The Hopeful Baby Blog

Chatterbox

2009-06-04T22:59:00.000-07:00

I can't believe how much Sam has been talking lately (at 2 yrs + 2.5 mos). His language skills are just exploding. Gus is also a little talker but Sam is our chatterbox at the moment. We drove over to the art museum in Sonoma today to see the Rembrandt etching exhibition there (although it was their first trip to an art museum, the boys were not impressed, but then the etchings averaged 3"x4" so who could even see them?), and on the way over D amused himself with teaching Sam the phrase, "Sam little parrot!" Which he is. But still. It's undignified, don't you think?

The latest utterance to crack me up came from Sam this morning. I was fixing their breakfast (instant waffles with peanut butter and bananas smeared on top) and heard Sam muttering something a few feet away. I looked over and saw him energetically attempting to scale the stove, while simultaneously shaking his head and saying, "No climb up! No climb up!"

When I finished snorting my coffee, I agreed, "No, Sam, no climb up!" and he obligingly quit trying to actually climb up. But I couldn't not laugh, though I tried. I was picturing the classic angel and devil on each shoulder -- "Climb up, Sam!" "No, no, no climb up!"

Sam cries and hurls himself on the floor at the drop of a hat these days, too. Gus still has a trace more equanimity, though I fear it's just a matter of time until Gus enters the crying fit Olympics as well. However, Sam seems to be getting in his two-year molars at the moment, so maybe it's just teething pains.

It's hell being two, isn't it? But oh, they're funny little ducks!

Holy Jumping Linguists, Batman!

2009-05-31T23:58:00.000-07:00

So Sam is wearing his glasses more or less all the time, now. (I want to point out that at the beginning of his wearing glasses, I thought this day would NEVER arrive. I swear, it was like training a cat to wear glasses. Sam had about as much interest in and comprehension of the reasons for his wearing glasses as one of our felines would have. Or possibly not as much.)

I read somewhere that when infants and toddlers who have wretched vision and desperately need glasses actually start wearing them, their language skills and coordination improve as if by magic. Well, I'm here to testify. Sam is Mister Linguist now, and Gus is only a hair behind him. I frequently call both of them "Mr. Parrot" and "Mr. Echo," since their favorite trick is to echo the last three syllables or so of whatever I've just said. A couple of weeks ago, Gus was puttering around my feet and whining "Joots! Joots!" while I was trying to juggle three or four tasks -- one of them being pouring some juice for him and Sam. So of course D chose that moment to show up and want me to do something or other for him and I snapped out, "Just let me give Gus his juice before he has a coronary," and Gus dutifully echoed, "Coh-woh-na-way!" Which cracked me up and put an end to my snappishness for the moment.

But Sam has the Mister Linguist title for now. Earlier this week, D decided to finally cover our fireplace opening completely so that the boys could no longer throw their toys -- and clothes, and juice cups, and Sam's glasses, and anything else that would fit -- in there, necessitating Mom and Dad to drag it out. He got it covered and locked down while the boys were napping. The first thing Sam said when he got up from his nap and saw it was, "Daddy do! Daddy do! Fireplace!" Both of the boys puttered around it for a bit, trying in vain to stick some of their little toys in there. Finally Sam burst out with a heartfelt, "Why?! Daddy, why do dat?!" His very first question, and his first relatively sophisticated sentence! Wow... but I do wish it hadn't been so sad-sounding. He still brings it up occasionally, making it clear that he hasn't given up on the issue: "Daddy, why do dat? Fireplace! Why?" Poor kiddo.

Not to be outdone, tonight Gus spontaneously started singing, "Goodnight ladies... goodnight ladies..." echoing the song from "The Music Man" (which they are currently enamoured of -- the Robert Preston version, of course). But then, last night Sam started trying to sing the "Ice cream!" barbershop quartet from that show, with Gus chiming in.

As for the jumping... Gott in Himmel, the jumping. I think Gus has Olympic aspirations. Both of them have been jumping for some time now, most recently from the 6" thick couch cushions, which they drag from the couch and strew across the floor like water lilies. (Note to self: Self, NEVER EVER do anything in front of the boys that you don't want them to do right back at you, and forever! It was more than a little silly to pull the couch cushions off the couch where they could see you, wasn't it, eh? Remember that the next time you want to sit on the couch and have to round up all the cushions before you can do it.)

Ahem. As I was saying. This evening Gus climbed up on the couch (with couch cushion still on -- maybe 22" off the floor) and leapt off it like a gazelle. Distance achieved: about three feet. He landed with a thump but on his feet, no worries (except my ensuing heart attack). Gus also has taught himself to do a somersault (his term: "sowersaw") from the fireplace hearth (about 2" tall) onto the rug. (Sam is still working on his somersault, but I'm sure he'll achieve it eventually, egged on by his more daring brother.)

As for me, I'm constantly torn whether or not to let them do things that I fear will necessitate a trip to ER. I do not want them to have needless fears or be hesitant about trying new things. And as a shining example of what not to do, I have my own mother, who was constantly forbidding me to do relatively safe things that most other kids got to do, and who did her earnest best to make a fearful emotional cripple out of me -- all with the best of intentions. (Sigh. Thanks, Mom.) As a result of my own upbringing, my interior monologue when the boys are jumping around is something like, "Eeeeeek! Ohmygod, he's going to fall! And crush his skull on the hearth! And die! Oh, wait, it's okay, he landed, he's all right ... oh noooo mister bill he's doing it agaaaaaaiiin! Aaiieeeee!" I try to let as little of this out as possible ... but it does pop out here and there. Yikes.

And yet, nervous as the jumping makes me, I'm also proud that they're so intrinsically daring and happy that they're having fun. I think I'm learning that a large part of Momhood is learning when to keep your mouth shut.

First sentence

2009-04-05T23:52:00.000-07:00

Well, some decade I am going to complete The Blog Post That Ate Manhattan (otherwise known as chronicling the boyos' second birthday party and otherwise just generally Catchng Up) but I cannot seem to dig myself out from under the giant stack of undone things around here, so I am going to content myself at the moment with one little anecdote:

Tonight, D and I were tag-team diapering Sam on the changing table, while Gus lounged around in his crib, waiting for us to get to more important things (i.e., Gus). (D and I usually diaper the boys together if we are both home, since they are INCREDIBLY "roll-y" and fairly uncooperative about holding still for such things. And if they are poopy and rolly at the same time ... well, 'nuff said.) D was clapping Sam's hands together and I was chatting up Sam in an effort to keep him from howling (about what, I don't remember -- Sam's version of the Terrible Twos is to cry at the drop of a hat, usually about something that Gus wouldn't even notice), and I said, "Sam-sam! Can you say, 'Mama loves me?'"

And from the crib behind us came a gravelly little toddler voice: "Mama ... uuuuhhhves .... me."

I thought my heart would burst right out of my chest, but of course D hadn't even heard Gus, so I coaxed him into saying it again. Gus turned his head sideways at first and was coy about repeating it, but at last he grinned, and then said again:

"Mama. Uuuhhhhhves. Me!"

Oh, my lord yes, baby. Yes, I do. I do, I do.

Boys with mustard

2009-03-19T00:08:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a post (in response to my Internet friend V's gentle nagging -- hi, V! I'll write you in the next day or so) to celebrate the boyos' SECOND BIRTHDAY! Woo hoo! In the meantime, here's a recent pic, taken in the farmers' field beside our house -- of Sam and Gus with mustard and daffodils.

The best boyos in the world

2009-01-03T00:31:00.000-08:00

Gus, after falling asleep in the pac n' play and then being carried to bed:
Sam, with his new and dearly beloved zebra toy:

Beezbawww

2008-12-31T22:55:00.000-08:00

Have I mentioned that D is something of a baseball addict? For Christmas, he asked for a certain collection of old baseball game footage, and he has been happily plowing through watching the various games since then. The boyos, of course, are fascinated by TV, and specifically by anything on TV that Daddy will actually sit down and watch, since Daddy isn't much of a TV watcher in general.

Tonight, as D was attempting to load the baseball DVD into the player and then get the electronics cabinet door shut without trapping any of 20 questing little fingers (an aerobic activity all by itself!), Sam suddenly started saying, "Beezball! Beeeeezbawww! Beez! Baaww! Beezball!" (Sometimes the "ll" in "baseball" makes an appearance, sometimes not.)

I thought D was going to bust something, he swelled up with so much pride! His boy! Saying "baseball!" At 21 months!

Of course, when Sam saw what a reaction he got from Daddy, he said it all night after that. It was pretty funny, and just got funnier every time he said it. You know, we wouldn't want to forget we were watching a baseball game or anything .... Baseball? The devil you say! Why, I thought that was curling! Thanks for the update, Sam!

I thought Gus might also pick up "beezball" right away, since they often do that with each other, but although we coaxed him, he wasn't quite ready to commit himself. However, when I had Gus on the changing table this evening, I asked him, "Who likes baseball?" And without any prompting at all, he shot back, "Dada!"

Seems like our boys know the score! (All right, I hear those groans out there. Sorry, couldn't resist!)

To make up for it, I'll include this shot of our boys being rambunctious little pills ... and on the strength of that, wish everyone a Happy 2009!

Pee! Pee!

2008-12-31T00:29:00.000-08:00

This will be a short one since I MUST get to bed, but I have to record what Sam showed me this morning. I got them an adorable little book called "GALLOP" for Christmas (well, two copies, one of which resides in the closet until the other one gets torn up), which shows "moving" horses and dogs and such when you turn the pages. This morning Sam pointed at the "p" in "gallop" and crowed, "Pee! Pee!" I was floored. They're only 21 months old -- are they supposed to notice things like that? I checked him two or three times with other p's in the book, and yes, he knows what a p looks like. Well, ya know (scratching my head in wonderment since this forty-six-year-old mum didn't learn the alphabet until the freakin' first week of first grade) -- who knew?

Of course, Gus had to get in on the action, since Sam was getting attention, and he showed me the "A" in "gallop" and said, "Eh! Eh!" With a little coaxing then, both of them pointed at the "o" and informed me that it was indeed an "o."

Oh yes, and last night Sam showed me on their little toy piano that the opening note of "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (as played in this household, anyway) is a "C." I asked him to play the song, and he couldn't play the whole thing, but he hit first the middle C, then the C below that, then the C above. No fiddling around with notes in between, just the octaves. Which really, I found rather astounding all by itself. Gus is the one who wants to sing along with their "Trebellina" DVD, but I think Sam is the one who is paying attention to the music lessons! (It's funny -- although there are exceptions, singers are notoriously poor musicians as such. Perhaps we have one singer here and one good musician. Or, maybe just two kids who like to fool around with music a little.)

Oh, and their vocabularies are progressing by leaps and bounds. We were practicing drinking water tonight after dinner (if they get soaked, I will change their clothes for bed anyway), and with a little prompting, Sam actually lisped, "Mooooorrre ... preeeee...." (aka "more please"). I would not have expected any of this six weeks ago. And they pick words up at the drop of a hat. It's a good thing I have mostly quit cussin' now!

On the downside, Gus is quite determined never, ever to fall asleep in his own crib again. This causes difficulties, as one might imagine. I can't do the "cry it out" thing (even if I could stomach it) since the boys share a room. If I remove Gus from their room, well, then it's no longer "cryng it out" since what he wants is to leave the room! But it seems unfair to subject Sam to up to an hour of brother's wailing (not to mention it eventually makes Sam cry too, and then I have TWO crying toddlers with healthy lungs and a determination to be heard in Philadelphia, which makes ME want to cry!). I've thought about moving Gus's crib into our office and letting him cry it out there, but (a) it's not his room, which is the whole point, and (b) I think they will shortly learn how to climb out of their cribs, and our office is decidedly NOT babyproofed. And I don't have time to babyproof it at the moment.

So what is happening now is that Sam goes straight to bed, but Gus goes into the pac n' play in the living room, there to "read" his books and listen to soft music until he eventually gives it up oh, maybe half an hour later -- or more -- during which time the living room is Off Limits and Adult Time has gone out the window. And then when he does fall asleep, I have to transfer him to bed, and he has to be 28 pounds now.

So this is doable, but hardly ideal. Any suggestions on how to deal with this that do not involve "cryng it out"? I'd love to hear them!

Good day, Moon!

2008-12-08T00:11:00.000-08:00

We are up to our ears around here in board-type baby books. Oh, and up to our hip-waders in partial baby books -- that used to be part of whole baby books -- and bits and pieces of various women's clothing catalogs and crystal catalogs and flower seed catalogs that have been "loved to death" by our eager first readers. If it has a picture of any sort on it, Gus and Sam are all over it. Frequently, a silence will descend and I'll go tearing from the kitchen into the living room to see if the kiddos have escaped down the hall or even (who knows!) out the front door or something -- only to find the boys sitting down quietly with books or catalogs in hand. The fact that they can't actually read yet certainly hasn't deterred them. They observe that big people read, so therefore, so do they!

We also read to them quite a bit -- several books a day. (Since each book typically takes five or ten minutes to read, it's not that big a deal.) I've noticed lately that many of these children's books feature the moon, and we have ended up talking a little bit about the moon to them. But neither D nor I had done anything like take them out into the back yard and point it out to them.

As it turns out, it's not necessary to point out the moon to Sam and Gus -- because they pointed it out to us! Yesterday I saddled up the boys with their adorable little T*rget teddy bear backpack/harnesses and took them for a walk over the acre in back of our house. We were making slow progress (listen, with one of them tugging in each direction at all times, you can bet it's slow progress!), when suddenly Sam pointed up at the sky and shouted, "Moo! Moo!"

Yup. Sam was pointing straight at the half-moon, visible in the blue afternoon sky. Gus looked up and then also pointed at the moon, chanting along with Sam, "Mmmmmmmoooooo! Mmmmmooooo!" (Gus needs a bit of a run-up to get the "m" sound out of his mouth. I need not tell you how adorable that is, though it does elongate our conversations a bit.) Then just for variety, Gus pointed at a crow winging its way past and gave a very passable, and loud, imitation of a crow's caw.

I was really kind of astounded. How on earth did they make the leap of cognition that the little stick drawing in their children's books meant that white thing up in the sky? I told D about it when he got home yesterday and he flat-out didn't believe me until he took the boys out separately and tested them. Yes, at nearly 21 months, they can indeed identify the moon on command. Kind of cool!

Uh, doo, three, dubeejin

2008-12-02T23:32:00.000-08:00

Sam first learned to "count" back in late June while my dad was here, and of course Gus followed right behind. At that time the boyos had a little toy elephant that once had "talked," but they pulled the string a little too enthusiastically and all conversation with the elephant ceased. However, the string still hung out enticingly, and Sam in particular loved to grab this thing by the string and swing it around his head like a medieval morningstar, or else whack things on the ground with it (are there polo-playing genes in our background?).

But then Grandpa showed Sam a better trick. My dad would lean forward and hold it out in a confidential manner. He'd swing it by the string and count, "One, two, three!" At "three," he would throw it up about a foot in the air so that it spun two or three times, and then catch it again. Sam and Gus would cackle in amazed wonderment like a gaggle of little guinea hens, and rush forward trying to be first to grab the amazing flying, counting elephant! Sam usually won the scramble, since he was more aggressive than Gus at that time, and he was first to pick up on the tossing and counting: "Doo, doo, dee!"

I was all excited at the time, thinking he was really learning to count. But I should have known better. "Doo, doo, dee!" was about as far as they got with the elephant (which since has disappeared -- I think perhaps it fell into the litterbox and met with an untimely displacement into the garbage). Both Gus and Sam have since learned to "count" on their fingers, or they will "count" birds eating on our porch, or really any damned thing that comes in multiples. But I don't think there's any real concept of counting -- only that you are supposed to point at things and make certain prescribed sounds. (Gus's preferred sounds at the moment resemble Japanese a little: "Doe, doe, doe, doe, dojo!")

But today, Sam made a breakthrough -- well, maybe. At least it sounded better. I have noticed before that often right after their naps, they are quite chatty. Today I had Sam up on the changing table after his nap, and he was fooling around with a string of four plastic pop beads while I changed his diaper. Suddenly I heard, "Uh, doo, three, ssnrgle!"

Okay, I don't know what the last sound was. Something vague. But "three" was clear as a bell! My head popped up and I said, "Sam, what did you say?" He said calmly, "Doe, three! Three!"

Of course, then everything was "three!" for the rest of the afternoon, which put paid to the idea that he thought it had any meaning. But still ... you know, really, at this point I'll accept anything that sounds like a real word! I'm not particular any more! And Sam can now say "three!"

In the boys' defense, they've had a bit of a word breakthrough in the last few days. Suddenly, they are rushing up to me with their (five million) board books, jamming them into my leg or my tush, and pointing emphantically at something in the book: "Cat! Dog! Baby! Dada!" they tell me. "Mama! Ba ba! Dog, dog! Woof woof!" Sam startled me a few days ago by stabbing his finger at one porcine cartoon by Sandra Boynton and announcing, "Pig! Pig!" Yup, it was a pig, though I had never heard him say it before that, and he has taken every opportunity since to point out pigs. He can even identify Dr. Seuss's pigs, which look more like a mangy pink camel. I never knew there were so many pigs around. They show up in children's lit right and left. I hope this adoration for pigs wanes a bit as time goes on, or there will be precious little bacon eaten here as they grow older!

Perhaps the cutest thing they do, though, is word substitution. There are some words they just can't or won't say, so sign language (all their own) comes into play. A flower (or plant of any kind) is a "sniff sniff" -- finger held up to the nose as if holding a flower, and a quick sniff. I even find myself answering them, "Yes, that's a sniff sniff," instead of sayng flower. They've also developed a cute thing for "elephant," where they lift their little arms to their faces and flip their hands at the wrist, and do a tiny little elephant trumpet. Gus does a fair imitation of the sound, but it's Sam who really kills me. Gus has kind of a raucous voice, but Sam has a soft little voice that is so gentle and sweet that it cracks me up every time when he attempts to trumpet like an elephant. It would have to be a very, very tiny elephant.

In which I discover that I myself am the shallowest person of my acquaintance

2008-11-18T23:10:00.000-08:00

I have been in negotiations lately with a county agency to get Gus and Sam (well, actually, mostly Sam) evaluated for developmental delays. Sam has worried me a little for some time now. His gross motor skills are excellent, but he really doesn't use the pincer grasp unless forced to it, and he falls over his own feet like he's wearing clown shoes. Also, he can ignore you like nobody's business. His actual hearing seems to be fine, but if he is busy with something while you are calling him by name, well, good luck getting his attention because hey, dude, he's busy. Of course, his dad also does the ignoring thing. If D is reading something interesting, or engrossed in some problem, you'll have to walk right up to him and touch him on the shoulder to get his attention. He's busy, dude.

But the Easter Seals guy made it here at last this morning, and he and Sam had a little assessing playdate. Well, actually, he and Sam and Gus had the playdate, except that I finally had to cart Gus off into the next room so that the Easter Seals guy could actually assess Sam. To tell the truth, I think that's one of the reasons the boys seem a little behind. Tell me, could you work out your block-stacking skills very well if every time you got a couple of them together, some annoying person came along and knocked them winding? Or else started doing something fascinating on the other side of the room, just begging for investigation? Hm? How much actual work would you get done?

In any case, the nice Easter Seals guy (ESG) will be returning next week to assess Gus, and he only gave me a rough outline of his assessment today. The boys are 20 months and 2 days at the moment. ESG said that Sam's gross motor skills are excellent and he tested at 21 months. (Yay Sam!) But it was downhill from there. He said Sam's pincer grasp was actually pretty decent and his fine motor skills were okay-ish. But he doesn't pay attention when you call his name (he said Sam actually looked at him only one out of five times when he called his name), and his speech is definitely lacking. ESG said the boys would be eligible for free speech therapy when they turn 24 months (implying strongly that boy, howdy, do they need it!). He finished up by saying that both Sam and Gus seem like a "young" 20 months to him.

This is all what I had expected, more or less. And yet somehow, his calling them "young" for 20 months really rankled. But what that mostly pointed out to me is how damned shallow I am. Why on earth does it bother me that they are a little immature for their age? ESG said that he sees kids all the time with REAL problems, and our boys are in no way in that category. He basically said that our kids' problems, such as they are, should more or less straighten out on their own. I should just be grateful for that.

And yet I confessed to D the other day that I have been seized with "baby envy" -- not to have a baby, mind you (since we have the two best boys I could ever even think of!) but to have toddlers that are slightly more intellectually accomplished. My mother had a bazillion stories about how brilliant I was at an early age, and I guess I expected the same of Sam and Gus. Well, A, I am/was a girl, and B, I was a singleton. Boys tend to lag behind speech-wise, and so do twins. (And C, my mother might have been guilty of a slight case of mis-remembering!) So I need to remember that, instead of stewing over my Internet friend V's brilliant kid H, who not only can say at least a version of all three of his names, but can also more-or-less count to ten. Gus and Sam are very interested in counting, but what we get from them is (with appropriate pointing), "Doh, doh, doh, doh, doh, dojo!" Clear enough to this doting mom, though possibly not to anyone else.

And I'm kind of dreading Thanksgiving. Well, not Thanksgiving itself, but the Saturday after, when we are scheduled to meet D's sis, her husband and their toddler Leo ( one week older than our boys, as longtime readers of this blog may recall), who apparently is ready to ship off the MIT for the spring semester. I just know that our day together is going to be filled with little anecdotes about baby Leo's brilliance and perspicacity. And, darn it, probably some on-the-spot demonstrations of same.

Well....

Well, my kid can sing the first five notes of the pentatonic scale! In tune! Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Music, music, music!

2008-11-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

We have a lot of music going on around here, though most of it isn't that high-flown. For instance, this is D's and my version of "Ba Ba Black Sheep" (which we sing during diaper changes, which take two adults these days since one determined and poopy "roly boy" can easily defeat one adult):

Ba, Ba, Baby, have you any poo?
Yes sir, yes sir, lots for you!
Some for your mother, some for your dad,
Some for your brother, just to make him mad.
Ba, Ba, Baby, have you any poo?
Yes sir, yes sir, lots for you!

As you can see, this is high-class stuff.

I have a musical background (a minor in music, many years of singing in choir, dreams of a musical career before I got a galloping case of GAD, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder -- which I guess means you're just a nut about everything in general). And D is very fond of music too, though he can't carry a tune. (Actually, that's not true. D can sing quite well for about one musical phrase, and then he loses the key and takes up the song again in another key. The odd thing is that within each phrase, he's right in tune -- but he can't seem to keep going in the same key throughout the song.)

At any rate, we've exposed Sam and Gus to whatever classical music was playing on the Sirius music channel, plus my singing old show tunes, plus Rush Limbaugh's bumper music, and whatever else happened to be floating along in the ether. We also got them a little red toy piano last Christmas (with money my aunt sent me before she died, so I think of that as "her" piano). They've enjoyed banging on the piano, though they didn't show any particular talent with it. Both of the boys have been singing "Ba ba baby" for the last couple of months, though that's as far as they ever get with it.

Recently, though, I got them a DVD called "Trebellina," which is basically an intro to the concept of a musical scale. The cartoon characters systematically go through the treble clef notes, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C, and the half-hour show also has video of a bunch of different musical instruments. I think it's meant for slightly older kids (hah! especially since the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends NO TV AT ALL for kids under two -- sigh! which we have been violating with abandon for months now since there are just times when MOMMY NEEDS A FREAKIN' BREAK and it's two against one so guess who's winning?). But Gus and Sam love this DVD. Loooooooooove it. They call it "Eee" (since they can manage to warble along when the characters sing the note "E") and point to the TV saying, "Ee? Ee?" whenever they think there's a good chance I might pop them in the pack and play and give them another dose of mind-rotting musical cartoon TV.

And today -- which, btw, is their twenty-month birthday! -- Gus did something that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Gus had had his morning bottle (which they get after breakfast -- today, home-made french toast) and was lobbying to steal Sam's bottle, which I was trying to feed him. I said, "Gus, why don't you go play your piano?" so he obligingly wandered over and started banging on it, then singing random syllables. Suddenly he sang, "Ee, ee, ee," in an ascending scale (like Do-re-mi). He was right in tune. Obviously, he had picked that up from Trebellina (and my singing along with it). My jaw dropped. I mean,he was right in tune. I didn't want to make a big deal of it, so I just said, "Gus, that was very nice," and that was that for the moment. But later, when D and I were changing Sam's poopy diaper and singing the song above, Gus not only started singing random syllables too, he followed that up with "Ee" in an ascending scale again, this time going up five notes instead of three. Then he repeated it.

Oh. My. Goodness.

So we are not exactly talking a musical prodigy here (I'm sure Mozart had already written a cantata by the time he was a mere 20 months) but still, it was very exciting to hear Gus's first real musical notes!

And last night, we had another first: A kiss from Gus. I was trying to get him to calm down and go to sleep (he's been on a bit of a strike about going to bed at night lately, though he's fine with taking naps -- go figure) and he had just handed me their baby doll, trying to engage me with that. Being the softy I am, I picked up the doll and played with it a bit, rocking it and kissing it on the forehead. I handed it back and said, "Can you kiss the doll?" No problem, Mom, he kissed it on the forehead too. I pushed my luck and presented my cheek to him and said, "Can you kiss Mama too?" He promptly went for my glasses inst4ead, of course, so we had to play Gus the Professor and I admired him while he wore my (break-proof) glasses for a moment.

Then I tried again, with the glasses out of his reach. "Kiss Mama?"

Gus bent over and feathered the softest little kiss onto my cheek. I'm not sure his lips even touched me. It actually felt more like when my cats give me little no-touch breathy "kisses." But he obviously meant it as a kiss ... and oh, I thought my heart would burst into a million pieces from suddenly swelling up so big.

Those boys, those boys. Those boys.

Wagons ho!

2008-10-07T23:13:00.000-07:00

Two of our very good friends here -- Aunt S and Uncle W -- gave the boys this Little Red Wagon for their birthday. I stick them in it and schlep them around the property every once in a while. They love it, but close to 60 pounds of toddler bouncing over gopher holes is hard on Mommy's back!

First kiss

2008-10-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I haven't blogged since July. Oy.

In my defense, I will state that I am now living with two little chimpanzees -- two utterly adorable, incredibly sweet-natured, loving, adorable (did I say adorable? well, it bears repeating) little chimps -- but still chimps, who grab EVERYTHING THEY CAN GET THEIR (FOUR) LITTLE HANDS ON and strew it to the four corners of the earth. Or simply sit down and rip it up on the spot. Or eat it. Or attempt to eat it and give me a heart attack when I see what they have gotten hold of this time. And now that Sam and Gus are 32" and 32 5/8", respectively, now, they can reach an awful lot of stuff.

Oh. And they climb.

So I haven't blogged since July, and my email with friends and family has declined to such a state that my cousin actually emailed D at the office last week politely inquiring whether I was still alive since she hadn't heard from me in oh, months? D forwarded my cousin's missive to me, no doubt thinking I'd reply that very afternoon. And slug that I am, I haven't written her back yet. Because I know that a one-sentence email such as "Yes, I'm alive, we're all alive actually, thanks for asking, bye now!" will not be well received. So I have to actually write her a real email.

And I just don't have the strength for it at the moment.

Sigh.

Maybe tomorrow.

In any case, I just popped on to record a lovely, lovely occasion: My first kiss received from one of the boyos! They'll be 19 months on the 16th. They've been working up to a kiss for some time, kissing their hands at people and so forth, but the mechanics of actually planting a kiss on someone's face seemed to elude them.

Then last night, I had just given Sam his final bottle (subject for another post, I guess -- they are eating real food very well but are still Adamant that Little Gentlemen Drink Milk Only From Ba-bas, Not Sippy Cups) and was waltzing him off to bed. I had stopped by D for the Night Night Daddy Litany of "Go to sleep now, there'll be lots more fun in the morning, Mommy and Daddy love you, good night!" and then stopped by our copy of "Portrait of Miss May Sartoris" (artist: Frederic, Lord Leighton) to let Sam say night night. (We say goodnight to that portrait, to all of Daddy's marathon medals, and to the thermostat in the hallway.) Sam kind of blew a kiss at her, so I held him up where he could kiss the portrait like he does his reflection in the mirror. It was, I need not tell you, adorable. Then I said, "Do you want to kiss Mommy?" and lo, he puckered up like a little pink-lipped goldfish! So I leaned in and offered my cheek and Sam dabbed it with a kiss. I thought my heart would explode.

By golly they are cute.

More soon.

Below: "Miss May Sartoris" by Frederic, Lord Leighton

Hottentots

2008-07-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

Mostly the boyos haven't had issues with their immunizations, but they got a couple of new vacs on Monday and today, Wednesday, they have been running fevers like nobody's business. A little Tylenol this afternoon and some Motrin this evening have helped, but their temps have been enough to make this mama nervous. Gus had a rectal temp of 102.2 this afternoon and Sam was 101.8. Just before bed, Gus was 102.4 and Sam was 103.5. (Yikes!) I called Humongous HMO's advice nurse this afternoon and quizzed her about it. She said that fevers on Day 2 with the pneumococcal immunization were very common and no biggie in general. She advised us to keep tabs on it and call if (a) either of them got up to 106 (106!!! She said it so casually, too. You could make toast on a forehead like that!) or if they hadn't gone down by 11 a.m. tomorrow. So we shall see.

I stripped the boys down this afternoon to just a diaper and pair of shorts (so the diaper actually stays on, ha ha) and that helped. They perked up after the Tylenol, too, and ate well and ran around and played. So really, I think they're fine. But it is disconcerting to put your hand on a child's forehead and have the impulse to jerk it back because you think you'll get burned. I opened their bedroom window and put a fan in it to draw in the cool night air (it was up to about a hundred here today but it cools down to around 60 every night). (My old typing teacher would be so disappointed in me. I'm blogging in the dark here, and every time I want a numeral or parentheses-- have you noticed I live for the opportunity to use parentheses? -- I have to bend down to peek at the keyboard. OTOH, my old typing teacher told me that some people never learned the touch typing system and for quite a time she thought I would be one of them, so perhaps not.)

In other news, my dad got here tonight. Finally. After about a zillion issues with his airline. It was hard for me to see him looking so tired and old, but I guess I should just be glad he is here at all, since he is pushing 80. He walks like our nearly 19-yo cat Ursus, sort of bent over a bit and watching where he puts his feet. But it was still lovely to see him and give him a big hug.

I don't know if I mentioned or not that D is leaving for Russia on Saturday? No, I didn't buy him the ticket ... he is going to be teaching a class there for three weeks, and I miss him already. He swears he is going to behave. I am not at all worried about him philandering but he does trust people too much, and I'm a bit concerned he'll meet some overly friendly Russians, go out drinking, and get rolled for his money. I hope, hope, hope not.

So my dad will be here for a couple of weeks, helping with the boys. I doubt he'll change any diapers, but at least I'll be able to get out of the house for 20 minutes or so to take a walk. And the company will be nice. I adore our boys but when the conversation is limited to mama, dada, baby (Sam says baby clear as a bell these days!), bur bur (for bird), dee gah (kitty cat) and various squawks with all kinds of meaning -- I guess -- it's nice to have some adult conversation, just to round things out.

Mother's Day photo

2008-07-06T00:14:00.000-07:00

Well, the post I just put up is a bit of a downer (despite its somewhat positive message) so I think we need a great pic to counteract it! Here is one of my new favorite photos of the boys, from Mother's Day. Sam is on the left; Gus on the right.

Gray is an interesting color

2008-07-05T23:30:00.000-07:00

First, let me say thanks to those of you who posted support here, and also a couple of my friends who emailed me directly. I can't say how much I appreciate your support. And thank you all for not saying, "Gee, what a piece of trash you are for staying with an alcolic husband!" Which, honestly, I feared I might hear.

I've been continuing to think about this issue, and really, it is a spectrum of gray. I suppose many people would see it in black and white but I'm living it, and it looks gray to me.

On the pale pearlescent gray side, like the lining of an iridescent shell, is our life together when D is not drinking. Honestly, it's pretty darned good. For one thing, he agrees with me that children are best brought up at home by mommy (assuming that you can financially swing it, which luckily we can). And staying at home here with Gus and Sam has been an incandescently joyful experience for me. I can't think too much about it at any one time because I start to tear up. I tiptoe into the boys' bedroom at night to check on them, and when I lay my hand gently on their little backs, just to feel their breathing, I get a rush of joy that runs through me like heroin. They are ridiculously beautiful, and so ornery and funny and silly and unique and wonderful. I have never memorized anyone's features as I have theirs. I know their little faces better than my own now. And I am profoundly grateful that my husband goes to work without complaint and understands that the work I am doing at home with our boys is every bit as important as the work he performs to keep us financially afloat.

I am grateful that D took care of me during the long years when I could not have taken care of myself. I am grateful that he still hugs me on demand without question, and makes silly jokes to cheer me up when I need it, and shares a long history with me that mostly makes our life together feel like being wrapped up in a warm woolly bathrobe.

On the medium gray side is his stubborn streak, and his nasty little habit of freezing me out in "non-talking" mode when I've done something to annoy His Highness. I don't think this has anything to do with drinking -- this is just his high-handed father coming out in D. (On the plus side, he doesn't do the non-talking thing much anymore.)

And down in the deep charcoal gray is his drinking nights. But to give him some credit, he never complains about his hangovers, and he always gets up the next morning and pitches right back into the work at hand, whether it's going to his academic job or working on things here at home.

And somewhere in that sea of gray is our children's very existence. I thought for a long, long time about whether we should even have kids. I know what pundits like Dr. Laura would say. She basically doesn't think you should have kids unless things are perfect at home. And there's something to be said for that, except that if you wait for things to be perfect before you do whatever it is you want to do, you'll never get anywhere with anything.

I worry about the boys growing up with a functional drunk for a dad. Obviously, this is a Very Bad Example right in front of their eyes. But I also thought about my own upbringing. My dad smoked like a chimney the whole time I was growing up. I would walk into the living room, and the smoke from his pipe would have settled into a visible layer at about my shoulder height. The walls were all yellow-brown from the smoke. I was sick every winter and lost several weeks of school every year with awful bronchitis. (Looking back, I'm astounded I never had pneumonia. Also, it's a good think I'm not going to school now -- I think they'd fail me on general principles, just for losing so much time.)

Now, statistically, kids of smokers are much more likely to smoke, so you'd expect my brother and I both to do so. Our actual results? My brother also smokes like a chimney. But as for me, you literally could not pay me enough to get me to smoke. I hate smoking with a passion I would never have had if I had not grown up with a dedicated smoker. I would not even date smokers. Smoking is something I've never given consideration to doing, for even two seconds -- even though it was in front of me for all those years.

