Well, this is bananas.

Currently 11 weeks + 5 days and would you look at that, it looks like everything is actually Just Fine.

After my last update, I continued barfing and not bleeding and feeling pregnant as fuck and, for the next ten days, bemoaning the fact that I was suffering so greatly for an unviable pregnancy. After all, we didn't even have sex the week that we would have needed to in order to conceive, if I was really only five weeks and a few days along. (My husband: "I'm pretty sure we did. Remember that time that my back hurt? And you said you'd already ovulated so this was just for fun?" Me: "Not really. I had sex for fun? You sure?")

And then my doctor's office called back like, "So are you going to make a follow up appointment or what?" I told them I'd call when I started bleeding, but they gently insisted that I come on in and take a gander at the ol' uterus so we could call it one way or the other. So I did, driving up by myself, grumbling about the cost of valet parking at the hospital and hauling myself onto the ultrasound table still grumbling.

The technician turned on the screen and I could see the sac. It had gotten bigger, but as she swiped through a few times, I could see that it was empty. I closed my eyes and tried to rest. I'd seen it coming at least.

It was taking so long though. I opened my eyes to ask what was happening, and I saw the tech taking what looked suspiciously like fetal pole measurements. "Is there something in there?" I asked. "Yes," she replied, "Looks like it's measuring about seven weeks." She zoomed in and I could see the rhythmic pumping motion of the tiny heart. She said, "I think that's a heartbeat. I'm going to go get someone else for a second opinion." The second opinion arrived and was much more confident: "That's a great heartbeat." They measured the sound waves and a few more things and then sent me on my way, totally confused but elated. The doctor called that night and said the heartbeat was well within the normal range at 155 bpm and that there was an excellent chance that this would become a full-term baby.

I went back at 10 weeks, sweating bullets. They put me in the same room where I found out that our first baby had no heartbeat, and I almost threw up. Then the doctor took a while to come in, and then he couldn't locate my uterus with the TV ultrasound wand, and I almost died right there on the table, and then he switched to abdominal and I looked up through the flood of tears and saw him pointing to my baby, who was moving her tiny arms and legs, all lit up on the screen.

Last week, we got the non-invasive testing results back and the baby is low risk for the trisomies they screen for, aaand... it's a girl!

Tomorrow is my NT scan, and if all goes well (please God let it go well, don't make me have to return the impossibly tiny floral ruffle-butt leggings I just bought) I think we'll really have the big exhale.

Limbo

The first ultrasound was Wednesday, the day after the election. I'd watched the returns from bed, mute with horror but thinking, "at least, on the bright side, I'm so anxious about the election that I've barely even thought about tomorrow's ultrasound." The feeling carried into the next morning - I drove through the drizzling rain into Manhattan thinking about the Supreme Court and deportations and the Handmaid's Tale and entertaining all kinds of great hyperbolic fears about everything.

My doctor - a new doctor in the same practice, as my last obstetrician passed away this summer; what an awful loss, he was such a kind and gentle doctor, though the new one seems pretty wonderful too - turned off the lights and started scanning and I swear, I can literally just feel it now when it's not good news. "Have you had any cramping or bleeding?" he asked.

"No," I answered, "Why? What are you seeing?"

He explained that he was seeing something - might have been a cyst, he wasn't sure - in the lower part of my uterus, right by the cervix, possibly IN the cervix - and he wasn't seeing anything else that looked like it should have looked by now. He ordered some bloodwork and scheduled an appointment that afternoon with the fancy ultrasound machine upstairs to make sure it wasn't an ectopic pregnancy.

We left and went to McDonald's where Leo threw his chicken nuggets on the floor and complained the whole time, and then we walked up through the rain to one of those Upper East Side indoor playgrounds where we paid thirty dollars for the privilege of chasing him through three small rooms of dubious cleanliness for an hour.

And then we walked back down to the hospital and had our second scan, where they were able to see that it was NOT ectopic (thank you, Jesus) and there was an identifiable yolk sac but no fetal pole. The upstairs doctor - the radiologist maybe? - came in to say that it might just be early, or it might not be good, and they wouldn't really know anything until they got my HCG results back and even then they wouldn't know for sure.

