the face of difficulty even when you think you have nothing left" --reserves of energy/life/creativity when you thought you were spent.

(2) mother's gift to the baby - 9 of pentacles
... essentially, "a sense of deep, internal self-worth that is not reliant on outside judgments; the ability to know you are worth something and accomplishing things despite what anyone else says." --true internal independence and understanding of one's value.

(3) baby's greatest strength - 3 of swords
... this one is tricky. the 3 is usually a painful, traumatic card, but when framed as a strength, it becomes something along the lines of "the ability to go through difficulties knowing that they are necessary and that you will be stronger afterwards"--to transmute pain into growth, sort of; to bring things out into the open and deal with them even if they hurt, so that healing can follow.

(4) baby's greatest challenge - ace of pentacles
... turning ideas/dreams into reality... i saw this very strongly as representing the actual birth of the baby... its greatest challenge right now is the process of fully becoming material and physical, and literally materializing outside of the womb.

(5) baby's mission on earth - ace of cups
... embarking on the path of love; seeking emotional intimacy; trusting intuition. the baby is probably developing an emotional awareness if it doesn't already have one!

(6) baby's support on earth - ace of swords
... strength in spite of adversity; conflict or struggle which ultimately creates opportunity; emergence of new mental abilities. the baby's brain, memory, and awareness is developing, which totally relates to this. this one also connects back to it's "strength" in the 3 of swords.

so... to have three aces in a reading about a FETUS is too uncannily crazy. and i don't find it strange that the ace of wands was left out at all--the baby was never lacking a spirit, so how could that be developing? but here's the best part...

after that, i really wanted to "ask" the baby to show me something about itself (specifically the gender) in a concrete way... so i shuffled again and asked internally--while it was moving--if it would show me a card that represented itself. i pulled one card, and it was the king of wands.

baby is a boy. dreams, psychics, matt, and the tarot... i can't deny it anymore. he's a he.
if it was a girl i would've pulled a pentacle or a queen, or even a cup. not a king, and not THAT king.

the best part about that card was that i had a reading several months ago, in despair, about my reproductive system and all its woes, and basically just asked what the next 3/6/9 months were going to be like or what would happen with me. i was really afraid at the time of finding out that i am infertile... and the reading overall made decent sense and i was comforted, but the last card, the "outcome" of my reproductive stuff for the year made no sense to any of us. guess what card it was? yep, it was the king of wands. retrospect is a beautiful thing.

so remember what i just said about the ace of wands being missing from the baby reading? well i think it's pretty clear it's because the baby considers itself the KING of wands; not the ace. spirit and creativity are strong in this one and don't need more development, apparently. i also really like the parallel with matt offering the 9 of wands as his 'gift' and the baby showing the king in response, which is basically the 9 exalted... like he took matt's best gift and turned it into something even better.


fascinating stuff, eh?! so i have accepted that baby is a boy, but i'm holding out on the 'he' business until i see a penis. but that's just for mental convenience in case the whole universe is totally sending crossed signals...

and for the record, i'm developing the suspicion that this baby might end up being born in aries. but we'll see.

i have been having the worst fucking headaches lately! it's pretty much constant... i mean, i get a break for a few hours at a time but then it comes right back like nobody's business. and it's not like it's excruciating and warrants bed rest, it's just bad enough to disrupt my mood and daytime activities without being a good enough reason to go home. right across my forehead like someone has a too-tight strap squeezing around my skull.

and of course, i won't take meds for it... though i must say, shocking as it was to me, that crazy 'head on' stuff--you know: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD!!!--actually seems to help. it's homeopathic, which also shocked me, but it definitely helps lessen the discomfort, if not remove it all the way.

i'm starting to wonder if it has something to do with my eyesight. i have been wearing my glasses more often, but still not 24/7. maybe my brain is confused.

on another note, i feel the baby pretty frequently nowadays... :)

while at ward's over the weekend i realized i needed to stock up on snacky foods that are really healthy so that when i find myself starving at work i don't eat the cookies sitting on my desk... so i picked up a couple of raw revolution bars (which totally rock) and as an experiment, i decided to buy a belly bar too. turns out it's really tasty! 'burstin' chocolate' (deep chocolate orange)... mmm mm.

these things have 200% folic acid, 100% iron and B6, and lots of other vitamins, which is awesome for days when i forget my prenatal vitamins. they also have 8g of protein, wee!

