Clothing expiration date

Tonight was it. The last night I'll be able to wear the t-shirt I always wear to host meetings of the non-profit group I run. Last month a perceptive friend could tell I was pregnant before I made the public announcement. But my belly wasn't fully announcing itself to just anyone.

Tonight was a different story. I've been out and showing since I went to a WAHM on January 25, but this regular shirt over a turtleneck was pushing it. A friend visiting a meeting for the first time -- the one who has been so gracious of a listener and sharer just a few months after a miscarriage -- announced, "Well, you're really sporting the belly bump!" I felt embarrassed.

I guess I still don't know what it means to be a proud pregnant lady. This time last time, I was giving a presentation to a scholastic journalism conference and wearing maternity sweaters that made it obvious. I remember looking at myself naked in the hotel mirror and thinking, "I am absolutely huge."

Monday I was up to 114 lbs. and today the same scale said almost 117. I haven't dragged out my files to check on anything and haven't even given the forms to the midwife to get her own copy of them. So who knows how my growth compares to last time. I just know that the feelings I'm having do not.

Crying into my pillow

Last night I laid all my fears out there in bed with my husband. Fears about not feeling bonded to this embryo, not singing to it every morning like I did with my son, not even feeling pregnant or really believing it, being disappointed about the pregnancy making me miss BlogHer, worrying about having a successful homebirth without doing something unsafe for the baby. Even though I seriously think unnecessary c-sections are really shitty for babies, I have to believe that mine was necessary and I worry that I could beat the odds and have another short-cord or other funky issue.

I talked about wanting to honor the fact that my 4'11" grandmother had 6 babies at home without a problem as far as I know. That my 5'2" mother had five babies vaginally (not naturally, but vaginally). Lots of people do this. Can I get out of my own way? Do I have to go through a whole bunch of Birthing from Within therapy or hypotherapy, or can I just ride the denial wave, imagine my baby falling out of me like happened to a denial-promoting friend twice?

This and so much else.

I needed to cry.

He said the best thing he could have, that it was okay to have doubts. Right.

A night at home

As of yesterday, I had been home for five straight days with my sick son (tacked onto a weekend of being home a lot, too) and out for five straight nights -- three for work, one for meditation (part of my volunteer commitment) and one for my volunteer commitment, a meeting I organized.

The good news is that I think I have two wonderful women who are willing to share that volunteer responsibility and leadership title with me. I was starting to feel like if I could not get that, I would just let the whole thing fold since I refuse to carry on a resentful role when having a second child. Or even if I end up dealing with a loss. I need help. I think they will offer it such that I don't have to throw in the towel on something I care about or let it further get to me. I don't want to be grumbling about this thing I love pissing me off while I have a new baby or am dealing with a miscarriage.

But, assuming the pregnancy goes forward, I still worry about being able to cobble out a postpartum existence that fits my values of attachment parenting at the same time that it provides boundaries other parts of me need.

Today my husband stayed home with a tummy bug, which was in some ways helpful and a relief, but it also was the first of several days of all three of us (with lots of snow predicted) and a boy who isn't really well enough to go to any holiday doings anyway, it doesn't seem.

The thing I want and need is time by myself. I cannot write an article if the little boy could burst in at any moment or his dad might just start playing the piano. It's fabulous that I now have a room of my own, but sometimes I wish it came with a beam that would transport me to a remote location where I could not be touched.

So if I feel like this now, without a mouth attached to my breast... Can I get it together by August?

Clarifying my goals

I'm really writing this after the fact, because when I got home at 10, I just had a snack and read some Brain,Child and went to sleep. But we can pretend.

Tonight (ahem) I hosted a group meeting on "Creating Balance in Family Life" with two life coaches. They had us working on clarifying our values since misunderstanding our values -- or setting priorities that don't, in fact, fit with our values -- is a lot of what causes people to get frustrated and to feel unfulfilled.

I came to the conclusion that I value complexity. I just do. I don't like things that are simple. They are not interesting to me. I like competing themes and ideas in literature, film, art. I like to be involved in a lot of things. I like to see connections across disciplines and from one aspect of my life to another.

This doesn't mean I can't develop mindfulness, or that I can't train my brain to appreciate one thing at a time. I think that is healthy. But it means that it's silly to say I'm striving for things to be peaceful, for that elusive "one day" when everything will be cleared out and have its specific place and time. I like messiness. It makes me feel alive, involved in life.

There's part of me that has always known this. I recognize that I have a fear of becoming like my mom who was depressed and didn't have a whole lot of passions, interests or relationships when I was growing up, at least not when I was really young. So this can go kind of pathological if I let it.

But it's also just plain who I am, someone who likes to be busy and have lots of irons in the fire. I wouldn't keep making that happen if it weren't true. I wouldn't have started my fifth personal blog here if I didn't feel like I needed many spokes from my center.

So, although I sometimes complain that my husband doesn't take initiative -- and I pretend that I want him to have passions that he pursues and schedules and prioritizes instead of stuff he can take or leave, enjoy it and get inspired by it when it happens (like playing piano or listening to music, but not take action to make sure it happens) -- tonight I appreciated his yin to my yang. I would -- at least not in the long term -- be better matched by someone who had a similar temperament. I get to inhabit my temperament in part because he's not taking up/using/inhabiting the same kind of energy pattern.

