Living (and working) in a body

My pregnancy is 13 weeks and 1 day along. I started off the week crying with gratitude--I heard the heartbeat at the midwife's office and then got genetic testing results that my baby has the lowest risk possible of any chromosomal problem, including the type of congenital heart defect that has appeared in my family of origin. I can't believe I could be so lucky to have a baby that is as healthy as any test can possibly test for, and therefore as likely to make it to term as any other baby. We told a wider circle of friends and made an appointment to tell work. I was just overcome with gratitude--and then utterly exhausted from all the emotion. 

Then the next day I got to work, feeling rested and well (which is happening a few days a week these days, which is a new thing) and realized I'd forgotten about yet another meeting; and I'd failed to respond to a colleague in a timely way about something; and I'm really behind on projects due imminently. This has been the story of the past new years (not the entire story, there have been some really good work highlights too), but I feel like I'm always apologizing: "sorry I missed that meeting," "sorry I was off email," "sorry I had to cancel," after I went through the nausea and fatigue of a first trimester of pregnancy, then a miscarriage, then complications from a miscarriage, then depression, not to mention my ongoing PTSD; then another pregnancy and miscarriage; then more complications and a D&C; then utter emotional disaster. And now, I'm healthy! Nothing is wrong! but it still affects my work, because I have to sleep for 12 hours a night in a profession where burning the midnight oil is the norm; and I have to stop and rest and eat repeatedly when others are moving straight from project to project. I'm not complaining, I am incredibly grateful, and happy with my decisions. I'm just noticing that having a child takes an enormous amount of work, of real work; far more than I ever knew, because I thought it all happened after the child was born. But what about the miscarriages, the fatigue of the pregnancy, and then god forbid, the survival of a late-term loss of a child? How do we account for that? How do we make room for that? Make time for that, value that? In work worlds that are designed with the assumption of male bodies? I mean, the answer is, we don't; women get pushed out; we get paid less; we don't even have paid maternity leave in this country (egregious!). And in a less abstract way: How do I explain why I've been a little flaky lately, when I haven't been sick? Pregnancy is healthy, and yet it mimics illness. It's certainly a health condition. Especially when I've been having to use that excuse for now, three pregnancies in a row? In the past, I've never heard of women needing to make accommodations while they were pregnant; all the examples I've seen seem to just press on, these women have seems so hardy. But my guess is it was hard, too. We just don't talk about it. 

And maybe a part of me misses work being my major focus. I've made a conscious decision to make time for other parts of my life--my treatment for PTSD, my journey of trying to have a child--which I don't regret, but there was a reason it had to be a conscious decision. I like doing what I do, and I like to be as good as I can at what I do. Deliberately not trying to be perfect is hard. Harder still is allowing that of myself. 

Weirdly, I've had some moments this week where I realize--fear--that now I am *that* woman. After miscarriages and struggles with trying to get pregnant again, I know what it feels like to be irrationally resentful of other people having children. And I worry that I've brought those feelings up for other people now, despite my best efforts not to. Especially now that I "announced" my pregnancy over email to more friends & family (we referred to the miscarriages). It's hard, but I remind myself that I can't take away the pain of loss and infertility, and it's stupid to try. That's where people go wrong, and I've borne the brunt of this too: trying to make others feel better, rather than allowing them their pain and bearing witness in a compassionate way. It's okay if, as I start to show, other women need to run away from the sight of me, as I once felt the need to do. I can respect the need to do that. Basically, what I'm trying to tell myself, is that I'm going to step in shit, because the world is still full of it--unfair suffering. And that's okay. I might even say or do something accidentally hurtful. I hope when I do I have the humility to respond well, and not get all defensive, and instead to see that someone is hurting. I suppose that's good preparation for parenthood too. I will screw up. That's a guarantee. But the question is whether I will be too afraid of admitting that I screwed up to bother to reflect and try something new. 