of course i decided to research the company before i posted anything about it, and i'm not totally in love with them... basically a couple of marketing-industry vets with a good idea they knew would "sell"... but they did pack a shitload of nutrition into a really tasty bar, meant for women with annoying cravings vs. a need for health, and i can appreciate that.

on another food-related note, i made the fish broth over the weekend out of a florida mangrove snapper, and MAN did that stink! the house still smells like fish. i froze it and haven't used it yet but i'm thinking miso soup is in order tonight, so i really hope it doesn't taste how it smells. good nutrition shouldn't be painful!

i came here intending to write about the full moon gathering last night that was really awesome despite me not actually wanting to go initially... but then there was a comment waiting for approval which completely threw me off track.

i realize that blogs are public entities and i have deliberately allowed anonymous and unregistered commentary because, well, why not? but i am surprised that someone would come here, read my (mostly very personal) posts, and then decide to leave a nasty message about how i'm crazy for having a preference in how my baby is born. or that a friend has emotional difficulties with the experience of the birth she just had.

i know there are plenty of flamers (as in those-who-inflame, not gay men) on the internet, but for some reason i just didn't expect that here. is there really so little respect for other people's perspectives? and so little compassion for someone dealing with a traumatic experience?

while of course, a healthy baby and healthy mom are the goal of every birth, it's not always just about the end result. the journey DOES matter--to some people, at least.

please comment freely, and honestly, but please do it respectfully. that isn't too much to ask--and after all, you are on MY blog.

over the weekend i thought i felt something, and then again on tuesday sitting in the tattoo shop with matt... but today i KNOW i felt it!

funny little butterfly tickles way down in my pelvis :)

it happened while i was racing around the building gathering things to be delivered someplace, and i was hungry... so i guess the baby was rustling around in frustration wanting me to eat and stop stomping around! i felt it off and on for a good 30 minutes. it's really cool! very tickly, like there's a little bug crawling and i want to shoo it away.

*laughing* now i feel it again! it knows i am thinking about it... (ergh i wish i could stop saying "it!")

update: it would appear that all is well, mostly because as matt put it "you are way too good of a sister" (matt feels he would never talk to his brother again if they had a fight like that). but we had a few email exchanges and she apologized... so i let it go, and she seems not to mind anymore if i use the name. we'll see when i talk to her in person.

***
i am so hurt right now. my sister sent me the nastiest email i have ever read in my life, and i just spent the last 35 minutes sobbing to my mom on the phone about it. at work.

i'm too upset to go into detail right now but suffice it to say i "stole her girl name" and instead of telling me how much it meant to her and talking to me about choosing something else, she decided to lash out hatefully via email.

bottom line: lily will not be my daughter's first name.

last night i had another dream about having the baby... it was on-time, not early like the last one (i don't think i blogged about it).

in the dream i woke up and realized i had slept through the birth and the baby was already clothed and separated from me, and i was pissed and asking for him--it was a boy--and really confused why i had been asleep... i was so upset i missed the experience, again. and that he was handled right away by people who weren't me or matt. i kept thinking "what about the skin-to-skin contact?!" and getting upset. ah, dream logic.

so that's the second time i've dreamed of a boy baby whose birth i "slept through" or just couldn't remember. i can think of a few reasons for this:

1) since i don't know what birth will feel like, my brain doesn't want to guess and so conveniently makes me just not remember in the dreams,
2) i am having a premonition of an anesthetized birth,
3) my deepest fears are simply expressing themselves in my dreams.

if i find out it's a girl, #2 will not worry me at all! lol.

begin "official" 2nd trimester!

friday night nate came over to start the polaroid project and ended up making me feel much better about my body than i expected to after staring at a large belly for far too long. i was talking about how it's fat and not baby and he laughed as if that was the most ridiculous thing i ever said and told me i'm not even close to fat. it was suprisingly nice. anyway, i think the project will come out cool.

saturday we continued the remodeling projects going on around the house and recruited a friend to destory one of the walls, which he did amazingly efficiently (it took him 2 hours to do what took us about 5). then cleanup, and putting up more drywall and a new window...

sunday we finished the seaming the drywall, moved the piano, cleaned, i made a pie, made kendra a soup, made matt a soup, and that was it. long productive weekends, yay!

this morning traci and i were at maude's as per usual and we had some of their hash brown casserole, and holy crap--for once maude's has done something REALLY well! (other than my vegan desserts, of course.) it was sooo tasty. so if you go there in the morning and want yummy food, i highly recommend it. i'm totally going to steal the idea and make that for myself ASAP.
yes, i have been fantasizing about cheesy hashbrowns all morning. and will continue to do so for the rest of the day, i'm sure.