More to the point, our family was deeply disfunctional in ways I'm not going to get into here, and during much of my childhood, I was very, very unhappy. I was probably clinically depressed from about age five to age 14. Some people would say that my very screwed-up parents should never have had me. And yet... I am here, and glad to be here, despite the flashbacks, the PTSD, the depression, the whatever. I walk this earth and am deeply, outrageously happy to do so. I went out for some exercise this evening and heard the rapidfire outpouring of music from a mockingbird on a telephone pole, far above my head. Whenever I hear a mockingbird, it's like suddenly smelling lemon, or touching pure cashmere. It is a moment of pure beauty, like ringing a chime in my head. How much are moments like that worth? Is it worth going through crap in your childhood to get to a mostly-very-good now? I would argue that it is. I would argue that life itself, just breathing air, is a wonderful thing. (Well, okay, if you're not in serious pain from cancer or some godawful thing like that. All bets are off then.)

Anyway. I may have some apologizing to do to our sons when they are older. I hope not, and I'll try very hard to make sure no apologies are needed. But here they are on this earth, and with any luck they'll stay here and enjoy this world for many years, and I hope they enjoy mockingbirds as much as I do someday.

In a nutshell, I'm trying to say that although my life is not perfect (as detailed in my previous post), I don't want people to think I'm lying about, moaning, "Woe is me!" and being wretched all the time. Nope. I'm severaly irritated only two to three nights a week, and honestly, the severe irritation is limited mostly to the last couple of hours of each evening. My life as a whole does not suck. My life is imperfect, and together we have problems that need some answers -- that may, sadly, be unanswerable -- but for right now we continue to limp along pretty well here in our little three-legged race.

Just two or three nights a week

2008-06-02T23:25:00.000-07:00

It's 11:30 p.m. as I write this. D is sitting in the dark on our back porch, full wine glass in hand, drunk. This is a little scenario that plays itself out in our house about two to three nights a week. Oh, he's not usually on the back porch. Usually he's in our living room, watching TV or listening to the stereo on headphones. But wherever he is, by about 9 p.m., he's drunk.

The rest of the week, D is normal, he's sober, and he's a great guy. He's sweet, he's smart, and most of all, he has been more supportive to me than anyone else in this world -- and I include my own mother and father in that. But if he doesn't get his drunk on two to three nights per week, he's not happy. It's obvious that he depends on it.

***********

I wrote that on June 2, and here is is June 20. Things have not changed, except that tonight when he came home with a 12-pack and I asked him to defer his drinking to tomorrow night, on the grounds that I was tired of him going to an every-other-night drinking schedule, he put his beer away in the garage and didn't drink it -- but he has given me the cold shoulder all night, refusing to talk to me except for the bare minimum. He went to bed a little while ago, obviously still angry.

This anger stuff related to his drinking is a little unusual. Most of the time he's a congenial drunk. Usually I'm the one who's angry at him, for being drunk.

I have refrained from writing about this for a long, long time, but after reading Cecily's post at Uppercase Woman about "The Fear That Holds Me Back," (I love Cecily!) I realized I should just get it out there. Trying to pussyfoot around this issue has been one of the big issues keeping me from blogging. So often, something I want to write about the boys has D's drinking as a component somewhere in the story. I have hesitated to get into this subject at all in my blog. I don't want this to be a drinking blog, or an AA blog, or an anti-AA blog. I would like this to just be a chronicle of our wonderful little boys' beginning and their first years in life, and the life that I was living as I was raising them. But honestly, this has been a fairly significant part of that life, so trying to leave it out has been, yes, like trying to tiptoe around the elephant in the living room. Works okay except that you keep stepping in the pachyderm-size turds.

The other reason I have refrained from writing about this is that although this situation is definitely a problem, most of the solutions offered to me are likewise a problem. People have this notion that if you are married to an alcoholic, you should leave them, no matter what. Or give them an ultimatum -- me or the bottle. Something along those lines.

Real life is not so simple. Granted, I have largely plopped myself into this box, but it is a box that I can't see a clear and simple way out of. Back when I met D, I was 26, but pretty unschooled in the ways of the world. I really didn't know anything about alcoholics or what they were like. I didn't admit to myself that D was an alcoholic until after we had been married a while. The logical thing to do at that point, I suppose, was leave him. But it was complicated by the fact that I was wildly in love with him. Also, I had my own pretty big set of problems. My early upbringing sucked, to coin a phrase, and in my late 20's, I developed a nice anxiety disorder, OCD, a set of completely irrational phobias, and PTSD, all delayed reactions from my childhood. As so often happens, once I felt safe in a relationship (with D), I completely fell apart.

Well, he took care of me. He didn't kick me to the curb, though a lot of men would have, and he supported me emotionally, financially, whatever. I don't know what would have happened to me during those years if D had not taken care of me.

But I finally got effective treatment for my anxiety disorder, and now we have the boys. . . and now I worry about them, growing up in a household where Daddy is drunk so much of the time. The only good hope I have is that when they are old enough to lisp, "Daddy, why do you drink so much?" he will see the light and do something about it. D is a good guy, a conscientious guy, and he did not drink at all for the first month after we brought the boys home, because I was such a mess and he knew he couldn't take care of newborns while drinking. So I know he can do it when he wants to.

Anyway. That's the story. D has made it clear he's not going to AA or rehab or anything else, and I do not plan on going to Al-Anon because it seems to me it's not my problem to fix. Either D will do something about his drinking when the boys are old enough to notice it. . . or he won't. If he will not do anything at that point, I will have decisions to make. Right now, I have toddlers to diaper. And teeth to grit, sometimes.

Fast and furious

2008-04-30T23:28:00.000-07:00

The milestones are coming thick and fast these days! Yesterday, Gus stacked three blocks on top of each other all by himself, and a couple of days ago, Sam got the hang of clapping. Yesterday D and I determined that Sam can not only clap, but knows the word "clap," and tonight, as I was holding Sam on my lap and singing "Little Rabbit Fufu" to him for the umpty-umpth time (I know, I know: "Fufu" is an awful song with a terrible pun at the end and an unregenerate violent hero. My kids will be warped. But I learned it in Girl Scouts), and Sam started to clap along -- in time. And he stayed in time through two verses! Listen, I was in choir and took dance lessons and did all sorts of things throughout my high school and college years that required people to keep time, and you know what? There are a LOT of adults and near-adults that can't keep time like 13-month-old Sam was doing it this evening! I was floored. (I'm not crazy, though -- I have no expectation that you, my long-suffering audience, will likewise be floored by this simple feat. But I was.)

As for talking, I already mentioned Sam's foray into "kih-tee" (which was actually more like "kih-tay," which gave it a very hip and happenin' sound). He also calls the cats "kee ka" (obviously short for "kitty cat") and, most often, "dee gah." Of course, everything else is "dee gah" these days too. Sam is a one-word man, for the most part. Until very recently, his one word was "Bah," and now it's "dee gah." I have suggested to him that he branch out with "Monet" as well but it seems he'll have none of that.

Gus is seriously into "Da-dee" these days, and actually seems to know who that is. Both of the boys do, for that matter. Yesterday after D left for work, I asked each of the boys separately where Daddy was, and they both did the exact same thing, which cracked me up. They looked puzzled for a second, then turned and pointed at the front door and then the window, as if to say, "Well, I saw him go that way this morning but darned if I know where he got to after that." But Gus wins the "Da-dee" sweepstakes. Yesterday morning, I was sleeping in for a few minutes while D fed and diapered the boys (as he does most mornings, to give him his due). Suddenly an insistent voice in the other room saying, "Da-dee! Da-deeeee!" woke me out of a sound sleep. It wasn't so much that Gus was loud, but his voice had a peculiarly mature tone to it that just startled the hell out of me. I swear it sounded like he was 4 or 5 instead of just a wee toddler. A blast from the future, I guess!

Too many milestones, too little time to type. Yesterday Gus got on their little blue dinosaur-slash-rocking horse all by himself, for the very first time. I had put him on it and showed him how to dismount a couple of times, and I guess he did a little reverse engineering to figure out how to get on. I looked up from the paper and found him on it and already rocking, and I must admit I squealed in pure delight and clapped my hands. In return he gave me his thousand-watt smile and his rusty-hinge inhaling squeak which is his version of a laugh at the moment, and it was all priceless.

Sam has an unrequited passion for the ceiling fan in our living room. I rather like the fan too (it is antique white and has some curlique scrolling on the housing that makes it look like we pulled it from some 19th century drugstore, when in fact it was on sale at the Home Despot) but Sam luuuuuuuvs his fan. And the ceiling fans in the office and our bedroom need not apply. He points to the living room fan at least twenty times a day and shouts "Bah!" or now, "Dee gah!" and I say back, "Yes, Sam, that's the fan. FFFFFFFaaaaaaaan. It goes round and round. Can you say fan? Okay, guess not." And then he kicks and grins, happy in his passion for the fan. (Okay, technically speaking this is not a milestone. But it is amusing, at least to Fond Mommy.)

Speaking of Mommy, we're still lacking one milestone. The boys know who Daddy is, but they seem to be clueless about who Mommy is, even though when they are upset their calls of "Ma ma! Ma ma ma, ma!" rock the household. D can reliably get them to point to the kitty cat (granted, they have six to choose from, but still), or can get Sam to point to the fan. But when he asks them to show him Mommy, they just stare at him, or like as not, turn and point at the wall or the table or the refrigerator magnets or whatever has taken their fancy. But not at Ma. Ma ma ma.

Maybe tomorrow.

Kih....tee!

2008-04-23T23:26:00.000-07:00

It's late and I'm pooped as usual, but I have to get this down. (It occurs to me that there's an awful lot of "poop" around this house, what with the boys producing it and me being pooped so much!) D usually gets the boys up, but he slept in this morning and I had the honor of seeing them first thing. As usual, I spent the first few moments after I went in going from one crib to the other, just saying hi. Sam was already standing up, and as I patted his little back, he pointed past me to the doorway and said, very clearly, "Kih...tee!"

Startled, I looked where he was pointing, and there in the open doorway sat our big orange tomcat, John Carter. "Kitty" indeed! The reason it was so startling was that Sam hasn't really used words before. Actually, he had reverted lately to saying only "Ba!" for all occasions, and I was starting to worry about him a little. He had said ma-ma-ma and similar in the past, but every time he said what sounded like a word, I couldn't get him to repeat it. But this time, excited by the prospect of a real live cat only a few feet away (I'm being slightly sarcastic here -- our boys are both inundated by cats all day long!), Sam actually repeated "kitty" two or three times.

So, I think this was a "first word" for Sam. Which amuses me, as I remember telling D that our kids' first word would have to be kitty!

Gus is still working on a first word. He appears to use the syllables "die die" to mean Daddy, but since he will also walk around pointing at random objects and saying "die die," it's still a little unclear. He also says ma-ma-ma but again, the meaning is unclear. The sound he makes that amuses me the most is a kind of shushing hiss, that he makes when he is pleased with something! I have no idea how he decided that a hiss was a good thing. Maybe it is a corruption of "yes?"

Well, who knows. But just remember, hiss if you feel happy! And point at any and all available "kih-tee!"

Birthday pics

2008-03-21T22:50:00.000-07:00

Pics first, verbiage later!

Anniversaries

2008-03-06T12:47:00.000-08:00

I've been having a hard time with the decision of stopping pumping. The boys let me know when they were about five months old that hey, Mommy, this nursing thing is soooooo much slower and less productive than drinking formula from a bottle, so why don't we just stop it, eh? They really were quite "done" with it then. I wasn't happy about that decision but short of superglueing their little mouths to my nipples, I didn't see a way around it.

I've been pumping ever since then, determined to give Sam and Gus not only the antibodies from my breast milk, but also whatever nebulous benefits to their I.Q.'s my little contribution might make. But as they've gotten older and much more active, finding time to pump has become harder and harder. Also, they're nearly a year old now. They've probably gotten as much from my breast milk as there is to offer.

But it has been hard to quit. I was pumping a couple of days ago while eating lunch (I always end up double- or even triple-tasking while I'm pumping), and the thought of finally quitting left me in tears. I called D at work and whined pitifully at him. (Well, I thought I was pitiful; I'm sure he just found it annoying though he was good enough not to say so.)

My problem with quitting, I told him, was that I never felt I did the breastfeeding thing well in the first place. I felt like a complete schlub when it came to feeding my little boys with the milk of my body. First, there had hardly been any milk -- it took several days to come in, and when it finally did, there was pitifully little. My colostrum was bare drops -- maybe enough to feed one butterfly; certainly it wasn't enough for two little baby boys. (It kills me that breastfeeding advocates often advise nursing mothers to just wait for the milk to come in, and not offer any bottles. Realistically, what is the poor baby supposed to do for a week? Starve?)

We had further problems in that little Sam (born at 4 lbs 8 oz) literally couldn't fit his tiny mouth around my nipple. Gus (6 lbs) could nurse and even had a decent latch, but seemed uninterested in sucking very hard at all. I worked with several different lactation "experts" (most of whom, in my increasingly cranky opinion at the time, did not deserve that appellation), but the problems continued.

So we gave them bottles, and they sucked them down. And grew. I also nursed, but never managed tandem nursing at all. I pumped and pumped, trying to increase mysupply, but my biggest total at one pumping (ever!) was 80 ml. Also, I had a hard time recovering from my C-section, after several months of inactivity lying in bed (oh, yes, and being older than God when the boys were born, which believe me didn't help), and all in all, the whole thing was just a royal cluster... ah, I said I wasn't going to use words like that anymore, didn't I? Still, you get the idea.

The odd thing is that although I strove mightily to breastfeed successfully, and really don't think there is much further I could have done, I still feel guilty for not having succeeded very well. Thank you, Modern Opinion, for making me believe that a non-nursing mom is an unsuccessful mom. In the old days I could have just handed the boys to a successfully lactating wet nurse. Not an option these days. Instead, I just drove myself nuts, and annoyed the boys.

So I was whining at D on the phone, and crying just a little, and he pointed out that the boys are thriving. Thriving. They are happy and healthy (one cold and one case of thrush so far, total) and into everything, including attempting to ride Buster, our one cat who will let them get that close. Sam is walking and Gus is nearly there, and they are both in the 23 - 25 lb range, which is quite respectable for twins at nearly a year, right in there in the singleton range. They are smart enough to know how to get my goat already, and completely adorable.

So maybe, D opinined, it was good enough. Not the perfection I wanted, but good enough.

It has taken a couple of days for that to sink in. Maybe, huh? Well, maybe it was good enough.

But I still felt that I needed closure (hate that word, but you understand immediately when I say it) on the nursing thing. And when I looked at the calendar today, I got it.

Two years ago, on March 6, 2006, D and I walked into Dr. Enterprise's office for the first time, to see if she could help us get pregnant. I don't have to look up the date. It was graven on my brain, since we had to wait nearly three months for the appointment. Three months of screwing like crazed jackalopes, whether we wanted to or not, and taking my temp, and trying IUI's, and obsessively reading and bookmarking everything on the Internet that I could find about pregnancy and IVF, and worrying nonstop about whether Dr. Enterprise would just wave her hand dismissively and say, "What, are you kidding me? You're too old, get outta here!"

But she didn't. She didn't sugarcoat our prospects, and it took two IVF's (and an awful lot of dollars) to achieve a pregnancy. But old "Git 'R Done" Enterprise (as the local twins mom club calls here affectionately -- and no, I'm not kidding about that!) got it done. And here we are, with two amazing little human beings who would not have existed if we didn't have a dream and an excellent doctor and an awful lot of patience and some extra money. Well worth it all.

So this is a good day to call the pumping done, and acknowledge that my little babies are starting to become little boys. Every time I look at their little faces, my heart just about leaps from my chest in an excess of happiness. (Well, okay, that's when they haven't just pulled the cat food down off the table onto their heads, or found some cat poop on the floor and smeared it everywhere, or ... um, et cetera.) They are the best project I've ever done, and it's time to admit that this particular phase of the project are over.

Okay. I can do it. I'm pumping right now, as I type, and I'm ready to turn it off and disconnect for the last time. And on the positive side, at last I can get some Retin-A creme and get rid of a few of these wrinkles that have crept up on me the last couple of years!

Here's to you, boys! Cheers. I love you, buddies.

Let's try this again....

2008-02-19T23:33:00.000-08:00

Blogger ate my last post. Let's see if this can sneak through:

But wait, there's more!

2007-12-20T23:28:00.000-08:00

More teeth, that is! Woo hoo!

Sam and Gus both have FOUR teeth coming in on top, not just two. Actually, this state of affairs has been in place for several days, but I've just been running around here like the proverbial decapitated chicken, and so haven't updated. But oh, those teeth are coming in fast and furious! I can't tell you how beautiful those literally pearly white tiny teeth are. (Okay, or rather, the very tips of said teeth. But they are pearly, and extremely white.) And it won't surprise you to hear that the boys are chewing on pretty much everything in sight.

The boyos are really looking more and more like little boys these days rather than babies. They are FAST little buggers when it comes to crawling (especially Sam, whom we have dubbed Mr. Beeline, for his habit of making a swift and brutally direct line to whatever has caught his fancy at the moment, usually the open refrigerator door or a fleeing cat). They are both working hard on standing unassisted. (Gus gets up on one knee, the other leg straight out at an angle, and spreads his arms wide -- for balance, one assumes -- in a way that makes him look like he's either doing that Russian dance with the bottle on the head or else auditioning for a remake of The Al Jolson Story. Sam is more traditional, also getting up on one knee but grabbing whatever vertical item he can find -- often my knee -- to balance with. He hasn't quiiite figured out the full-fledged pullup move yet. However, I had to remove Sam's mobile from his crib tonight -- sob! -- because he has figured out how to get up far enough to actually grab the mobile, which has choking hazards on it. And by the way, I ask you, what freakin' genius designed a BABY MOBILE with choking hazards?! Good gravy.)

Another less charming habit that they've both acquired is doing the Locomotion when we are trying to change their diapers. People, you haven't lived until you are changing a VERY poopy diaper and suddenly have your squirmy, fairly strong little nine-month-old roll over on the changing pad and start to blithely crawl away. Trailing you-know-what behind him. Ick, to say the least. Wrassling the boyos is like trying to change a very expensive, dear and wonderful little freakin' octopus! Not fun. D and I have taken to calling in reinforcements for diaper changing if the other one is home. (Of course, I do almost all of the poopy diaper changing, since the poopy diapers literally make D sick at his stomach. Curiously, scooping the cats' litter boxes -- D's job since my pregnancy days -- doesn't have the same effect. I haven't pointed out the discrepancy since I have no desire to ever scoop a litter box in my life again!)

Oddly enough, Gus and Sam have very different poop styles. (I know -- who knew there were styles of pooping? Live and learn.) Gus produces big wet extravaganzas of medium-brown poop that sometimes seep up his back, past the diaper and onto his clothes. (Fun for the whole family! Especially when Mommy gets some on her clean new shirt!) Also, Gus is a "stealth pooper" -- he poops quietly and doesn't cry or otherwise make a fuss, so you might not notice until he's been sitting in it for a while, by which time he commonly has a headstart on a bit of diaper rash. I have taken to sniffing my blond boy frequently! Sam, by contrast, produces very adult-looking, compact, dark brown turds that are much, much easier to clean up -- but smell like he's taken up Dumpster-diving and eating garbage as a hobby.

In Total Cuteness News, Gus learned (and taught his brother) how to play peek-a-boo with Mommy by peeking around the corner of the couch or the bathroom door -- any kind of architectural feature, really. Seeing and listening to them dissolve in gales of giggles as we play is, literally, one of the joys of my entire life. I just had no idea. I knew I would love my children, yes, but this.... This love I have for them sweeps all else before it. I have to keep a firm rein on myself not to become an Obnoxious Mommy. (You know what I mean. I don't have to detail this for you.) But at least now I understand the cause of Obnoxious Mommydom. These boys, these tiny twenty pound-ish people who literally did not exist before 17 months ago are the most wonderful beings I have ever met.

Ah, well. I'm a nutcase. Blame the Tylenol that I've been mainlining since yesterday. In other news, I have a wretched cold. Rivers of mucus running down my throat and out my nose, to the point where if I have both hands full of baby or what-have-you, I have actually dripped onto my own clothing. The disgustingness of this makes me want to make the noises that Bill the Cat used to make. Ack. Gick. Worse, though, is the sneaking suspicion that where Mommy leads, the boyos will not be long to follow. I called up Big Humongous HMO today to get tips on how to take care of little boyos with horrific colds, and it was all the old stuff my mom used to inflict on me -- lots of fluids, a vaporizer at night, a little infant Tylenol here and there.

I hope to heck they don't catch this cold. We'll see if our luck has run out.

Triple tasking

2007-12-13T01:01:00.000-08:00

Well, it's 1 a.m. and I am sitting here pumping and simultaneously shopping on the Internet for new dress pants for D for Christmas (he wears a 35 waist -- nobody but L#nds End seems to carry those!) and I am about to drop ... does that make this shopping till I drop? ... but I had to pop by here to report that ... drum roll, please ....

Masters Gus and Sam once again have coordinated the acquisition of new teeth!

Just found 'em today. Gus has one new top tooth (the left front one) which has fairly well sprouted -- maybe with 1/4 inch visible -- and Sam has both top fronts visible, but only just barely. This coordination of teeth cracks me up. They apparently reached into the gene pool and got different eyes (Gus's are powder blue still, but Sam's are veering toward green or hazel), different ears (Gus's are a replica of my dad's big ones, and Sam has D's pointy little elf ears), and different hair (Gus's hair is lighter than Sam's, though they both seem to be working toward a reddish brown), but they are definitely sharing the teeth gene. Too cute.

Tough day

2007-12-01T23:05:00.000-08:00

When I went to bed last night, I found that Georgina had made it up from her little nest, but collapsed only a couple of feet away. When I picked her up, I noticed she was twitching all over, and she also seemed not to be able to walk at all. I ended up sleeping all night with her lying on my chest.

This morning, she still seemed not to be able to get up, so I knew it was time. My lovely neighbor Grandma D came over and watched the boys, and D drove Georgina and me to the vet. On the way, I told Georgina how much I loved her and how I'd miss her, and reminisced about the fun times we had, like when D and I spent a semester in southern France (he had wangled a job teaching at a school there) and took Georgina with us, since France is fine with people bringing pets in. We had an apartment with stairs, which she had never seen before. It took her a couple of days to get used to the stairs, but then the fun began! She spent the rest of the semester charging up and down the stairs at lightning speed, often dragging along a little pink sock she had found somewhere. We often woke up there to the sound of her chirping to the sock at 3 a.m. and then ricocheting up and down the stairs a time or two. When she wasn't running up and down, she would crouch on the stairs, peering between the bannisters, "spying" on us in the living room below. I've never seen anyone have so much fun with stairs.

They gave her the drug in an I.V. in her front leg. She went easily, barely perceptibly, since she was only hanging on by a thread anyway. I can't tell you how much I cried today. I don't think I've cried this much about anything since we lost my mom back in 1996.

Tough day.

But in better news... and thank God, there is always better news as soon as I turn my attention to the boys... Gus actually clapped today! His first clap! Of course, he only did it once, but it was unmistakeable. I was whistling "Running on Ice" (it's a fun one to whistle; try it sometime) and clapping along, all for the entertainment of the boys. Both boys were grinning, and then Gus actually clapped his hands together once! What a milestone.

Then later in the evening, apropos of nothing, as far as I could tell, Sam waved at me! Or maybe he was trying to signal me to pick him up. Not sure, really, but it was something. While looking right at me, Sam held up his right hand and kind of cupped his fingers -- an inverted wave, I guess -- and then made a fist and slammed it down over his heart. Then he repeated the whole thing, grinning all the while. Meaning? Who knows? D suggested that our little guy was really attempting a Sig Heil (and I must admit it looked like that!). Too cute, whatever it was. Of course I grabbed him up and smooched his little cheeks, so now he probably thinks it's a signal for that.

Thank God for the boys. In so many ways.

Sad

2007-11-29T23:16:00.000-08:00

I got nothing done today. Well, except for caring for the little guys, of course, which emphatically is not nothing. And they were spectacularly cute today. Gus very suddenly outgrew his helmet (we moved the appt and are going back tomorrow for an adjustment) and so got to go bareheaded for the day. I couldn't resist kissing his little blond head over and over (since for once I can reach it!).

Speaking of growing, the boys got weighed yesterday when we went in for their second flu shot. Sam is 19 lbs 7.8 oz, and Gus is 20 lbs 14 oz (nearly 21 lbs! Oh my god!). They are rapidly outgrowing all the baby clothes I have for them. We'll have to take a field trip soon to the local Carter's outlet store.

But Georgina is still languishing, and I literally spent hours today debating whether to put her to sleep today. I made myself sick at my stomach worrying about it. My eyes are still swollen from all the crying. I even went so far as to call my fabulous neighbor down the street, Grandma D, and ask her if she could watch the boys while I went to the vet. But I just couldn't pull the trigger. Poor Georgina. She actually slept most of the day. It's just that she looks kind of miserable when she is not sleeping.

Listen, if you ever come down with some incurable whatsis, don't look me me to put you out of your misery. Obviously I'm crappy at this sort of thing.

The door's ajar

2007-11-25T22:44:00.000-08:00

I hate writing this post. No no, don't panic -- the boyos are just fine. In fact, they're great. Sam started crawling with "forward volitional motion" about two weeks ago (I have no idea where we picked up this "forward volitional motion" thing but it does describe it well -- he's actually moving FORWARD instead of backward now, thereby avoiding trapping himself under the couch, and he gets where he aims at), and now he's just hell on wheels. Gus started getting into a triangle sit by himself a couple of days after Sam started crawling, and about four days ago, Gus started crawling forward too! Holy cow, two rapidly crawling babies! Can the earth survive such depredation?

So it's Panic City around here for the grownups. I feel like a border collie with a whole herd of little lambs. I keep trying to round them up, but they keep finding new ways to get out of the metaphorical corral. Though actually, we are trying to keep them more or less corralled in our living room, during waking hours. On the advice of my twin moms group, we had a guy come out to look at our house on Wednesday and help us figure out what childproofing we needed to do. I can't quite call it a scam but I sure didn't feel like we got value for the money. We paid about $150, and for that, we got about 40 minutes of his time, a few useful tips, and a kitchen full of installed baby latches on the lower cabinets and drawers (he brought a helper who did the latches). But he missed several hazards that I've found since then, and D had a strong feeling the guy was trying to rip us off by jacking up the prices on things like baby gates. (Of course, D is so close-fisted with money that the poor stuff practically screams when he grabs it. So his feelings may not be entirely accurate.)

And in other good news on the boyo front, Sam and Gus are just the sweetest little men I've ever met in my entire life. Granted, I've been around very few babies, so for all I know, all eight-month-old babies are like this. But they just kill me with the angelic quality of their little smiles -- especially with their two little "tombstones" sticking up from their bottom gums. I swoon with their cuteness every time Gus grins and then ducks his head, pretending to be shy, or when Sam smiles up into my eyes and then pumps his arms and declares, "Heh! Heh! Heh!" And now they've added to their babbling repertoire, too. Gus has said "Ba ba" a few times, but Sam has taken "Ba ba" and run with it. He was hysterical this evening. I'll bet the syllable "Ba" passed his little rosy lips a minimum of two hundred times tonight. Sam seemed to be carrying on not just a conversation using "Ba ba" as the medium, but bucking for a Tony with his virtuoso one-man show, with a vastly differentiated cast of characters. I have never heard "Ba" said in as many tones and pitches and with such apparent difference of meaning as I have tonight. It was amazing, and incredibly adorable.

So me, I got no complaints there. (Except that it's hard to keep up with them!)

No, the problem is my beloved old cat Georgina. She's failing fast, and I am in the wretched position of trying to do what's best for her. The problem is, I'm not sure that what cats think is "best" is what humans think is "best." Popular wisdom says that when pets start failing, and you can't make them better anymore, it's time to whisk them off to the vet and have them put to sleep. For their own good, as the saying goes.

I used to buy into this idea. But then I had to put a few animals to sleep, and saw what it was like up close, since I felt I owed it to each cat to be there with him or her at the moment of truth. And I've wondered in the last couple of years if perhaps all the hoorah of taking the animal to the vet is actually more cruel than letting the cat die on her own. Cats, in general, do not care for going to the vet. Georgina, in particular, really dislikes it. Because she gets so wound up about going there, I am reluctant to make that her final life experience. I was talking with a friend of mine about this and she said, "You know, it would be like going to the dentist for us! How awful!" I had to laugh at her comparison but yes, I hate going to the dentist too, and how awful it would be to have to go there to end your life. Geez.

I had this problem once before with another dear old friend, my cat Adrienne, who also abhored going to the vet. So when her cancer was so advanced that I couldn't stand it anymore (though Adrienne seemed okay with dragging herself around our apartment for some indefinite time to come), I found a vet who made house calls, and had him come out to do the deed. The problem was that since he didn't have all the equipment that he would at the office, he put her to sleep a slightly different way -- which involved a final injection directly to her heart. When he did that, she gave me a look I've never forgotten -- a completely outraged look that said, "How could you! I trusted you!"

So I don't know what to do, and I've cried buckets of tears lately. Georgina is probably the closest to me of all the cats I've had in my life. I met her thirteen years ago when she was a little tortie feral living in the parking lot at my therapist's office, back when we lived in Washington state. For some reason, that evening when D and I had dinner out and my fish was really awful (I think it had been thawed and re-frozen a number of times), I decided to drop by the parking lot on my way home and give her the fish. You would have thought it was manna from heaven -- and I guess, to her, it was. So then I started feeding her when I went to see my therapist, and then pretty soon, I was going down to this parking lot every day to feed her. Mind you, at the time, I was pretty much a mess myself. I had started out with mild depression and occasional suicidal thoughts (which, okay, are not a good thing, but I wasn't serious about them at all), and by the time I met Georgina, I had deteriorated to the point where I was anxious and unhappy pretty much all the time, and I could hardly get myself out of the house because I was so agoraphobic. So having this goal of getting out of the house in order to feed this poor little cat that depended on me was actually a big deal for me, and very therapeutic. (My therapist, by contrast, kept telling me that I had to "get worse in order to get better," and accordingly, I just kept getting worse and worse under her so-called "care.")

When I first started feeding Georgina, she was so wild that if I looked directly into her eyes, she would bolt. After a few months she got past that, and would even let me touch her and pet her a little. Finally, at one point, I noticed she was pregnant ("Oh no!") and a couple of weeks later she had a kitten, a little black male with a white spot at his throat. I was successful in capturing the kitten when he was about six weeks old, and we adopted him out to friends of ours. But to prevent a repetition, I knew it was time to get her fixed. She was still quite wild, but I managed to surprise her and cram her into a cat carrier, and I whisked her off to the vet. (Maybe this is where her fervent dislike of the vet started?)

When I claimed her from the vet and took her home, she was still quite anxious and wild. I put her in our bathroom with a litter box, so she could learn about that, and then I would sit on the floor of the bathroom, reading, just keeping her company. Finally, after a little while doing that, one day while I was reading she crept up on my lap, oh-so-slowly and tentatively. And then when I petted her, she purred.

And that was the start of our great friendship.

The last few years, she has slept right beside my pillow, and has been the last thing I see at night and the first thing in the morning. Lately, as her health has been failing (she has had chronic renal failure for about five years now, but we have kept it at bay with subcutaneous fluids and medicines), she has been sleeping up on my chest. But the last couple of days, she has been too weak to get up on the bed, so she is sleeping on her little heated bed on the floor in our room.

This post is not a request for opinions. I've had about as many opinions as I want on this subject. I guess I just wanted to say that I am going to miss my dear Georgina something fierce, and I wanted the world to know what a difference the presence of this little cat has made in my life.

That's all.

Little Crab Claw

2007-11-13T23:39:00.001-08:00

The boyos and I had a great day Wednesday. We were booked to see their physical therapist at Humongous HMO at 10:30 (they are still receiving therapy for the torticollis, or "wry neck"), and I had been getting flyers all week for the EnormoGinormousBonanzaWhingaDinga Sale (Buy one, get fifteen free! or something like that) at Gottschalk's (a local Macy's knockoff), and I had been further thinking that the boyos just don't get out enough... so we made a day of it.

By some small miracle, and with a little help from D., who doesn't teach until evenings on Wednesdays, we got out of the house on time and arrived at Humongous HMO with ten minutes to spare... where we found that half the population of Sonoma County had apparently discovered a burning need to hang out at our HMO. The parking lot was buzzing like a termite hive with SUVs crawling the aisles, looking for a spot to fold their wings. Giving up after a moment of that, I headed for the parking garage (which I dislike because it is a looooooong walk, especially pushing a slightly heavy stroller, to the other side of the campus where I inevitably need to go)... where I found that the garage was officially and signfully Temporarily Full.

The boyos may have picked up a few new vocabulary words as I continued to circle the parking lot looking for a place to alight. The good thing about having twins is that you usually end up with doc appointments booked back to back, and so we finally got into the building at 10:55 -- just in time for the second twin's 11:00. The upshot was that the PT only had time to work with one twin, so I chose Gus, who is still being rather charmingly floppy.

Just to fill you in, we saw a pediatric neurologist in Oakland a couple of weeks ago for said floppiness, who examined Gus and Sam and listened to our tales about them. She said she thought Gus was probably just fine (though she invited us to bring him back in January or February if he hasn't caught up with Sam yet). She didn't use the word "lazy," since it has pejorative overtones, but the word seemed to be hanging in the air. Sam is a busy, busy baby, with people to see and things to do and let's hop to it, sistah! Gus is just... well, if I had a nickel for every time someone has called him "laid back," we'd have a fair lump already for his college fund. Gus has clearly bought the line that the adventure lies in the journey, not the arrival. Sam not only wants to cut to the arrival, he wants to know where we're going next? and how about a party afterward?

The good news from the PT was that the boys are both doing much better holding their heads in midline (i.e., straight up rather than lolling toward the left), and she said she thought they wouldn't need to see her much longer. She also said their heads already looked much rounder to her.

Following the PT appointment, we wandered into the Patient Relations office, since it was across from the PT offices. I had intended only to ask for the proper address to send a nastygram regarding the problem we had with Dr. Wacko (whom we never actually saw) -- the pediatric neurosurgeon who wouldn't see the boys for their plagiocephaly without them first having a cat scan. (Hmph. As if!) I ended up talking with a very sympathetic Patient Relations, ah, person (no idea what they call themselves) who said that she would write the nastygram for me and not only that, send it to Dr. Wacko's boss for a reply. Hah, so there! (I must say this was above and beyond what I expected.)