"Yes, okay, bad news, thank you," I said, "Please just say it, bad news, just tell me bad news, I need to hear it."

"We just don't know," he said. "You're measuring about five weeks. We just have to wait and see."

My HCG came back on Friday - just above 20,000. So: bad news. No five week pregnancy would have that kind of HCG. And my progesterone was a 13.5 - which is pretty dicey. They're having me come in on Thursday for a follow-up. I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope.

The awful, terrible irony of all this is that my morning sickness has been atrocious. I'm throwing up and sick almost all day. I absolutely hate going through it with no real hope of having anything good come out of it. Why can't my body just let it go, let it gooooo?

So uh... about that.

Looks like I'll be starting that hike up the mountain earlier than I'd expected.

I'm pregnant! 

Last night, at cycle day 43 and after a week or so of "I think I'm about to get my period" cramps, I figured I'd take another test just in case. Sure enough, two super dark lines appeared almost immediately. 

I'm excited and terrified. I'm a little nervous about the timing - I think it's been three weeks since we've had sex, and I got a negative Wondfo and digital test on Thursday morning, which makes me worry that this is another doomed "late implanter" like my first pregnancy. But Wondfos are weird and I know there's that whole "sperm can live for five days" thing, and maybe this is just a perfect storm? Whatever it is, the cards have been dealt and I just have to wait to see what they say. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything works out the way it is meant to be.  

Round Two... ding ding ding!

I seem to have a hard time admitting it, but we've been trying for Number Two for a few months now, and I am officially Ambivalent.

(And also Not Pregnant, but that's not much of a surprise, right?)

There must be some little light that goes off around your child's first birthday that lets people know it's time to start inquiring about the five year plan of your uterus. 

"Soooo.... are you guys thinking of having another one?" 

Another slice of Leo's birthday cake? Hell yes! 

"Is it time for number two yet?!"

Nah, he usually waits until after his nap to take a number two.

"Any *exciting* plans for this year?"

Yes, we plan to sleep through the night for three or four consecutive months! Keep your fingers crossed for us! 

In reality, I tell people that I would love to have another kid but I really, really don't want to go through another round of trying to conceive, another difficult pregnancy or another "fourth trimester." I'd really prefer to just have a stork drop off a six month old baby, all chunky and smiling and sitting up independently. Is that a thing? Can I just go on Amazon Prime and order Leo's brother or sister with two day delivery? (I'll be careful not to click "Subscribe and Save" by accident... you wouldn't believe how many razors I piled up before I remembered to cancel that thing!)

When I think back on the journey of getting to Leo, it's hard not to let it turn into a Greatest Hits collection of miserable experiences. The devastation of miscarrying, the anxiety and disappointment of failed cycle after failed cycle. The endless discomfort of pregnancy, with all of the barfing and backaches and swollen extremities. Insomnia for weeks before delivery then sleep deprivation for weeks afterwards. My unbelievably shitty delivery. My struggle and ultimate failure to breastfeed, which took me down to levels of depression and anger that I didn't even know existed. It really fucking sucked. I'm not saying there weren't some nice moments, but overall it felt like running a marathon in a hurricane. 

Of course it was worth it. Of course I'd do it a thousand more times for the incredible little boy I have today. Of course I'd walk through fire, swim across oceans, climb the highest mountain for him. But I would also pause at the edge of the fire or the mouth of the bay or the bottom of the mountain and be like, "Oh man. Do I really have to? Ugh. This sucks."   

So that's what I'm doing now. I'm dutifully taking my folic acid and tracking my cycles and doing It, and I'm squinting up at the top of the mountain and grumbling to myself. It's probably not going to be an easy journey. (Already my cycles are going batshit crazy - I'm on day 44 right now, with negative tests and no period in sight, lucky me!) But I know that there's another little soul waiting for me up at the summit, and I'm on my way to find him. (Or her?)  