also(!!) i came into work this morning and the maintenance guys were here ready to fix some peeling paint we have in our 100+ year old building... so they put on their masks and start scraping away at the wall and what i am very sure is layers of old lead-based paint not 6 feet from my desk. paint chips hit me in the head more than once. my desk was covered in a thin layer of white dust after 5 minutes! so i said "uhh, guys, is this paint lead-based?" "no, they haven't used that stuff in like 20 years" (actually it's more like 30, but whatever) "well this building is more like 100, you know..." as they shrug and keep scraping, safe inside their face masks. so i said "well i'm pregnant and i'm not sure this is ok for me to be around" and i marched into the other room and called environmental health and safety, who promptly told me he would check if our building had lead on last year's survey (it did) and come right over to chew out the maintenance dudes for "not following procedure with lead-based paints." uhh... thanks. all i wanted to know was whether i should leave the room! apparently the answer was YES. they could have at least offered us masks too... i mean, if they need them, don't we? wtf?!

so i managed to 1) get some guys in trouble 2) freak myself out and STILL breathe in paint dust 3) halt all the work being done in our office for at least today. awesome. and then when they come in to paint over the work they will have eventually done, i'll have to complain about that too, or most likely just take the day off. if i can't paint my own nursery i'm certainly not exposing myself to cheap industrial paints like they use at UF. *grumble*

the good news is someone brought in holiday cookies for us :)

so... my body is telling me i do not eat enough protein. i'm not sure how i know that--it's not that i've been craving it horribly--but i just know. the problem is going to be how do i address it?

the last two times i've eaten eggs i felt like crap afterwards. the baby doesn't like eggs. i don't love peanut butter. hummus is great but it's not high enough in protein, nor can i eat enough of it to get the 80-100g of stinkin' protein i need every day! nuts are fine but again, i'd have to eat 3-4 cups of them to get enough...

so on an average day i eat:
bagel 3g
cream cheese 6g
oatmeal/cereal 6g
almond milk 10g
muffin (or something) 3g?
apple/orange/other fruit ?
hummus 6g
carrots ?
tempeh/bean-based dinner 15-20g

grand total: only half what i need to be eating! *ugh* but i know my calorie intake is fine...

clearly i will need to perform a diet revamp this weekend before i go shopping.

on edit: it occurred to me that perhaps the problem is in fact the prenatal vitamins i am taking, not the eggs. i'm pretty sure that i've taken my vitamins both times i ate eggs recently... and i know they made me sick over the weekend when i took them on a (stupidly) empty stomach. and eggs didn't bother me when i was on my first bottle of vitamins--a different brand. so i will also be experimenting with vitamins this weekend. it is so miserable to be nauseous all freaking day again!

i was NOT informed of the potential risks of having been shot up with rhogam, NOR the reasons why i probably didn't need it! motherfuckers!

it's preserved in MERCURY for fuck's sake! and it can cause permanent immune system damage! I FUCKING HATE HOSPITALS! *scream*

let the birth center just try to give me that shot at 28 weeks without proving i need it...

today during lunch i went (with another pregnant co-worker) to visit a friend from work who had her baby last month. it was an interesting experience... she wanted a totally natural birth but ended up with an emergency c-section, so it was really good to talk to her about that. her son is totally adorable and healthy, btw.

she told me, as she cried, how she was overwhelmed with feelings of having "failed" as a birthing woman by allowing the c-section to happen. she never wanted that and felt a lot of guilt (and what i think was a sense of being cheated) over not living up to the expectations she had placed upon herself, and she said she is only just now getting over it and coming to terms with the fact that it's ok.

i mentioned how i am afraid of the same thing happening to me... for me it's not a sense of failing to live up to expectations though, it's much more THIS IS WHAT I WANT and i am afraid of the disappointment and of not getting to experience what birth is *really* like if i end up with a c-section. also the threat of never getting to have a vaginal birth if i consent to a c-section is huge. this is a real problem for me; i need to learn to accept the possibility before the time comes or i am afraid i will be a mess afterwards, should it come to that. i worry about it a lot.

she said her recovery was fine, she had no horror stories about not being able to hold the baby or get out of bed or anything, so that was reassuring, but still. the sense i get for myself is closest to resentment, i think--i would be so angry and resentful for having birth taken away from me, i can't imagine getting over it. i think i'm a little bit crazy!