In the course of our 20 minutes in her office, Gus decided that he liked this woman, and started grinning and ducking his head and flirting with her, culminating in -- gasp! -- a wave! A real wave! My neighbor down the street had told me she thought Gus had waved at her a couple of weeks ago, but I never saw another one so I chalked it up to imagination. Then a few days ago, he raised his arm toward me and made kind of a grasping motion. I thought that he was trying to grab my hand, and didn't think anything more of it.

But the PR lady said, "Oh, look, he's waving!" And viewed in that context, I had to admit, she was right! It was darling -- his little arm was raised in some sort of stiff Sig-heil-looking movement, and his little fingers and thumb opened and closed like a little pink crab claw. So from a purely aesthetic point of view it wasn't much. But the grin on his face told me he was trying to communicate, and what else could it be but a wave? How wonderful! (Update: When D came home tonight, Gus gave him a wave too! Still the crab claw thing. Adorable.)

Gus's little wave made me giddy with adoring him and Sam. It was absolutely the highlight of the day. (Actually, I feel giddy much of the time, whenever I contemplate my great good fortune in being their mommy, and how narrowly that came to be.) We buzzed by the hospital cafeteria (which, amazingly enough, has quite tasty lunches), where I picked up a chicken sandwich and a diet Pepsi and then looked around for a nonexistent place to alight. (I have to reiterate here something I've mentioned in earlier posts -- which is that whenever I go anywhere with the boyos, I feel like the chauffeur to a pair of rock stars. Heads literally swivel as we go by, and murmurs of "Oh, twins!" and "How adorable!" waft behind us. People stop me in my tracks to inform me how lucky I am and to tell me all about their family histories of twins. I'm not exaggerating. Rent a pair of same-size babies and try it for yourself, if you don't believe me!)

A nice woman named Susan invited us to share her table, and we had quite a nice conversation while I fed the babies and myself. She told me a sad story about her brother's child, a little girl who (years ago) contracted polio from the live virus oral vaccination, and ended up dying at age nine, her body wracked by the various ravages of the disease. Yikes. Poor child.

Following lunch, we decamped to the mall, where we trolled Gottschalk's for a solid two hours, tried on some Seven7 jeans (which used to be all the rage and commanded prices over a hundred bucks but now were slashed to a mere $39.95 -- how low have the mighty fallen!) which fit all right, but I decided my still-carrying-baby-weight ass is a bit large to waste $39.95 on. Instead we bought and brought home a sum total of two Christmas ornaments. (Both kitty ornaments, of course!) The boys were good as gold and left still more middle-aged women swooning in their tracks.

I don't know that this blow-by-blow account of our day is terribly interesting to anyone but me, but I wanted to record it since although it was an ordinary day, it was also a great day because I was hangin' with the boyos. I do get very tired and sometimes quite stressed, just because caring for TWO infants at once is pretty exhausting ... but I really can't think of anywhere else I'd rather be.

And the crab claw slayed me. Oh, you kid!

The Leaning Tower of Tigers

2007-11-02T13:51:00.000-07:00

Since Thalia was kind enough to give me a prompt by asking this doting mommy how we dressed the boyos for Halloween, let me reply with this series of some of my favorite recent pix!

P.S. Don't forget to scroll down for the latest actual writing-type post!

Reelin' in

2007-11-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

I realized that I haven't reported the amazing (to me, anyway) progress the boys have been making lately. So here's a highlights reel.

Gus went through a period at about 4 months where he was quite vocal, and seemed determined to make himself understood. Then at about 6 months, he backed off from that. I tried not to worry about that (thinking, of course, about the brutal spectre of autism -- not that I know much about it, mind you, but they talk about infants and toddlers regressing from their achievements as a sign of it) but Dr. Pixie kind of shook her head when I brought this up and laughed at me, and pointed out that babbling could wait until 8 or 9 months and all would be fine.

That was a good thing to hear, since not only had Gus gotten bored with the babbling he had been doing, but Sam had never really done it at all. Sam has always been vocal and indeed, rather opinionated, but it's the same sounds over and over. "Hoo hoo! Hoo! Hoo! Hoo hoo!" was an early favorite that was still being used as late as yesterday, and indicates anything from interest to extreme happiness to anxiety. (It's all in the inflection.) "Heh ... heh ... heh ..." in a quiet little voice was what I called his happy sound (made often while he was nursing, and I have no idea how he made that sounds while his mouth was thus occupied, but he managed). That one was used a lot in the early days, starting while we were still in the hospital, but it only makes a rare appearance now. (I love it when it does, though. It's such a gentle, sweet sound.) An urgent "Moo! Moo!" could roughly be translated as "I expect a bottle right NOW, missy, and if it does not appear in short order there will be crying! I mean it! Countdown commencing! Ten, nine, eight...."

So you see that while Sam made his needs known, there was not much syllabic action going on. Not much in the way of consonants. Gus was not big on consonants either, to tell the truth, but the highs and lows, the apparent (though mysterious) meaning he could wring from "Ahh oooOOOOoooo... Ah, ah, ah. Ah ooo. Ah. OOOOOOOooooooo... oh. Ah. Oh," made it seem like there was slightly more, ah, there there. (Okay, okay, so they were both monosyllabic wonders. Well, that's why we write, isn't it, to make ourselves known to ourselves?)

At any rate, eveb as both boys decided to spring the same number of teeth in the same week, they have both decided at the same time to take up babbling as their new hobby. Consonants and everything. "Blue" is a favorite (as in, "Ah blue blue blue! blue! Ah!" but the big winner around here (and they're both saying it, starting just last week) is... drum roll please...

Mama!

Okay, it's usually more along the lines of "Ma, ma, ma, mama, ma. Mah. Ah, blue blue. Ma," but hey, I'll take that. Sometimes it's just the two syllables, which sounds mighty word-like. And when Gus looks right into my eyes and says it, or grabs my pajama legs as I am walking by, and grins up at me and says in his little gravelly voice, "Mama!" well, that's plenty good enough for me. Or when little Sam pulls his tiny thumb from his rosebud mouth and says it in his light little lyric tenor voice, I'll take that too, no questions asked.

In other news, we do not have real crawling yet. However, we do have standing (Sam with authority and confidence, probably because he's been doing it for over a month and a half; Gus -- who started standing only in the last two weeks -- with the appearance that he's doing it mostly because I want him to, but hey, he is doing it!). We also have scooting: Gus on the slow side, but usually forward; Sam with speed and flair but always backward. This has led on several occasions to me running into the living room from the bathroom or bedroom and frantically looking for a hysterically crying baby, and finding that he has managed to back himself completely under the couch. The first time I pulled Sam out from under the couch this way, it reminded me so much of pulling out a recalcitrant cat that I laughed so hard I had to put him down abruptly. (He gave me the nastiest glare at this, by the by, which of course made me laugh even harder and think I might have to run for the bathroom.)

The newest addition to the highlights reel is the "triangle sit," which consists of the baby sitting up unsupported, with his legs stretched in a triangular position like a dancer warming up. Sam has been doing this for a week or so, and has worked up into sitting this way for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. The advantage to the triangle sit, as Sam has realized, is that you can use both grubby, wet little hands on whatever toy you are currently mauling. (Gus will put up with the triangle sit if I am right behind him and help support him, but his heart is not in it yet.) As for Sam, I usually put a pillow behind him when he sits like this since he is not happy if he falls straight back from this position and hits his head (and who could blame him?) but he hasn't actually fallen from this position for a couple of days now. And D told me tonight that while I was gone for a little while and he was watching the boys, Sam apparently managed to pull himself up into this position from a prone position!

Wow. I can't believe how far they've both come.

Darn. I guess it's time to get serious about babyproofing the house!

R Heads R Better

2007-10-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

Back many, many moons ago when we lived in Seattle, every time we drove by the Rainier brewery, D would amuse himself by chanting (in some sort of weird pseudo-robot voice), "Our heads are better!" Apparently in some previous incarnation there had been an ad for Rainier Beer that incorporated this pithy saying. And when it comes to beer, there is no possibility of my husband EVER forgetting any minutiae connected with it. (D loves his beer. Boy does he love his beer. Maybe I'll cover that in some future post.)

Be that as it may, I find myself thinking of that phrase now, since indeed, the boyos' heads are now demonstrably better, or at least a tittle more symmetrical than they were when we started. (Is tittle a real word? Heck with it; I like it. I unilaterally declare it a real word! Even though I suspect that using it minus the usual "jot and" is against the Word Police rules.)

We made the trek down to Santa Clara (about 2 hours from here -- a long drive but luckily the boys slept most of the way) roughly a month ago, and met Dr. GQ. Dr. GQ is one of those snazzy docs who wears verrrrrry expensive ties and French cuffs, and also has published papers on the subject of plagiocephaly and oh, by the way, just happens to have been a Fulbright scholar. Despite all this, he's quite likeable. He breezed in, poked around on the boys' heads for about 20 seconds, and then gave us the five-minute lecture on plagiocephaly and using helmets to correct it. Or, of course, not. (That sounds too brief but since we were already well versed in what he covered, it was more than enough.)

He also used calipers to measure the boys' heads diagonally, first in one direction and then in another. Each direction should have had the same measurement. In point of fact, both boys were off by more than a centimeter. Dr. GQ had already informed us in his little lecture that his cut-off point for recommending helmet use was one centimeter. He said that even if heads were out of alignment one centimeter or more, they would usually fix themselves -- but it could take all the way until they were adults (meaning that kids go through the formative years with "Charlie Brown head syndrome"), and also, there is a small percentage who do not self-fix. And of course those poor people who do not self-fix and who end up with asymmetrical heads are generally not very pleased about it.

That, plus the fact that Humongous HMO would cover the cost of the helmets ($3,000! Each! Three freakin' grand, can you believe it?) decided us in short order. Helmets all around! And one for you too, barkeep!

Rather luckily, the facility in Oakland that makes the type of helmet we are using had an opening for us that afternoon. So we grabbed some wretched McDonalds' food and buzzed back onto the highway for another hour, up to Oakland. The boys eventually fell asleep, but their car seats are clearly not overly comfortable, and they were getting a little testy about being crammed into them for hours on end at this point.

We had a bit of an adventure getting to the Oakland office, since I had misunderstood a tiny but crucial bit of the directions as given to me over the cell phone, but I'll gloss over that quickly since the whole thing was, ahem, my fault. We got there eventually and were wafted right in to the tiny office by the young man who does the helmet fittings.

Fitting Guy said he has done thousands of helmet fittings, and indeed, it's rather obvious, just watching him work. This type of helmet uses measurements taken by laser, of all things -- the same kind of laser scanner used by the checkout at your grocery store. Fitting Guy tied tiny little white "do rags" over each of the boys' scalps and positioned them, one at a time, in the head scanner. Sam got a good scan in two tries (wiggling screws up the image, as you can imagine!) and Gus took only one try. It was fascinating to see the 3-D computer models of their heads as shown immediately on Fitting Guy's screen. (What was even more fascinating, in a queasy sort of way, was noting the way both boys' heads are noticeably "squished" in a diagonal direction.)

We picked out "themes" for the helmets (I picked out rockets and sailboats, both on a blue ground, but called back the next day and changed it to a plain blue one and a plain yellow one instead -- I had some notion at the time of painting them with tiny little murals but I think I'm going to blame that one on the superglue fumes there at the office). We fed the boys their bottles there at the helmet office (we had fed them their previous bottles at Dr. GQ's office) and got on the road for the hour-plus drive home -- which was not much fun, since Sam decided he had HAD IT with his car seat for the day -- not that I blame him -- and he fumed and fussed and carried on for most of the way home. I just about dislocated my arm turning around in my seat and re-shoving the binky in his wailing little mouth every thirty seconds. Then I had to drop D off at the university to teach his evening class, and finally got home (with sleepy Gus and the still-wailing Sam) to put the boys to bed by myself. Oy. Long day.

And a long post already. More on this anon.

Is it just me, or is there a resemblance?

2007-10-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

Cuteypie Sam in his little helmet, and...

The Poky Little Puppy?

Must be getting close to Halloween

2007-10-26T23:50:00.000-07:00

Presenting.... two little tiger cubs! Grrrrrrrr!

Carrots? Carrots!

2007-10-14T21:58:00.000-07:00

Featuring Gus's first encounter with carrots. Apparently successful. (He also likes pears, which are the yellow dabs interspersed with the orange.) Don't you think the orange makes his eyes look even bluer? I think he may be on the verge of a fashion trend here.

All wrapped up and no place to go

2007-10-14T21:52:00.000-07:00

Featuring Sam in his lovely new sunshine yellow plagiocephaly helmet (which has a velcro fastening, which is why the afghan stuck like glue, enabling this shot).

A scare

2007-10-12T23:11:00.000-07:00

I apologize to my readers (all three of you, bless your pea-pickin' little hearts!) for taking so long about putting up a new post, but really, things are just nutsy here. Whenever I feel like I just might have things a teensy bit under control, something new happens. Today was a case in point.

Yesterday was the boys' six-month checkup (never mind the fact that they're nearly seven months; that's the way it is when you're dealing with Humongous HMO). Dr. Pixie looked them over carefully, as she always does, and asked in detail what they were doing. I told her about Sam's apparent wish to become the first ever Baby Marathoner: He will stand for as long as you will balance him, dancing and grinning and having the best old time. (We also call him Elvis Boy.) I have never outlasted him. It's clearly a matter of time before he pushes off the starter blocks and starts doing laps around our living room.

Gus, however, takes things a bit easier. As in, he clearly believes that legs were made for kicking (by preference, Mommy in the stomach) but chooses not to believe the vile rumor that they can also be used to stand upon. Whenever we stand him up and encourage him to use his legs, he just grins that adorable little (two tooth!) grin and oozes gently downward into a pile of baby goo. Hah, he says. He's expecting a high school graduation present of four strong bearers and a gold-leafed and velvet-upholstered litter. Walking, Gus clearly intimates, is not part of his future. (But let me reiterate that he does have quite strong little legs. Boy has a kick like a mule!)

At any rate, I told Dr. Pixie about Gus's antipathy toward standing, and after observing his other slightly floppy attributes, she ordered a creatine kinase test (CPK). Creatine is released when muscles break down -- which of course they do every day, as we use them, but they are also built back up again. Gus had a tough time with the blood draw, since his elbow vein rolled around for the tech instead of sitting still to be properly poked, but in a minute he was all past the screaming, and all was good again. (Well, until we trotted over to get his and Sam's immunizations. Three shots at a time, right into their little thighs -- ouch! I think I might scream too.)

I didn't think much about the blood test since Dr. Pixie didn't seem overly concerned, but this morning I had an email from Humongous HMO telling me that his blood test results were in. Of course, they couldn't just email you the results, right? No, you have to check into their (badly designed) web site, go through about 10 screens, and finally find out ... that Gus had a CPK level of 291. Normal, the web site informed me, is 0 - 200. His results were flagged as "high."

I was still pretty rational at that point. I fired off an email to Dr. Pixie, asking her to either email me back or give me a call so we could discuss this. Then I turned to my old buddy Go*gle for information, typing in "creatine kinase infants high" ... and got return after return featuring the words "muscular dystrophy."

It doesn't take long to become completely nutsy with that staring you in the face. Muscular dystrophy. Wheelchairs. Shortened lifespan. Oh my God....

I won't bore you with my blow-by-blow account of the rest of my morning. It was divided between Go*gling for more information, and taking care of the babies, with the added feature of my little boys curiously touching my face to feel the tears flowing down my cheeks. I couldn't stop crying. Or praying, for that matter. I admit, it was a bit of an overreaction, but while I am fairly rational about my own ailments (real or imagined -- with not too many of the imagined type), I am a complete nutcase about anything that impacts or could possibly impact the boys. I know, they're just two little boys, nothing particularly wonderful or special about them, objectively speaking -- except that they are my little boys, and I am besotted with them, and if you ask me, I will seriously tell you that yes, they are the most wonderful little boys that God ever created and put into this universe. (I am prepared, tentatively, to admit that in some other universe -- using the Many Universes Theory -- there might be some little boys who are just as cute and amazing as my two. But not in this universe. I'm pretty sure of that.)

Thankfully for my sanity, Dr. Pixie got back to me about 2 p.m. She said, essentially, that 291 was a nuthin'burger. She said that in the dystrophies, you see CPK levels of 2,000 or so. She agreed with me that it was probably a good idea to track it, just in case, so we will repeat the test in a couple of months, but she added that many infants and toddlers under the age of two have elevated CPK levels, and no one knows why. It doesn't seem to hurt them any, she said.

So that's why I can never seem to get a post up here. I spent at least two hours that I didn't have on tracking down an ailment that my kids don't have. Duh.

(In other news, the boys did get helmets for their plagiocephaly. More info and pics in a couple of days -- promise!)

**************************

And one addendum: Can anyone tell me how to set things up so that when I receive the emailed version of reader's comments, I can email them back? Right now, when I hit Reply on these emails, I got an automatic No Reply address. Is this just because I'm using Blogger or because I'm stupid? My blogging deity, Cecily (whom I adore as a writer though I disagree thoroughly with most of her politics), has the lovely habit of always replying individually to her reader's posts. I would love to do that too but clearly this is beyond my ken. Suggestions?

Tooth Day!

2007-09-12T22:55:00.000-07:00

The boyos are just a few days shy of their six month birthday, and lo and behold, both are sprouting teeth! Well, more accurately, one tooth. Each.

Gus, of course, has been "teething" for about three months now, first with that cyst that looked like a little white tooth point (and which has now disappeared, just as Dr. Pixie predicted) and more lately, with -- apparently -- real teeth. Gus has become very familiar with the taste of grape-flavored Infant Tylenol, since when his mouth really hurts, nothing else calms him down. I had thought that Sam wasn't teething at all yet, since he doesn't cram his hand in his mouth and howl the way Gus often does -- but maybe, like the rest of his father's clan, he's just not a complainer. (Most of my birth family are not complainers, but I'll admit that I am! If I'm in pain, I figure everyone around me gets to help with the burden. It seems that Gus shares my philosophy.)

Today I ran my finger around Gus's gums for the umpteenth time, since that seems to help the discomfort, and felt a hard little something right in front on his lower jaw. Closer examination revealed the very beginnings of a beautiful sharp little tooth! You'd have thought I had discovered uranium. I ran down the hall calling for my husband. "Look, look! He's got a tooth!" D understandably took this in stride, since Gus has indeed been teething for months now. But there was something about actually seeing the tooth that just floored me. Is this a remnant of going through infertility? Will I always be skeptical about progress until the the evidence is squarely before me?

In any case, after I forced D to stop work and come out of our office to admire Gus's tooth, I thought to check Sam's mouth -- and right there, center front, was the duplicate of Gus's tooth! Same exact location, same amount of tiny little sharp tooth sticking out. It's true that the boys are twins, so this might not be considered remarkable, but they're dizygotic (fraternal) twins, so there's no real reason for them to be teething at the same time and in the same location. But it sure is cute. (And yes, of course D had to make the trip down the hallway again to admire Sam's tooth! Silly question.)

In other news, our cat Buster (who once belonged to a woman who had two little girls, and so seems a little more relaxed than some of our other cats around the clamor of two baby boys) decided for the first time today that it was really just too much effort to shift his butt the three necessary inches to prevent Gus from grabbing him. Up till now, Buster has been lounging on the quilt or afghan on the floor with the boys, but juuuuuuuuuust out of reach. I've seen him shift as little as an inch, just barely enough to keep the questing little hand from his fur. But today he apparently said, "To hell with it," and let Gus make contact with his backside on a couple of different occasions. To give Gus credit, he merely patted Buster with a more or less open hand, as opposed to Sam's approach these days, which is best described as "Whacka whacka!" But the funny thing was that after Gus finally got to touch Buster, he started crying. I really have no idea why. Perhaps, like so many other long-deferred dreams, the reality did not live up to the fantasy. (Pictures of kid and cat soon, I promise!)

On the elbows

2007-08-17T00:16:00.000-07:00

These are the boys after having rolled over -- and up on their elbows! Very exciting stuff for this mom. Crawling's next, I have no doubt. God save us all.

Five months today

2007-08-16T23:42:00.000-07:00

It's late and my eyelids are drooping, so this won't be as long as it should be ... but five months ago today at this time, I was holding a sleeping little Sam (as yet unnamed) on my chest and trying to stop shaking after my one-hour-before_midnight C-section. (Gus had a little bit of a breathing problem when he first arrived and had been whisked off to the nursery for observation, so I didn't get to hold him until the next day.)

I had never been around babies (well, not human babies -- though lots of, um, cat babies!) and didn't know what to expect. But the one thing I never expected was that both of our boys would turn out to be as charming and delightful as they indeed are. Sam is still our Smilin' Sam, and nothing makes him as happy as hangin' with Mommy and Daddy (well, unless you count "kicky kicky" -- the boy is a livewire, I'm tellin' ya. That marathon running his dad does must be in the genes!). Sam is a charmer, with long dark eyelashes and eyes that are turning a lovely shade of green, and it's completely impossible for me to walk by him in his little bouncer or hanging out on his blanket without stopping for a chat. And our Gus is a little more reserved, but he's a darling too, with eyes like little blue morning glories, and a strong desire to communicate with us. (This morning his pre-verbalisms were very tonal -- he sounded like he was speaking Chinese!)

That said, they are indeed human babies, and therefore cry at inconvenient times and spit up until I'm soaked, and in general do the annoying things that babies are wont to do. But their personalities are so cheery and sweet. I really had no idea babies were so much fun.

And in Breaking News, Gus and Sam are both rolling over and propping themselves on their elbows! That happened just in the last four days or so. Oh, dear ... crawling, here we come!

Wry Neck Geeks

2007-08-12T22:53:00.000-07:00

Please let me offer this very cute photo (okay, I'm a starry-eyed mom but really, aren't they adorable?) in lieu of the wet noodle whipping I ought to be getting for not blogging on anything approaching a regular basis. My only excuse is -- well, look at the photo! There ARE two of them. And the older they get, the more they want one-on-one time with Mommy. Can't say I blame them, but there's only so much time... so the blog gets short shrift these days.

The newest thing yanking my chain is my darling sons' torticollis and plagiocephaly. (Hah! Have twins and you too can start learning all the words you need to become a medical transcriptionist! In your spare time!) We're not sure where the torticollis (aka "wry neck") came from, though it can occur in utero, especially with twins. But I keep beating myself up because when they first came home, I would put them on their backs, but when they turned their heads to the left, I always just left them there because it seemed to me that if they spit up, they would not choke. Chicken and egg time -- maybe the turning came first, or maybe gravity turned their heads and leaving them there caused the torticollis. Who knows.

In any case, their heads were round as little apples at first, due to the C-section and not having to get squished in the birth canal like the rest of us, but now they look like wax heads that someone left out on a hot sidewalk. (Well, okay, maybe not so much. There could be a bit of hyperbole in there.) Gus's head is a little odd looking, but it seems to be rounding up some now that we have been doing the physical therapy for a few weeks. Sam's head, however, definitely has that trapezoidal look. His head is definitely flattened on the side in the back, and the placement of his ears is not remotely symmetrical.

So Dr. Pixie gave us a referral to the "head clinic" down in Oakland, but there's a glitch. The specialist they were going to see ordered a CT scan to be done on each of them here, before they ever went to see her. This is normally done to check for craniosynostosis, a condition where the sutures of the skull fuse prematurely. However, this condition is pretty rare (a lot more rare than positional plagiocephaly), and Dr. Pixie said she's pretty sure they don't have it. Not being familiar with CT scans at all, I started reading up on infants and CT scans -- and found something I didn't like, not one little bit.

It seems that a Dr. Per Hall in Sweden did a study recently that seems to show that CT scans could affect kids' IQ scores in the future. Or ... not. There's a bit of controversy about the way the study was done. Still, intuitively, I could believe this. A CT scan gives you about 25 times more radiation (or even more than that) than an ordinary X-ray. I mean, really, do I want my kids to have the equivalent of 25 X-rays at this age, when positional plagiocephaly is a cosmetic issue, not a developmental one? I think not. I mean, what happens if they fall off the coffee table a month from now and have to have a CT scan? Now, mind you, radiologists are supposed to have a light hand when it comes to doing CT scans on infants, but this interesting discussion of the Swedish study references yet another study that seems to show that a majority of CT scans are done with too much radiation, since radiologists typically want to get nice "clear" pics.

Altogether, this info made me completely queasy (and I mean that literally) about putting my kids' heads anywhere near a CT scanner. Just ain't happening, at least not without a lot more reassurance. I talked to D (who, in another lifetime, was an engineer in our nation's nuclear Navy) and he agreed with me. So the CT scans were cancelled, and now it looks like the Oakland specialist won't see them without the scans. Oh, great. But wait -- Dr. Pixie scared up a referral to another specialist, a plastic surgeon who sees a lot of these cases and who does not use a CT scan typically. This doc has amazing credentials, has published papers, etc., and is clearly more qualified than Oakland doc. That's all terrific, but... he's two solid hours away. That's two hours in each direction, with twins in the back seat. Did I mention that I'm a recovering phobic-everything? Agoraphobia, bridge phobia, social anxiety disorder, you name it. I used to be a galloping mess anytime I went out in public or on a highway. I'm mostly recovered, these days, but the thought of two hours on the highway shepherding my little guys around makes me pretty sweaty and nervous.

So tomorrow I'll call Dr. Wonderful's clinic and see if he can recommend someone closer to home who doesn't feel the need to irradiate my children's heads for fun and giggles. If he can't ... then the squeegy-like sound you hear after that will be me grinding my teeth to keep from screaming as we swoosh down the on-ramp!

Bits and pieces

2007-07-02T23:51:00.000-07:00

I am finding it hard to blog lately, partly for lack of time, but also because so much is going on that I want to record that it seems like I can't get down any of it. I would like to emulate some of my favorite bloggers and produce a well-rounded, classically styled essay every time I hit the "publish post" button, but what I am really able to produce right now is more along the lines of random notes taken frantically on Post-It notes in crayon. Well, so be it, I guess.

The boys are becoming more and more adorable, and their personalities are developing apace. It's obvious to me that Sam will be our little party animal. He loves people, and he loves meeting new people. Our next door neighbor came over yesterday to move a piece of furniture, and Sam, who had not met the neighbor before, surveyed him for a mere 30 seconds before giving him a lovely gummy smile. Thirty seconds! And it was one of Sam's megawatt smiles, too -- not to mention assorted arm waving, kicks and gurgles. It's obvious: our boy is either going to be President or a used car salesman.

As for Gus, he is not one to jump into anything. He surveys toys mistrustfully before finally whacking them. He looks into our faces and checks us out carefully before vouchsafing us a smile (though I must say that his smile, when it arrives, is blinding in its beauty). The neighbor? A smile? I don't theeeeenk so.... However, Gus is still working on his collection of volitional noises, adding to them carefully (whereas Brother is still mostly limited to a jovial "Hoo hoo!"). Gus has added a very Hispanic-sounding rolled R, and in the last couple of weeks has also added "crowing," which actually sounds like a rusty door hinge. Not to be outdone, Sam has also started crowing in the last couple of days. In his case, his crowing is so high-pitched and pure in tone that he sounds like he's going to launch into the big Queen of the Night aria from "The Magic Flute." So perhaps Sam will be our tenor (or maybe countertenor!) whereas Gus's lower-pitched voice sounds more like a baritone in the making. (Hm. My mother's grandfather, she always said, was a tall red-headed man with a big handlebar mustache, and he was noted for his lovely baritone voice. History repeats, perhaps?)

In other news, we went in for their four month checkup and shots on Tuesday. Gus was 14 lbs 1.3 oz, and Sam was 12 lbs 10 oz. Sam was only 1/4 inch behind his brother in height, though. I think Sam's copious spitting-up may have retarded his weight gain. (Oh, let me tell you about the spitting up! I often refer to him as my Little Fountain. Sam's favorite thing to do is spit up what seems like half his bottle -- enough to soak his clothes, my clothes, and have enough left over for a small puddle on the kitchen tiles -- and then give me a beatific grin. Clearly, it doesn't bother him. But ye gods, you would not believe how many shirts this child goes through in one day!)

But Dr. Pixie, their pediatrician, was not overly concerned about the spitting up. (She just seems like a pixie. She's several inches shorter than me -- and I'm not what one would call tall -- wears her hair in a cute little pixie cut, and in short, looks like she could sub for Santa's elfin helpers at a moment's notice.) The copious spitup should resolve in the next few months, she said. She noted that we could give him Reglan, but was unenthusiastic about the idea, due to the possibility of seizures. (Seizures! Yikes!) The Zantac that Sam is taking doesn't help with the spitup; it just keeps it from burning his esophagus. (Hence his happy little smiles after, I suppose.) So it seems for the moment, he will keep his title of Spitup Sam.

All in all, he and Gus are in quite good health. We went through a looooooong bout of thrush last month (thrush totally kicked our butt, believe me), but that's all gone now and no new malady has cropped up yet. I thought that Gus had a tooth coming in -- it was hard, pointy, and white, and obviously bothered him -- but Dr. Pixie says it's an inclusion cyst, and it should go away when his teeth actually do come in.

We do have one thing looming on the horizon. Both Gus and Sam have a nice little case of torticollis, or "wry neck." This means that they have a tendency to look to the right whenever possible. To stretch out the shortened muscle that causes this condition, D and I are supposed to stretch out their little necks by turning their heads to the left several times a day, repositioning their heads while they sleep, etc. Gus has responded well to this, and his is definitely getting better. Sam is more stubborn about the head turning (you should hear the wails our little boy soprano can produce!), and also has definite flattening of the head in back, on the right side. Actually, his head is pretty asymmetrical in general. His ears are seriously not aligned with one another. So now we have an appointment to see a specialist in Oakland to find out whether Sam should get a helmet to help mold his head correctly. I must say the helmet thing seems rather trendy, but I don't want my boy to have a weird-looking head throughout life. So off to Oakland we will go, next month. Stay tuned!

Smilin' Sam and Glossolalia Gus

2007-06-24T22:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, no, we don't actually call him Glossolalia Gus -- though he does appear to speak in tongues sometimes. (Joke! Just a joke!) Gus loves to look deep in my eyes and proclaim (in a peculiarly resonant voice for such a small guy), "Awoooo! Guh. Guh. Rrxxxllrr... [sort of a growl sound there]. Ah, awoooo. Oooo. Oo." He says all this with such authority and conviction that he really seems to mean something by it -- though in actuality, I think he has simply twigged to the idea that the grownups produce interesting sounds, so why shouldn't he? Then he sticks out his tongue (which he has lately discovered) and looks pleased with himself. And then Gus smiles at me and his sky-blue eyes light up, and I completely fall apart and have to kiss every square inch of his exposed skin.

After all that, I finally get around to changing his diaper. And D wonders why it takes me twice as long to change diapers as it does him?

On the other hand, we do actually call our other little guy Smilin' Sam, because he has discovered that he has a killer smile, and loves to use it on every occasion. His beautiful little doe eyes seem to be turning a lovely hazel, and together with the smile, they make him completely irresistible. My female friends who come to visit practically trample me to get to Sam. Sam smiles at me, D, Grandpa (who has been visiting us for a couple of weeks), the cats, his toys, the ceiling fan, and the chandelier (a favorite, for some reason). With apologies: He liked whate'er he looked on, and his looks went everywhere. You would think that the star power of Sam's smile would be somewhat diluted by such widespread application, but it has the same effect on me as his brother's smile. I smile back until my cheeks hurt, and tell him how wonderful he is and how lucky and blessed I am to have him and his brother, and kiss his forehead (three times, that's our rule, thank you) and cheeks and nose, and completely fall apart.

Oh, yes, and then Sam gets his clean diaper.

In other news, the boys are sleeping for about six hours at a stretch during the night. Last night was very promising: we got them down about 8:30, and they slept until 4:30 a.m. Hallelujah! Unfortunately, that was also the night that my very old cat Georgina (who is blind, and basically lives in our bedroom, sleeping beside my pillow every night) decided to go completely dotty, and meow (LOUDLY) right beside my ear every fifteen minutes or so. In case you are wondering, a (LOUD) meow right beside your ear at 3 a.m. has about the same effect as a howitzer going off outside your window. One is unlikely to just sleep through it. So I'm a little short on sleep at the moment, despite the boys' cooperation. Also I'm concerned about Georgina. I think she has a UTI since she has a track record of same, and I started her on her usual antibiotic that the vet gave us for her, but if that's the issue, the Zeniquin doesn't seem to be helping yet. A visit to the vet is probably in the cards for tomorrow.

In still other news, the boys have had thrush for about a month now. We've been treating them with Nystatin, which helped a lot, but we could not seem to get a complete cure. I whined piteously via email to their doc, who then prescribed fluconazole, which is a systemic drug, but appears to be very safe. Fluconazole is, in fact, widely prescribed for thrush -- but you would never know it by the reaction from Our Humongous HMO, which acted as if their doc had prescribed gold dust pounded by dwarves and suspended in dragon's tears. They gave me a big song and dance about how it is a "rare" drug and that's why they couldn't get it to me for nearly a week. I finally got them to allow me to get it from a different pharmacy, but to get reimbursed for it, I had to go to Humongous HMO and pick up The Blue Form, THEN go across town to the pharmacy that actually had the fluconazole -- oops, I mean the pounded gold in dragon's tears. Three hours I spent on this nonsense yesterday, while dragging around my dad, who as I mentioned is visiting.

And that is happy news! (That my dad is visiting, not that I dragged him around yesterday.) He is obviously quite taken with the boys, and they seem to like him as well, bestowing smiles freely and letting him charm them out of crying (well, most of the time). My dad is wretched at anything approaching house work, so he certainly isn't doing anything like pitching in around the house ... but actually, just stopping the boys from crying has been worth a lot. And it has been so great having him here. Three generations under one roof -- I wondered if it would ever happen. But it has. And that makes me very happy.

Unobservant mom

2007-06-21T23:20:00.000-07:00

So shoot me, I'm an unobservant mom. Which pisses me off about myself, since one of my primary complaints about my own mother was how she seemingly could not manage to see things that were right under her nose (like, oh, my losing twenty pounds in one month, when I was 14 and in my Depressed Anorexic phase) ... and here I am, blind as a bat myself to something even more obvious. Gah.