12 weeks and 2 days

I've been feeling so tired still, though nauseated less often. I have more moments where I'm surprised to feel a normal level of energy, every couple of days. I've been on fiber-watch, which is hard when carbs are the only foods that sound appealing, since regularity is hard to come by, and I want to avoid a GI meltdown like I had a week or so ago. But mostly, I'm okay. My tummy is definitely rounder, and my bras don't fit (but I keep wearing them because I haven't gone bra shopping, and it seems weird to since I'll just keep getting bigger for a while, so ouch), and I feel nothing really different inside, so you can imagine how I burst into tears of amazement, wonder, gratitude and love, shaking MFP's hand with excitement, when I saw this figure dancing so elegantly and waving little hands and legs in front of my eyes yesterday:

My baby looks like a baby. I said to the technician, this is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. I hardly look and barely feel pregnant, and yet my baby is dancing inside my uterus, oblivious to anything outside. The tech kept pressing my belly to try to get one last measurement, and the baby had stopped moving, and wouldn't move no matter how much pressing and jiggling she did, or how much deliberate coughing and laying back and turning on my side I did. The baby was unphased. Our child is stubborn and likes to sleep a lot, MFP said; takes after us. I was so worn out from the excitement I came home and slept the rest of the day.

The geneticist at MFM suggested the NT scan even though we are also doing the more definitive cell free DNA blood test, since I have a lot of family risk factors, and we jumped at the chance. We were nervous of course in advance. We are always braced for disaster, like everything is this terrifying gauntlet we have to go through, but we joked after the scan that measured out baby to be perfectly healthy--no sign of genetic defects, thank creation--that we always forget to anticipate that after the gauntlet lies not just relief and things as they already are, but absolutely amazing dreams coming true. We get the results of the blood test, likely by mid-next week. If that's good, which looks like they very well may be, we'll tell work about my pregnancy. And maybe buy a baby book again.

Monday I'll also look for a heartbeat with the midwife at my physical, which I moved earlier because I didn't think I was getting a scan. Now I'll get two checks on the baby right after another. I hope I can get through the anxiety ok of the wait for the next one.

We shared the ultrasound baby-looking photo with MFP's family, and I liked how they all responded--teary and excited, like it was huge news. My friends were happy for me but not nearly as much--maybe because at our age babies happen all the time. I know even if I weren't estranged from my family, their response would be disappointing. There are so many of them, babies are an everyday event, and they don't really show that much emotion anyway. I felt sad after I ran into my sister who I haven't seen maybe close to two years last weekend. We just waved and smiled and she biked along and I kept walking Pupstein. I wanted to say, "I'm pregnant!" First thing. It is sad, that loss. When I think about my choices, I have no idea if I'm right or wrong, I'm just bumbling along, doing what I can with regard to my family of origin. But when I think about what I want for my baby, I'm filled with certainty that I want every adult in their life to be someone they can be real with, who won't impose a different set of standards than the one we live by in our house, where no emotion or topic is off-limits. It's hard to carve a new path. But actually, I think, even harder to stay on an old one that keeps old wounds from healing and causes sadness and shame.

Today I thought about that beautiful moving figure of a baby and I thought about what an adventure it will be to raise a baby in a house filled with love and openness and impromptu dancing with parents who have creative and engaging lives of their own to share. I felt like I'd moved to a land of dreams, even though I'm stuck living only a few blocks from the sad house I grew up in. I'm so happy, right now, I have this baby all bound up with me.

11 weeks

This week came in like a lion and out like a ... relatively unthreatening, though still wild, member of the cat family. Luckily I'm here today, at 11 weeks, with no bad signs, getting close to the beginning of the second trimester. I thought to myself today, well, one way or the other I'm getting out of this first trimester soon. I hope, and I know it's probable, that I'll be on the happy other side.

I'll work backwards from today, when I'm feeling pretty good. The last two days I was able to bike to work again, and eat in a way resembling a normal person, without much nausea or gastrointestinal distress. I'm still really tired--evidenced by today's nap and yesterday's 8:30pm bedtime. It felt so good yesterday to have energy again, for the first time in a while! This is probably a result from taking it easy and resting a lot this weekend.