So when I crawled into bed and snuggled up to him, I got present to what a good thing it is that he is who he is so I can be who I am.

Maybe one of these days we can talk and see that beauty instead of always kind of wishing the other were different.

Maybe we can manage having a second child together.

Still going

I'm still pregnant. Temp back up. It's just cold out, I think.

Or maybe there is doubting that played a role. Yesterday saw one of my energy workers who is really into the work of Byron Katie and "is that true? what would you be without that belief?" stuff. I probably needed some of the clearing but was also a little annoyed at how she pushed. Seemed just as righteous as I am about my doubts.

Little boy did fine waiting for me. But he came up with emotional stuff that was about my anger. Funny since part of my "story" was that I am responsible for his suffering (c-section, etc.) and she was trying to get me to throw off that belief. So it's not true but yet it is?

What role do I have in my progeny's health and happiness based on my beliefs?

The beginning of the end?

My temp was 97.7 today. It should not go below 98.1 if I'm pregnant. Of course, it's 25 degrees outside and was probably about 60 in the bedroom. Maybe the thermometer cooled down my mouth.

I took it again: 97.9

And again: 97.7

I told hubby and mentioned that I would buy another pregnancy test later. "Is that going to tell you anything?" I offered that the line might be lighter if my body was losing its HCG. I don't really know, but I don't feel like being questioned.

Today I have a dentist appt. and an appt. with my energy worker, who can probably muscle-test and answer whatever question I have.

But if I'm about to go through a loss, I'd like any foreknowledge/assurance I can find.

First friend disclosure continued

Here is what I wrote in an email to my friend today, in response to her question about how I'd been feeling so far.

"...So other than being tired at the moment, I feel eerily normal. I never got sick with #1, but I certainly felt queasy by this point, had to pee a million times a night, etc. I'm feeling a bit in disbelief, still taking my temp every morning, have taken 4 tests (well, two were old/expired in 2006, but I did them anyway. No, wait, that would make it 6 tests in two weeks. Can that be right? What a kook!) I'm feeling really cautious about believing...

So... physically I'm fine, emotionally, it's surreal. I have one friend who has now an 18-lb, 3- month old son but I watched her go through 3 losses in the past year & a half. I have another friend who is 17 weeks along after two miscarriages (and had started but didn't need to go through with fertility treatments). My one sister had one miscarriage between kids #2 and #2, and my other sister had several after having three kids. I've been in writing groups and workshopped/given feedback on at least 5 or 6 pieces on miscarriage in the past few years. And as I think I told you I didn't even get my period back after #1 until almost 2.5 yrs. So I am one skeptical little bunny!"

My first tell

Okay, I'd already told my guy acupuncturist (in person, the day of the first test) and my therapist (via email, while rescheduling). But today I told the woman acupuncturist who said six weeks ago she wanted ovulation closer to 14 days than 21 (and she got it!). She put needles in the points that are used for nausea, among other things, and we were both nearly zapped out of our skin by the charge of electricity. "Wow, your qi is high! I felt that!" I've had a lot of needles stuck in me but I've never had a zap and tingle like that.

Later, I emailed to a friend who recently had a miscarriage because I didn't want to go to yoga and lunch with her next week and later tell her I was/am or had been pregnant. I wasn't sure if she might want a rain check, but she was just so cheery and congratulatory. "How have you been feeling?" she asked.

That was a few hours ago. I've ignored some other emails, too, but I should have replied to this one. The thing is, I don't really want to say that I'm feeling totally normal in my body and totally in some kind of surreal denial in my head.

While I was not replying to emails tonight, I was watching the last episode of season one of "Mad Men." I knew from the "Making of 'Mad Men'" special feature that Peggy was indeed pregnant and that she would have the baby -- and turn away from him -- this season. When my husband said this was the last episode, I couldn't believe there would be no more lead-up. There it was: she just went to the hospital in the beginning stages of labor claiming she ate a bad sandwich.

I don't think my denial will rival Peggy's, but this feels so strange. "Maybe it's just a different pregnancy," the acupuncturist said when I told her that I wasn't noticing any of the symptoms I had at this point the first time around.

Indeed!

Baby's avatar

I had no idea when I was newly pregnant with my son that he'd come out a redhead with charcoal eyes. I don't profess to have had any visions. But his energy seemed somehow so nuanced, from so early on. Maybe that has to do with his having an intense personality, being a sensitive and dramatic soul. Now three, he's not one to fade into the background.

That's why I've felt a little skeptical that this time around, I have no picture, no sense of this potential for a person that's supposedly growing inside me.

So last night, I lay in bed thinking about this blank frame. It had less of a sense of soul than a new Internet user identity with no picture uploaded. You, know, the default image on a blogging platform or on LinkedIn, or wherever -- that shadow with a silhouette or sometimes even a question mark. There was no substance.

And yet, as I started to think about this blank, this empty shell, the frame started to change. It got scalloped like a stamp -- those frilly edges you think of more with Valentines, but they're actually on every USPS standard-issue stamp.

And the interior seemed like it got more opaque and textured. No longer a sad fading gray, the landscape inside the frilly frame deepened to a black through which show ragged scratches of color, overlapping in every direction.

I think I actually started to believe.

And it seemed like she was a she.