A club that we belong to has a big picnic for all the members once a year, usually at a very nice big park in St. Helena. The park is filled with big ol' coastal oaks (75 feet tall at least, craggily romantic in their twists and turns, and providing lots of shade), and very pleasant. The other members of our group urged us to bring the boys so that everyone could meet them, and since it was likely not to be too hot, and it's a very shady area, I said okay. Mind you, I went on a hunt the day before for appropriate sunscreen for babies (ended up with one with an SPF of 50!), and freaked out a bit about keeping them cool enough ... but still, we managed to get out of the house that day only about 45 minutes late, and with me more or less keeping it together, despite my anxiety about this first big outing to the great outdoors.

Of course, our friends all oohed and aahed over the boys, which I was expecting -- but to my puzzlement, they kept referring to Gus as a redhead. "Um, excuse me," I'd reply politely, "but he's really more blond." He was ash blond when he was born (with tons of hair, as babies go), and while it had turned somewhat more golden rather than ashy as the weeks went by, still, I know what my kid looks like, right? And he's blond. So there.

Except that when enough people called him "Red," I finally took a really good look at his hair, there in the filtered sunlight. And you know what? Yeah, you're way ahead of me. Yup, it's definitely beyond "golden" now -- his hair has morphed all the way into the strawberry blond category, and is just a click short of what I would call true red hair.

So this is good news in one way. My mom was a redhead born, with beautiful auburn curls and translucent pink skin, and I always envied her the red hair. Which is a bit nonsensical, actually, since I was ash blonde myself when I was younger, and actually had really gorgeous hair for a long time (down to my waist until just a couple of years ago). When I was pregnant, I said that if I had my druthers, I'd like one redhead and one blond. (Hm -- kind of looks like I got both in one, actually.)

But the bad news is that I MISSED THIS FOR WEEKS. Gaaaaah. I mean, I just can't believe how unobservant I was. Truly, this makes me nervous about the future. I've always felt I would be a good mom in at least one way: I would never miss things because I'd be watching my kids like a hawk, knowing firsthand the dangers that are out there.

And now this.

Well, I've been needing new glasses, but put it off since they tell you not to get them while you're pregnant. (Believe it or not, the shape of the eyeball changes while you're knocked up. No, I am not making this up.) So maybe if I get new glasses now, I can convince myself that I missed this (major!) development due to my crappy old scratched-up glasses. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Lordy ... it's going to be a long 18 years.

The Boyos

2007-06-11T09:59:00.000-07:00

Fussy Gus (though not fussy at all in this pic -- actually, he looks like he wants to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge!)

and

Smilin Sam
More soon!

Welcome to the Vale of Tears, kiddo

2007-05-26T08:45:00.001-07:00

Gus cried his first real tears this week. And I thought I was gonna die.

D was taking care of Gus, and he had left him on the bed (in the middle, on his back, definitely safe place) while he went off to wash his hands after a particularly noisome change. Gus took exception to this and was crying his head off. When I poked my head in to see what all the fuss was about, I discovered Gus lying on his back (as described above), howling away -- with two perfect little tear tracks streaking his perfect little round cheeks. Which just about broke my heart. God only knows how I'll deal with it when they really have something to cry about.

In other news, both boys had their first immunizations this week. I read up on immunizations, then D and I discussed it, then Dr. G (their pediatrician) and I discussed it... and like most other people, we decided to go forward with immunizations. For the obvious reasons -- the odds of them becoming significantly ill from immunizations are way less than the odds of them becoming significantly ill, should they be exposed to someone with whooping cough, or step on a rusty nail. We play the odds around here, and the odds said they were safer getting the shots. But still. A mother worries.

(We did skip the rotovirus shot. These boys will not be in any kind of daycare situation for at least 3 years, and Dr. G said that was where kids are most likely to be exposed to rotovirus [which apparently makes you vomit and then your head spins around], and also the immunization is only a year old. Heck, I don't try new meds on my cats, let alone my kids, unless it is a life-or-death and all the old stuff has been trotted out already.)

The jury is still out on their reactions in total. Gus had his shots on Wednesday and Sam had his on Friday. This necessitated a second trip to Our Homongous HMO for Sam's shots, but I did NOT want TWO fussing babies at once. Turns out that Gus was the fusser and Sam (at least to date) has taken it more philosophically. Gus looked sad and annoyed for two solid days and ran a tiny bit of fever, whereas Sam cried his head off at the office but then quieted down for a field trip to T@rget (our first!) and has been his regular self since then. (Re going to T@rget -- we have a Snap and Go Double stroller, and I discovered that if you have only one infant carrier in the double stroller instead of two, there is LOTS of room in the basket below to stash merchandise. Good to know.)

But Gus seems back to normal now, and is on his way to being protected against lovely things like diptheria and polio. (D's dad had polio when he was a kid, and was in the hospital for a year. And he still ended up with a wizened leg that gave him problems all his life.) So I feel good about them being protected. But it was hard, hard, hard to see their little legs being stabbed with needles... oy vey. And the resultant wails.

Sigh.

A mother worries, nu?

The Smilin' Boys

2007-05-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

A brief post here to note that both of the boys are smiling now! Gus smiled very briefly at me a couple of days ago, and my heart nearly flew out of my chest. It was the cutest smile, a happy little ray of light blinking briefly from behind clouds. (He retreated to a frown immediately afterward -- Gus is quite an accomplished frowner already. More than one person has told me that his frown looks just like mine. Not sure that's a great thing, but there it is.)

Naturally, I just about killed myself racing to tell D about The First Smile, who promptly declared it either gas or a figment of my imagination. (D has an unfortunate habit of discounting things I tell him. Annoying, to say the least.)

But this morning I was nursing Gus, and D burst into the room I was in to declare that Sam had smiled at him for the first time! D was clearly elated, and I was very nice indeed and didn't try to pass it off as mere gastrointestinal disturbance. (This is why I'm going to get the Wife of the Year Award, right?) And then a little while later, after I had been nursing him, Sam smiled at me -- about four times in a couple of minutes! Clearly, having mastered the new skill, he wanted to show it off. It was just darling, and different from his brother's smile -- a shy-looking, sweet little smile that flicked on and off again. So adorable.

I tell ya, we live for moments like this around here.

Two months plus one day

2007-05-17T12:37:00.000-07:00

I should have written this on their two month birthday (actually, I should have written a post on their one month birthday too -- oh, well), but real life intervenes. On days when D is gone all day at work, I am pretty much running the entire time to keep up with the young 'uns. I'm starting to call them the Tag Team since it seems like when one isn't crying, the other one is, and vice versa. (Though this is not, strictly speaking, true. For instance, both of them are asleep at the moment -- glory hallelujah! -- which is why I can take a couple of minutes to pound this out. Though I'd like to point out that I am actually holding one of them as I type.)

I was thinking about how they have changed since they were born. For one thing, they are considerably larger. I haven't weighed them in a while (we will have them weighed at their two-month checkup next week) but I am guessing Gus is around 10 lbs and Sam is around 8 lbs. I was clipping Gus's little claws yesterday (as sharp as they are, I am calling them claws!) and I noticed how much larger his hands were than when he was born. I am really astounded at their rate of growth when I take the time to think about it.

Their little faces have changed quite a bit as well. Low be it spoken, Sam really looked rather monkey-like to me when he was born. Now his little face has elongated and his eyes seem to have much more expression than they did at first. He gives me these melting doe-eyed looks now that just kill me. Gus also looks different -- he looked so lost and kind of woebegone for the first few days, but now he tends to wear a more mischievous look. I think that look is created by the very wide-eyed and almost astonished expression he has so much of the time. My neighbor calls him "Bright Eyes" and I think that is a pretty good nickname for him!

The main difference, though, is in their behavior. Obviously, they were totally dependent on us at first, as they still are, and they would snuggle in to our warmth, and cry until they were picked up, if they were hungry or wet or cold. But now they seem to actually notice D and I, and crave attention from us. This is very flattering sometimes -- "Look, he actually knows who I am!" but also results in even less free time than before, if you can imagine that. I pick up one crying member of the Tag Team and soothe him, then look up to see the other one's eyes following me accusingly around the room. "Hey," I can hear the left-out baby thinking, "what's so darned special about him?" Followed, usually, by crying. Put down the baby I'm carrying and pick up the accusing one. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There have been big changes in me as well over the last couple of months. For one, I weigh about 50 lbs less now than my pregnancy high of 203 lbs. (Thank God!) My C section is largely healed, though pain from it still prompts me to take Vicodin -- though much less of it now, usually 1 to 2 tablets in 24 hrs. I look fairly normal these days except for a pronounced pooch at my waistline that makes me look about 5 months pregnant. I've been told that's partly fat but largely stretched-out muscles, that will take some time and remedial exercise to become un-stretched out.

But the biggest change in me is in my emotions. I really was not prepared for the force of the emotions I would feel about these babies. Everything is bigger than life. . . if D does the least little thing that I consider possibly harmful to the babies (such as not carrying them precisely the right way in their sling), I freak. I try hard not to, but I do. I feel shaken and tossed by these emotions sometimes, as if I were in a storm. (I know that's such a cliche', but really and truly, I feel that way.) The least threat to my babies brings on a flood of tears, or forces me to bite my tongue to keep from threatening someone (usually my husband) with swift and lethal retribution if they don't fix things right this instant. I went to Target one day about a month ago -- my first trip to the store by myself after the surgery -- and rushed home in a tizzy to see the babies. The instant I saw them again, I burst into tears. I knew they were safe at home, I knew I would see them again, I knew it all. . . but still.

Did I mention I'm a crazy lady these days?

Songs to walk a crying baby by

2007-05-14T07:43:00.000-07:00

(To the tune of "Freres Jaques")

Brother's noisy
Brother's noisy
Yes, he is
Yes, he is
He thinks I should hold him
He thinks I should hold him
Instead of you,
Instead of you.

Kitty watching

2007-05-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

Gus noticed a kitty today.

The pic is not of Gus noticing the cat ... though the surprised expression on his face was much the same as when he was staring at our fuzzball this morning. (Sam is on the left; Gus is on the right.) But I thought the pic might help me apologize for being absent for so long from this space. :)

I had put Gus down on our bed to re-swaddle him (for about the zillionth time -- we call both the boys our Little Houdinis because they can undo most swaddles in no time flat when they want to), and it happened to be right beside our old blind cat, Georgina. (She is a bit decrepit, in addition to being blind -- but she still loves to be picked up and held on my shoulder, and still enjoys her catfood, so I don't see her as a candidate for the Big Scratching Post in the Sky yet.)

And for the first time, Gus noticed her! It was wonderful to see the expression of awe on his little chubby face, and to see him reaching, unsuccessfully, to grab her long tortie fur. So while he ogled her, I stood there and told him all about kitties, and how they don't really like to be grabbed, and how they are our friends ... and of course all that was solely for my benefit, not his, at this age!

His attention lasted for about a minute and that was it. Which was just as well since I wanted to swaddle him and get on with my own agenda. But it was wonderful to see him really see something. How cool.

Why Blogger is annoying; plus caps vs. no-caps

2007-04-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

Blogger has developed an annoying hiccup since being eaten by Google. Occasionally when I attempt a post, Blogger will just plain eat the post. No notice, just -- gulp! Also, it won't let me mark the text of my post and then save it, to guard against such happenings. This is making me think about moving to a different blogging provider (or whatever one calls these things).

So, this is more-or-less what I said just five minutes ago (eaten by Blogger):

There may be times in the near future when I will dispense with caps in some of my posts. This will be not because I have some retro longing for archie and mehitabel, but because I have a baby in one hand, and it takes two hands to deal with the Shift key and capitalize properly. I figured out that if (like much of the rest of the world) I just don't give a rat's ass whether or not I have proper spelling and punctuation, I could get down a lot more of my thoughts in pixels. And since these are some of the most important weeks of my life (to me -- not necessarily to Gentle Reader), I do want to get my thoughts down, as much as possible.

you've been warned.

I like cats, not PUPPPS!

2007-04-01T04:18:00.000-07:00

(Full disclosure: I am typing this at 4 a.m., while pumping, and just after having bottle-fed both boys. I think I have offically entered New Motherdom.)

This will be short since I have about five minutes left for this pumping session, and I think that going to BED would be rather nice about now! (My dear husband is taking the next shift with the boys.) But I have to bitch about the latest development in my pregnancy. Oh? You thought my pregnancy was over? Well, me too. My body, apparently, has other notions....

While I was still in the hospital after having the C-section, I noticed some itching on one thigh. Not even bothering to examine it, I put some hand lotion on it and went to bed. Same thing next day: itching, lotion, ignored.

A day or two after leaving the hospital, I noticed that my thigh was itching like a sumbitch. I finally dragged out a hand mirror to check it, and found a lovely patch of red dots in a random pattern. "Oh shit," I thought, "it's my herpes again." (Another full disclosure: like a significant portion of the population, I have herpes. I didn't catch it sexually, but that's a whole 'nother story. In any case, it flares up occasionally, often as pustules on my thighs or buttocks.)

I had to come in to my HMO on Thursday to have my staples taken out, and after making several phone calls to "make it so," managed to get Dr. Blinky to look at my bumps. He said it didn't look like herpes to him but obligingly took a sample to have tested. I was self-medicating with acyclovir pills and topical acyclovir (which is incredibly expensive -- $100 for a lil-bitty tube), but by the next day decided that Dr. Blinky was probably right -- it looked to me like freakin' SHINGLES, not herpes, and by that time I was frantic. Was shingles catching? Who knew? Could I manage to kill or maim my boys with my body's ill-timed illness? I didn't want to find out. My poor husband was putting up with me wailing like a banshee (really, folks, I'm not a crier, but with a combination of post-pregnancy hormones and this stress, I was spouting tears like nobody's business). I finally managed (by crying on the phone) to wangle an appointment with another doc in the "urgent care clinic" that evening.

That doc diagnosed me as having PUPPPS -- something I had distantly heard of during my travels through infertility, but having seen that it was extremely rare, I ignored it. Hah, hah. FYI, PUPPPS is a nasty, itchy rash, peculiar to pregnant women and (rarely) those who have just given birth. Turns out that PUPPPS -- which feels exactly as if you've stripped naked and gone cavorting in your local patch of poison ivy -- is more common to moms of multiples, and is also linked to moms who have boys. Seventy percent of women who get this have had boys. So here I am ... twins, boys, PUPPPS. Yay.

The doc gave me fluocinonide, a steroid ointment, for the PUPPPS, which I slathered on all affected surfaces (which was a LOT), only finding out later that one is supposed to use this stuff "sparingly." I saw a dermatologist a couple of days later, who took a biopsy from my thigh, and added Sarna lotion to my regimen, as well as condoning my use of Benadryl (which I read about on the Internet). Really, the Sarna is the most useful stuff of all. It has menthol and various herbal crap in it that makes me smell like someone's incontinent grandmother, but it does get rid of the itch, at least temporarily.

I am now finishing up this post a couple of days after having started it, and I have good news/bad news about the PUPPPS. Good news is that the redness is fading and swelling is going away, so it looks like the PUPPPS will last for two or three weeks as opposed to two or three months. Bad news is that my blood pressure has shot up to the range of 155/105 or so. I have NEVER had b/p readings like this in my life. These readings resulted in my being dragged back to my HMO (along with my entourage of husband and kidlets, since I am still restricted from driving) for blood tests to rule out preeclampsia (which, again, is supposed to happen to you before birth, not after, but with me, who knows?).

All blood tests turned out fine. So it looks like the b/p is a result of simple stress (HAH! Ya think?) or possibly the steroid cream. (None of my docs agree that the steroid cream could be causing this, but on Drugs.com, it says in black and white pixels that one of the side effects of fluocinonide ointment is sudden high blood pressure. So there.) Anyway, I have taken myself off the steroids, and am now using just Benadryl and Sarna, and am taking my b/p every day. We may have to follow up on this some more, but I don't think I'll stroke out today. Um, probably.

BTW, the boys are simply adorable. What wonderful kidlets. I'll try to actually write about THEM in the next!

First pics!

2007-03-26T01:38:00.000-07:00

Augustus:
Samuel:

To quote Drew Barrymore ... THEY'RE HERE!

2007-03-23T00:30:00.000-07:00

This will be a quite brief post since I am bone tired and need to pump and then get in bed and snooze away while the post-partem doula is here taking care of them (she's here only a couple of nights a week) ... but as you have figured out by now, THE BOYS ARE HERE!!!

And my apologies to my friends who I regularly correspond with, for not telling them first, but it has been a whirlwind few days, fraught with exhaustion, and also my fingers are still numb so I have to go back and correct a lot of typos. So no birthstory today, just the facts, ma'am.

Which are ... my water broke on Friday afternoon, March 16, with no warning other than slightly increased cervical mucus for a couple of hours beforehand. Luckily I was home in bed, and luckier still, we have a waterproof mattress cover! So the apparent GALLONS that gushed out didn't ruin our mattress.

I called Doug in a panic and we rushed to the HMO hospital, and several hours later, at 11:03 and 11:04 p.m. on March 16, they arrived by C-section. We were a little disappointed not to wait and have them on St. Patrick's Day, but I was heading into active labor and we thought it best not to wait.

So, meet the world -- Augustus Franklin Fauxvert and Samuel Washington Fauxvert! (And no, Fauxvert is not our real last name, but really, you knew that, right? The other names are accurate, however.) Gus was born first, at 6 lbs even, and Sam followed up the rear with 4 lbs 8 oz. They are both natural blond beauties (Gus's copious -- copious! -- hair is lighter than Sam's equally luxuriant mop) and I am achingly in love with them both already. I'll try and post a pic or two in the next few days.

Woo hoo!! :)

Nearing the wire

2007-03-15T23:55:00.000-07:00

This will be brief because of my access issues ... as in, leaning far enough forward to hit the keyboard! LOL! Laptop in bed is not working so well because it is just too unwieldy. Also, my fingers alternate between being numb and hurting (that delightful late-pregnancy carpal tunnel) so typing isn't a lot of fun right now.

But the end is in sight! One way or t'other ... I will be 37 weeks on Sunday. Wow. I remember when I worried about making it to 12 weeks. Thank you, God. (I mean that literally.)

We had a little scare on Monday when I saw my OB for my weekly appt. I was gritting my teeth while she rooted around, checking my cervix (ah, the joy of that little procedure!), when she said, "Oh! Your cervix has really thinned out!" Hm? Really? That brought D's and my heads up. Then she added, "I can put a finger right through there!" Oh, ick, lady. Too much info, thanks. (Sorry, I'm not really the Earth Motherish type ... I try, but that's just not me.)

In any case, she got as excited as I've ever seen Dr. S become, and said we might need to do the C section that day to keep me from going into labor. Oh, my. Well, I was more or less okay with that notion, but poor D ... I have now seen him officially turn green. Very entertaining. He did not, he said, feel that he was quite ready.

In any case, they sent us over to Labor & Delivery for me to be monitored, and I wasn't having any contractions, so they sent us home again. So this Monday we have another checkup appt -- my last! -- and the C is scheduled for the Monday following that, on March 26. But if Dr. S gets all excitable again this Monday, it could happen then. I'm torn between being sooooooooo over this pregnancy, and being scared of the C section. I mean, I'm not panicking, but I'm just not thrilled with the idea of surgery while I'm awake, thank you very much. I think I'll try and concentrate on just how over this pregnancy I am. I do love feeling the boys bounce and kick and generally raise havoc in there -- but I'm ready for them to do that out here now instead.

Wish us bonne chance!

********

Oops! And I can't believe I forgot to mention this ... SIL and baby are doing great. She is out of the hospital now and recovering from her C section, and baby Leonardo is off oxygen and generally just terrific (and incredibly adorable, with the poutiest little pink lips!) but still being quite lackadaisical about nursing. So they will keep him in the NICU until he can feed on his own. Then he's good to go!

I'm an aunt!

2007-03-09T21:52:00.000-08:00

And my husband's sister is a new mommy!

In a nutshell, things went fine. SIL had her C section about 5-ish this afternoon, with absolutely no complications. Junior was born at 34 1/2 weeks, at 5 lbs 12 oz (very respectable for that age, I think!), and appears to have a fair complexion and (maybe) reddish hair. He's spending some time in the NICU but appears to be basicaly fine.

The proud parents have an Italian last name, and have chosen the name Leonardo to go with it. This is particularly appropriate since Mom teaches in the sciences at a university, and Dad works in computer stuff and is also of a scientific (and artistic) bent. Aside from the fact that I just like the name Leonardo, I'm happy that they chose a name that is a bit of a mouthful, since the names we have chosen are likewise a little out of the ordinary -- and now they have no room to make fun of us! LOL!

Whew. I was on needles all day. I'm just so relieved. And happy!

First one to pop

2007-03-08T23:18:00.000-08:00

Well, my SIL's C section is tomorrow, at 34+ weeks. You may recall that she has been stuck in the hospital for some weeks now, because of her case of complete placenta previa (i.e., her placenta is right square over the cervix -- not a good location). I am concerned for her. She has been bleeding on and off over the last few weeks (including day before yesterday), and her doctor told her tonight that he wants to do the C tomorrow and not wait anymore. He is concerned about the risk to her of uncontrolled bleeding. since this last bleed was pretty big.

So, she's off to the races tomorrow. I am just keeping my fingers crossed for her and Junior (as she and her husband have been calling their singleton boy), and hoping her story ends happily. (After 5 IVF's, she deserves it!!!) Please keep her in your thoughts and prayers.

My experiment in humor

2007-03-07T22:09:00.000-08:00

This is the story of a vaguely scientific experiment, with no provable or reproducible outcome, just an indication. And not having an identical twin of my own, there wasn’t even a “control” for this experiment. But the results still might prove useful, or at least interesting, to someone else going through IVF, so I’ve been meaning to chronicle it for some months now.

Back in July 2006, someone posted a very interesting news story to the Yahoo! IVF group I belong to. (It’s a terrific group; if you are getting ready for IVF, thinking about maybe doing IVF, or are actually in the process right now, I recommend you check it out.) The story was about an IVF study conducted in Israel that apparently showed that women who had a clown perform for them while resting from ET (embryo transfer) had a higher rate of conception than those who didn't. An article from Salon.com says:

Reuters reports: "After introducing clown therapy to patients having in-vitro fertilization, doctors at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Zerifin, Israel, said the conception rate rose from 20 to 35 percent." The sample size was pretty small, but researchers saw a noticeable increase. "Thirty-three of the 93 women entertained for 10-15 minutes by the professional clown conceived, compared to 18 patients among the same number who had not had a good dose of humor," according to the wire service.

Now, on the face of it, this sounds completely goofy. Clowns? Guys in whiteface with big shoes who go “honk honk”? While you’re lying there on the table in a paper gown with a full bladder and wondering if you’ve just wasted several thousand dollars and a lot of effort? (Of course, when I put it that way, what better time to take your mind off things with watching a clown?)

But oddly enough, I’ve had very good luck in the past with trying out for myself another medical recommendation by an obscure group of Israeli researchers,** so I thought this one might be worth checking out as well. (And really, what could it hurt?) I was especially interested since I have a tendency to be depressed in the best of times. Getting ready to go through IVF for the second time (and having already decided that this would be the last time we’d try it with my own eggs – which did not make me very happy), I was feeling very stressed indeed. I had seen other research that indicated that reducing one’s stress by means of acupuncture, yoga, etc., seemed to have a positive outcome on IVF results, so it didn’t seem farfetched to me that perhaps inducing that state of relaxation during a critical moment in the process might have good results. I had already tried acupuncture when we did IUI (useless, and annoying), and yoga during our first IVF (good for my back, but otherwise without result), so I wasn’t keen to try those again. All right, I decided, this time we’d try a dose of humor.

The thing is, I’m not that keen on clowns. There are very few clowns that I actually find funny, and it seemed to me that the point of the experiment was to induce relaxation by making the women chuckle and laugh. (The Israeli researchers said they had settled on clowns because that way there was no language barrier in understanding the comedy, but obviously, I didn’t have that issue.)

But I am a big fan of standup comedy, and I loves me a really funny movie. I decided I’d get my humor fix by watching a laugh-out-loud-funny movie or watching standup comedy every single day – every day! -- during the entire IVF process. When I first read the article about the Israeli research, I was just starting the suppression stage, finishing up birth control pills and taking Lupron shots in my tummy. I figured I’d start the movies on the day we started the big guns (Menopur and Follistim), and continue through the stimulation phase, retrieval and transfer, and into the two week wait.

The only way I could figure to make sure I had a steady stream of funny movies available during this time was to join Netflix, which meant I had to tell D about my experiment. (I found out during all this that you can join Netflix for as short a time as one month, which is really a pretty good deal.) I was afraid he’d pooh-pooh the whole thing and think I was being just a silly female. But when I showed him the article, D was as intrigued as I was. I mean, really – a fifteen percent jump in the conception rate? Even with such a tiny sample, that’s worth looking at. To my surprise, D began scheming to beg, borrow or steal a portable DVD player so that I could actually watch clowns (such as the ones from Cirque du Soleil, or the old Red Skelton Show) during the half hour wait after ET.

In the end, we dropped the portable DVD part. I’m just not excited about clowns, plus I couldn’t figure out what we were going to do with a portable DVD player afterward. And while spending an extra hundred bucks on a DVD player we might never use again was a drop in the bucket compared to several thousand for the IVF itself, I hate to waste money on junk I don’t want or need.

Now, in fairness, there were other changes in the second cycle from the first one. For the first cycle, I did three days of bed rest after ET, then went back to normal activity, including gardening and so forth. (Bending, lifting, digging – stuff that might not be contraindicated but certainly isn’t recommended during the two week wait.) For the second IVF, I pulled out the big guns and did a full week of bed rest. (Not realizing I was merely presaging the next several months!) I know a week is a lot, but I had read an email from a woman who did just that and got pregnant on her second IVF, so I figured I’d try it too.

Also, more tellingly, with the first IVF we transferred six three-day embryos, while with the second we transferred 11. (This may be some kind of record; I don’t know. I have never heard of anyone else transferring that many. And I can just see those of you in the UK blanching and toppling sideways when you read this!) The thing was, when we transferred six, they were six lovely embryos. Just gorgeous. They were all absolute top-grade or the next grade down, with no fragmentation and strong growth. “Beautiful” embryos, every last one of them, according to Dr. Enterprise. The only thing that we knew was wrong with them was that they were all from eggs that were – just like me – 43 years old. Which is pretty damned old for an egg.

And what did we get from six gorgeous embryos? Bupkis. Nuthin’. Technically, we got a chemical pregnancy – a first beta of 19, followed by a second beta of 5, as I recall – but really, that’s just a slightly more involved version of nuthin’.

So with the second round, when we ended up with eleven gorgeous embryos (all top grade or next to it, like the first time), we had the first round to look back on and confuse us. We could have tried again with six, but that just seemed silly. So how many did we try? Eight, and then attempt to grow the others to blastocyst and freeze them? Ten? All 11? This was complicated by our doc telling us that embryos from older eggs typically did not freeze as well as ones from younger eggs. So we would be taking additional risk with trying to freeze any at all, instead of using them all when they were fresh.

Another way of looking at it was that 11 was slightly less than twice the number of embryos we had transferred before, and so you could figure that perhaps we were taking slightly less than twice the risk of getting multiples. But I had been told just how freakin’ OLD I was by so many doctors at that point, plus we had the experience of the first IVF, and we just didn’t think we would get many multiples, if any. Maybe twins, we thought. Maybe.

Of course, as you know if you’ve read the archives here or followed this saga from the beginning, what we actually got was SIX takers – two empty sacs (that perhaps we shouldn’t count as fetuses at all, though our doc did), plus four fetuses with heartbeats.

So how do we account for this? Pure luck? Very possibly. The extra bed rest? Well, maybe. From what I’ve read, the jury is still out on how much bed rest, if any, is useful after transfer.

Should we lay it at the door of using 11 embryos? We could do that … except that why did we suddenly get such a high rate of return with 11, when we got nothing at all with six? Maybe we just had a bunch of viable embryos this time and had none last time. It’s certainly possible. And 11 is an awful lot of embryos, so there’s just more genetic material there, both good and bad. But really, six is a lot, too.

Or it could be our humor experiment. I kept with it faithfully, and I did notice a definite difference in my overall mood. By the end of each day during the two week wait, I had usually managed to work myself into a funk, deciding that the IVF had not worked, none of it would ever work, and that God had it in for me and I would never, ever in this lifetime manage to get a child of my own by any means whatever. And just about the time I was ready to sit down and have a good cry, it would be time instead to sit down and watch my funny movie. And by the time I had finished cackling over “Duck Soup” or shaking my head at “Life of Brian,” life looked better, and I would start thinking about whether it’s really a good idea or not to send a kid off to one of those snooty Northeast colleges even if they do get a full ride.

Probably the most amusing part of this is what we chose to do right after the transfer. (You’ll remember I had nixed the clowns.) I had noticed during our first embryo transfer that there was a CD player in the transfer room. The first time, we played a soothing New Age-y album provided by the doctor’s office. But this time I went looking for a suitable humor CD to play, and ended up with a Jeff Foxworthy album! Probably the first time that gentleman has had his comedy put to quite that use. But it kept D and I both chuckling during the whole waiting time after transfer, which is what I was after.

So I recommend the Humor Experiment to those of you who are still working on your own baby-making project. If nothing else, you should be in a better overall mood during a very difficult time. And who knows – it just might work! I think it did for us.

** The first Israeli research that I used to good effect was a study showing that technical “overdose,” or off-label use, of Program (lufenuron), a flea medicine, was effective in controlling ringworm in felines. I had very good luck with this treatment and recommend it highly if your cats are plagued with ringworm. We managed to eradicate it completely from our household using Program. I brought this to my vet’s attention at the time, and though they scoffed at it at first, a year later they were recommending it to their other clients!

Laugh-out-loud movies
(From several “best of” lists I found on the Internet, plus suggestions from friends.)

Duck Soup
Monkey Business (Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe, Ginger Rogers – one of the funniest movies EVER)
The Big Lebowski
Cat Ballou
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
A Night at the Opera
Northern Exposure (Season 1)
Young Frankenstein
Monty Python's Life of Brian
Airplane!
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle
The Three Amigos
Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein
The Seven Year Itch
Some Like It Hot
The Truth About Cats & Dogs
Office Space
How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
Guide for the Married Man
Zoolander
Midnight Run

Movies that were supposed to be funny, but weren’t particularly (though they are still good movies):

The Apartment
To Be or Not to Be (Mel Brooks)
The Odd Couple (movie)
Napoleon Dynamite

Musings (finally!)

2007-02-27T17:45:00.000-08:00

Whee! I'm back on the Internet again. Sorry for leaving this space barrenfor so long, but reaching the computer has become problematic lately. As you already know, I'm spending a lot of time in bed, so it's harder to get to my desktop computer. plus it has become difficult to reach the computer in another way, even when I'm sitting right there. I've been a keyboard-on-the-lap kind of typist for years now - but there's not much lap left anymore! So the keyboard creeps lower and lower onto my thighs, and my arms just can't reach around this behemoth belly and all the way down to thekeyboard anymore. I am definitely Technologically Challenged at the moment.

So how am I writing this - dictating it to the cats? (I only wish. That would definitely get us on Letterman's Stupid Pet Tricks. If not our own Superbowl commercial.) No, I finally bit the bullet and spent fifty bucks on a laptop desk to use in bed, and now I have a Rube Goldberg kind of setup with my ancient Thinkpad. (So ancient that it still has Win98 on it, if that gives you an idea.) This thing has so little firepower that when I tried a little while ago to update my Blogger account, it wouldn't read the anti-spam "Read these letters and type them in" bit. The image wouldn't comethrough at all. So I'm typing this in Word, then I'll email it to my desktop, and then I'll waddle into the other room and get online, and from there I'll upload this post to my blog. See what I go through for my faithful readers?

Although you're right; this blog is for myself, mostly. (Though I treasure the readers I do have!) There is so much going on in my life now, in a slothlike or turtle-ish sort of way, and I'll probably never be pregnant again, so I really want to remember it. All of it - the wonderful, the annoying, the heartbreaking. (To my sorrow, I already find myself forgetting about the reduction. It was such a huge part of my consciousness for quite a while there, but now it's over and done. I suppose it's human nature to put the hard things behind us with finality. That is how we have any reserves left to deal with the future.)

Oof - sorry, I had to stop for a minute to deal with a contraction. Frankly, if I had Dr. Braxton Hicks here at the moment, I might tell him to bite me. (I know; he didn't invent them, just name them, but still.) I get some big honkin' ones these days that feel like I'm being wrung out to dry. The only good thing about them is that every time I have one of the biggies, it reminds me how very happy I am that I don't have to go through labor! I'm not looking forward to my C-section either (surgery while I'm wide awake?Oh, fun!) but at least there won't be any of this hours-and-hours-of-labor crap. It could be worse.

Getting back to who this blog is really for - the other people that it's for is my sons, eventually. I started this blog before I became pregnant, with the idea that if I managed at some point to have a daughter, I would strongly encourage her to start working on children well before the point I did. I wanted her to know how hard it was to even get pregnant, after waiting so long, and after acquiring a uterus full of fibroids along the way. I intended to be as honest as I could, with the idea that this someday-daughter would read all this as an adult, and perhaps take it as a cautionary tale (and also a way to know what her mother was like back in the distant past before she became a Mom and presumably lost all vestiges ofhumor).

And then we became pregnant - with two sons. Sons! A pretty exciting event all by itself. But I looked at my blog to date at that point, with its female-oriented bluntness and repeated mentions of docs staring up my cooter(and how little I enjoyed that) and I kind of wondered: Is this suitable for males to read? (D has been informed that I have a blog, but not provided with the URL. Of course, he hasn't asked for it, either. A bit of don't-ask-don't-tell on both sides.)

But on further reflection, I think it is suitable reading for the male persuasion. First, I think they deserve to know, at some point, about the reduction. I won't be telling them as children, and I've sworn my SIL's to secrecy, but it is a reality of life and a part of how they came to be. Perhaps I'll change my mind in 20 or 25 years, but that's how I feel now. They should know. And secondly, I think it would be good for them to have some inkling of how difficult pregnancy can be - the achieving of it and also going through it. This isn't for sissies. And it's an experience they'll never have directly.

And yet, it's also an experience they definitely should know about. I want them to be thoughtful and responsible young men, and have some forethought about getting a young lady knocked up unless it's on purpose. And also not to think that should the unexpected occur, and the young woman is suddenly expecting when they least expected it - well, abortion is not something to be entered into lightly, and perhaps not at all, if a better solution can be found. I remember when I was young and stupid, and I thought that if I becamepregnant when it was not convenient, I would "just" get an abortion. "Just"get an abortion. I can't believe I thought that then. It's not that simple, as I know now.