I was recovering from being hit all at once with every possible symptom listed for this month in the "What to Expect" blah blah book that a friend recently bequeathed to me. Warning: TMI ahead, skip to the next paragraph if you don't feel like hearing about disgusting pregnancy symptoms. I had to miss work Thursday because I had such an awful night Wednesday. It might have been viral, but I suspect it might have been my system reacting to me eating in totally abnormal ways for a long time now. I think I'd been constipated and started having hemorrhoids earlier that week, and then Wednesday night I felt horribly nauseated for hours, then vomited twice in a row, then had diarrhea. I had no idea how to respond, besides rest of course, considering what I'd do for a) nausea b) diarrhea and c) constipation are completely different things. Finally this weekend I restricted myself completely to the BRAT diet, and that seems to have worked, thank goodness. I was dreaming of all the foods I haven't eaten in so long--pound cake, madelines, a croissant, donuts (you can see a theme)--and really missing being able to eat whatever I want. (All those things I miss would make me want to throw up, and would really mess my very fragile system up). Also, by the way, having hemorrhoids for the first time, not to mention tons of gastrointestinal abdominal pain, is really shitty (well there's a helluva pun) for someone who's had a miscarriage. Blood and cramps? but not *those* kind of blood and cramps? Way to freak me out.

All this came right on the heels of a really stressful morning last Wednesday. I was resting before work and I got the call from Maternal Fetal Medicine about scheduling my genetic counseling appointment. I missed the call and I immediately blamed MFP for not helping me find my phone--clearly I was incredibly stressed out and angry at myself for not being hypervigilant, since I knew they were going to call soon. Then when I called back I found I had to wait until the 18th--a week and a half away--for the test, and there was no way to get me in sooner. Yet it can take up to two weeks to get the results. At this point--already a stressful time of day because I was on my way to work--I completely overreacted. I told MFP, "Fuck you!" accusing him of not being helpful; I resented him for not having to be the one whose blood gets taken and whose phone gets called, as though I were all alone in this. I freaked out that my state is going to pass a law criminalizing us if we get bad results and make a choice to terminate. What I didn't say was that I was mostly angry at myself for not having known in advance how all of this worked so that I could get what I wanted, which is what my friend had who first told me about cell-free fetal DNA testing: a test to know as early as possible, right at 10 weeks. Turns out, actually, you can do it at 9 weeks! I still feel kind of angry, couldn't Dr. Special have referred me? Couldn't the midwives just have referred me when I first called them without waiting until they talked to me first, so that I could at least get in at MFM? I'm scared, and I want, desperately, any indication I can get about whether or not this baby is healthy, about whether I might actually have it. And when I'm scared, I feel alone (hence me being an asshole to MFP, and pushing him away), and I worry about whether I've trusted the wrong people (if I'd had a doctor like my friend's OB, would I be able to know sooner about whether the baby's healthy? Should I have somehow known this would happen and figured out a way to get in earlier?). I was late to work and I called MFP crying to apologize. I know we're in this together, I said; I'm sorry I reacted so badly and was so mean. Clearly I brought a whole shitload of other issues (my childhood, for one big one, and both miscarriages) to this one, *slight* delay.

I'm just desperate to get to the end of this trimester, to hear some sort of definitive news that it's OK to hope, to start doing things like telling work and others and making plans, and it's agonizing to wait even one more week than I have to. Admittedly, it's also scary given what my friend had to go through--getting conflicting answers, then finally having to make a decision to terminate the pregnancy based on the timeline recently shortened by our legislature to 20 weeks rather than her own timeline (fucking ASSHOLES--ok I'll get that out of my system). I was so worked up Wednesday morning, I was saying out loud to reassure myself that we'll just go to New York, where MFP has relatives, if we have to to terminate, if a law gets passed saying that we're criminals for deciding to end a chromosomally abnormal pregnancy. The thought of getting bad results at 13.5 weeks (when I could have had them as early as 11 weeks), and then having to digest and understand them, and get answers as to exactly how severe the abnormality is, and then decide what to do about a fetus I already deeply love, keeping the rest of my life in mind, and do so under the pressure of the state legislature that's about to criminalize that very choice, and while with every passing day an abortion gets more costly and less accessible--is horrifying. And that's where I live a lot of the time, thanks to past traumas and two miscarriages--in the world of the horrifying, of the worst case scenario. I know it might not sound medically accurate, but I'm not surprised I had the worst night of GI symptoms that night after such an incredibly stressful morning.