Birth story, continued

Shockingly, the Kardashian marathon and constant fetal monitoring wasn't doing great things for my blood pressure. At 8:30 pm, they gave me another dose of labetalol, which helped a little bit but not enough. My nurse broke the news - it was IV magnesium time. Oh, and once that started, I wasn't allowed to get out of bed to pee anymore, (Come on, I'm like a thousand weeks pregnant and guzzling water. Of course I've got to go every thirty seconds!) I'd heard awful things about the magnesium, so I asked to speak with the doctor to see if there was any alternative. I can't remember exactly who came in to talk, but the bottom line was that there wasn't really much of a choice. I sighed, had one last pee and reluctantly surrendered my veins.

It wasn't too bad at first - I just felt a little extra warmth in the room. They gave me an Ambien around midnight and we settled in for some sleep. A little bit after 3 am, my nurse came in to reposition the fetal monitor and I couldn't get back to sleep after that. There's just no getting comfy on your back in a hospital bed when you're hooked up to a zillion different machines. I watched TV, watched Ed sleep, waited for the sun to rise.

At 6 am, it was time for the cervical check. Zero change! Thanks for nothing, cervadil! I was still closed and 50% effaced. They talked about doing another round of ripener but decided to just start me on Pitocin anyway. Pretty quickly, I was epidural'ed by a team of doctors, one guiding the other through the procedure. It made me super nervous but the epidural wound up being textbook perfect - I could move my legs, put a bit of weight on them to scooch myself around, and I could feel a mild tightening sensation during each contraction but I didn't feel any pain. (Well, not until later, at least. Spoiler alert.) I dozed off again for a bit and woke up at 10:45 to the peculiar sensation of amniotic fluid burbling out of my nether regions. Another check - one centimeter dilated! This show is getting on the road!

 My parents and Ed's mom arrived sometime around noon, around the same time the magnesium started making me feel truly awful. I was burning up, sweating, nauseated and puking. The next hours passed in a blur of misery. My mom, ever the savior in moments of crisis, was amazing. She held my puke bucket a hundred times and directed everyone else to take turns bringing me damp, cool washcloths for my forehead. Ed brought me water and ice and Jello from the patient lounge, because I was so thirsty that I had to keep drinking, even knowing it would come back up a moment later. My mom broke out the eucalyptus and mint aromatherapy lotion and rubbed my feet for what felt like hours. I was so miserable. I thought the hard part of labor would be feeling contractions and that the epidural would mean my labor would be blissful and serene, full of giddy anticipation for the arriving baby. Instead I was so unhappy that I more or less forgot that I was pregnant and started to feel like I'd contracted some awful tropical disease that I might not survive. Of course, the cervical checks reminded me that there was an end game here... and that I was nowhere near it. I was three centimeters in the early afternoon. I was three centimeters at 5 pm. They said, "if you haven't made any progress by 11 pm, we'll do a c-section." I was three centimeters at 11 pm. They said, "Let's wait til three am to decide." I was three centimeters at 3 am. And I was three centimeters at 4 am, when they finally agreed to call it. (At that point, I'd pretty much said to the doctor "Just get me a fucking scalpel and I'll do it myself, I need to get off of this magnesium.")

I wish I remembered more of Leo's actual birth. When I try to remember it, it comes in flashes of bright OR lights: lifting my hips to scoot from the bed to the table. Throwing up into that weird sock thing. Seeing Ed in his paper scrubs and face mask and not recognizing him at first. Hearing Leo cry and thinking, "Oh. There's a baby in here." I remember saying, "Someone needs to feed that baby!" I know that Ed brought him over to me, that he showed me pictures on the camera screen, that I did see him. But I don't remember feeling anything besides a pang of relief. The baby's here, the baby is healthy, the baby didn't die. This is the hard part of the story, the part that even now makes me get teary and sad for both of us. I spent so long picturing what that moment would be like. I dreamed it in sparkly slow motion, the rush of endorphins, the overwhelming waves of love, how I'd gaze into Ed's eyes and whisper in awe, "We did it. We made this." Of course, it wasn't like that at all. And it makes me sad that maybe it somehow cheated Leo out of something important. Today, I love him so much that it feels like my heart could just burst. I love him so much I can feel it like a vibration in every cell of my body. I love him so much, I think that love pours out of me and surrounds him like an aura, and I wish I could have enveloped him in that love from the second he was born. I know, of course, that I did love him then just as much as I do now. I just couldn't feel it at that moment. But more than the puking or the sweating or the failing epidural, this is the part that was the absolute worst.