And yet I am not willing to take abortion on demand away from our arsenal of solutions. I think that sometimes, if the woman is in truly desperate circumstances, or if the baby will almost certainly have a quality of life that is not what I would want for myself, it is a solution, and better the woman and her doctor should make that decision than let the government get its patty-paws on it. But how often are women in truly desperate circumstances? Rarely, I think. Of course, it does happen. Yet so often the choice for abortion really is a matter of convenience. And I'm not sure "convenience" is a word that should even enter into this question.

Okay, backing slowly away from the soapbox....

I wanted to cover one more reproductive issue today, though this is a personal question, not a general one. At my appointment last week, Dr. S brought up the question of getting my tubes tied. As in, did I want her to go ahead and do it while she was doing the C-section, since she'd be mucking around in there anyway and it would save me a surgery later, should I decide on it down the road?

Well. Uh, I said. Um. Huh? I hadn't even considered it, truth to tell. Frankly, I've given very little thought to birth control of any sort since realizing a couple of years ago just how difficult it was going to be to getme preggers by any method at all. Dr. S went on blithely that she needed to bring it up now since my HMO has a three day waiting period after signing the paperwork, and while our scheduled C is a month off, who knows what the babies will choose to do, and it's better to have things decided in advance. And besides, she said, I could sign the paperwork now, and still change my mind at any time right up until the surgery. So why not sign it now?

D jumped on the idea like a duck on a June bug, which annoyed me a trifle. I mean really, it's not his decision to make - which is what I tartly informed him. Dr. S went on with her reasons. Basically, she said, it would relieve me of worrying about birth control. (Except, of course, that I haven't been worrying about it.) Also, the older I get (I'm 44 now), the more chance there is for genetic abnormalities in a fetus. And she's right about that. I'll be 45 by the time we could really start trying again, and that's getting up there. We dodged the bullet (as far as we know) with the twins, but the two that we reduced showed indicators of abnormalities - both of them had thick nuchal folds, and one had a visible cystic hygroma. What if only two had stuck, instead of four, and the two were the ones with the abnormalities? I don't even want to think about that. Or if I had (somehow!) managed to get knocked up by normal means, and only one of those four eggs had stuck - which one would it be? One of the two we have now, or one of the other two? Those are fifty-fifty odds. Not so great.

I think my reluctance to do this is mostly due to the fact that neither of the babies that will be arriving soon is a girl. I'll get past this eventually (probably the instant that I see my sons' little faces!) but I guess at this point I haven't quite resigned myself to the idea of never having a daughter. Voluntarily tying my tubes seems to cement that particular future. Oh, I know we could do IVF again - the tubes have nothing to do with that. But IVF is so expensive and so mentally difficult, I doubt we will get up the gumption for it soon enough to use my own eggs again. We're both kind of worn out on that front, and tapped out financially. Whereas an "oops" baby... well, I could dream, right? I mean, my mother didn't hit menopause until she was in her late fifties, so I still have time, right? Right?

I'm also a little skeptical, it seems, that our sons will both arrive safely! I have no reason to think they won't, but this seems to be a remnant of "infertile" thinking - you know: "I'll believe it when I see it." I am a little too well-educated now on the millions of slips possible 'twixt cup and lip, when it comes to actually bringing a live, healthy baby into the world. We are nearing the finish line - heck, I can see it up there, justpast the cheering crowd! But, you know, something could still happen ....

If Dr. S had asked me this question two years from now, I'm pretty sure my answer would have been, "Oh, sure, let's do it." Because at that point I'd be fairly confident that my own eggs had turned to crap. But of course, if all goes according to plan, in a couple of years I'll be running nonstop after a pair of high-velocity little boys and have no time to go into the hospital for a day or two to get the old tubes tied! So logically, now would be a good time to do it.

So I think I will sign the paperwork at my checkup tomorrow, but I'm still mulling over this question. And I have a month - probably - to do the mulling. Input welcome from my discerning audience!

Tough days

2007-02-08T21:54:00.000-08:00

These are just tough times, mentally, for both of us. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, D has to teach all day long, not getting home until 7:30. Then he has to clean litter boxes, feed the cats, take out the recycling and trash ... just fun stuff on top of a long day. (But it's all stuff I can't cope with right now.)

I felt kind of isolated since he disappeared to the living room right afterward, and because I was having some contractions, I stayed in bed. When D. finally came in to get ready for bed, about an hour later, I tried, very gently, to start a conversation ... just stuff about how his day went, etc. He told me that it looks like the teacher's union at his university may very well call for a strike. The problem with that is that he doesn't agree with many of the stances that the union has taken, and therefore has never joined it. But if they strike, it will be time for him to jump, to one side of the fence or the other. And whichever way he goes, he is sure to make some enemies. (They take this stuff very seriously there -- you would think they were life or death issues, instead of things like whether the student activity fee should be raised by $15 per year.) And the problem with making enemies is that he is finally up for tenure this year.

Sigh ... Anyway, then I made the mistake of asking him to help me put away a couple of things that were lying on the bed, since I was still having some problems. (I spent a good part of this afternoon sorting out drawers in our bedroom, thus the junk strewn all over the bed.) I asked him to get rid of a pile of newspapers -- and he threw them on the floor. Then I pointed out some old shirts that I had designated as new rags (which should have gone in the rag bucket in the hall closet) -- and he threw them on the floor.

Well, thanks, honey, I said. I could have managed that myself. I had more in mind "putting them away" -- what a strange concept. (And this is actually really funny in a sort of grumpy way, since he is the neatnik and I am the queen of useless crap -- hence the need to sort out the drawers and get rid of the excess.)

Decided at that point it was time to haul my Braxton-Hicksish butt out of bed and go wandering over the Internet instead, where at least no one would be grumpy at me. So here I am.

If one more person tells me I am glowing, I think I will bite them.

The California Pacific Medical Center drama continues

2007-02-06T22:17:00.000-08:00

Got a call from ol' Tiffany today (a manager in California Pacific Medical Center's billing department -- the one who gave me the initial estimate for our amnio). I had to waddle hurriedly in from the next room and lunge for the phone before the answering machine picked up, with the result that I was out of breath, having a contraction, and a just a wee bit surly when I finally answered.

But I controlled my snarl and wasn't too surly ... and I was glad after we talked a little bit, since Tiffany had called to tell me that yes, in fact, there had been a mistake in billing. Seems they had billed us twice for the same procedure (isn't that what the first girl told me the first time?) -- and therefore the second bill was incorrect after all. Which results in a savings for us of about $3k. Which is an enormous relief. We are not poor people, or we would never have gone the IVF route in the first place -- but you know, you start adding up how much cribs and diapers and bouncers and whatnot are going to be, times two (and mind you, this is just the start-up cost!) and you soon start feeling pretty darned frugal. Better the $3k should be in our pocket than CPMC's.

In all fairness to CPMC's employees, I have to say that it sounds like it is their system that is at fault. Tiffany told me that the problem seemed to be that their third-party billing operation (though Sutter), which is the entity that gave me the wrong numbers, has no direct access to the actual medical records. So when they checked the billing, it all looked fine to them. But when Tiffany, who does have access to the medical records, checked things out, it was immediately obvious to her that we had been double-billed.

I'm just glad I don't work for CPMC's administrative arm. It must be a nightmare.

And perhaps I have been proven wrong. It took both hands to do it (or rather, both billing departments), but I guess they finally did find their head. Or an anatomical feature on the other end, perhaps.

100 Reasons Why California Pacific Medical Center Sucks

2007-02-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

Well, actually, no, I don't have 100 reasons. But it's rather catchy, don't you think? With any luck at all, Google will archive it and a link to this page will be there for the ages. Because let me tell you, I am in a vindictive mood at the moment.

To recap: CPMC sent me an erroneous bill. The reason it's erroneous is because ol' "Tiffany" in Billing told me over the phone that our amniocentesis procedure, for BOTH babies, would run between $2 - 3K, plus extra for the lab (Genzyme). That was a trifle pricey for us, but we agreed to it because I was so worried about something happening to the boys from a bad amnio, and I had faith that Dr. Tex would do the best job possible. (Which he did, IMHO -- my beef is not with Dr. Tex or his staff at all.) Anyway, if you look up the above link you'll see the story of the first bill they sent us, which was approximately TWICE what Tiffany had quoted me.

WTF? says I at the time (back in December), and called up Sutter's billing (separate from Tiffany, apparently). A very nice little girl looked up my records, and shortly thereafter reassured me that it looked like Dr. Tex's office had accidentally double-billed us, and not to pay it while she straightened things out. (My bad, incidentally, for not typing up the end of that particular story.) Relief all around, right?

Well, today another bill came in, again for the same exaggerated amount, plus a little form letter saying that Nice Little Girl had looked things up, all right, and found that the bill was correct in the first place. And pay up pronto, sucker.

WTF???!! (This time in a yell.) Not happy. Called up Sutter billing and got the same Nice Little Girl, except she wasn't so nice anymore. Assured me that the bill was correct, as well as due.

I am just steaming now. I looked around but of course couldn't find my notes for my conversation with Tiffany about the estimate. (Everything is in a tremendous muddle these days, since I haven't been able to stand on my two feet to clean anything up in forever. As a matter of fact, I am rushing this post so I can go lie down again.) I called Tiffany nonetheless and left a voicemail. With any luck (with her track record) she might call me back by the end of next week.

I don't think I have a snowball's chance of winning on this, frankly, since everything was over the phone and I'll bet Tiffany didn't note down what she told me the procedure would cost (nor would she necessarily tell me if she had). But I am going to whine and bitch and kvetch until they are sorry they ever misquoted me a price on this. We expected this to run a MAXIMUM of $4K and instead it's looking like a total of over $6K. I am NOT happy. And CPMC is going to be a little less happy too by the time I get through with them.

Food fight

2007-02-01T18:48:00.000-08:00

Or rather, it isn't so much a "food fight" here lately, as it is me fighting to make myself eat the food. Any food. I am just sick unto death of stuffing my face. In point of actual fact, I am eating a very reasonable amount of food, but it feels like I am trying to get a bit more stuffing into a waaaaaaaay overstuffed couch, if you can imagine what I mean. And my husband, lovely though he is, is a fairly wretched cook at the best of times, and takeout is pretty much a non-starter because of the gestational diabetes. (Everything that actually tastes good has TONS of sugar in it. Start reading the labels yourself if you don't believe me.) Also my honey is a vegetarian, so I don't want to put him through the angst of actually cooking a fellow creature ... so we have been using a lot of pre-cooked meat, things like chicken strips and meatballs. Nutritionally they are pretty sound, with a lot of protein, but taste-wise, they tend to be a bit like the dog's supper.

So I just made a sojourn into the kitchen to see what I could scrounge for dinner (since D's semester has begun again and he has to teach all day until 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays). I feel pretty decent today and thought maybe I'd actually (gasp!) cook something for myself -- but there's nothing in there. We had a Grand Meltdown with the fridge a couple of months ago, and all my lovingly prepared homemade beef stew and so forth went into the garbage at that time. There's nothing in there but precooked meatballs and the like.

I was anorexic for a few months when I was in high school, and my attitude toward food these days feels disturbingly like that time in my life. I should clarify here and say that my anorexia stemmed not from some desire to be ultra-thin (since I was pretty skinny to start with) but from simple depression. My life sucked and I just wasn't interested in eating. I lost 20 pounds in one month, and my parents never said a word. (Which perhaps shows you the state of my relationship with my parents at that time.) Years later, when my mother died suddenly, I again lost my appetite and shed a bunch of pounds in a month, simply because I couldn't bring myself to eat.

But now I don't have that luxury. I have two little boys that are depending on me to eat for them, and to do a damned good job of it.

But goddamn it, I am just sick to death of eating, and especially of eating the crap that is allowed me. I will be so ridiculously glad when these boys have popped out, healthy and wailing, and I can have some Chinese takeout again!

Random notes

2007-01-28T21:42:00.000-08:00

Just a few notes on various things:

# # #

For the first time today, I caved and asked my husband to apply lotion to my feet after I took a shower. I just cannot reach those oversized tugboats anymore. Or rather, I can, but only by seriously squishing my middle, and that hurts. And my feet desperately need lotion nowadays, since they have decided to swell up like puffball mushrooms after rain. They are ENORMOUS. And that stretching of the skin doesn't feel very good. (Hm, ya think?)

I did check out the swelling and slight purple-ness with my doc at our last interview, and she cheerily informed me that not only is it normal to have gigantically swollen feet when one is carrying mults, but also that I can expect my calves to swell, too. (Why don't I hate my OB? She tells me the most appalling things in the sweetest, most reasonable way. I really ought to deck her. The problem is, though, that she listens to my multitude of anxious questions and never, ever becomes impatient with me, unlike most male docs I've encountered. I guess I have to keep her.)

# # #

We got a recliner today! I have been thinking about this for a while, but was deterred by the price tag and the fact that I've never lived with a recliner and didn't know if I'd like it or not. Then someone suggested Craig's List ... and that did it. I found a nice brown leather one, a trifle antiquated but in good shape, being put up for sale by a birth educator (hah! how ironic) who needed more space in her living room for her classes.

To make space for the recliner in our tiny living room, we had to banish a wingback chair that is part of a set with our couch. Mind you, I like wingback chairs, but this was a particularly starchy one with a ramrod straight back, and no one but our cats had ever been able to sit in it comfortably. I felt a little bad about evicting the cats from one of their favorite perches -- but it turns out I needn't have worried.

I inaugurated the recliner tonight, as D and I watched episodes of HBO's "Rome" (courtesy Netflix), and found it very reasonably comfortable. Or at least, it beat out the couch (which inspires Braxton Hicks every time). I was still sore afterward, but we watched two whole hours without it absolutely killing me. I hadn't been in the recliner five minutes before almost every cat we owned demonstrated an interest in being in it with me. Finally, our gorgeous mahogany Manx Boomer, who is our shyest cat, actually jumped up on my lap! This achieves significance when I inform you that he never does that. He is what we call a "beside cat" -- one who will cuddle up beside you but never on you. This chair obviously has good vibes. A success all around!

# # #

And on a far less cheery note, my SIL who is also 44 and also pregnant via IVF (just 1.5 weeks behind me) has been slammed into the hospital on bed rest because of her placenta previa. Frankly, I'm worried. She lost a previous baby at 21w, and it was a heartbreaking thing for her. And not only heartbreaking, but very difficult for her, um, mentally, if I can be a little blunt. I just pray that nothing happens again. Her baby ought to be viable at 28w if it comes to that, but it is still iffy. Please think good thoughts for her.

29 week update

2007-01-24T09:37:00.000-08:00

This will be brief since I spent 2.5 hrs last night, from 3 to about 5:30, counting Braxton Hicks and wondering if I needed to call Labor & Delivery or not. I never did exceed the magic number of 4 per hour, but let me tell you, when you get three of those in a row, ten minutes apart, it gets your attention. But I wanted to update this for those few (and well-appreciated!) of you who appear to actually check this blog.

In a nutshell, I'm just a mess these days. I am in constant discomfort -- the only question being what degree, not whether or not. I am GI-NORMOUS (as both my husband and total strangers love to tell me lately). The bad part, though, is the Braxton Hicks contractions, which make me feel like my belly is turning inside-out and also scare the heck out of me when I gete too many. Luckily my cervix is holding up well, but from the number and frequency of the BH I get, you would think I was at 40w instead of 29w. This makes me chuckle sardonically when my OB schedules my C-section at 38 weeks (March 26), but okay, whatever makes her happy. I have a feeling, though, that I won't make it past 36. These guys are getting big.

Just how big was illustrated yesterday, when we went up to my HMO for an indepth ultrasound. (I say "we" because poor D. had to chauffeur me there, as he does most of the time now. Once there, he had to go in and get a wheelchair and then wheel me in like a too-heavy load of laundry. I just cannot manage that big parking lot and THEN the long walk down the hospital hallway to Radiology anymore.) We had a lovely, chatty u/s tech (we'll call her Aurelia) who seemed to know what she was doing (always a plus). She confided that she herself was 25w with her sixth kid! (I had wondered at the bulge but with someone who's a bit overweight, it's better to wait for the information to be volunteered.) Aurelia gave us the guided tour, much like Oscar, and showed us one baby's little foot, from the bottom, like a footprint (aww! SO cute!) and both their little "wee wees," as she put it. Oh, yes, their faces too. Comparing them in profile, you can see differences in the noses ... it will be interesting to see how much they look alike, or don't.

And the boyos have been growing apace! They are both in the 57th percentile for growth for singletons, with estimated weights of 3 lbs 3 oz. and 3 lbs 2 oz. But the tech commented yesterday that "there's still room in there," so hopefully we will get them up to 5 lbs each ... and then, ya know, I'm good with all this being over. I really am. 'Cause if ONE more person tells me "You're glowing!" (and yes, they really say that -- apparently all my friends got together and came up with the single most irritating phrase possible) -- that person is gonna get SAT ON by a huge and irate pregnant lady!

And ya know that's gotta hurt.

Checkup

2007-01-06T22:44:00.000-08:00

Well, the Braxton-Hicks relaxed their grip on me long enough for me to make my appointment with my OB yesterday. While there, I found out the following:

1) I had lost a few pounds. (How many exactly, I'm not sure. I'm guessing 2 or 3.)
2) My BP is fine -- 122 over something-or-other. So at least I don't appear to be heading toward preeclampsia. (I know; fingers crossed.)
3) I have a lovely little yeast infection. These are uncommon with me, but what the heck, I might as well be thoroughly uncomfortable, right?

Dr. S and I also had a chat about the Braxton-Hicks. I found out that some of my so-called contractions might actually be baby movements, and some of them might be my fibroids "popping up" from the uterus. (I know; I had no idea they ever did that. Reminds me of Nessie's head peeking up from Loch Ness or something. Creepy.)

The thing is, though, I think I have some weird synthesis of all of the above. One typical contraction might start with a little walnut-sized lump suddenly appearing to the left of my bellybutton (that's the fibroid). Then something hard surfaces under that and kind of pushes (and that's the baby) ... and then my uterus decides it has been outraged enough by these shenanigans and I get the "official" BH, with characteristic tightening/hardening all the way across the top of my uterus.

Does this sound like fun? Because if it does, I'm not telling it right.

Just to add joy to this, D. read an article in the new Twins magazine about Dr. Luke's book on nutrition for multiples. After reading the article and then hearing me mention I had lost a couple of pounds, he had now decided his new mission in life is to hound me to eat enough. Thanks, honey.

An example: He brought me dinner in bed tonight because I was having BH again. He had HEAPED the plate with pre-cooked chicken strips (which he picked up at the grocery store today), green beans, and pasta. Turned out he had bought "cajun" chicken strips which were far too hot for me to just eat outright, so I would eat one strip and then take the burn out with a few green beans. I managed to eat about half what was on the plate -- not bad, I thought, for a woman with a tummy that is getting severely squished these days. But D. is wretched at estimating amounts of things (he can't eyeball a cup of something to save his life) and accused me of not eating anything at all. Well, duh ... I mean, I didn't take before and after photos or anything. Sorry, hon. The thing that really kills me about this, though, is that just a couple of days ago, when I was stuck in bed, he couldn't be bothered to come in from his project in the garage for the entire afternoon to see if I needed anything. And that was on a day when I was seriously stuck in bed.

I wouldn't trade D. for all the tea in China ... but at the moment, I could use a little vacation from him. Just a leetle one. Guess that's not going to happen when I can barely drive across town by myself now. Oh, well.

One bright spot: I absolutely could NOT get comfortable in bed last night, so I took a Tylenol. I finally fell asleep, and woke up, not two hours later -- which is what has been happening lately -- but with sunlight streaming through the window. First time in ages I've slept through the night, and I felt a lot better this morning. I think we'll have to repeat that experiment tonight!

Rough patch

2007-01-01T12:00:00.000-08:00

Well, we hit a little rough patch in the road here .... We arrived home fine on Wednesday (although I did manage to leave my blood glucose meter behind at my SIL's house). I was very tired that day but went to bed and thought all was well.

The next night we went out to dinner, and then afterward D insisted that we go up to our HMO on the other side of town to pick up my new glucose meter. He meant well, but I was tired and didn't want to, and the whole thing degenerated into an argument. We did go to the HMO and pick it up, but then didn't get home until nine-ish. I started having more Braxton-Hicks contractions that night, which then got worse, and finally resulted in me spending a couple of days in bed getting them under control.

So Friday and Saturday were lost to lolling around in bed, and then on Sunday morning I felt better, so I dragged D over to BabyNews, the only "large" baby store in our area. Hah. Large like a hole in the wall. We did get to try out a Snap-n-Go double, but looking at their $600 cribs was kind of a joke. We can't spend $600 each on cribs and that's just the way it is. We really need to keep it around or under $200 (and if anyone has suggestions, I'm more than open to them!).

So that was semi-productive ... but later in the evening, D started having asthma problems (he's allergic to the same cats he loves). This was his first big asthma attack in about five years, but it was a doozy. Due to his freakin' stubbornness, I ended up finally calling an ambulance at 3 a.m., thank you very much. As you perhaps can tell from the calm way I've related this, he spent only a couple of hours at the hospital and is more or less fine now. However, now my BH contractions have started up again, so I am typing this during one of my brief sojourns away from bed.

OUCH. Just got another twinge. Time for bed again.

Better days

2006-12-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

Well, today is better. (This despite getting up FIVE times last night, and finally saying to hell with it and getting up for the day at 6 a.m. D's apocalyptic snoring all night did not help matters.) But I got in a lovely nap this afternoon, and my SIL's beautiful azure-eyed Ragdoll cat (who actually resembles a Himalayan more) has decided I'm okay. Actually, after me sneaking him a few pieces of cheddar, I have about decided that in his mind, I'm now "Aunt Cheese." But he's a sweet cat, and it helps keep me from going through what D and I term "kitty withdrawal."

And for a lovely -- and astonishing -- holiday story that brought happy tears to my eyes (since I've been following her story for some time now), bounce over to Barren Mare and give her your congratulations!

Ah, sleep, it is a gentle thing

2006-12-22T21:37:00.000-08:00

Ah, sleep, it is a gentle thing, beloved from pole to pole.
To blessed Mary praise be given, she sent the gentle sleep from Heaven
That slid into my soul.

I think I got that right. I'm a bit pregnancy-addled at the moment, and too goddamned tired to look it up, so please forgive me if I've screwed up The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, of which my terrific 8th-grade English teacher once forced me and my classmates to memorize select bits. (See, that's how old I am. We had to memorize poetry. Hasn't that been outlawed or something now?)

The tired bit comes from the fact that I have reached that point in pregnancy where there is NO position that is comfortable for more than an hour at a time. And I have months to go. Oh, boy.... Although, I hope it goes without saying, I would rather have this problem than the alternate problem of feeling just fine and being non-pregnant. I remember I once wrote I would crawl on my bare knees over broken glass to have children. Well, I think I'm reaching that section of the road.

Last night was a good example of the no-sleep thing. We are currently staying at my husband's sister's house in Portland. They are terrific people and I'm glad to be here. Nonetheless, it's hard. I feel like I am constantly whining about the food, since I have to follow the diet for gestational diabetes. The sister and her husband have been great about trying to accommodate me, going out and buying whole wheat bread for me, for example ... to which I am eventually forced to say something along the lines of, "Oh, yeah, great bread, thank you! Except that it has, um, honey in it, and it made my lunchtime sugar level shoot up to 166 when it's supposed to be under 140... uh, do you have some other whole wheat bread around?" As if, of course, they've been keeping the really good stuff secret in the garage or something, just to spite me. I feel like a whiny house guest, which I hate. Hell, I am a whiny house guest.

The sleep thing has been ongoing for the last couple of weeks. I have reached that point in the amazing growth of my belly at which there is NO possibility of sleeping on my side without it hurting like sixty. There's just too much there there. The free-weights-in-Jell-O belly has won the battle. I capitulate. The problem is that I'm really not supposed to sleep on my back since it compresses the vena cava which cuts off some of the blood to the uterus. (And I believe this now, since after about an hour of lying on my back - if I'm awake - I start to feel short of breath.)

So at my doc's suggestion, last weekend I made a clever device out of folded towels, designed to cant me up on one side just enough, a few degrees, to keep me from sleeping directly on my back. I tried that on Friday night, slept reasonably well, though I awoke with a slight backache. Well, I thought, maybe this is doable. Tried it again the following night. Woke up on Saturday morning ... with a mother of a backache. I mean, really, just a huge awful backache. I've been very smug throughout this pregnancy, that even though I've had back problems in the past, I've had absolutely none for the last six months. And now this! I've been using a heating pad the last couple of days and it is finally starting to abate, but really, it was just awful.

So let's see ... I can't sleep on either side. I can't sleep flat on my back because my babies will die of asphyxia (or something equally dire). I can't sleep on my back with the addition of the towel device. I can't sleep upside down like a bat, though I've been about ready to try that. So what does a desperate pregnant female do?

Well, this particular desperate pregnant female resorted to sleeping on her back anyway, feeling like a Bad Mum the whole time for obviously ruining my children's lives before they're even out of the oven. So now I'm the Hetty Green of the pregnant world. (Remember Hetty Green, the Witch of Wall Street? She was a millionaire, but so tight with a buck that she delayed getting medical help for her son's injured leg, which eventually resulted in the leg's amputation.) This sent me down into depression over the last couple of weeks, just feeling so helpless over this. But I saw my doc on Wednesday and whined at her, and she suggested a last try at solving the problem, by propping up one side of the entire bed so that the whole thing would be at a bit of an angle. (As she pointed out, this is what they do in surgery when they need to keep pressure off that vein -- they just prop up the whole surgery table.)

So we tried that here at the sister's house, with a couple of 2x4's under the feet of our bed, and it wasn't so bad. It did not, however, solve the sleep issue since I think I just simply get uncomfortable from staying in one position for any length of time. So last night I slept the way I have been this whole week: in shifts. I slept from eleven to 3:30, got up and peed, then slept from about 4 to 5:30, walked around a bit and got to bed again about half an hour later, then got in one more hour of sleep. That was my night.

So I'm just incredibly freakin' tired. (Oh, and don't suggest a recliner, please ... I also need to get completely horizontal at night, to let my myomectomy scar stretch out and relax. Joy.)

And now tonight ... The brother-in-law absolutely insisted we watch the new Batman movie (the Christian Bale prequel). That's fine except that I couldn't get comfortable anywhere, so I was roaming around the back of the living room like a caged whatsis, trying to be inconspicuous. Plus I'm so tired of the whole Hero's Journey thing. That was new when Lucas did it first, but it's so old now it has whiskers. So here I am trying to be polite to make up for my pickiness about the food. Then my husband decides to drink numerous beers, even though he did the same thing last night. But that's nothing new ... whenever we come here, D acts like he has a free pass to drink every single night. (Perhaps I should mention that D's drinking is a long-standing bone of contention. He maintains that since he doesn't -- usually -- drink every single night, plus he doesn't let it impact his job, and he never has blackouts, that he doesn't actually have a problem. I maintain that there are other considerations, but hey, I'm just the wife ... so what the hell do I know?

Anyway. Sis and BIL went to bed, I felt like crap, D was still in there swilling them down, and I burst into tears. Nice long cryfest. I just feel like shit and this tunnel looks so incredibly long. I assume that's light at the end. But tonight I don't really feel sure.

Aaargh

2006-12-15T22:53:00.000-08:00

I am going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction. I predict that given a ten-minute head start and a mirror, the California Pacific Medical Center administration still could not find its collective ass with both hands. Mind you, that's just one consumer's opinion.

The first thing that annoyed me was that it has proven virtually impossible to get my CPMC amnio results sent to Kaiser. They have not even provided ME with written results. I called them several times and left messages, to no avail. I finally called the woman who did our genetics counseling and asked her if she could light a fire under the records department. Apparently, she did, but when I talked to their records department, they first maintained they had already sent them (no, I said sweetly, I don't theeeenk so), and then finally backed down and said they would fax them ("re-fax them," they said -- oh, those kidders) to Nurse Annoying (remember her? It's been a while since she entered the story). I called Nurse Annoying immediately, left a long message telling her what was going on and asking her to pretty please follow up on the CPMC fax. I came home later to a message from NA saying that as of two hours after the time when I talked to CPMC, they had not faxed her anything. That was on Tuesday.

Grrrrrr.

I had to go in Thursday for an ultrasound to check the boys' growth, so I took that opportunity to drop by my HMO's medical records office and see if anyone had entered anything into my records in the meantime. Nope, nothing. I also requested my medical records to take with me on our holiday trip next week to Portland. Sure, they said, and printed out some records for me. I took them away to read with lunch, and found that they were actually records from everyone but my OB. Some interesting reading there, though ... I found myself actually giggling over Nurse Annoying's rendition of one of our meetings. I could just feel her irritation with me crackling between the printed lines. Which is fine, really; it makes me feel better about dissing her here in this public forum.

Some even better reading was found in my social worker's accounts of her meetings with me. (Yes, my HMO has provided me with a social worker, of all things.) I have met with her about once a month since October. She seems nice enough, and has given me some good info on places to take parenting classes and so forth. I haven't spilled my entire life story to her, since I see no need to, but it has been nice to talk to someone about a few issues related to my pregnancy.

Her accounts of her meetings with me were mostly factual, and did not have any particular axe to grind. But she uses psych jargon to describe some things. She mentions that I am "hyperverbal" in our meetings.

Hyperverbal? Well, yes, I am a woman, and I like to talk. And I was under the impression that when you meet with someone who wants to know how you are doing, you tell them. Also, when I only have 45 minutes to talk to someone about a lot of things, I tend to speed up. But "hyperverbal" makes me sound like Wiley Coyote on speed. Harrumph!

The worst label, though, was that of "psychomotor retardation." I had to look that one up. Wikipedia says, "Psychomotor retardation comprises a slowing down of thought and a reduction of physical movements in a person." So as far as I can make out, this social worker seems to be simultaneously accusing me of talking her ear off and thinking excessively slowly. Gee, thanks. That's a flattering portrait. Or perhaps she was commenting on the slowness of my movements? Yeah, lady, I move like a turtle these days, because in case you haven't noticed, I am carrying freakin' twins! And I have a belly that makes total strangers rush to open doors for me and ask if I am due soon! And I outweigh my husband, and my feet hurt! See if you're ready to run a marathon under those conditions. Harrumph again.

Maybe I just shouldn't be reading my medical records....

But, as I said, I'm not likely to read my CPMC records any time soon, the way things are going. (Oh, and did I mention that they didn't even send ME a written copy of the amnio results? And it's over a month later!)

But now CPMC has really blown their credibility with me. They had us pay upfront on the day of the amnio with a credit card, in order to get the 35 percent self-pay discount. Okay, fair enough. They gave us a receipt at that time for (IIRC) the $1255 we paid that day, and said that Genzyme would be billing us separately. I got the Genzyme bill (for about $1300) the other day. They had applied the discount and already taken it from our credit card. Okay, I thought, well, the ol' credit card is really getting loaded up here, but again, fair enough.

But then came today. Today we got a bill from CPMC for nearly $5,000! Mind you, old Tiffany in Billing had told me it would be around TWO thousand dollars for everything except the Genzyme bill. And on this new bill, they had not applied the money we already paid them, and of course there was no mention of a discount.

I am really Not Happy with these people.

So on Monday, I get to have a little discussion with CPMC. Two discussions, actually; one to inquire when I might expect to have my records actually sent to my HMO, and the other to inform them how woefully incorrectly they have billed us, and request a correct accounting. Actually, I'm glad I have until Monday to cool off. Because I think I just might blow out my phone if I called them today.

Aaargh.

And in much more important news ... everything on the u/s on Thursday was lovely, beautiful, perfect. AND I got Oscar the Wonder Tech, so life was good, at least for a short time. The boys are growing apace, each estimated at about 1 lb 7 oz now, and in the 49th percentile for growth. (Which is fine, being at the 49th, I mean -- after all, the bigger they get, the faster they're going to want out of there. Since I am only at 24w on Sunday, they are nowhere near being ready for their outside debut!)

And at long last, I got to see their little pee-pees. (I know, I know, that's not correct and they will be warped for life if I don't use the right term immediately; so sue me. I'm sorry, I just cannot call anything that tiny and cute a "penis." So pee-pee it is, at least for now.) Oscar had asked, quite noncomittally, if we had found out the sexes yet, and I told him that we were having two boys. And Oscar said, "Oh yes, I know." Well, duh, of course. He's the guy with the training and the u/s, right? So I made him point out the evidence to me. And once pointed out, it was pretty plain to see! That made me start laughing, so Oscar asked if I wanted a baby pic of that, and I said sure and laughed even harder. So I ended up bringing home not only the standard u/s pics of baby face profiles, but also something a little more hardcore, with convenient arrows to point them out. All of which made D laugh uproariously as well when I showed him the pics.

So yes, if we have to pay it, $5,000 is a small price to pay to make sure those little guys didn't get messed up. But I have to admit I'm going to argue like hell that they owe us a discount.

The Mambo Kings

2006-11-28T20:49:00.000-08:00

Am I supposed to be this miserable this early?

Actually, I'm not miserable every day. It seems to follow a pattern: a day (sometimes two) of feeling quite decent (and sometimes getting a few things accomplished), followed by a day or two of feeling that I am Going To Pop Right This Second. Ugh. My belly right now feels tight as a drum. I'm guessing that perhaps Dexter and Sinister go through a day or two of sudden growth (or that my body finally registers the growth they've been doing all along), and then I have a day or two of my body adjusting to it and stretching. But ye gods and little fishes, on the days when they are growing ... there just are no words to describe this. You know how you're only supposed to fill up your tires to 28 pounds? (Or whatever it is; I'm no car expert.) I feel like I've been filled up to, oh, about 306 pounds at the moment. (Or so. Maybe only 304.) A trifle over-full.

Also, the boys have discovered the joys of movement. Which is a good thing in general, as I hope they will be active and fit little buggers as they grow up. But when they move inside my belly, although it make me happy (in an abstract sort of way), it is Not Comfortable. The funny thing is that I rarely feel any movement with my hands on the outside of my belly ... but oh, the inside is a different tale! Sometimes it feels like they're practicing their synchronized swimming moves, with a slow, rolling sort of motion. Other times they feel like they're doing the mambo. Still other times I have no idea what the guys are up to, except that it feels damned weird and I wish they'd cut it out. Sinister in particular has developed a habit of putting his head (or perhaps his feet) up under my ribs, like he's trying to warm them up there. Not comfy for me, though perhaps for him. Dexter is fond of pushing on a particular spot just to the right of my belly button. (I do have a fibroid there; perhaps he's simply trying to make a little more room for himself.)