I realize that no test, no benchmark passed, is going to definitively tell me everything is going to be okay. Regardless I still have to find some kind of peace inside myself. Most of the time I feel like I'm managing the fear of another loss, rather than actually feeling happy and hopeful. My therapist asked me about that this week, and helped me focus for a minute how how intensely happy I am that I am finally pregnant again, and how grateful I am that there are no bad signs, and on how much I love this baby. I decided to go to my first prenatal yoga class this weekend. My worst panic was right before I went--maybe the baby has already died!--as though the act of going to a class for pregnant women was overplaying my hand. But I can date me feeling better over the last few days to that class. It felt good to move again, finally, after feeling so sick and tired for over a month; and I shared at the beginning that I've been nervous because I have two losses. The response was kind. And I liked how the class, when it did mention pregnancy, which thankfully wasn't that much, focused on the here and now, not the future, like, when I'll hold my baby or something. She just said at the end during meditation "Feel your connectedness to your baby," and at the beginning, "Notice the energy coming from your baby," with a couple of "hug your baby" as a way to tell you to flex your abs thrown in throughout. A lot of the times I feel like I got a call telling me, "We have your child here, don't worry, you'll see them--probably--in 9 months," and I just have to trust that my child is okay, all the time, as though it's in someone else's hands. Because its wellbeing is certainly not in *my* control, to a large extent. So it was nice to hear "feel your connectedness to your baby," because despite that feeling of being totally out of control, I recognize that right now, me and my baby are more intimately connected than I'll ever be with anyone else, or again (unless I get pregnant again). I don't believe my baby is a person--it's not--and that's what's so amazing and cool. We're somewhere in the mysterious blur between one and two, between alone and together.

I went to acupuncture this weekend too, which hopefully helped with my GI problems, and since then, I've been able to be more in the mindset of, it will probably be okay. I don't know for sure, but I recognize that probably, we will have a healthy baby. It's hard for me to stay in that place for long. As soon as I started to feel better Monday, that in itself worried me, since one of the signs of miscarriage is "sudden cessation of pregnancy symptoms." I was pro-active though, and I called MFM to ask some questions about that appointment and the timeline, and I moved up my next appointment with the midwives. I should hear a heartbeat then right around the time I get the test results back, and right when I hit 13 or 13.5 weeks--the start of the second trimester. I know that's not the finish line, but it'll be an important milestone. At that point, it would be irresponsible of me *not* to start making plans at work--pulling out of some commitments. And I'll feel more comfortable, and less like I'm being inappropriate, saying "I'm pregnant" when I'm talking about what's going on in my life. I know I might feel like an imposter ("other people get pregnant and take their babies home, but that won't actually be me") throughout this pregnancy, because that comes up with me a lot, but I'm working on easing that feeling. Right now I'll focus on getting through the next two weeks, and then the two weeks after that, and then after that...

---

One more thing. MFP and I have noticed what we affectionately call, in the voice of the trailer for a thriller, "The Thickening!" For a few weeks I've been in the, "pregnant or fat?" stage, which could also be, "pregnant or bloated from all kinds of GI distress?" stage. I know I've gained a lot of weight, even before the pregnancy, from the miscarriages and then the progesterone (and a lot of pastries...), so it's hard to tell if I'm actually showing at all yet. There's a definite thickening around my waistline. Empire-waisted dresses only these days. But, since I'm on my own personal bump-watch, I think I see a little bit of a bump. A little bit of a bump! Maybe. But kind of! I know other women might feel differently, but right now I'm looking forward to showing. At least to myself. That my baby is growing!

10 weeks

As long as I'm still pregnant today (I have no evidence otherwise, but having had a missed miscarriage, the thought's never far from my mind that the fetus has died without my knowing it), this is the longest I've ever been pregnant. I'm two weeks away from (one way of counting) the beginning of the second trimester, and the end of nightly progesterone (yay!).