Oh right, the epidural! Soon after Leo was born, someone noticed him barking a bit so they whisked him and Ed off to the nursery for observation. (He turned out to be just fine.) As the doctor went about returning my organs to their original place inside my body, I realized I could feel a lot of what was happening. By the time they started stitching, I was in a ton of pain. "Guys? I can feel this." I said. They told me they'd adjust some things and continued on. "It didn't work!" I said, beginning to panic. No one responded. "Seriously," I said to my nurse, "could I at least have a shot of whiskey and a bullet to bite on?" She laughed. "I knew I liked you," she said. We both laughed. I tried to think about other things. The anesthesiologist was telling dirty jokes. I chuckled along with the others in the room. Soon enough, it was over and I was in recovery, begging the nurse for a glass of water.

I was alone for a long time in there - an hour, maybe. It was strange not being pregnant anymore. I hadn't been so far apart from Leo for nine months and now, I was really by myself. Then Ed came in, carrying a paper with Leo's footprints. They were massive. I couldn't believe they belonged to a newborn baby. Then my parents came in. I grabbed my mom's water bottle and guzzled it before the water-rationing nurse could come by and catch me. And we waited and waited and waited. Then they rolled me into my private room. There was a picture of an angel on the door for some reason, and I was irrationally convinced that they'd put me in some sort of special room for moms who were recovering after losing their babies. I was still on magnesium, nearly delirious from lack of sleep, no longer nauseated but still burning up. My bed was right next to a huge picture window and I looked outside. Everything was covered in a blanket of wild, unexpected late March snow. I'm dreaming, I thought. I shed the hospital gown and changed into my own tank top. Ed went to yell at the nurses about turning down the temperature in my room. And then they wheeled Leo in.

I wish I could remember holding him for the first time. I have the pictures, but I don't have the memory. But I do remember spending the rest of the day just staring at him. I loved his pointy, elegant little nose and his sweet, gentle eyes. His hair was so soft and downy, his limbs were so long and graceful, his cheeks were so chubby. He reminded me of a baby bird, somehow both delicate and solid at the same time. And I remember the first time he latched on for a feeding. It seemed so natural and easy, I remember thinking, "Oh, breastfeeding is going to be a snap! Ha, and people say it's so hard! Well, not with this perfect latcher!" (Hahaha. Hahahahahaha. Haha. Ha.)

And there we were! He was finally here. And we were all falling in love.

It's been such a long time, baby.

Time flies when you're raising a gorgeous, blue-eyed, ruddy-cheeked bundle of love and joy and sleep deprivation! I can barely believe it, but Sprout is here. And he is healthy and gorgeous and six months old! But with that delicious spoiler alert out of the way, let me catch you up on the last nine months - starting with my birth story.

The last three months of pregnancy passed in a bit of a labetalol and self-imposed modified bed rest haze. My blood pressure and my weight both started skyrocketing - more or less simultaneously - and so I was put on medical leave from work around the time that I found myself in so much back pain that I couldn't walk three blocks to the drugstore. It was a rough winter anyway, with frequent snowstorms and freezing puddles on every corner, so I built myself a nest on the couch with Netflix and my home blood pressure monitor and waited for April 7th.

Sprout must have gotten tired of watching the same twenty or so episodes of Parks and Recreation over and over, though - by Saint Patrick's Day, my blood pressure monitor was giving me the blinking heart icon. Translation: call your doctor, mama. After two consecutive high readings, the on call doctor told me to head into Labor & Delivery for a little bit of monitoring. Throughout the pregnancy, I'd joked that I wanted a "high intervention" birth experience. In my first pregnancy, those long weeks between the first hint of doom at the 7 week ultrasound and the final confirmation at 11 weeks were sheer torture - I couldn't imagine any c-section recovery could be worse than that. I would happily trade my hopes for a vaginal birth, my curiosity about what labor feels like, the exciting "honey, it's time" moment and even the "I am woman, hear me roar" natural birth merit badge for the absence of that terrible anxiety. 