for her it was a result of the usual cascade of events (in my opinion)... she went to the hospital dilated to 3cm and they let her labor as usual until she was exhausted, then her midwife suggested an epidural so that she could rest. then they broke her water which was stained with meconium, and after that, pitocin was brought in and she dilated to 6cm. but the baby wasn't doing well with the contractions at that point and his heart rate dropped to 50bpm, which is when they decided on the c-section. totally understandable decision... however, one has to wonder if the pitocin is what distressed the baby in the first place.

everyone has to wait until they are there in the moment to really know what will happen, but from far away it is so easy to see how these things spiral out of control... it's a good lesson, i think.

somehow i am going to have to come to terms with the potentiality of not having a natural birth.

#1: it occurred to me yesterday that my moodiness is totally gone. apparently. i haven't been in very many anger-inducing situations lately so maybe i'm just lucky and avoiding it! but seriously i feel pretty even-tempered and human again... it's nice.

#2: again with the boobs... since i think about them all the time (because they tingle and twitch and ache and jiggle) i remembered that back when i had my nipples pierced years ago, the piercer told me they were "a little bit inverted" which i realize now he was totally wrong about but it gave me a complex for a short period nonetheless! they are SO not inverted at all. these days they stick out like 20ft, too... even slightly inverted nipples do not do that. it just kinda pissed me off that he made me feel 'different' when i'm not, and never was. noob.

#3: i found a really amazing tarot spread for "communicating with an unborn baby" today. it goes like this:
1...............2

3...............4

..........5

..........6

(cup/uterus shape)

1 = the father's gift to the baby
2 = the mother's gift to the baby
3 = baby's best strength
4 = the baby's biggest challenge
5 = the baby's mission on earth
6 = the baby's support on earth

isn't that neato? i'm excited to do it. i need my spiritual cohorts (*ahem* karen, traci?) to properly execute it though, so it will have to wait for the right time.

#4: i went to bed at 630 last night--yes, 630--and i was still tired this morning. 11+ hours of sleep. still tired. wtf??

#5: all i can think about today is the veggie chili i am going to make after work. that and ice cream. mmmmmmmmm chili...

#6: so nate is obsessed with this and i have agreed to participate for both our benefit. (does there need to be an "s" in there somewhere? seems like it.) he wants to do them in sequence of rainbow colors with the last one of baby+me being white... it'll be another cute thing to hang on the wall in the nursery, AND it will save me from having to take more awful pics of my own belly. woot!

ok people, i need help. matt keeps coming up with insane, definitely-going-to-be-made-fun-of style names for the baby should it end up a boy. it's clear he wants something unusual, possibly historical, and somewhat dramatic... but i draw the line at 'biblical.' no way i'm going there.

so far he has suggested:
dorian
abel
malachi
gabriel
aidan
...and something else crazy that i can't remember.

clearly aidan is a fine celtic name, and if i have to settle on dorian i will, but he is really into "abel." you know, like the pacifist first child of adam and eve who was killed by his evil brother. not quite the sort of association i'd choose for the name of my son...

but matt--of course--doesn't seem to like anything on the long list of reasonable names i have compiled.

so if anybody has any relatively-odd but not totally lame ideas that you wouldn't mind sharing please do! preferably nothing that makes us seem like we're amish or mormon. thanks :)

yesterday:
approximately 3:00pm headache commences.
3:00pm-7:00pm headache continues with little change.
7:45pm headache intensifies to the point i was told i was being "unrefined" and "weird" at a restaurant.
8:45pm-12:00am i feel like my head is going to explode, can't sleep. it's like a hammer smashing against my skull over and over in the same spot.
2:20am break down, get out of bed to hunt desperately for analgesics, which i can't find.
2:30am wake matt up to help me look for pills (or go get some if we're out). he produces a new bottle of advil, i take half of one pill.
3:45am headache finally stops and i get to sleep. freaking night from HELL.

today:
MY UTERUS ISN'T BIG ENOUGH FOR THIS BABY! i can feel it stretching. it's not comfortable at all... it's like a pulled muscle only duller and it doesn't go away. strain. ache. i think this is what they call "round ligament pain..."
and my boobs are growing again. they hurt and they're bigger and in another week i swear i am going to need larger diameter nipple rings because these are pretty much hugging my newly-enlarged nipples! too much info, but wtf, this is a pregnancy blog right?

the idea that i am any less pregnant than before (or having a 'threatened miscarriage') is almost comical at this point. if anything i think i am/was having a surge of extra pregnant-ness which probably caused the bleeding.