I'm exhausted because I saw the midwife right after work today--a long day. Going back to the same OB/Midwife practice where I had two bad outcomes was a little scary. Also, I have a lot of doubts--given that I wish they would have handled some things about my miscarriages better, and that I left for Dr. Special's office because I wanted different treatment, is it even a good idea to go back here? Am I trusting my baby's health with the best place possible? I haven't really shopped around that much for a practitioner. But I'm remembering why I went with this practice in the first place. I have to give birth at a hospital with a reputation for being high-intervention, supermedicalized, but this unique practice of midwives (CNMs) delivers there. A friend had the midwives catch her two children and had great experiences with them; and their statistics--which they actually bother to publicize--are fabulous, in terms of very low rates of interventions. Plus it's just me. With my trauma history, I need personalized attention; I know I need sensitive, holistic caregivers; and I really like the whole approach of empowering women to make informed, evidence-based choices--which is all the "midwifery model of care" stuff. I like the idea of having a midwife meet me at the hospital and not leaving my side till the end, even if there's a C-section, rather than having nurses I've never met before keep coming by to stick their fingers in my vagina, or residents constantly wanting to peek in. I like knowing that if I do need surgery or another intervention, I'll be with supportive people who will help me trust that it's really needed (and not second-guess myself, hopefully, as much later). I spent a lot of time with pregnancy #1 talking to them about this practice and that's why I chose it. They seemed experienced working with women like me who have avoided doctors for years because of a history of trauma.

But...that's all well and good for labor and delivery, but what about getting me there with a live human baby? If there's a problem, will I be poo-poo'ed as I felt I was with pregnancy #2? Will I be abandoned to the OB if I need an OB and forgotten about by the midwives, instead of having someone attend to things like suggesting a pregnancy loss group? (A social worker told me about the group I ended up attending; and she was pretty surprised my OB hadn't told me about it--or handed me any info on dealing with miscarriages at all). In my desire to treat pregnancy as something healthy and avoid, if possible, an escalating cavalcade of interventions, will I miss a chance to save my baby's health, or mine? How the hell can a woman scared of another loss--an even bigger one this time--have a "natural" "holistic" pregnancy and birth with midwives?

I remind myself that it was science that led me to the midwives. I'm basing this on data about healthy outcomes and outcomes that women feel good about. And I'm a pretty good advocate for myself, especially after the losses. I will speak up if I have a concern.

Today with the midwife went well. It had its ups and downs. The downs were at the beginning, when the midwife asked me to recount the two previous miscarriages, which in a way I was glad to re-tell, because they were both complicated and awful, but she was sitting at a computer and having computer trouble. I got annoyed. Is that how it's going to be? You're not going to read my chart in advance and I'm going to have to tell you about these horrible experiences repeatedly while you type into a computer? Then the midwife-in-training shared that she had had four miscarriages, and has a healthy daughter, and that she feels for me. I really appreciated that. As the appointment went on--standard prenatal health information, no doppler or exam--the midwife asked me a bit about my anxiety and trauma history, and I shared that it's just helpful for me to share that to let my providers know that I might take a little bit of time to trust people, and I really like midwives because they seem to be about empowerment, and that helps me feel safer. She validated that, and she understood why I hadn't had a pap in many years, because I've been avoiding it. Then later she said that she expects me to call more often, she wants me to call anytime I might want a check, and she expects that they'll see me more often because I've had two losses. I got a little teary (as I often do with my hormones these days), and she rubbed my back, and said it's definitely okay to be extra nervous and to be crying in their offices, and really put me at ease. I told her my concerns about being told "it's probably okay" when I'm worried it isn't, and she said definitely to keep calling back and ask to talk to a midwife if I ever feel like there's a problem. At the end she asked if I needed a hug and she gave me one. I like that she kept the previous miscarriages in mind as she was talking to me. I said that this would be my first visit to this office where I had a good outcome; where I came in pregnant and left pregnant, and she gave me a high-five. I got teary again thinking that maybe this really will be the one that ends up in a baby.