Ugh.

Oh, and sleeping. Ah, the classic question: the Back vs. the Left Side -- who wins? Not me, that's all I know. I am a habitual back sleeper (with occasional detours into a side fetal position), but since sleeping on your back squishes some vein or other that's not supposed to be squished, you're theoretically supposed to sleep on your left side during pregnancy. Or if you just can't manage the left side, then even the lowly right side is better than the back. And if you do sleep on your back, your children will all have club feet and excessive dental caries. If not two heads.

So I've been attempting the side sleeping for several weeks now, mostly without much success. When I lie on my side, my belly feels like a huge sack of Jell-o with a couple of five-pound free weights thrown in. (In case you're wondering, no, that's not comfortable.) I tried using a pillow -- even went out and bought a special body pillow that threatened to take over the whole bed, like Godzilla in Tokyo -- but the pillows were way too bulky. I have had some success with taking our blankets and wadding them up to fit under my belly -- sort of a customized pillow. This has the disadvantage of stealing my husband's covers (which is not so bad, really, since he's always too hot at night anyway), and sometimes my own butt ends up hanging out in the cold, but it seems to work, after a fashion. At least I can get to sleep that way.

The real problem comes a couple of hours later, when my body signals me to shift to another position (or get up to pee, which is of course a favored activity these days). First, I grasp my belly and hold it firmly to me, to counteract the squishy Jell-o motion. Then I roll over to my back -- and then I inevitably gasp out loud, since it hurts like a mo-fo! Ooooooooooh .... You know that feeling when you fall asleep sitting up in a chair. and then you wake up? You're okay as long as you're just sitting quietly in the chair, thinking about moving. But as soon as you actually do move ... oh, the pain. Every stiff muscle in your body shouts the same thing: "What were you thinking, you idiot?!"

I never knew bellies could stiffen up. Silly me.

Ah, well. I confess that these moments are balanced, at least roughly, by moments like this one tonight: Since I'm supposed to take a walk after each meal, to help the blood sugar metabolize properly, after dinner I went to our back porch, which is about 40 feet long, and started in on my ten laps of the porch. It was chilly, about 40F, but clear, with a beautiful sparkly quarter moon and diamond-bright stars. Mostly I didn't notice the beauty of the night since I was trudging along with my cold hands in my coat pockets, watching the ground so I wouldn't trip over the seismic cracks in the poured cement slab, and trying not to think about the possibility of my stomach exploding right then and there. But I finished my ten laps, and then happened to look up at the Big Dipper, and for some reason thought, Soon I'll be able to show this to my sons.

My sons.

Holy crap, what a huge and wonderful thought. My sons! I've thought of them as the twins, the kids, the boys, and even "me fine boyos" (which, I'll confess, is what I call my five male cats too), but the phrase "my sons" had never really taken up residence in my brain before. I started crying, of course, looking up at the stars and just leaking.

My sons.

What an amazing and immense thought, since only a few months ago, I wondered if I would ever have children of any sort, let alone children of my body. And now, here I am, with what feels like immense unearned riches poured into my lap like gold, like the finest silks. A wealth that I might not deserve, but will never let go of again while these hands can grasp anything.

By my count, I have 17 weeks of this discomfort left ... but I think, just perhaps, I -- and my sons -- will be able to make it. Together.

Well. Probably, anyway. We'll see what the ol' Jell-o and free weights belly has to say about that.

Give thanks!

2006-11-23T23:33:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update so that I can hop into bed, so that we can rise bright and early to go down to Monterey tomorrow. But I have to say that yesterday was one of my most thankful days in a long, long time. Dr. Tex treated us to a freebie ultrasound so that we could see just what was going on with Sinister's spine. (The Baby A and Baby B thing is just too confusing for me, since it changes every time! So the right side baby is Dexter and left is Sinister. I hope this does not give Sinister a complex.)

And the answer was ... absolutely nothing interesting was going on with Sinister's spine, or with his tiny little head, except for absolutely normal growth. Dr. Tex showed us how all the structures in the brain were normal, and also how the skin followed the spine, unbroken along the entire length. Normal. Just plain old normal.

Dr. Tex also showed us how the sac of one of the reduced fetuses is pressed right up against Sinister's sac. Since the membranes are permeable, Dr. Tex said it was very possible that the cholinesterase (what the AFP measures) was migrating through the membranes a little and screwing up the measurement. He said this was an ongoing problem with multiple fetuses and with fetal reductions. He further said (O happy day!) that it was his definite professional opinion that little Sinister is just fine.

Both D & S are at about 13 - 14 oz, and right on target for growth (at the 70th - 80th percentile for their age). They are fine, fine, fine.

I thought I was walking on a cloud as I left the office.

I regret to report, though, that today, only 24 or so hours later, that warm glow of thankfulness has dimmed a bit. Is this just human nature or am I really that shallow? I'd like to think I'm not abnormally shallow, and that this is just the normal state of things -- no one can walk around in a pink cloud 24/7; you'd bump into things.

But as D and I held hands before our little Thanksgiving dinner tonight and talked about what we were thankful for, a little of that pink glow came back. I hope it always will, on this day, as I recall at last getting the good news from Ghent.

"May cause anxiety in parents"

2006-11-21T10:44:00.000-08:00

So ... we got the amnio results.

I decided yesterday morning that it was time to take the bull by the horns, and wade into the bureaucracy of California Pacific Medical Center to try and get some answers on the amnio. I called in the morning and tried to reach a genetics counselor by selecting the voice mail button that supposedly lets you talk to the "next available counselor." Well, the next available counselor appeared to be coming in to work via mule team from the Himalayas, because after an interminable wait, I was finally shunted off to their appointments line, where someone offered to take a message and relay it to the genetics counselors. We did that, then I got right back on the line and tried again, pushing different buttons.

This time I got one of the senior genetics counselors, whom I've talked with before. She was very nice but said that the information still had to come in from the lab, and she would put a message in to "our" genetics counselor (the one we saw before the fetal reduction, who was very nice, but I had lost her phone number) to get the information and call us as soon as possible.

That held me until afternoon. At that point I was on the phone with my aunt, catching up on things and swapping pregnancy stories, when the "boop boop" sounded and I dumped my aunt from the line rather unceremoniously, explaining that the clinic was calling. It turned out to be a young woman from the lab, who had apparently called me only to tell me that the genetics counselors would be the one to call me. "But isn't it ready yet?" I whined. "We came in on November 8!"

Lab Girl allowed as how that had been some time ago, and this time actually pulled up my chart to see about things. "Oh," she said after a moment, "it looks like someone should already have called you. I'll patch you through to one of the genetics counselors."

I gratefully agreed. She then proceeded to connect me with Juanita Somebody's voice mail, which informed me that Juanita would be out of the office for the entire freakin' month of November.

Now that's what I call service.

(Would it be belaboring the obvious to point out that while the Professional Types I have dealt with at CPMC have been nothing but lovely, extremely competent, and a joy to work with, the CPMC bureaucracy and lower echelons do not seem to be able to find their collective asses with both hands?)

My heart rate and blood pressure both skyrocketed, and I started punching phone buttons with both hands, ready to do battle (again) with the CPMC phone lines to try and reach a genetics counselor. But then the "boop boop" sounded, and lo, it was "our" genetics counselor, ready at last with the amnio information. I called out to D to get on the line so he could hear it too, and then noticed that while my anger had dissipated, my heart rate was still up there. "Anxiety" would just about describe it.

The first thing she told us was (drum roll, please... ) that all the chromosomes for both babies were normal. NORMAL. Normal, normal, normal. I felt myself wilt, and said quietly, "Oh, thank God." On the line, I heard D draw a shaky breath and say something similar.

We had to ask her again, of course (just to hear it, really), so she nicely reiterated it several times, and then we started to feel cheerful, to say the least.

And then she asked if we wanted to know the sexes. D had recently come around, deciding, I think (though I didn't press him about it) that the whole naming problem might just go away if we knew the sexes (and didn't I say that several weeks ago?). So we said yes. And she said that they were both the same ... (another drum roll, please!) ... and they were ... BOYS!

Oh, my goodness. It was a party on the line for a few seconds there. I think it would have been the same no matter what she said, really, but the happiness and relief of hearing that we had two normal, healthy baby boys on the way was just too much for us. What joy, what quiet delirium. It was lovely.

But ... there's always a fly in the ointment, isn't there? In this case, our counselor revealed that they had also done an AFP assay on the amniotic fluid, since they had it there. (Normally the AFP is done as a maternal blood test, earlier in the pregnancy, but because of the multiple placentas present, they were not able to do that in our case.) She said that one twin had tested normal, but the other one had had a slightly elevated AFP, testing as a "weak positive."

We had no clue what any of that meant, but she explained. Elevated AFP levels are commonly associated with neural tube defects such as spina bifida, a condition in which the developing spinal tube does not close up properly and therefore leaves nerves exposed. The effects of spina bifida on the child can range from nearly no effect, to paralysis (of different levels) and anencephaly.

She said, however, that because we had had several ultrasounds which all indicated that both babies were normal, it was very possible that some AFP had crossed over from the other placentas, and caused this weak positive -- in which case, our baby not have the condition and would not be affected. But we just don't know yet.

But she had been extraordinarily efficient (our counselor being one of those aforementioned people at CPMC who are a Joy to Work With), and set up a followup ultrasound to examine the spine on Wednesday morning (tomorrow, that is), with Dr. Tex, who had said he would do this ultrasound at no charge, bless his heart.

So tomorrow's another Big Day. I have to admit I am nervous, though it is not as bad as it could be. If there is a problem, hopefully it will be on the smaller end of the scale, especially since it was a weak positive (as opposed to off the scale). And spina bifida does not cause mental retardation, though of course it does cause physical problems.

I also have to admit I didn't know jack about spina bifida before yesterday (and don't know that much about it now) except that one takes folic acid to prevent it. (And yes, I have been taking 1200 micrograms of folic acid daily since before we conceived, so that has helped me remain calm as well.) I also didn't know jack about the AFP test. Here's one good page I found on that: Elevated Maternal Serum Alpha Feto Protein. It is mostly about elevated AFP found in maternal blood samples, but also discusses AFP in amniotic fluid.

But this one sentence from that otherwise useful page seems a bit obvious:

"Elevated maternal serum AFP may cause anxiety in parents."

Hm. Ya think?

Getting tense

2006-11-18T23:30:00.000-08:00

I can feel myself tensing up, waiting for the amnio results. I have negotiated this particular two week wait mostly without incident, mainly by ignoring the fact that I am waiting for something. But waiting for what I fervently hope will be the good news from Ghent is getting to me. Tonight I was in the shower, talking to God (what, haven't you already figured out I'm a strange one? Of course I talk to God while I'm in the shower; doesn't everyone? And no, smartass, He doesn't answer me, at least not out loud), and praying that the amnio would come out okay (which I suppose is nonsensical at this point, since the results are probably already in, and may already be in the mail -- so what is He supposed to do, intercept my mail? Is there such a thing as Heavenly White-Out?).

And I just kept thinking about how hideous it would be if the amnio is not okay, and it didn't take much of that to send me into a fullscale meltdown. So in very short order, poor D (who was innocently watching a football game while I was in the shower) had to contend with a dripping-wet preggo lady of Wagnerian proportions and way too many hormones who was also dripping copious tears. He did manage to get me calmed down, finally, just by patting me and repeating, "It'll be all right," like some sort of mantra. But oh, in my heart of hearts I am still frightened. I cannot imagine what we will do if something is severely not okay. I know what we agreed to, but I look down at my huge belly, and I cannot imagine doing that now. I also cannot imagine raising a seriously handicapped child. I am suffering from a severe failure of imagination at this point.

But I calmed down for a while at least, and we went out to a regular games night and potluck we have with friends, and things were much better. But as we were getting ready to leave, somehow the subject of showers came up. Two people so far have offered to throw showers for us. One person is quite serious about it (we talked about it again just this morning on the phone), and she is part of a circle of friends we have developed here who are separate from my husband's work. The other person is one of my husband's work colleagues, and I don't know how serious she was about her offer. If she was in fact serious, I think it would be better to have two showers, rather than try and blend the two sets of people, none of whom know each other. (Although I am open to other opinions on this, if my Dear Readers have experience or input.)

But D wasn't open to anything. This is one of his least lovely traits: He tends to make up his mind on the spur of the moment about something I have been giving thought to for an extended period of time, and blast out his opinion as though it's the only possible answer and I'd be a fool to naysay him. He immediately decreed that it would be silly to have more than one shower, and when I tried to explain why I thought two might work out better, he absolutely didn't want to hear anything that didn't jibe with the opinion of the Great God D. I am afraid I lost my temper a bit at that point, and pointed out (alas, in front of our friends) that he'd never even thought about showers before, that he didn't know the first thing about showers, and he was being all logical and sensible and in fact, just being a damned Man. This little hormone-fueled soliloquy amused our friends greatly, but of course incensed the Great God D, and, well, it was a good thing we were already leaving. He was quite short with me all the way home, though he had calmed down by the time he was getting ready to go to bed.

But this is a tendency of his that has annoyed me muchly in the past and I guess is not going to get better. I think he is channeling his father, who was very much the autocratic head of the household. His mother was a dear lady, but an alcoholic and something of a vague presence in the household, who only rarely put her foot down or even seemed to have an opinion about most things. As you may have noticed, I do have opinions, and tend to be forthright about voicing them. And I'll be damned if I am going to be intimidated or shut up when I have something to say.

In D's defense, I'll also say that once he has calmed down and thought about things, he often changes his mind and agrees with me, or agrees to defer to me if the issue is important to me. But damn, this initial charge-of-the-Light-Brigade approach is annoying, and I can see it causing problems later with the kiddos. We need to be united on things in front of them, not have him spout out his unconsidered opinion and leave me to try and change it. But I've talked to him before about it, and he doesn't even believe he's doing it, let alone be open to changing it. So I need to find another tack to approach him when he does this ... and not just fly off my own handle, as I did tonight, and complicate things.

I just wish the damned amnio info would get here. And I pray that it's okay.

Shake it up baby

2006-11-14T23:45:00.000-08:00

It's amazing how emotions go back and forth and up and down and well, just all over, with this pregnancy thing. On Sunday night, I was convinced I was headed for miscarriage. Today I woke up to a lovely sunny day (the unfair advantage of living in nuts-and-fruits headquarters, aka California) and all seemed right with the world. But of course a few things went in between.

Late Sunday night, I was dishing out catfood when I suddenly felt some very odd roiling just to the right of my bellybutton. I mean, this felt weird. Something was going on. I stood stock-still for a moment, then laughed: of course! It was the babies, finally doing something! I was feeling the babies move, at last! How wonderful and cool!

Of course, in about a minute I had talked myself out of that, and decided I was having premature labor and a miscarriage was no doubt headed for me like a freight train. I abandoned the cat food and went searching for my little booklet on preventing premature labor. I followed the directions in the booklet (hands on my belly, middle fingers at the belly button) but had no clue whether I was having contractions or not. I could feel my heart racing in anxiety, but that was as much as I was sure of.

I had two more repeat bouts in the middle of the night, and each time followed the directions in the booklet: empty your bladder, then drink two big glasses of water. I became very well hydrated using this procedure, but no better informed. Finally, a few minutes before my alarm went off, I woke up from a dream in which I was having an orgasm (and do you know how long it has been since that event occurred?! Since before I was even officially pregnant, that's when! My IVF doc said no sex or orgasms during the two-week wait, then during the next ten weeks once I was pregnant, and then my pack of cautious OB's echoed her: no, no sex or orgasms for now, well, maybe sometime after the amnio, better to be safe than sorry, right? Grrrrr ... talk about a long dry spell!).

But as I woke up, I realized that what I was really feeling was not the Big O, but a very odd subterranean rippling of my abdomen. It was pronounced, though not painful, and it completely sent me into panic mode. I had to come in for my in-depth 19w ultrasound that day anyway, so I made an appointment with a doctor to find out when to expect my miscarriage.

But of course my fake Big O was pretty much the last gasp for the mysterious abdominal ripplings. I had one more little episode later that morning, and that was it.

The ultrasound went well, though I didn't get Oscar this time, and neither D nor I were much impressed with the woman who did the u/s, compared to the CPMC tech. She didn't seem to know or care that it's nice if the tech can give a bit of a tour, as in explaining, "This is what I'm doing now...." Also, it was pretty much a repeat of what the CPMC tech had done just the week before. Same measuring of the tiny brains, measuring of the femur, oh, yawn ... except for seeing the beating hearts. That wasn't a yawn. And seeing the little folks squiggling around in there. That part never gets old.

This tech said that the computer said that the babies weighed in at 10 oz and 13 oz. Last week, the CPMC tech said they were 8 oz each. It seemed odd to me that the one could have gained five ounces since just last week, so that was one of the questions I asked the doc when I saw him. He seemed to think the CPMC report had been wrong, since 8 oz was rather light for 18w.

The nice part about seeing the doc was that it was Dr. Empathetic! Who did the abdominal myomectomy for me that made all this happy nonsense possible. I had originally wanted him for my OB, but he ended up taking extended family leave because one of his children was diagnosed with cancer (which just kills me when I think of that -- I can't imagine how horrible that must be). At any rate, he was back in the office, and it was very nice seeing him, not only because he's a terrific doctor who actually listens to you, but you know, I wanted to show off my immensely pregnant belly to him and say thank you in person. He seemed touched by that. I guess it's not every day you see such concrete evidence that your work makes a difference for people.

And he set my mind at rest. I told him the tale of my belly wrigglings (including my fake Big O), and he told me that localized movement of that kind was definitely not a contraction. Contractions are apparently much more global in nature -- you feel them through the whole belly, or the whole lower back, or your whole cooter ... and then just to illustrate, he put one hand on either side of my belly and pushed. I was so startled that I just made kind of a wheezing noise in reply, but he made his point. I think I'll know a contraction now if I feel it!

So the kids are officially awake now. I think maybe the one to the right of my belly button (where all the activity was) perhaps was flipping himself around like a swimmer at the end of the pool, getting ready for the next lap. (Last week his head was up under my ribs; this week he was head-down.) It's an amazing and unsettling feeling, sort of like feeling snakes rustling around under your skin ... and I can't wait to feel it again.

Just a pinch

2006-11-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

This post will be a quickie, since I'm still having little ping-like owies from yesterday, so I think bed is still the best place for me. But I wanted to reassure anyone who tunes in that I am fine, and it looks like the babies are better than fine, and although I'm already bored out of my skull with bedrest, things in general are good.

Dr. Tex was great again, and his staff was quite nice and seemed like they knew what they were doing. And the joy of doing this at the satellite office is that we were not subjected to machine-gun-like noise from ongoing construction. We did an in-depth u/s on both babies beforehand, measuring their little heads and the contents therein, looking at their tiny little innards such as kidneys and hearts and so forth, measuring femurs, and their computer added it all up and spit out an answer: Normal, normal, normal. (Hallelujah!)

Then we did the owie part -- the actual amnios. Perhaps it is summed up best by this exchange:

Me to nurse (grumbling just a bit, after completion of both procedures): Pinch, my ass!

Startled nurse (with adorable Aussie accent): I'm sorry, did you say it pinched your ass?

Me: Um, no, sorry! I just meant that my friends who said that amnio felt like "a pinch" were obviously off their rockers. That hurt like a son-of-a-gun, if you ask me.

Or maybe I'm just a card-carrying whiner. That's possible, too.

But in any case, the deed is done and I am greatly relieved by that. Now it's all over but the waiting for results (8 to 14 days, from the various estimates I heard). Oh, yeah, that and the bedrest. Which I'm back to now. Ciao!

Downtime

2006-11-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the amnio, featuring Dr. Tex. I plan on taking a day or two of mostly-bedrest afterward, so I may or may not make it back here to update this blog in the near term. I am assuming the amnio itself will go okay (after all, we are shelling out the big bucks to Make It So), but I am worried about two things -- one trivial and one not.

The trivial bit is: Will it hurt? I hear that the amnio feels like a "pinch" to most women, but that reminds me of a pediatrician I had when I was little, who would tell me he was going to give me a "mosquito bite" whenever I had to take a shot. That always annoyed the hell out of me. Even when I was four, I knew the difference between a mosquito bite and a damned shot. (Hm, and I still hate patronizing, condescending men! LOL!) Anyway, I just hope it doesn't hurt too much since I'm a wimp about these things.

The untrivial bit is worrying about the results. My intuition tells me that the kids are fine. Now, sometimes my intuition is astoundingly on the money, but there are other times it takes a hike to parts unknown and gets lost out there. So I can't rely on that.

I am -- well, not terrified, but certainly very concerned that one or both of them might have Down syndrome or some other genetic abnormality that would be very difficult to deal with. D and I talked at great length about DS in particular, but also disability in general, and we agree that neither of us want to raise a disabled child. Of course, something could happen during the birth process, such as a shortage of oxygen, or sometime in the future, the kid could walk under a bus and suffer brain damage -- but it just seems to both of us that there is a big difference between coping with problems as they come along, and volunteering for a lifetime of problems. And of course, with modern technology, you don't have to volunteer for that if you don't want to.

But I can't imagine how awful it would be to terminate one of the babies now (or -- horrors!! -- both?). That last ultrasound completely did me in. The babies were facing each other, and hopping and bopping in there -- moving all over the place, and being completely adorable and astounding. They are becoming very real to me. I look at this enormous belly I'm growing, and frankly it just looks (and feels) like I've swallowed a watermelon -- but the ultrasound makes it all real for me. I want these babies. I want these babies. And I want both of them! I have progressed from not being able to imagine my life with the burden of twins, to being quietly tickled and amazed that I -- little old me! -- I managed to win the two-fer-one package! Woo hoo!

There's been an awful lot of praying going on here, and will be for the next couple of weeks, I guess. (We're not doing the 3-day preliminary FISH since that's another $600 or so, and I would want the full report before acting on anything, anyway.)

Oh, boy. I am pretty sure this two week wait will be worse that the original two week wait ever was.

Twofer

2006-11-06T00:08:00.000-08:00

Gentle reader, you’re in luck: we’ve got two topics for tonight. One: why I changed our amniocentesis appointment; and two: why I hate Shakespeare’s heroine Cordelia.

I can boil the amnio question down to a rather succinct answer: More than once, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night worrying about this thing, and that is very unlike me. Once I’m asleep (which, granted, can take a while), that’s it for the night. Aside from taking potty breaks (especially these days), it more or less takes a nuclear blast to get me up before the alarm goes off.

But why was I worrying about it so much? We had booked a doctor (call her Dr. X) through our HMO to do the procedure. I had talked about this doc with the HMO genetics department, and they told me she had done 2500 procedures since 1991. Granted, that sounds pretty good, but they didn’t have a yearly breakdown. For all I knew, she had done only 25 of them in the last year. (Unlikely, but who knew?) Also, when I talked with Dr. Blinky about this particular doctor, he didn’t seem to know much about her or her work. Since there are only three doctors in our HMO local area who do amnios, I would think he would know something about her if she had much of a reputation.

Finally, the week before the amnio was to be done, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I fired off an email to Dr. Enterprise (our IVF doctor, who recommended Dr. Tex for our reduction). I was expecting her to say, oh, it’s fine, I know Dr. X and she does good work, don’t worry. Instead I received the following (slightly redacted for names):

I recommend you have your amnio with Dr. Tex just to be sure. He knows what to look for after the reduction and has a lot of experience. None of the (HMO) doctors, especially Dr. X have experience with patients who have had reductions. I think it is well worth the extra money to have a doctor like him. He’s a vanishing species.

Frankly, you have to have bigger cojones than I do to buck Dr. Enterprise's advice. So now we are booked with Dr. Tex to do the amnio on this coming Wednesday. It was funny, actually -- as soon as we made the decision to do it, and I called CPMC and got an appointment (which luckily will be at a satellite office in the town we live in, rather than having to go all the way to San Francisco), I felt as if a weight had been lifted from me. Literally, it was as if I had been carrying a heavy object on my shoulders, and it had rolled right off. It was the most extraordinary feeling.

Of course, that was immediately followed by my worrying about how to pay for it! For those who wonder about such things, the procedure plus the lab work is going to run us about $1800. Ouch. We are not poor. . . but after all these expenses, I’m starting to feel like it! But at least I’m sleeping through the night again. (Except for the aforementioned potty breaks.)

And now for the luckless Cordelia.

One of my favorite writers ever is the science fiction and fantasy author Lois McMaster Bujold. I discovered her works shortly before D and I married, and I’ve been snapping up her works as they come out ever since. Her most brilliant series is the Vorkosigan family saga, which begins with a rather unusual late-in-life romance between Aral Vorkosigan and Cordelia Naismith, in the book SHARDS OF HONOR (also included in the omnibus volume, CORDELIA’S HONOR). The novel is written from Cordelia’s POV, and she is an incredible kick-ass character: smart, wise, witty, and very brave. (And she only gets better in subsequent books in the series.) If you like character-driven SF, and especially if you like non-stupid romance, I urge you to check out this book.

After a few years of my waxing ecstatic over Bujold’s work, my darling husband wanted to see what I was so excited about. I gave him SHARDS OF HONOR. He read it in short order, and afterward said that if he ever had a daughter, he would want to name her Cordelia. High praise indeed! And such was the impression that the book made on him, he has kept this notion ever since.

There’s just one hitch.

I really, really dislike the name Cordelia.

This is rooted mostly in my antipathy toward Shakespeare’s play, “King Lear.” Mind you, I’m very keen on some Shakespeare. “Cymbeline,” a very dark comedy, is one of my favorite plays ever (and it also has the advantage of a kick-ass heroine in his Imogen -- but then, Imogen is a fairly awful name too). “Hamlet” is a play for the ages. “Romeo and Juliet,” while a trifle nonsensical, has sublime language and some unforgettable scenes and characters.

But I’ve never liked Lear, either the play or the character. King Lear starts the play half-potty, as far as I can tell (today I think he’d be diagnosed as well on his way to senile dementia), and doesn’t become a sympathetic character until the last ten minutes of the play. Of his three daughters, the conventional wisdom is that two of them, Regan and Goneril, are awful, conniving bitches, and his youngest daughter Cordelia is an angel and the incarnation of the word honor. Well, I’ll agree that I wouldn’t care to meet either Regan or Goneril in a dark alley, but as for Cordelia, she’s not a heroine; she’s a passive, cowering simp. She never does anything throughout the entire play, except for her initial action of refusing to suck up to her dad (which in itself is a passive, negative action, not a positive one). And even that is nonsensical. She’s supposedly his favorite daughter, which means that she should know him like the back of her hand, and be used to dealing with him. So what does she do when he’s acting like an idiot? Instead of talking him down, or gently showing him what an imbecile he’s being and getting him to see the humor of his own ridiculousness (techniques we see used by Portia in “The Merchant of Venice”), Cordelia flies the metaphorical red flag right in the face of the enraged bull.

Now, in my opinion, this is old Billy Shakes busy at work setting up his plot. He’s not particularly worrying about whether the characters totally make sense at this point. He’s just setting up discord between his characters, to hang the rest of the play on. (He does the same thing in Hamlet – sacrificing common sense for showmanship – but that’s such an amazing play in so many other ways that I’ll forgive him just about anything for that one play.) Also, I believe Cordelia is meant to be Honor incarnate, which means she doesn’t have to be a real person or an interesting character -- she is more of a place-marker for the idea of Honor and what one should be willing to sacrifice to keep it.

But I just don’t like her. And I don’t like the name, either. There is no good diminutive for Cordelia. Delia? Sounds like a hooker from the 1940’s. (Please, if your mother is named Delia, I’m not insulting her. I’m just saying what the name sounds like to me.) And Cordie? Oh, ick. Okay. . . then how about Cord? Of what, wood? So you see, you’re stuck with a three-syllable name at all times. And that seems both unwieldy and pretentious to me.

An obvious solution would be to use Cordelia as a middle name. However, there is a six-generation tradition in my family of giving the first-born daughter the middle name “Louise.” I am the sixth Louise in a row, and I really want to make it seven (if we are even having a daughter, which is in doubt, but my dear darling stubborn husband has also decided he doesn’t want to know the genders of the babies).

So I offered him a compromise last night. If we have two daughters, the first gets the middle name Louise and the second gets the middle name Cordelia. He was okay with that, but asked, what if we have one daughter?

Well, it’s not euphonious, but I suggested that we saddle the child with two middle names: Louise and Cordelia. (This poor kid is going to hate us!) The downside to that, of course, is that having two middle names is ridiculously unwieldy and pretentious as well. Needless to say, D. thought that was a crappy idea. (Honestly, I think it’s a crappy idea too, but it STARTS with the crappy idea of being too attached to the name Cordelia!)

D. then offered what seemed to him a brilliant solution: what about naming a girl Louise Cordelia?

Well, that is a solution of sorts … except that I am attached to the name Louise not because I find it particularly attractive, but because it is part of my family history. I know I’d start calling her “Lou,” which to me is redolent of some fat guy chewing a cigar. Not the image I see when I think of my daughter-to-be.

We left it at that for the moment, but I’m not imagining for a moment that this is over yet. D. was clearly marshalling his forces for another round.

I swear, I’m starting to hope we have two sons.

A Day Without Drama

2006-10-30T19:57:00.000-08:00

...just wouldn’t be a day in the Fauxvert household!

My apologies to my readers for not catching this blog up sooner. It seems like the last few days have been one thing after another. I’ll hit the highlights here.

To begin with, the diabetes issue, while proving to be a royal pain in the ass, has luckily been no worse than that. My fear that my fingers would turn to chopped sirloin from the testing was unfounded, thank goodness. It turns out that the testing is actually fairly easy (though getting the timing right is a pain). There is a little pen device (very similar to a Follistim pen) that holds a teensy little disposable blade (which is so tiny, in fact, that it resembles a needle, and feels like a needle pricking your finger -- which I’ve done a million times while sewing). There is also a little electronic device that reads disposable test strips and tells you what your blood sugar is. You load the pen up with the disposable blade (called a “lancet”), stick it against the side of your finger (I alternate hands so that both sides get a chance to heal), and press a button. It sticks your finger, you say, “Ouchdammit,” then squeeze the finger a little to get a nice little bead of blood, and apply it to the test strip. It reads it, tells you that your blood sugar is acceptable, and thus confirms that you are being a good and responsible citizen and mommy-to-be by eating the most boring diet in the universe and thereby enabling your future children to be born with the regulation single head each, rather than two. (You can see my fetching little companion immediately below:)

Actually, the diet is not so bad. I had panicked that I wasn’t going to gain any weight on the diet, but I have gained a pound in the last couple of weeks, so I’m doing okay there. (Unsweetened peanut butter is okay, so I’ve been eating lots of that!) The nutritionist encouraged me to experiment with my diet (within reason) to see exactly what I can eat and what I can’t. What seems to be on the “no way Jose” list is anything with refined sugar. My body is just not set up to handle ice cream, pie, cookies, or anything similarly sweet at the moment. Fruit juice is also out, since it has a ton of sugar in it. I am allowed to have artificial sweeteners, but I am avoiding them on principle for the duration of the pregnancy. So the only “sweets” I am having are a couple of pieces of fruit each day. (Interestingly, my body also set up a fuss about unsweetened quick-cook oatmeal, which is theoretically on the okay list.)

I’m also not supposed to eat milk products in the morning, since for some reason, many diabetics have difficulty digesting milk early in the day. (I think I could challenge this and get away with it, but I am also supposed to take my prenatal vitamin and iron supplement with no calcium products, so I take my vitamins at breakfast.) I am also supposed to avoid trans-fat types of things, though olive oil is just peachy. (Not literally, no. Peachy olive oil would be fairly disgusting, don’t you think?)

This has resulted in a daily breakfast of two eggs (either fried or boiled) and two slices of whole wheat toast (one decorated with the regulation one teaspoon of butter, the other with a tablespoon of peanut butter). This is not a bad breakfast in and of itself (and our eldest cat -- 17 in September -- has taken to begging for bits of toast with butter, since he is a fiend for any kind of milk product such as cheese or butter). But I’ve been eating this breakfast for close to two weeks now, and it is getting old, old, ooooooold. It’s like the Monty Python skit: “Spam and eggs, eggs and eggs, Spam and Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam...” (Although it would be my guess that Spam has too much sugar to be included in the diet.)

However, if I pick the menu carefully, I am able to tolerate some restaurant food. For instance, yesterday I had some salad and an absolutely delicious slice of deep-dish cheese pizza at Zachary’s in Berkeley, and my blood sugar came out at a very respectable 123 (I’m supposed to stay below 140). So I read the papers during breakfast and try to ignore what I’m eating (except for when the cat nudges my hand for his fair share), and concentrate on enjoying my restaurant outings as much as possible.

The timing, as I said, is the real pain. I test my blood four times a day: a fasting test, first thing in the morning; and then after breakfast, lunch and dinner, exactly one hour after each meal. In between the meal itself and the test, I’m supposed to work in a fifteen-minute walk. It was explained to me that exercise makes your body bypass the need for insulin by getting the blood sugar to go directly into the cells that need it, instead of lounging around in your blood and causing problems. And I do see a few points’ difference between when I exercise and when I don’t.

However, since these days I always feel like I’ve chowed down on the Hindenburg right after meals, there are times when that little walk is sheer torture. I end up with a bellyache and thus have to go lie down for some indeterminate time, and this is really adding to one of my major problems these days: I’m getting NOTHING done. Between thinking about what to eat, cooking it, eating it, getting in the prescribed exercise and then the blood test, then worrying about it all again in an hour and a half when it’s time for my between-meals snack, plus the general malaise that comes with carrying around twins that apparently are coming ready-equipped with their own sets of free-weights, I am a totally useless individual these days. (Hah, some would say, “What else is new?” but I’ll pretend to ignore that.)

But the babies are growing, and with any luck they’re a pair of healthy little buggers in there. I’m going to guess that’s worth a certain amount of inconvenience.

A Mixed Bag

2006-10-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

I had thought this post would be mostly Good Things -- but then Monday rolled around (as it usually does, darn it) with its truckload of discontent. But first things first.

On Friday, I met with a new female doc at my HMO, whom I think I will call Dr. Girlish. Not “girlish” in a bad way, but she had a bubbly personality, and she was also rather slight and girlish in her personal appearance. She also seemed highly competent and very friendly – a nice combination.