my belly is getting bigger too. i need to take a new picture.

this weekend was the scariest halloween i have ever had, but not because of demons or witches or haunted houses... no, it was blood that freaked me out this time.

thursday night i had a lovely dinner with a friend (at chopstix, mmm), and when i got home around 730 i went to get in the bath to relax for bed, and was unpleasantly surprised by the sight of blood in my underwear. bright red fresh blood. oh fuck. matt was at school and out of touch.

i ran to the bathroom chanting "no no no" and "it's ok," trying to stay calm and assess the situation. no cramping, no back pain, just blood, oh god, really blood dripping like a period. i started shaking and kept chanting as i grabbed the phone to call the midwives for help... my awesome midwife was very calm and explained my options: relax and hang out, come by for a doppler ultrasound to hear the heartbeat if any, or go the ER and find out for sure what's up. i told her i would see her in 5 minutes, hung up, and lost it. i wailed and sobbed uncontrollably and called my doula/friend/angel karen to see if she would come with me. she did.

so we got to the birth center (as another birth was happening) and i was still bleeding, so the midwife talked to us and then put the doppler--which i had previously refused--on me, and for a good 30 seconds there was nothing. i just laid there trying to accept whatever was going to happen. then all of a sudden there was this fast, intense thumping... the heartbeat... and i cried more. i felt like my heart was ripping out of my chest. i kept thinking "at least if there was no heartbeat i could accept the worst..." but there was, and i couldn't trust it to mean anything.

she said the heartbeat was good--it kicked at the doppler wand--but in the end we decided to go to the ER anyway to try to find out why i was bleeding. i called matt's academy 5 or 6 times and no one answered, so karen drove us all the way out there to hunt him down. after 20 minutes of wandering around in the dark and empty building we found someone who found matt, and we left for the hospital. poor matt was so distraught, but he stayed calm and tried to comfort me.

karen stayed with us for 2 hours or something while we waited, and then we waited for another 5 or 6 hours until finally being seen. the bleeding had long stopped, but all those delirious, hungry, late-night hours left me a lot of time to "go inside" and talk with the baby... while matt was out at one point i sunk into myself and felt like i was swimming in the placenta with the baby, and it knew me, and i cuddled it and had a serious non-verbal conversation in which it reassured me it was going to stay with us, and together we knit up the bubble around it and tightened my cervix with the understanding it would not open until we were both ready for a healthy birth. i may have been hallucinating, but i felt very sure everything was ok after that, and just kept waiting until they called us. the longer i was there the more it became clear that this is just my body's way of handling this particular pregnancy.

i was "treated" with multiple draws of blood for god-knows-what tests, i had to wear a constant blood pressure and pulse monitor (that was interesting), and they came and did two ultrasounds with visual. it was amazing to see the baby. it was much bigger than i thought, and it was moving all the time... it looked perfect. the doctor said the heartbeat was good and everything in me was "in the right place" so they left me again, then came back to do a pelvic exam. my cervix was closed and i wasn't bleeding anymore. but i knew that already...

then came the part where they freaked out about my having factor v leiden (i clot too much) and insisted i need to be at their high-risk clinic and on a daily dose of heparin. i acted very immaturely and told the resident "no" and at one point i even stuck out my tongue (but hey, it was 4am and i was loopy)... i explained that the hematologist disagrees with her, my midwives say it's ok, and i had no intention of visiting any high-risk clinics, and she stopped talking to me altogether. i seem to be really good at pissing off doctors lately.

so anyway i ended up with a shot of rhogam for the bleeding and was sent home with a cheerful "we have no idea why you were bleeding, but our collective opinion is that, since we don't know a damned thing about women's bodies, you are diagnosed with 'threatened miscarriage.' good night!" needless to say, when i bled again on saturday night--much less--i decided to stay home and rest. i rested until this morning when i got up for work.

so that was my insane weekend... i can't say it was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, but there was a deep sorrow and inability to accept the idea that i might have been losing the baby. i know, as matt said very sweetly, "we can make more babies," but it still felt so sad. and wrong. i really think i knew it was ok, because my reaction to the bleeding was that it didn't fit... nothing could be going wrong because everything was so clearly ok.

a surprising number of women actually have periods--full out periods--for the duration of their pregnancies. so i am not going to lose my head over a little bit of blood. not again, anyway. and now i am fine, with just a little bit of residual spotting of old blood. and no cramps. this baby is not going anywhere (see next post)...