Medically, I got some helpful advice on what to eat, since these days nothing feels edible, but at least if I have a few things I can make sure I'm getting my protein and calcium. I got a million blood tests and a urine test; and I scheduled the dreaded pap test along with a general physical (breast exam--I hate that, that's why I've avoided it for years, but I did lose a half-sister to breast cancer that appeared while she was pregnant, so I'm going to do my best to face down this fear; and MFP will be there with me; also I scheduled it with this same midwife, at her suggestion, since we've already had a conversation about my history and my issues with it) for four weeks from now, and at that exam, they'll have the doppler out to hear the heartbeat. But no scans. THAT is the difference between midwives and OBs; they don't do ultrasounds. Right now I'll only have an anatomy scan at 20 weeks. Can I really trust enough that I'm still pregnant, that I'm OK, without a scan? Given that the second trimester is new to me, maybe I can approach it with fresh associations. Also, for me, the scans themselves make me incredibly nervous in advance, and I have to take a long time afterward to come down emotionally from the anxiety. We'll see how this goes. This is a tough time--no movement, I'm hardly showing at all, and no scans, either.

But there's always the possibility of getting a scan at MFM--Maternal Fetal Medicine, where I'll go for genetic testing. I should get in in the next few days...I'm anxious about it (this seems to be a theme). I am hoping to get the cell-free fetal DNA blood test, a very new (2011) and simple blood test that's more accurate than anything else in telling you whether the baby is healthy. A friend told me about it. It could also tell us the sex, but I don't want to know right now, I think. I'm 35, which means I have a 1 in 350-ish chance of having a child with Down's syndrome, and a higher risk in general of having a child with any kind of chromosomal abnormality. I wondered if I could take some reassurance, in a way, from my previous miscarriages, as though they were signs that my uterus was being choosy about only growing chromosomal healthy embryos. It's surreal that I'm undergoing genetic testing at the very time there are attacks on women who choose abortion after getting results that indicate Down's. Obviously, I am 100% opposed to these cynical ways of doing nothing to help people with disabilities, yet placing them on the front lines of an effort to attack women. I have always approached this with this book in mind, which talks about one family's experience of disability, and which says that most parents of children with Down's just don't want to engage with the genetic testing debate because it does absolutely nothing to help their children--no funding for the specialized care they'll need, no greater access to educational opportunities. Also, the author made a point I hadn't thought about before: that finding out earlier about a child's condition can be really helpful; it can help you make sure you have the necessary medical attention at the ready, as well as connections to support. And I'm sure that having consciously chosen to parent a child with a disability can only help the parents and child in the years ahead. The truth is, I honestly don't know what I would do. The decision would involve MFP. Like most women, as studies show, I would likely terminate. But I also am already deeply attached to this fetus. Frankly, I just want to fucking know. And there are so many other things I'm worried about besides Down's. There are chromosomal disorders that make it impossible for the fetus to even live to term, or live more than a short time after birth. Given my age and my history, I will feel a lot more confident doing basically responsible things like re-arranging work responsibilities for the spring, and buying some new, bigger bras or clothes, and in general, telling people beyond super close friends that I'm pregnant, once I hear back about these test results.

I know there's no magic moment when I go from "in danger" to "safe." I have to live with that. But I do hope this feeling of being an imposter goes away--not feeling like I'm pregnant "enough" to go to prenatal yoga class, or to buy a baby book or something--if I'm in the second trimester and I have healthy test results. Well, if it doesn't go away I hope it lessens. I guess what I hope is that trust grows. I suppose that's the theme of this post. Trust in myself to advocate for myself and to make good choices about my health care; trust in my caregivers to be compassionate, skilled, competent and kind; and trust in my body, that I will do the best I can in this pregnancy. I think about women who've suffered stillbirths and I realize that that last one--trust in my body--may just never happen. I guess it's trust that I'll do everything in my control, at least. Maybe I can't trust that I'll bring a baby home--it still seems almost impossible; even as we're reading packets from the hospital about packing a baby outfit; that seems so outlandishly unrelated to what I'm doing now, just trying to continue this pregnancy another week at a time. But I would like to trust enough to *hope* I can bring a baby home. Hope never killed a baby. Maybe it's even time to hope enough to start knitting for mine.