Lucky me, that high intervention birth is exactly what I got. At L&D triage, they connected me to the fetal monitor and the blood pressure cuff and took some blood for lab work. After an hour or two, a nurse popped by to let me know they would be releasing me soon - my b.p. was elevated but not terribly so, and as soon as they got the lab work back, they'd be sending me home to rest and hydrate and monitor it on my own. Thank God! I was starving. I wondered whether or not I could get away with grabbing dinner at McDonalds on my way back to the subway. I was sure the sodium wouldn't be in my best interest, but I was fantasizing about getting two double quarter pounders and combining them into something that I would simply call "The Pounder." I was so deep into this fantasy that I could almost taste the tangy dill pickles when the nurse came back and told me that they'd decided to admit me for the night. You know, just for observation. I texted my husband and asked him to bring my hospital bag, but no rush! (And maybe smuggle in a burger or two, if he wouldn't mind. Extra pickles.)

A second nurse came by to escort me to my room - a spacious delivery suite with a pretty view of the hospital courtyard. "Here's a hospital gown and socks," she said, "and you might want to take a shower before you put them on. Once we get the induction started, you won't be able to shower again. Have you eaten yet? If not, I'll try to find you something because you'll be on clear liquids only once we insert the Cervadil" 

"Oh, no," I laughed. "You must have picked up the wrong patient from triage! I'm just here for observation." 

She confirmed my name. "No mistake," she said. "The doctor decided you're getting induced tonight. Settle in and I'll get you some dinner." 

I texted my husband: On second thought, YES RUSH! 

I took my shower, pulled on the cozy anti-skid hospital socks and climbed into bed to watch a few inspirational episodes of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. My husband and my tray of cafeteria food arrived simultaneously, and after a hearty last dinner of oily baked chicken and grayish green beans, it was time to get the party started. Someone came in and inserted the cervical ripener at 6 pm. (I think it was a doctor, but there were so many people in and out of the room at that point, it may have been the anesthesiologist, a random med student or possibly even the orderly who came in to pick up the dinner tray. Over the next 48 hours, the list of people on earth who had seen my vagina more or less quadrupled; apparently there's no room for modesty in a teaching hospital.) 

In the grand Festivus tradition...

...it's time for the airing of grievances.

Everything hurts. I can't sleep because everything hurts and when I do get to sleep, I wake up four times a night to pee. I'm retaining so much water that I'm getting the equivalent of carpal tunnel in both elbows, so every time I bend my elbows for longer than a minute or so, my forearms go numb. The sciatica is awful - I don't think I've felt my right thigh since October, and I frequently feel like I'm being shanked in the right rear buttock. Not to be left out, my left side has decided to pull a muscle or something mid-back. And that's not even beginning to address the swelling in my ankles or my creaky ass knees. I thought about asking a stranger to carry me up the stairs in the subway today. And then I thought about just renting an apartment near a subway station that has an elevator.  I've gained 16 pounds and my doctor is totally going to yell at me.

I have a weird growth on my gumline that is apparently a "pregnancy tumor." When my belly isn't itching, the ligaments are complaining about all the stretching. Forget tying my shoes; I can barely put on my socks. My skin is dry everywhere except for my face, where it's so oily I keep expecting Halliburton to declare eminent domain on it. My husband forgot to bring home the Carvel ice cream cake I specifically requested and I cried.

Pro: my hair is growing quite rapidly. Con: it's all gray.

Recent panicked Google searches: "I can't feel my cervix" "broken water or pee" "fetus vibrating?"

Despite all of this, I know that I'm lucky as hell to be 26 weeks today with a beautiful, healthy, wiggly little guy. But I am 99% sure that he is going to be an only child.