Dr. Girlish did a quick manual exam of my cervix and pronounced it just fine, though to be certain, she wanted to get an ultrasound of it. I pointed out that I was heading down to Radiology for an ultrasound next, so couldn’t we combine them? Great idea, she said, and after deciding she wasn’t quite sure how to get that into the HMO computer system (since she is new there), she wrote me a little note to give to the u/s tech. I felt like I was back in grade school, though in a good way. I almost expected the note to have a gold star on it! (I love it when docs make me feel taken care of, as opposed to feeling that I’m being bossed around. I know there’s a fine line there, but Dr. Girlish seemed to know where that line was located.) Dr. Girlish also knows Dr. Enterprise, so we had a little gossip (a very little) about her, and that was kind of fun.

I had sat there chugging the required 16 oz of bottled water throughout my chat with Dr. G, so I was primed for the u/s. Again, I got lucky, since Oscar turned out to be my tech for this u/s. (Oscar not being his real name – but he introduced himself by another first name which has the same ambience. So Oscar he is.) I had actually chatted with Oscar at length on the phone, several weeks back when I scheduled my 19w Level II ultrasound, and I had some notion at that point that it might replace the amniocentesis. On the phone, he had explained in depth what they look for with the 19w u/s, and also explained that amnio is usually done before that, so although it is possible to flip the scheduling around and do the Level II first, that’s not the usual way to go about it. (And later, after our talk with Dr. Tex following the reduction, D and I decided we wanted the amnio anyway.)

In any case, I felt as though I knew Oscar already. He was very professional, very friendly, and took time to explain what we were looking at and what he was measuring on the screen. Also, he was able to get a good image of the cervix with the belly ultrasound, so I didn’t have to put up with any wanding nonsense. (The cervix was just perfect, I was told: nice and long and closed like it should be.)

But best of all, Oscar let me look at the babies! All the ultrasounds I’ve had to this point have been rather no-nonsense. There was a lot to examine and only so much time to do it, so the techs would zero in on their target, freeze it and snap the photo, then move on. My looks at the babies had been pretty brief. But Oscar actually sat there and let me watch them, for maybe a minute or so each, and it was an astounding experience. They move! They’re really alive and -- literally -- kicking in there! As well as yawning, stretching their little backs like tiny kittens, even waving at their misty-eyed Mommy. There was something about their movements that suddenly made it incredibly real. I suppose this seems obvious to the reader (what did I think I had in there, My Little Pony?), but so often, the whole thing has seemed academic. I have been going on the premise that there are potential children in there, as opposed to the real belief. But now -- now I know.

And what I found out about myself is that I have been one unhappy camper lately, because the rush of incredible happiness was like taking heroin. I didn’t realize how depressed I had been until suddenly I was not. I felt pounds and years lighter. As I left the appointment, I could not stop smiling. I avoided meeting the eyes of other people in the parking lot because I could feel myself grinning like a dolphin, and I thought I might startle them. (Dolphins always have that goofy little grin, don’t they? Makes you wonder what they know that we don’t.)

I felt so good that I just couldn’t go straight home, so I went ... shopping! No, actually, I did very little shopping, but I did get my hair trimmed (much needed) and I bought a lovely little cherry-red roll-brim hat knitted out of Polartec. No cold noggin for me this year!

The high persisted for a while, then wore off a bit, as highs have a way of doing. (Or so I am told. Actually, I am one of the few people in my generation who never did any illicit drugs at all, ever.) But I also had a lovely time on Sunday. Terry Pratchett, a very well-known author in the UK (I believe he has sold something on the order of 45 million volumes of fiction) was in town on his latest book tour, and a local store was hosting a signing. My husband and I once had the privilege, at a science fiction convention, of taking Mr. Pratchett to lunch. And I say the privilege, because I am just bonkers about his fiction. He uses his comic fantasy to make very salient points about the world we really live in, and I love the fact that he can simultaneously make me laugh until my tummy hurts, and also make me think hard about real issues. I also love the fact that he is a disciplined wordsmith, and instead of getting lazy and churning out any old thing because he knows he can sell it no matter what, he obviously works hard at making each new book better than the last. (A great book to start with is Pratchett’s collaboration with Neil Gaiman, titled GOOD OMENS. His latest work, the third of a very good series, is called WINTERSMITH.)

So we got to hear him speak, and stood in line to have our books signed, and while I suppose this is a pleasure that only the true bibliophile can understand, it was indeed a pleasure. And when we reminded him, he even remembered our meeting him and taking him to lunch, which I find rather remarkable since that was several years ago.

So Sunday was good.

But Sunday night was not good. D and I ended up getting into a totally ridiculous fight over ridiculous things, and I said things to him that I’ve never said before and should never have said then. Granted, his acting like a jerk was what set me off. But my reaction far outstripped his jerkiness. It was like reacting to a slingshot with the A-bomb. And while I can blame some of this on the Raging Pregnancy Hormones of Death, I have to admit that mostly it was plain old orneriness.

But this morning was worse. D was up and gone to work before I rolled out of bed, and he left a terse and angry note on the kitchen table which made me realize how deeply I had hurt his feelings. And the more I thought about it, the worse I felt. We have been married for 15 years, and while he occasionally has a Male Moment, mostly he has been nothing but kind and loving. Yesterday was a good example. The book signing was in a part of town I wasn’t familiar with, and I didn’t want to go by myself. I didn’t feel very good yesterday, and I was afraid there would be a lot of standing around (difficult for me at this point, since I get worn out), and basically I just didn’t want to go by myself. But D had other things to do, and while he enjoys Pratchett’s fiction, he’s not the fanatic I am. But because I whined and complained and cajoled, he went, just to make me happy.

Just to make me happy.

As I sat there, feeling about the size of a small toad, the phone rang. I hoped it was D, but it was a nurse from my HMO, letting me know –- guess what! I flunked the three-hour blood glucose test too! I have gestational diabetes! Yippee! Sigh ... as if I needed anything to depress me further. She let me know that I would need to consult with their nutritionist about changing my diet, and also I would be learning from one of their nurses how to check my blood levels, FOUR times a day. With one of those ouchy things you stick in your fingers. Did I mention yet that I am NOT looking forward to this? Needles are a walk in the park compared with what is essentially a glorified paper cut. I hate, loathe and despise paper cuts. Nothing hurts worse, except maybe a canker sore on your lip.

These freakin’ kids had better get into Radcliffe. Or maybe Harvard. On scholarship. Wait, make that full scholarship.

I’m just sayin’.

As for me, the minute I got off the phone I burst into tears. The whole thing was too much. First the wretched knowledge of my own transgression, and now this. And it’s not just the sticking my fingers thing either, but the prospect of trying to figure out an entirely different way of eating. All day today, I would go to eat something (even something completely innocuous, like cottage cheese) and remember, oh, I’m not supposed to have that. Frankly, I just don’t see how a diabetic diet is viable for pregnancy, especially with twins. How am I supposed to gain enough weight for them, when a diabetic diet (as I understand it at this point) is essentially the South Beach Diet?

I hope that all will be revealed tomorrow, with the snippy little nutritionist I had before. Guess we’ll see about that.

After bursting into tears, I headed to the computer and emailed an abject apology to my honey. (Will I still be able to type when my fingers look like hamburger?) And lo, a little while later, he called, and all was forgiven.

And once I stopped crying, I got on Am*zon and found a couple of books on managing gestational diabetes. So those will be here in a few days too. And also, gestational diabetes is generally not a permanent condition, and resolves by a few weeks after birth. So we’re not looking at something permanent here. Well, probably.

So things appear to be straightening out, as much as possible.

But my goodness, it’s been twisty around here lately.

Where to begin?

2006-10-13T19:58:00.000-07:00

I have to apologize (once again) for not updating this in a more timely fashion, but I have spent this week either lounging about the house, hoping I wouldn't bleed any more, or else rushing off to one darned HMO appointment after another. Including the infamous "phantom appointment," which was by far the most annoying of the lot.

On Tuesday, I was supposed to go in for an ultrasound in the Medical Imaging department (ordered for me by my female doc on Friday when she had trouble finding the second twin), but I woke up that morning and toddled off to the john, as usual, only to discover a disconcerting amount of blood. Of course, any blood disconcerts me these days. In point of fact, there was probably less than a teaspoon there, but then, it was bright red. So I called and re-scheduled the appointment for Thursday at 11:20, and took myself back to bed for the morning. After three hours of reading the paper and being bored, I got back up, and voila! no more blood. Good enough, I decided. (I did have just a tiny bit more bleeding late that same evening, but it was so little that it hardly seemed worth mentioning.)

That day, I also got a phone call from the HMO informing me I had flunked my one-hour blood glucose test. (What I get for not studying, I guess!) The upper limit was supposed to be 139, and mine came in at 156. So I was slated for the three-hour version, which involves fasting overnight, having a blood draw, then drinking the Orange Drink of Doom (ODOD) and having blood draws at one, two, and three hours. (Are you counting? That's four sticks in my vulnerable little arms.) You're also not allowed to leave the premises, since excess activity might invalidate the numbers. Joy, joy. I decided I'd do that on Thursday, and just get it and the ultrasound out of the way all at once.

In between, I sulked. Reading up on gestational diabetes left me certain I'll be forced to cut out most of the foods I think of as "recreational." No more sweets -- ice cream, vanilla malts (waaaaah!), that lovely dense and gooey lemon bread from Trader Joe's, Mentos, warm blackberry pie a la mode -- and perhaps worst of all, fruit. I love fruit. I have been popping green grapes during this pregnancy like they were about to be discontinued. Not to mention the beautiful golden pears from our pear tree. And what about our yummy cherry tomatoes?! Oh, no! They're loaded with sugar, and here in northern California, our bushes are still producing in abundance. Waaaah, indeed.

On Wednesday, I made a tactical error and called Nurse Completely Useless (you see she's been promoted) to ask about the bleeding. The female doc on Friday had said to "let them know" if I had any bleeding or pain, so I was following instructions. Nurse Useless was out, so I left a message, but we connected by cell phone on Thursday morning, while I was lounging around in the lobby of the HMO during my three-hour glucose test.

The worst thing about the glucose test was, frankly, getting up early enough to shoehorn it in before my 11:20 u/s. But I managed that feat, then submitted my arm for puncturing and manfully drank the ODOD. I was trying find a comfortable position on my chair, and also trying to get interested in Robert Penn Warren's ALL THE KING'S MEN (which is slow going in the first chapter), when Nurse Useless called. I told her what the doc had said about reporting bleeding. Useless's interpretation of that was that if I had bleeding, I should call in and make an appointment for that day, and come in as soon as possible.

Meekly, I mentioned that that Dr. Enterprise had told me that the best thing to do about minor bleeding was to get horizontal immediately, and of course monitor it to see if it continues. I pointed out that hopping in the car and running up to the HMO (not a short trip since we're on the other side of town) was not exactly getting horizontal.

If Nurse Useless blogs somewhere, she has now labeled me as "Patient Annoys the Crap Out of Me." She immediately got testy, and wanted to know why I had called her if I knew better than her? Of course, I had called because she told me to call if I had any questions, way back when we first met. (I'll bet she's rueing that now!) But I began wondering the same thing, really -- why I bother to call this woman. I think I'll be making most of my own appointments from now on, and calling someone else for advice.

In any case, the three hours of my test went by with no further interruption, and ALL THE KING'S MEN turns out to be a pretty good yarn. It's framed as a story of Southern politics in the 1930's, but it's actually a meditation on what it means to be a person. (That sounds wretched, doesn't it? But the first-person narrator, a smart-ass who has Failed to Live Up to Expectations, is very interesting.) At 10:20, I dutifully chugged my 16 oz of water, and at 11:20, freed at last from the clutches of the glucose test, I waddled over to Medical Imaging for the u/s.

They had no record of an appointment for me on that day.

They did have an appointment for me on the previous day, Wednesday, at the same time, and then my 19w u/s on Nov. 13. But nothing for Thursday.

Let me remind you that although I had just power-snarfed a package of peanut butter crackers, I had had nothing else in my belly since the night before but a fizzy orange drink and a lot of water. And I'm a cranky preggo lady. I was loaded for bear.

The very young lady at the desk (with a stud! in! her! lip! Ouch!) was apologetic but insistant: no, I didn't have an appointment. And I had missed the one the day before, she pointed out reproachfully. I knew beyond a certainty that I had never made one for Wednesday, but finally allowed as how -- possibly -- I had not made the one I thought for Thursday. Maybe. I didn't have my notes with me, so I finally chalked it all up to placenta brain and made another appointment for the following day (grrrrr!).

As a reward for not going postal on the young lady with a stud, I stopped on the way home for a Whopper with cheese, and placated the voice in my head telling me that white bread isn't good for glucose levels by taking the top bun off and eating the Whopper open-face (still very tasty!). At home, I had barely walked through the door when the phone rang. It was the young lady with a stud, telling me she had made an appointment for me for the u/s for that afternoon at one o'clock and could I please come back in? (It was by then 12:30.)

And then I did explode. NO!! NO, I could NOT turn right around and come back up there for an ultrasound that I should have had this morning, ESPECIALLY when I had already made an appointment for the next day! (I never did find out what in her little pea-brain made her think this was a good idea.) I hung up on her and discovered that she had left ten calls and hang-ups on my answering machine, trying to get me to come back up there that day. I still have no idea what that was all about. But I was further incensed when I looked up my notes and found, written very neatly, my booked appointment for Thursday, Oct. 12 at 11:20. Just as I had told them. And I believe myself rather than them, since I had not written just "Thursday," nor just "Oct. 12," but both of them together, something I rarely do unless someone else reads it off to me that way.

Aargh.

Exhausted, I decided to take a nap -- and was awakened twice by phone calls from various departments of the HMO. After giving up on the nap as a bad job, I decided to try and clarify the whole bleeding thing (as in, what I'm supposed to do if I start again) by calling the HMO's Advice Line. The RN there told me that after the first trimester, protocol for bleeding of any kind was to see a doctor. Well, I said naively, I'm going to have an ultrasound tomorrow so that should take care of that, right?

Hah.

A little while later, I got yet another call from the HMO -- this from Nurse C, who I've dealt with before. Nurse C is actually quite nice, has a good head on her shoulders, and has a slightly jaundiced view of her employer (which I've come to appreciate more and more lately). The Advice Line nurse had apparently ratted me out to her, and she was tasked with trying to get me in to see a doctor. Protocol, she said, called for me to see one of the so-called "high risk" doctors, but Dr. Blinky wasn't available. So she tried to pawn off one of the other high risk doctors on me-- yes, a male whom I didn't know. (As you may recall if you've read my other posts, I have an extreme aversion to hopping up on the table and flashing my cooter for male doctors that I'm not well acquainted with.)

I just lost it. I had had ALL I WANTED of my HMO by that time in the day. And that was the last straw. I told her so in no uncertain terms, and to Nurse C's credit, she handled it very diplomatically. She finally got me to agree to see a female doctor (one I hadn't seen before, but at least not a male), and she agreed with me that it was totally ridiculous that there isn't one female doctor on their high risk team. She also pointed out that Dr. Blinky has a lot to say about who gets hired around there, so if I felt like putting a flea in his ear about that, she wouldn't try and stop me.

Darn it. I hate it when people are quiet and reasonable at me. It's like fighting Play Doh. We left it at that -- I thought -- except that half an hour later, who else should call, but Dr. Blinky himself?

I thought he was going to give me grief, but we actually had quite a good conversation. We discussed my aversion to flashing the old cooter for strange males (and no, I didn't put it quite like that), and he went above and beyond what I expected by saying that as far as he was concerned, there was no reason in the world why I couldn't have the female doc that I saw on Friday as my primary OB, with him on the sidelines to consult as necessary. I told him that Nurse Useless had said I couldn't have her, since she was part-time. He told me that "part time" is a relative thing when it comes to OB's. He said that your average full-time OB puts in 80 hours a week, and the average "part time" OB puts in 50 hours a week.

I have to say, the man is good. I went from spitting nails to actually having sympathy for Dr. Blinky and Co. I mean, after all, who would want to be an OB these days? Hours like that, patients who want to take your head off, or sue you for the least little thing, and who needs the grief?

We left it at that ... and I'm going to leave it at that for tonight, since I have just started spotting a tiny bit, so it's probably time to toodle off to bed. As for what happened today: It was much better all around, and I found out that the babies are doing just fine. (Yayyyyy!!!) More on that tomorrow.

Sturm und Drang

2006-10-08T22:35:00.000-07:00

... or Storm and Stress ... and I am darned tired of them. (Are you proud of me? I said "darned," not "fucking." Yay for me. I am trying to cut down on and eventually stop cursing altogether, since I don't want to fuck up the kidlets. I mean screw them up. Mess them up? Hm, I see this is going to be a long process.)

I didn't blog this weekend because (A) I felt rotten -- this pregnancy crap is for the birds; and (B) I'm just so tired of my own drama. I wanted to post something cheerful but it seemed inappropriate, at least until we get past the amnio on Oct. 23. Also, really, I couldn't think of anything cheerful.

But I'll go over my Friday appointments briefly. I toodled up the road to my HMO with the expectation that I'd be there a while, and I wasn't wrong. At 9:15 I saw Dr. S, one of the female docs my IVF doc had recommended (that Nurse Barely Helpful wouldn't let me have because Dr. S. works part time), and she was just lovely. I immediately preferred her to Dr. Blinky. I just felt that she really listened. Also, she put me on extra iron and calcium (which Dr. Blinky hadn't said a word about), and when her ultrasound machine acted up, signed me up for an ultrasound next week in Radiology (where they presumably have the good machines). And I could chat with Dr. S while clad in nothing but a blue paper gown and feel perfectly comfortable. I am going to have to find out if it's too late to switch.

Dr. S. also ordered a blood glucose test (to be taken while I was waiting anyway for my next appointment), and that was an interesting experience. (She said they like to do one early in pregnancy for women carrying twins, as well as the one they do later). I went to the lab she told me to, found a "closed" sign on it, went to the lab in the East building and found a line of about 15 people waiting. So then I waddled off to the hospital lab, found no line and got right in. They gave me the famous orange drink, which I had to chug to get it down in time to complete the whole test before my next appointment. The orange drink really wasn't bad at all, though my tummy told me it was a bit acidic. When they took the blood an hour later, it hurt like the dickens, for some reason. That happened to me the last time I had blood drawn, too. Must have a nerve there.

Then I rushed back to the West building (where I had started out) for my appointment with the nutritionist, found she was running late, and went over to the pharmacy to pick up a Rx for clindomycin gel for my preggo acne. Of course I went to the wrong pharmacy and had to go to a different one. More up and down halls, up and down stairs ... this all sounds easy, but I have turned into a short-winded chubby preggo lady, and I was getting very tired by that time. Why does my HMO apparently have no elevators?

Finally made it to my appointment with the nutritionist. Fifteen years younger than me and extremely sure of herself. She gave me some tips on diet that should prove useful, and admonished me to take my iron supplements well away from my calcium and dairy. This is easier said than done since I am also basically supposed to be eating six meals a day. She also said I had already gained more than I should have at this point, and I just don't believe that. I am 13 weeks and have gained 13 pounds, and what's wrong with that? If you look at me, I have not gained any weight anywhere on my body except for my belly and boobs. My cheekbones even look hollow.

I have been going by Dr. Barbara Luke's book, WHEN YOU'RE EXPECTING TWINS, TRIPLETS, OR QUADS, who advocates gaining a pound a week if you're carrying twins. She also advocates gaining the weight early, since in your final trimester (well, what there is of it, since you're also likely to drop 'em early) you are apt to have your stomach all squoze up by the passengers riding in your belly, and thus not be able to eat that much. Since I have the hiatal hernia, I am pretty sure that will be true in my case. At any rate, the question is, do I believe this 20-something nutritionist who is not known for anything in particular in her field, or do I take the advice of a nutritionist who for six years ran the Multiples clinic at the University of Michigan? I would far rather have to take off an extra 10 or 15 pounds than have low birth weight babies, and think that it was because I didn't feed them enough.

I eventually escaped the HMO, dropped by Burger King for a Whopper with cheese (33 mg protein, woo hoo!), and did a little grocery shopping afterward. I got home about 3, and was bushed. I mean, absolutely whacked. I could hardly put one foot in front of another. I fell into bed about 3:30, and didn't wake up until D. came and got me at 6:30, looking for his dinner. (Well, he claims he would have fixed dinner had I but asked. I will be testing that theory soon.)

But even though I got myself awake enough to make some spaghetti, I was still exhausted. I really didn't recover until the next day. And that is what I've noticed lately -- I just have no stamina. Anything exhausts me.

I guess that's gestation for you.

Doctor Central

2006-10-04T20:54:00.000-07:00

First, thank you all SO MUCH for your very kind and supportive posts. I can't tell you what they have meant to me. We have kept the whole reduction thing very close to our vest in real life (not wanting the twins to hear about it from someone else down the line), so the support I have received from my online friends has been very precious to me. Thank you!!!

Now for all the news that fits:

This week is Doctor Central for me. I have (or have had) appointments on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Monday I saw my new OB, mostly to chat, and also saw a social worker (Nurse Hardly Useful conned me into that one). Today I had a followup ultrasound from CPMC, at their satellite office here in town, and on Friday I will see a female OB/Gyn for a Pap smear, breast exam, and another ultrasound. Oh, and I also have an appointment with a nutritionist on Friday.

Joy, joy, joy .... I really am not keen on going to the doctor at any time, so this cluster of appointments has not been my idea of a good time. But thanks to the Phobease class I took a couple of years ago, I can get through them all without major upsets. (I am happy to say that Howie Liebgold changed my life! :)

The followup ultrasound today went smoothly, although the events leading up to it were a trifle bumpy. Today dawned a bit rainy and cool (the start of our "rainy season" here, and I'm just as glad to see it arrive, though it means the end of my hair holding a curl until next spring). I slept in late, then had to rush around to get ready in time, of course. I grabbed the envelope from CPMC that had the instructions on how to get there -- and discovered it was a different envelope altogether from a different organization, so where the hell was the CPMC envelope? I still haven't solved that mystery. But some of my brain cells must have been working at some point this last week, since I had taken the time to scribble the address on my calendar, so I was able to use Yahoo! maps to find it.

Amazingly enough (my friends sometimes call me "the late Mrs. Fauxvert"), I arrived for my appointment 15 minutes early. This made me feel pleasantly virtuous. I found a parking spot about 150 feet from the office, gathered my halo of virtue together, walked over -- and found that the door was locked. Eh? What gives? I banged on the door. No go. Banged again. Obviously no one there. Apparently they had all left for a leisurely lunch.

All my virtue evaporated in a hail of very naughty language. The one time in my life I'm early, and there's no one there to appreciate it? What the fuck?! My bulging belly had already started to complain, and there was nowhere to sit. I tried leaning against a stair railing and found I was getting misted on. I finally gave up and waddled back to the van.

When I came back about ten minutes later, I found a small crowd, everyone with the same question -- where the hell was the office staff? We all had a nice little venomous chat about that, and at a couple of minutes after the hour, someone finally arrived to open the door. I just hope CPMC calls me again to ask me if I'm satisfied with their customer service. Hah!

The actual ultrasound was uneventful (though fascinating), compared with the little drama before it. However, I found it unnerving to see the two reduced fetuses still sitting there -- though of course, I had known in advance that would be the case. It was still very odd and sad. Two little Banquo's ghosts, curled up in there. Not pleasant.

However, I am relieved and pleased to report that the other two (C and D, as they were labeled) are still in place, moving around, hearts beating properly (both of them at 153 bpm), and on target for growth. The tech said they were about 3 inches long each -- about the size of a newborn kitten, I judge. They were both obligingly turned toward the wand (or whatever you call the ultrasound thingy, the one they rub all over your belly), and so we got very good photos of their little faces. This both pleased me, and terrified me. The pleased part is obvious, I think. The terrified part comes from not knowing what the amnio will tell us (now scheduled for October 23). What if it tells of dire things? How would I ever have the courage to terminate one, having seen its little face? But how would I have the courage to face taking care of a severely handicapped child? I am not known for my Mother Teresa-like patience, or an overabundance of self-abnegation. I could take care of a handicapped child if forced into it -- but I know I would be resentful and angry, maybe for a lifetime.

I am praying a lot, these days.

On a much lighter note, yesterday I received a catalog from J.Jill, a clothier I've never paid any attention to before. But I flipped through the catalog and discovered many very pretty things -- most of them made for skinnier people than me, at the moment. But amongst the many skinny-people things, I found a unique jacket that looked like it had been made for an exceptionally stylish preggo lady. Among its other virtues, it has an inverted pleat in back that adds a good extra six inches of material. (The web site doesn't show the jacket's back, though the catalog does.) After getting done with the ultrasound appointment, I tracked the coveted jacket to its lair (the local J.Jill store), tried it on in the vicuna color, and saw that it was good. Getting carried away, I also bought a verrrrry cuddly-feeling berry colored zip-front sweater that was on sale. Whee! Perhaps it is possible after all to be a pregnant beached whale and not be a complete fashion victim. One can hope.

Just to skim lightly over my Monday appointments, my new OB seems pretty knowledgeable, and a nice guy. He had, however, a very odd tic -- or something. From the moment he walked in, he was blinking quite a bit, and when he was going on at length about the plan for tracking my pregnancy (in brief, I will be seeing him more and more often as the pregnancy wears on), he would close his eyes as he talked. I have no idea if he had just sprayed alcohol in his eyes and had to wash them out, if the light was hurting them, or if it was some sort of physical or psychological tic. But for the nonce, he will be known as Dr. Blinky.

The social worker was a pleasant surprise. Judging from the posters on her office walls, my HMO is on a crusade to make sure that no slightest bit of domestic disturbance goes untracked (thus, I think, Nurse Less Than Helpful's insistence that I see the social worker). The SW and I had a nice little chat, and when she asked what my major concern was at the moment, I told her that basically, I'm clueless about how to take care of babies. I have changed exactly one diaper in my life, and that's the sum total of my interaction with babies so far. She obligingly gave me about a dozen publications from various groups around town that apparently are slavering for the chance to teach me exactly how one diapers, etc. After we get over this hurdle of the amnio, I actually plan to sign up for some of the classes.

I realize I've left out the new chapter of the Prodigal Cat that got added to this week, but that will have to wait a bit (and I might have more to add in a day or two, anyway). I tell you, the worst thing about pregnancy is that it is DAMNED TIRING. I have been sitting here doing nothing but type and I'm ready to fall over.

More soon.

A long, long day

2006-09-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

Sorry for this hiatus ... but I have still been gathering myself together the last couple of days, even after being off bed rest. (And bed rest SUCKS. I hope to goodness I am not stuck on serious bed rest in the End Times of this pregnancy. [Although I would of course prefer that to an unhappy ending for this pregnancy.] But in addition to being mind-numbingly dull, bed rest makes me exhausted for days and days afterward. I did bed rest after my myomectomy, and again while we were trying to conceive, and each time, the aftermath was as annoying as the rest itself. The tiny bit of muscle tone I lay claim to just leaves town altogether during bed rest, and it takes me forever to coax it back again.)

Monday seemed to me like the longest day ever. It reminded me of some endless trips I've taken overseas, where you get up at zero-dark-thirty to take the shuttle to the airport, then sit twiddling your pinkies at the airport for an hour or two, then finally board and do a short hop to some jumping-off point, then unboard and reboard, and finally have an excruciatingly long flight to wherever you're going, and then even afer you get there, there's some 2 hour bus trip to get to your final destination. And then a taxi. And then you get to your hotel bed and figure, finally, I can rest, but then you can't sleep because you're just so enervated by that time. And it's just the day from hell, not because of anything particularly going wrong, but just because it's so damned long.

Monday felt like that. I felt so sad, and yet knew that I had to be determined. It had to be done and that was all there was to it. But first, I got up early because I had to feed the cats and try and arrange some final things around the house, and then there was the hour drive to the city, and the search for parking. And then when we got to CPMC and went up to the proper floor, we thought for a moment we'd wandered into a war zone. It turned out they are in the midst of serious renovations on that floor (think: jackhammers and dentist-like drills) and it was damned loud. Of course, my first thought was that the doc was going to be startled by some bazooka going off in his ear under these MASH-like conditions, and screw something up at some vital point. Therefore, in addition to being sad I also became crazed. Not a good combo.

D and I also managed to work in a short but vicious spat, and got bonus points for doing it in front of an audience. (Though I must say that during all the rest of the day, he was a complete angel and did all he could to make things easier for me.) When we checked in at the reception desk, they told us to come back after the nuchal fold ultrasound and pay for everything at that point. I wanted to clarify, so I asked if they really meant after the ultrasound, or after the procedure. Of course, said the receptionist, she meant after the procedure. I sat down with D in the waiting room, and a couple of minutes later they wanted us back again at the desk to sign something. I sent D, who came back with the news that they wanted us to come back after the ultrasound to pay for everything. No, said I, they want us after the procedure. "But she said--" "I already asked her!" "But she said--" "I know! I know! I clarified it already!" "But--" "If you'd let me finish, dammit--"

All with an interested audience in the waiting room, and a background of jackhammers. Fun was had by all.

We met with a genetics counselor first, who took us to a blessedly quiet meeting room down on the first floor, and proceeded to worry and depress us. She was very nice, and took a fairly in-depth genetics history from both of us. It turns out that neither of us have much worth worrying about in our family tree, but none of that matters because I am of "advanced maternal age" (i.e., older than dirt, and so are my ovaries) and therefore our children, if any, will be born with two heads. Or something like that. The figure that got to both of us was the 1 in 14 chance that each fetus would be afflicted with some chromosomal abnormality, whether a serious one or less so. That's a damned big number. Had I known that before we got started, I'm not sure I would have had the courage (or, possibly, foolhardiness) to proceed with my own eggs, despite my desperate desire to do so.

After the genetics session, we went back up to the war zone, and were conducted down a very long hall which gradually got quieter. By the time they ushered us into the procedure room, it was actually normally quiet. I changed into a gown, and we started off with a very long and involved ultrasound of my tummy, done by a technician. I had no idea there were so many angles that my interior could be viewed from. In addition to finding and labeling the four fetuses (A through D), she also located 3 (or 4 -- I lost count) new fibroids of about 1 to 1.5 inches each. This sent me into a new tizzy, but the tech said that most fibroids stop growing at about the end of the first trimester (where we are now) so with any luck, that might be as big as they'd get. I could tell when she was pressing on a fibroid with her wand because it would suddenly hurt.

When she was done at last, she printed out a long string of u/s pictures and went off to consult with the doctor. Then Dr. Tex came in and introduced himself, and we got going. He took over the ultrasounding and went back over things, sometimes pointing out various findings on the screen to a young female med student he had in tow. He told us what he was finding: two fetuses with normal growth, that had nuchal folds below 2mm, and two that had nuchal folds over 3mm. All four had visible nasal bones. He also pointed out to the med student what he believed to be a cystic hygroma, and also an exhibition of flexion in the hand of one of the fetuses (a soft marker for Down syndrome). Cystic hygroma can also be a marker for a number of different chromosomal defects, such as Down syndrome, Turner's, etc. It occasionally will resolve before birth, but usually cystic hygroma is a very bad thing.

It was difficult for us to watch the images on the screen, knowing that two of them would soon be no more. D finally gave up and sat beside me with his head lowered, but still holding my hand. I had initially not thought I wanted to see the images at all, but I found that it helped me to see the difference (visible even to these untutored eyes) between the necks of the okay fetuses and the suspect fetuses. The possible cystic hygroma looked immense, compared to the necks of the >2mm fetuses.

I had prayed to The Big Guy that the selection would be cut and dried. I don't know if He answers prayers along those lines, but the selection of which fetuses to reduce was indeed obvious. Dr. Tex didn't waste any time, but as soon as we were agreed, set right to work. First he numbed the skin with an injection (which hurt in itself, but not for long) and then, using the ultrasound as a guide, guided the needle in. The procedure was that the fetus's heart would be stopped with an injection of some chemical (I've forgotten what exactly) and then some of the amniotic fluid would be removed. (He explained the reason for that but I've forgotten. Maybe just to make more room.) I had my eyes squeezed tightly shut, so I avoided seeing the needle (which was quite large) but I couldn't avoid feeling it. It was more a feeling of intense soreness than sharp pain, but I could definitely tell that things were being messed with. A nurse stood at my feet and rubbed them a bit, to distract me, which did help some, but on the other hand I did not want to ignore what was going on. D and I made the best decisions we could all along the way, but it was due to our decisions that this was having to happen, and I did not want to ignore or ever forget that it had happened.

Each one took 3 or 4 minutes to complete. The first one was definitely more painful than the second (I think the xylocaine had kicked in by then), but during the second one I began to cry, and then had to suppress it since I could feel the sobs building up, and I didn't want my belly moving and causing problems. But I felt so wretched. It was actually my praying that set me off. I am a Buddhist and believe in reincarnation. But I am also a Deist, which is why I'm always having these interesting one-way conversations with The Big Guy, and I was asking Him to let the little ones reincarnate in a good place where they would have healthy bodies, and be loved and wanted by their new families.* And that really set me off -- but I didn't have the luxury of letting myself indulge in tears at that moment.

This is all making me sound crazed, I know, but I was a little crazed at that point in time. In any case, Dr. Tex was soon done, and checked by ultrasound to make sure that the two remaining were doing okay -- which they were. He talked with us about our doing amnios on the two remaining fetuses (he was strongly in favor of it, given the odds we had received from the genetics counselor) and gave us some advice on how to pick a good operator to do the amnios. (Someone with LOTS of experience. He told us that his own statistics on miscarriage following an amnio are about 1 in 400, which is significantly below the national average of 1 in 200.)

Afterward, I got dressed while D went down the hall and wrote CPMC a nice big check (though with the 35 percent discount). I was exhausted, and then we had to walk down that long, long hallway just to get to the elevator. Given that the nurse had just given me quite a strict lecture on how important it was for me to do strict bed rest for three days (she even advocated eating in bed, lying on my side, which made me think she actually had some beef against me and wanted me to choke on my food), I thought it was insane that they made me walk so far to leave their facility. What, don't they have any wheelchairs there? But I was too tired and upset to worry too much about that so I just shuffled down the long hall, clutching D's hand and letting him tow me along.

That was pretty much the day. I sat in the waiting area downstairs until D brought the car around, and then we drove home (with mercifully little traffic). At home I crawled into bed and read for hours instead of going to sleep -- because I was afraid, as Shakespeare said, of "what dreams may come." But apparently my unhappiness has been near enough the surface that my subconscious has not felt the need to take up the issue. No dreams about this, so far.