9 weeks

Yesterday I heard a heartbeat again, and saw that my little one had grown enormously in just the two weeks since the last scan. No wonder I've been so tired and nauseated! I placed the pictures from the three scans next to one another--5 weeks just to confirm the pregnancy; nearly 7 to hear the heartbeat for the first time; and yesterday. The growth is amazing. First there's just a little black oval where there's clearly a gestational sac in my uterus, but the embryo is too small to be seen; then there's a little white tadpole-shaped embryo inside a much, much larger dark sac, and yesterday, there was this big kidney-shaped sac and a white form that, to me, looks actually kind of like a baby! With a round head curled over a body, and maybe even two little white spots for feet I can discern (or imagine) and little arms too.

It's truly amazing how much has happened in only a month. If I ever need to convince myself to rest when I feel like it, I'll remember this. Today the embryo officially became a "fetus," which is exciting, because I've never reached that stage before; and after my appointment, I "graduated" from Dr. Special's office to the midwife. She told me to definitely bring the baby back to meet her. Because...there will be a baby at the end of this? I can actually hope?! During the scan, the fetus actually scooted away from the ultrasound--what? It can move?! how cool!--as we were listening to the heartbeat, which was perfect, and which we recorded again, this time without the interruption of me bursting into tears. But I did really start crying, and needed multiple tissues, once we were saying goodbye to the office and the nurse handed me my little "parting gift":

A baby spoon. Because we very well at this point might have a baby, who will someday need a little tiny spoon. Even now, after two miscarriages and two years of trying, my eyes redden at the thought. I was even thinking, you know, at this point, all we can think about is how much we need this baby to be healthy and survive and come home with us, but this baby really needs *us.* Even if we wanted to just kind of ignore it and not think about it for a while, it needs us to attach to it, it needs us to love us with all our might, it needs us to get ready to bring it home, it needs us to learn how to take care of our fears so that we can take care of *it*. 

It feels so good to allow myself to truly hope. Although I noticed last night and this morning I got irritable--I wonder if there is a part of me that is also afraid of this becoming real, at last. Afraid that I'll forget about my own pain from my own childhood and the losses from my own family when I'm trying so hard to give my child all the love s/he needs. Afraid that there won't be time for myself, for me to feel vulnerable and to take care of myself, now that there's a baby coming. MFP actually pointed out my irritability to me and wondered about this, and he's right. I don't want to try to be some kind of invulnerable parent; to forget about my own past and put my own healing journey aside in this process. I think that would actually in the end make me a worse parent, even if it means making time for myself and taking care of myself in the short term. But I definitely don't think this will be easy. All I know is I want to love this baby with all of me, with my whole heart, even the parts of me that wish that I had the kind of family of origin that I'm going to give my child. 

I snapped at MFP when he expressed fear that maybe this still won't work out. Clearly I just wasn't even letting myself admit that I'm still afraid, too. As though acknowledging the fear would make it more real. But it won't. Yes, anything could happen still at this point. I'm still not in control. I'm getting attached, I'm loving this baby, and that opens me up to enormous heartache. That reminds me of how, after miscarriage #1, MFP and I were talking about how we entered this game of parenthood, and we learned what a heart-wrenching, brutal, and amazing game it was. You open your heart to get totally gutted. You open your heart to feel love and hope and joy that you never expected to feel. I'm proud of us for choosing to try out this game, for being brave with our curiosity about it. And here we are, still playing it, another round this time, and we are vulnerable as hell. We are taking a risk to love, even at this early stage; we can't help it. It's funny though; we're vulnerable, but I have to remember how much more incredibly vulnerable my baby is. She needs us to get through it; he needs us to stay calm and keep loving even in the face of fear. But also not to get really resentful with each other like I did when MFP expressed fear!

Symptom-wise, I read that this week the nausea and exhaustion might peak. I'm definitely feeling brutally exhausted, and the nausea is near-constant. Life marches on though, I still have tons of work to do. It's hard to accept that I need to rest as much as I do, to be kind to myself about it. Like when I see ants crawling all over the garbage that needs to be taken out when I'm on my way to work. But fuck it, so I have a messy house. I'm growing a baby.