But I do have a new worry. I have found myself worrying more or less constantly the last couple of days about the state of the little ones that are left. Today I was in tears over it. I am not exactly terrified, but certainly very concerned that the two left may have chromosomal issues as well. And if they do, what then? Shall we just terminate our way down to no pregnancy at all? This has been such a long road ... starting in June 2005 with an abdominal myomectomy (that took me months to recover from) and then our efforts all this last year to conceive, first naturally and then with IUI's and finally with two IVF's ... and it just feels like we've been slogging up this mountain forever. And the mountain isn't getting any smaller, as far as I can see.

# # #

*This may be neither the time nor place, but just a note on the coexistence of Buddhism and Deism in one brain: People often have the notion that Buddhists are not allowed to believe in any deity. This is not correct. Gautama Buddha himself, when asked about the existence of deities, refused to make answer, saying that neither the existence or non-existence of any deity had any bearing on what he was trying to teach. There are actually a number of people who are simultaneously Jewish and Buddhist (so much so that they are sometimes jokingly labeled Jew-Boos in the Western Buddhist community), and indeed, there is even a Buddhist-Christian Journal that is put out by a university in Hawaii.

Quick update

2006-09-26T11:15:00.000-07:00

I'm flying low since I'm not supposed to be out of bed at all, so please excuse any typos, etc. Yesterday went as well as it could have, I think. Dr. Tex was great and so were the various personnel. In case anyone asks you, yes, the procedure does hurt. It doesn't reach the level of what one might call "PAIN" but certainly does reach "damn that hurts!" (And keeps on hurting, since the procedure takes several minutes.)

However, at least the choice of fetuses was clear. Two of them were on target with their growth for their age, and had nuchal folds under 2mm. Two others were also on target for growth, but their nuchal folds were both over 3mm. (You notice the jump of at least one mil in between.) On Dr. Tex's advice, we reduced the two with the larger (and suspect) nuchal folds. Dr. Tex advised us to also get amnios done on the two that are left, and now that I've talked to a genetics counselor, I concur. It turns out that the rate of all chromosomal defects for babies conceived by women of my age (44) is 1 in 14. That's damned high. Some chromosomal problems can be lived with but others are life-altering.

Thank you so very much to everyone who has expressed their support and prayers for me. I can't tell you how much that means to me. Think of yourselves as all being grabbed and hauled into one big teary group hug right now, will ya?

Two Ton Mama

2006-09-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

I held out on buying maternity clothes for quite a while. It just seemed like asking for trouble. Just begging the Fates to zap this pregnancy and make me take the stuff back to the store unworn, weeping all the while.

But my body has a mind of its own, and frankly, the one pair of jeans and one pair of shorts I own which I still fit into are rapidly shrinking. I seem to have the Amazing Growing Belly. When I first got pregnant, I shot up about ten pounds almost instantly. (Which was a little startling at the time, since I already had a BMI of 25, which put me squarely in the "overweight" category.) But since September 1, I have only gained one more pound. And yet my body is definitely reconfiguring itself. My waistline expands more and more, and when I look at myself sans clothes these days, I definitely have Preggo Belly. I have no idea where it's coming from, since I'm not gaining weight. I have a theory that my body is sucking fat out of my ass and using it to nurture the fetuses, but it's only a theory. (Like all theories, it's hard to prove. Nice idea though, huh?)

So a couple of weeks ago, after I had to use a rubber band to fasten my jeans (over the button, through the buttonhole and then back over the button), I caved. I went to Target to see what they had in the way of maternity clothes. They had some decent stuff, though I had my usual complaint about clothes-shopping at Target: They never have my size. I am an Average Fat American and therefore everything in my size has already been snapped up by other Average Fat Americans. I don't know why the buyers don't realize they should buy three times as much stock in the Average Fat American sizes.

After going to two different Targets, I finally wound up with three pairs of casual pants in three different maternity belly styles. (One under the belly, one traditional full panel, and one expandable panel that pulls up almost to my armpits but feels great, as though my Fat American belly is being cradled in a sling.) Of course, since I am also the average height for an American woman, at 5'4", and these pants are apparently all cut for pregnant Amazonian warriors, I will need to hem them all before I can actually wear them.

But I have yet to buy a single maternity top. Not for lack of trying, mind you. Today I went to the mall, and went into five different stores looking for a maternity top or something that could pass as one, and found nothing. Everything fell into two categories: Cutesy-poo Empire-style blouses that cradle the tits and then bell out over the tummy, all of which made me look as if I were either an aging Summer of Love refugee or else expecting Jane Austen to tea at any moment; or enormous tent-like dashiki things that were huge on my shoulders and added another fifty pounds visually. (I hardly need tell you I don't need another fifty pounds added, even if only visually! It's well within the realm of possibility that I'll get there for real in this pregnancy, but I'm content to wait until then.)

The best possibilities I've found for tops so far are in the J.C. Penney maternity catalog, which has some simple tee shirts cut for preggos like me. That's all I want, really -- something to cover up my belly and my pants' belly panel, that doesn't make me look like I'm trying to be cutesy and pass for 22. I hate ordering things from catalogs since I inevitably buy the wrong size and have to return it, but I don't see that I have a lot of choice here.

But I have to thank the Penney's catalog for my most entertaining moment in this search. There is a type of top known as a "surplice," which simply means that the top does a criss-cross thing. Penney's had a couple of blouses in this style, and had, in their infinite wisdom, labeled them both "surplus blouses."

Heh. Heh. They said "surplus." Heh.

Amazingly enough

2006-09-18T22:43:00.000-07:00

... I accomplished both my big goals today. I got my blood test records from my HMO (to be faxed off to CPMC tomorrow), and also talked to the doctor who will be performing the reduction on the 25th. And his timing was perfect -- he called after I stepped out of the shower, but before I left to do battle with the HMO. Sometimes ya gets lucky.

Also luckily, the doc seems like a very nice guy, as well as very knowledgeable. A little chit-chat before we got down to business established that he is a fellow Texan (yeehaw!), so we'll just call him Dr. Tex. (Though I have a feeling that he hasn't actually spent that much time in Texas, since his accent was undetectable. But then, people tell me that I don't sound like I'm from there either, so who knows.)

Dr. Tex told me that there is about a 4 to 5 percent chance of miscarriage of the entire pregnancy when you do more than one reduction (odds similar to those of amniocentesis). Basically, whenever you start sticking needles in your belly, you're looking for trouble -- and in this case, hoping you don't find it. And yes, that is how the reduction will be accomplished -- a needle through my belly, and into the fetus, which is then injected with a chemical to stop the heart. (I don't like this. I'm just reporting it. If I don't have the guts to look all this in the face, then I have no business having started any of this. A man should be able to shoot his own dog, and a woman should be able that she is having an abortion at least partly as the result of her own lack of judgment.)

He said that they numb the skin where the needle goes in, but there will still be some discomfort, since the needle goes through muscles and that doesn't get numbed. It's not like I'm not used to needles, having gone through IVF twice, but I must admit that a needle in my belly will be a new experience. (However, there's a masochistic side of me that's telling me I deserve it. If not worse.)

Dr. Tex will perform a nuchal fold ultrasound before the procedure, looking for "soft signs" of chromosomal or other problems -- a thickened nuchal fold (a fold of fat at the back of the neck), the lack of a nasal bone (a sign of Down syndrome), lack of growth of the fetus, etc. I asked him if CVS was an option, and he said no. He told me that even with twins, they sometimes have problems with contamination of the samples, and with four, there are just too many placentas in there to be really sure of which one you're sampling. I mentioned to him that there had actually been six sacs to begin with -- the four fetuses plus the two empty sacs -- and he said then that absolutely, CVS was out of the question. Even though it is a much more reliable test in terms of getting specific genetic information, it is a lot harder to get hold of a reliable sample to do the test in the first place. (And since Dr. Tex also does countless CVS procedures every year, and has been doing all this for 15 years, I have decided to take his word for it. I have no reason to think that he would steer me away from CVS unless there was a good reason, since he does so many of those as well.)

I asked Dr. Tex if he did many quad reductions, and he said that he used to do a lot more (as well as quint reductions) but that with advances in IVF, you didn't find that situation so much anymore. He said that these days, it was mostly a reduction from triplets to twins. I also told him that we wanted to choose the fetuses to be left solely on the grounds of health, not as a means of sex selection. He said that was good, since gender is still a little hard to see at 12 weeks, and that way he wouldn't have to spend time trying to figure out which was what.

And then I asked Dr. Tex about my biggest fear with this procedure -- that we'll go through with it, and then later we'll discover that the two we left in have Down syndrome after all. He said that it wasn't absolutely impossible that that would happen, but he told me that in his 15 years of doing these procedures, it never has happened. So actually, I'm pretty content with that. I mean really, am I so special that our pregnancy will be the first he misidentifies? Well, I hope not, and logically I find it pretty unlikely. At least that's one fear that has been (mostly) crammed back into the closet.

I'll be on pretty strict bed rest for three days after the procedure on Monday, so don't expect an update on these pages until the following Friday. (He said that getting up for meals and to go to the potty are okay, but not to go anywhere, do meal prep, or anything else. I have to infer that sitting upright in front of the computer for the half hour or so I need to write these is probably out.) Although if I'm feeling well, I'll try to sit here for five minutes and just give a quick thumbs up or down. (Hopefully -- as is appropriate for The Hopeful Baby Blog -- it will be thumbs up.)

I'm so glad Dr. Tex got hold of me today. He seems very knowledgeable (and therefore, one would hope, also quite competent), he seems like a nice guy, he comes highly recommended, as does his clinic, and the scuttlebutt I found about him on the Internet was all positive. I feel better now about doing this procedure than I have throughout this whole planning stage. My general modus with doctors is to find a doc that I feel like I can really, really trust, and then just ... trust him. (Or her, of course.) I did that with Dr. Enterprise (I could bore you for hours with the research I did on her and her clinic -- I've even read the papers she published on the Internet, which I'll bet you a doughnut none of her other patients have), and that worked out well for us. (Not perfectly, obviously. But I am pregnant, at the doddering age of 44, with my own eggs and my husband's rather haphazard sperm.) So I am hopeful, baby, that this will work out equally well.

Believing what you know

2006-09-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a little exercise in self-doubt, and experienced the peculiar hubris of "Yeah, but this is about ME!" All I had to do was actually believe what I already knew -- logically -- to be true ... but I found it almost impossible.

Yesterday evening, D. and I watched "The Seven Year Itch," which is a charming movie (if a little rambling) and will explain to you exactly why every male in 1950's America was gaga about Marilyn Monroe. (I must say that in addition to being physically spectacular, she was quite a good actress -- though as far as I could tell, she only ever got to play one role.) After the movie, I toddled off for a potty break -- and about jumped out of my skin when I discovered a large-ish amount of bright red spotting on my panty liner. Blood red. Miscarriage red. Very different from the trace amounts of pinkish-brown I had been seeing all week.

Instant hyperventilation. I had to start counting my breaths ("In, two, three, four, five, out, two, three, four, five") to keep from passing out before I got my undies back up. I checked for further bleeding and discovered a little, but certainly not what I would consider "gushing" (what I had heard of as a description for a miscarriage-type flow). Still, it was enough to send me into a tizzy.

The thing is -- and why this is a blog entry on hubris -- is that lately, I have routinely counseled my preggo Internet friends not to panic at a little spotting. I say this to them because that's what Dr. Enterprise told me, what Nurse Helpful at my HMO told me, and what every baby book in the universe tells us all. A little spotting is (let's say it all together, class!) -- NORMAL. (Especially in an IVF pregnancy, which for some still-unknown reason tends to be more prone to spotting than a normally achieved pregnancy.)

Except that it was ME bleeding like a stuck pig. (Okay, maybe like a pig with a paper cut.) MY pregnancy. MY babies bleeding out their lives into the panty liner. I found it completely impossible to be calm. And I was excessively irritated when I went tearing back into the living room with my news, only to have D. be very calm and infuriatingly rational about the whole thing. He patiently repeated what Dr. Enterprise had told us both, that a little spotting, even bright red spotting, was completely normal. In return, I wanted to act like Charlie Brown's Lucy and knock his block off.

(None of this was helped by the fact that D. had picked this night to have a few brewskies. He wasn't drunk -- at that point -- but not sober either. I found it completely infuriating that someone who was two sheets to the wind could be more rational than I was, cold sober.)

I did at least follow my own advice and get off my feet. I put down dry food for the cats and went off to bed, where I read a Terry Pratchett and tried to stop hyperventilating. The night ended up a long one, since I kept waking up worrying, and each time had to go pee and see what was going on.

By morning, activity had tapered off, and I began to feel better mentally. Today we are back to a little brownish spotting, and I actually believe now that the pregnancy is not -- at the moment, anyway -- in danger. I'm not sure I would have been able to achieve this level of sanguinity, except that this morning I was able to get hold of a nurse at my IVF clinic, who passed my questions on to Dr. Enterprise. (I have no idea when Dr. Enterprise ever gets a day off. She is the only doc there, and does all the embryo retrievals and transfers herself, on whatever day of the week they fall on.) Dr. E said that now that I have discontinued the progesterone suppositories, the two empty sacs are no longer artificially supported, and therefore are probably degrading -- hence the bleeding. (It's also possible that embryo #4, the little one, might have finally given up.) Either of those explanations is fine with me -- as long as the main pregnancy is continuing on its way.

And speaking of the main pregnancy continuing apace, tomorrow I will have to try and track some people down in their lairs, to make sure that continues smoothly. Last week when I met with Nurse Helpful, she said she would send bloodwork information off to Cal Pacific. However, when I tried to actually get in touch with her on Thursday, she first said she would call me back in an hour, and then while waiting for her call, I had a little domestic emergency and had to run out of the house -- and found when I got back that she had left me a very convoluted message detailing when she would be in her office to talk to me -- which was not going to be until next Wednesday. Wednesday! Nearly a week away from Thursday, in case I have to point that out. I think she's just downgraded herself to Nurse Not So Helpful. Now I'll have to drive up to my HMO and go to their business office in person to get my blood results, then come home and fax it myself. Not the end of the world, but irritating when someone else has already told you they'd take care of it. Hah.

The doctor who is supposed to do our reduction also called on Thursday night, when I was out. (Of course.) His message said he'd call again the next day, and of course he didn't. He's on my "hit list" for tomorrow, too. (And let me tell you just how much I am looking forward to wading through the various guardians of the CPMC gate to try and leave him a message.) On the plus side, I've been doing some Internet snooping regarding both him and Cal Pacific, and according to the highly unscientific gossip one finds on various pregnancy boards on the Internet, both CPMC and my doc are highly regarded in doing CVS, amnios, and other tricksy procedures involving needles. So that's a plus, at least.

And in a final bit of good news, me old da' continues to improve. He had his staples out last week (staples! in your chest! I don't even want to imagine that), his blood pressure is holding steady, he dismissed his baby sitter and makes his own lunch now, and most reassuring of all, his voice has returned to its normal full baritone timbre. (It really upset me when I talked to Dad in the hospital and heard how frail and reedy his voice sounded.) Thanks muchly to everyone who expressed good wishes for him! Now, God willin' and the creek don't rise, I think he is back on the road to health.

To sum up, today is better than yesterday. I just hope that trend continues.

Hen's teeth

2006-09-12T22:58:00.000-07:00

Pulling hen's itsy-bitsy sharp little teeth ... had they any, of course, which is precisely the point ... might be easier than getting info out of Cal Pacific about our scheduled fetal reduction.

Howsomeever (as my grandmother from Kansas used to say), I finally did get a phone call from someone there this morning, though I'll admit I don't know who, exactly. Her name went by in a high-pitched, girlish squeal, and I just didn't care enough to make her spell it for me. (I'll just call her Tiffany, shall I?) In any case, after a lot of back and forthing, Tiffany finally vouchsafed me the information that the whole thing is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000. Now, mind you, despite the laundry list of costs she quoted to me for the various aspects of our visit, she didn't have the exact cost of the nuchal ultrasound, and told me I will have to call up the hospital section of their clinic to get a price on that. She did at least give me their number. I suppose that's service, of a kind.

Also, she quoted me a price of $238 on the Papp-A and expanded AFP blood tests, which are part of the Integrated Test for Down Syndrome and other things (the third leg of said Integrated Test being the actual nuchal fold ultrasound). We went on to other things, then I circled back and asked her if the Papp-A was useful for a multiple pregnancy, since someone had mentioned to me that they thought it gave false positives for multiples.

"Oh!" she squeaked. "I don't know if it works for multiples."

We had already gone over the fact that I was having a freaking REDUCTION, thank you, since I am carrying four fetuses at the moment. And yet the idea of my dealing with multiples had apparently not crossed her mind. All I can say is that I really hope this young lady is not in fact one of their supervisors.

She did eventually hook me up with one of their genetics counselors, a lovely woman who seemed sharp as a tack and kind as a mother's hug. I fell for her instantly, in a very platonic way, and if all of Cal Pacific's employees were like her, it would be an impressive place indeed. This young woman, call her LB, straightened out the mystery about the blood tests. She told me that the Papp-A test would not be an option for me, since if you are carrying more placentas than the number of fetuses you are testing for, you get false positives, etc. I currently have at least four and maybe five placentas in there (depending on how fast that empty one is degrading), but we would be testing for twins, and so the markers would be useless. So the Papp-A is out. LB said that the expanded AFP, which is typically done in weeks 15 - 20, might give me some answers. But it all depends on whether we are down to the proper number of placentas by then, as to whether we can profitably do the AFP. In any case, the expanded AFP by itself will not give as complete a picture as it plus the Papp-A (and the nuchal fold ultrasound) would. In the end, LB told me that if anyone tried to take blood from me on the 25th, I should shoo them away.

This whole thing about trying to get prices from Cal Pacific has been really odd. They act as if in the history of their clinic, no one ever asked them this before. Although maybe they haven't. I suppose that their actual paying customers might be few and far between, with the majority of their work being paid for by insurance companies. Their confusion at being asked doesn't leave a very good impression, though. (However, their willingness to give us a 35 percent discount if we pay up front does sweeten the whole thing for me, at least a little.)

In other news ... I had it out with the nurse-dragon at my HMO yesterday. Except she wasn't a dragon at all, unless you think of a cute little stuffed toy of a dragon; she was perfectly lovely. Somewhat astoundingly to me, she actually tried to be helpful rather than obstructive. Nurse Helpful (as I believe I shall call her) even volunteered to make some phone calls to see if she could find a way for the HMO to pay for the reduction at Cal Pacific. (Didn't work; the HMO has a contract with UCSF instead.) And when I told her that I wanted one of the two female OB's my IVF doc had recommended to me, she mildly pointed out that since both of them work part time (being busy raising families themselves), it would be impossible for her to guarantee me appointments with them. (Drat them both anyway, by the by -- what business do they have actually raising families and having a life? I ask you.)

Nurse Helpful and I finally worked out a compromise. My supervising OB will be one of their so-called "high risk" docs, who also happens to be head of their prenatal department. However, for pelvic exams and such, I'll see one of the two women OB's. This seems like a lot of rigmarole to go through, I'll admit, but one of the phobias I have not yet been able to rid myself of is that of male doctors staring up my cooter. It makes me nutsy, and worse than that, it makes me nutsy for a couple of days in advance of the actual appointment. I cannot believe it's good for the developing kiddos for me to be having panic attacks for days on end.

I'm afraid that my endless questions put me well past my allotted time with her, but Nurse Helpful was very gracious about the fact that our appointment ended up lasting an hour and a half. The whole thing ended with a bit of unintended comedy. As I left, she gave me a scrip for the standard pregnancy blood tests, and a urine test. (I don't know what the urine test is actually for; I hope nothing important, as things turned out.) I took the paper and headed down the hall, starving, dying of thirst, and with a bursting bladder. (Don't forget, I'm gestating here. Everything is on overdrive these days.) I had food out in the car, so I decided to just pick up a drink in the next building over, then go to the lab for the blood. Oh, and on the way, I just ducked into the restroom to take care of the bladder problem.

You've spotted the issue here, haven't you? I didn't, until after I had already peed, washed my hands, and was in the next building over, sucking down my Creamy Italian Raspberry Soda (with whipped cream, of course -- as I said, I'm gestating here!) -- when it occurred to me that perhaps I should have held onto some of that golden liquid. Oh, dear. Then I sucked on the soda even faster.

I made them take my blood first, and then let them give me a cup (which I got to take to the restroom down the hall, out amongst everybody -- it kills me that they're nuts about privacy everywhere else, but are apparently fine with you toting bottles of your own pee along a public thoroughfare). I actually stopped along the way, sat down, pulled out a magazine for a few minutes and drank my soda, hoping I was producing something while I waited. Then I went to have my try ... and was, well, somewhat successful. The instructions said not to fill up the cup past halfway. I have to say I followed instructions -- it certainly was not filled up past halfway.

But the main thing that little episode did was to make me feel like the biggest jackass in Christendom. Member of Mensa, hah. I don't dare tell any of my fellow Mensans about this -- they'd make me take a retest!

Plodding along

2006-09-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

It looks like we are a go for the reduction at the California Pacific Medical Center on the 25th. (I can say their name here, can't I? I won't name individual doctors, how's that.) I never did hear back from the supervisor who was supposed to tell me how much the whole shebang (genetic counseling, nuchal, and reduction) is going to set us back, so I called the appointment scheduler back today. She nicely apologized for her supervisor's lack of contact and said the supe would get back to me either today or Monday. The scheduler also said something that made me happy (well, as happy as I'm going to get with this whole thing): namely, that she spoke with the doc who does the reductions, and he told her that his usual modus operandi is to do the nuchal and the reduction together. (Just like Dr. Enterprise originally told us.) So I'm not going to have to wheedle him into it, and he does this All. The. Freakin. Time. Which is what I want.

On a side note, just on the off chance that Dr. Enterprise would say, "Oh, him. Yeah, he's fine," I had emailed her asking her opinion about the HMO doctor who does reductions. Her reply was very much to the point, and made no bones about her opinion that the man was in no way qualified to do a reduction. (She did say he could deal with other perinatalogist issues down the line, should they arise.) So, we're paying for it. Stay tuned for the damage assessment.

I have to do a little circling back here and explain that the way I found out exactly who does the reductions was that one of the HMO nurses in their Infertility department called me about something else altogether, and while I had her ear, I quizzed her about that issue. (I also got an okay for the blood tests, which I'll do on Monday, when I go in to do battle with the HMO nurse/dragon. More of that anon.) The HMO is interesting ... some individuals there do excellent work, and some just don't. The key seems to be to get in on the scuttlebutt and find out who is doing good work, and insist on going to them. For instance, the doctor who did my abdominal myomectomy -- call him Dr. Empathetic -- was just terrific. He had the best bedside manner, and was incredibly patient in answering my thousand-and-one nervous questions about the whole thing. In addition, he did an excellent surgery for me, which healed quickly (though I do have a lovely six-inch scar below my bikini line -- not that I've worn a bikini since I was oh, ten) and apparently was quite effective, since I have since managed to get preggo with quads. But this perinatalogist my IVF doc warned me about? Uh-uh, I don't theenk so.

So on Monday, we're getting into the "insisting" part. I have an appointment to see a nurse at the HMO who is supposed to sort through my various obstetrical issues and help me pick an OB. The HMO has a "high risk team" of four OB's -- all men, natch -- who do their multiples cases. That would be fine ... except that I looked them all up on the HMO website, and in my layperson's eyes, it appeared that not one of them had any extra training to help them be a "high risk" doc. I asked Dr. Enterprise about this, and she confirmed it -- she kind of rolled her eyes and said they just had an "interest" in high risk cases. Oh, great. I really don't want a male OB to begin with, since it stresses me out terribly to have strange males looking up my cooter, and I feel stressed enough over this entire pregnancy. Dr. Enterprise gave me the names of a couple of female OB's at the HMO, who she said she refers all her patients to. Good enough for me. But I have a feeling I am going to have to pull out my lance and do some jousting with the nurse/dragon to get the OB I prefer. (And what if I do get the female doc and she screws things up? Then I'll feel awful about that.... Aaargh. Ignore me while I rip out my hair, please.)

On a happier note, when I talked to me ol' da today, he said that the visiting nurse had actually shown up and taken his blood pressure, and it was fine. Yay! He also sounded stronger. So I decided today would be a good day to Tell All. And now my father finally has the good news from Ghent regarding this little pregnancy. (I told him we were expecting twins, but not all the stuff about the reduction. We're really keeping that on a need-to-know basis.) My dad is a low-key kind of guy, so there were no wild expostulations, but he was puh-lenty surprised! But also very pleased. (Though mostly because I'm pleased, I think, rather than because he's been harboring some wish to be a granddad.) We didn't talk that long today, since he was starting to get tired, but it will be interesting to see what questions he comes up with about all this, once he's had time to think about it.

And on a minor note, I'll add that I did not feel ill today (unlike yesterday, when I felt so wretched that I started to wish I would throw up) and even made meatballs to go with my spaghetti. And ate them! Progress, definitely, since lately even looking at meat has made me want to hurl. It didn't hurt that the sauce had fresh tomatoes from our veg garden. We don't seem to be able to grow much in our garden except cherry tomatoes, but those we have coming out our ears. We have two kinds: some Sweet 100's that are tiny little things that almost taste like candy, and some generic variety that was labeled simply Large Cherry Tomatoes. Those are a little smaller than a golf ball, and are just the best damn tomatoes ever. And they're large enough to slice up and put on a sandwich, or throw into your tomato sauce or whatever. And they're mine, all mine! Bwahahaha! (Okay, I have to share them with D., who eats them by the handful. But luckily there's more than enough for the two of us.) And for some reason, bugs don't even look at the cherry tomatoes, though I've never been able to raise full size tomatoes without losing half the crop to the insect world.

Ah, yes, cherry tomatoes to burn ... and maybe, with lots of continued luck, some healthy squirming twins on the way. Hm. You know, when you look at it that way, things actually look pretty good.

The soap opera continues

2006-09-06T22:31:00.000-07:00

First things first: my dad is home from the hospital and doing reasonably well. He's been home since Monday evening, and today my brother carted him over to the Big City to see his surgeon for a follow-up. My dad was too tired to talk much tonight, but I gather that things went all right there. Luckily, my brother requested that they take my dad's blood pressure there at the doctor's office (they showed no signs of even thinking of such a thing, even though of course my dad had been through a scary drop in BP only a few days before). They found it was somewhat low, and so told him to lay off his BP meds for the time being (normally his runs high) until things got back to normal.

His surgeon's office had also somehow managed to mislay the paperwork (or something) that was necessary in order for him to have a visiting nurse come by every day for a while and check his BP, etc. Said nurse is supposed to show up tomorrow, but I'll believe it when I see it. It's starting to sound to me like the surgeon is a good surgeon, as such, but he needs to hire a new office administrator. Luckily, my dad is good at following up on things, and he said he would call their office tomorrow to make sure things were actually arranged as promised.

My dad is also supposed to have someone from a local caregivers company come by tomorrow for four hours, and fix him lunch and do the dishes and so forth. He could probably use someone all day long, but they're $14/hr and my dad, while not exactly penurious, definitely has Scottish blood. (Well, actually, it's Welsh, but close enough.) The fun part about that whole thing was trying to arrange it from here (California) since my dad was stuck in the hospital and my brother was busy either working or running back and forth between their rural home and the Big City hospital to see my dad. But the Internet was a big help. I got the phone number of the local hospital's geriatric care unit, and called them for a referral for care givers. Still, I cringe when I think of my long distance bill this month!

And in the main plot of the soap....

Today, I called and made an appointment to do a selective reduction on two of the four fetuses, on September 25. I'll just be starting my 12th week then. Making the appointment upset me less than I thought it would. I think I am becoming numb to the whole thing. I just hope it doesn't "hit" me later on. But I think, in part, I have finally come to the understanding that some parts of life just suck. They simply do. And there's nothing to be done about it but roll with events and try to get past to the other side with as little damage as possible. I found myself taking that attitude when I had my shots for IVF. The subcu shots were a piece of cake, but sometimes the intramuscular shots that I took in the backside hurt like a bear. Of course, I never knew which ones would hurt, which somehow made it worse -- it was just when my husband would happen to get a little too close to a nerve or such. And I had the choice of either whimpering and getting upset before each shot, or just baring my butt and getting on with it -- especially realizing I had volunteered for the whole thing. So I think that attitude has carried on here, a bit.

Of course, the logistics of getting this reduction done couldn't possibly be simple. Dr. Enterprise recommended a clinic down in San Francisco to do the work. They are not, of course, in our HMO's network. So now we will either have to pay for this out of pocket too (and I'm sure it won't be cheap) or else wheedle our HMO into paying for it. I doubt they will, since basically they only pay out of network providers for things that are (a) medically necessary (though I think you could make a good case for this being, in fact, necessary) and (b) that the HMO cannot provide through its own providers. Well, I'm sure our HMO has some hack who does this procedure once every six months and would be glad to take a crack at it for us, but I want a specialist who does this so much he could do it in his sleep, and that is what I am assured this clinic's doctor is. So if we have to pay, we pay. (But I'll bet it's gonna hurt.)

September 25 is going to be quite a day for us. For one thing, we'll be at the clinic for about four hours. Dr. Enterprise said they could probably combine a nuchal fold transluscency test with the reduction. I thought that was an excellent idea, since I cannot tell you how volcanically enraged I would be to go through this selective reduction, only to be told a month later that oh, by the way, one of the two you decided to keep has Down Syndrome. I think that would make me lose it. As in, chairs flying out windows, etc.

But the woman who was arranging appointments said they did not always do it that way (combining the nuchal with the reduction). Yes, I responded, but can it be done that way? Well, she would have to check with the doctor. Fine, I said (trying not to let her hear me gritting my teeth) but if possible, I'd like to do it this way. Usually, she said brightly, the doctor chooses the ones that are easiest to reach. And at that point, I was thinking, not with MY fetuses you don't! Because I swear I will get medieval on them (what does that mean, anyway? Like Vlad the Impaler?) if we go through all this and they get rid of the healthy ones. I really will.

She also suggested we could do CVS on each of the fetuses beforehand -- but then immediately contradicted herself, pointing out that would be very difficult, with four fetuses. That's fine with me, really. I would much prefer to do as little invasion of the womb as possible. These fetuses seem settled in for the long haul, but I don't know if that would remain true if we start poking around too much in there.

There are also, just for grins, several blood tests the clinic requires beforehand. To get my HMO to do those, I'll have to try and sweet talk my doctor into ordering them for me. But actually, she has been willing to do that before, so I'm hoping she might again. We'll see.

I do wish this blog entry had had some grand, overarching theme. I admire writers who are good at that, who can start off with a premise, spin it through loops and arches and round-the-worlds like a yoyo, and then come home to rest by rounding off their initial premise. But this entry is merely recording the slogging of this day. Maybe that's enough.

Events are overrated

2006-09-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

I am getting seriously tired of these eventful days.

I woke up this morning, not only mindful of the ultrasound scheduled for 1:30, but also antsy, cranky, and extremely nervous. I woke UP that way. I had one hope for the day, which was that when Dr. Enterprise (who "goes boldly where no doc has gone before -- with 11 embryos") did the wanding and started peering at the screen, she would announce that lo and behold, of the four embryos, the littlest embryo had taken the hint and gone away, poof! (I knew that two of them being magically gone was too much to hope for. But I was hoping for one, particularly since I had some spotting this week.)

And I hated it that that was my goddamned HOPE for the day. What an awful thing to have to hope for, that one of your long-sought and jealously guarded embryos has gone ahead and offed itself so that you won't have to.

You know, back during the 2ww, and then afterward before we knew I had a whole tribe in there, I used to talk to the embryos. I would tell them how wonderful the world was, how it was a great place with kitties to pet and flowers to pick and gardens to plant, and wonderful discussions to be had about timeless books, and fun and loving people they would meet along the way and learn to cherish as friends and family. (In fairness, I also mentioned that the world can be a sucky place sometimes, but I fear I played that down too much.) I had fun talking to them, and found myself tearing up at times, and realized a lot of things about what I cherish most, during this process of telling them all the wonderful things about the world and why at least one of them should come and stay here a while.

And now I don't talk to them at all. Because the only thing I can think of to say is, "I'm so sorry, but you can't all stay!"

Well, they were all still there. The good thing is that of the four, there are three good strong ones. So we are now down to a 5 percent chance of total fetal loss for the entire pregnancy. Translation: there is a 95 percent chance that at least one and more probably two of the little buggers will make it here to pet kitties at some future date.

Caveat: Those are the odds ... IF we do fetal reduction. And I don't see that I have a realistic choice not to, really. First, let's look at the odds of fetal death, even if we went down to just triplets. For triplets, Dr. Enterprise told us, there is a 25 percent chance that you will lose all three fetuses, usually around the six month period. As she then pointed out, not only would that be traumatic for us, but it would effectively nix our chances of ever having biological children. I'm 44 already. By the time we went through all that and then were ready to try again, I'd be at least 45. It is, frankly, a little bit of a miracle that I am pregnant right now.

We also have the circumstances of my myomectomy, which was traumatic enough to my uterus that I've been forbidden to go through the contractions and pushing of vaginal birth (let alone carry three infants in there).

So I was a mix of conflicting emotions after our appointment. On the one hand, we were virtually guaranteed parenthood. I really do regard this as something of a minor miracle, and I am honestly incredibly grateful for this chance. When I was younger, I knew I wanted a family of my own but felt so royally fucked up from my childhood with my birth family that I wondered if I'd ever actually be fit to be a mother. As an older person, I finally knew down deep in my bones that yes, I was ready to be a mommy, and a good one at that -- but the biological years had meanwhile gone whizzing by me, and now it was a crapshoot whether we'd achieve biological parenthood or not.

So it was a thing of awe to me to realize that yes, it was really, absolutely, very probably going to happen. After all this time. How truly amazing and awesome.

But it is bitter to me that the way to parenthood is paved with this necessary sacrifice. I do not blame Dr. Enterprise at all for letting us use all 11 embryos. She did warn us, quite seriously, that we might end up having to reduce. But she also pointed out it was our best chance to conceive at all. We agreed to gamble at this table, and now we have to pay up.

I don't want to make it sound as though I'm heartbroken, because I'm not. I am blessed with a certain lack of imagination in some matters, and this seems to be one of them. I don't see the fetuses as anything but fetuses at this point. According to my research, they are not aware (unless in the most rudimentary sense) and they are certainly not self-aware. I believe in reincarnation, so that even if there are actually souls in there, I feel sure they will immediately be bounced over to some other developing embryo. I don't think I'll go to Hell for this. I think God reserves the hell-realms for more weighty sins -- if, indeed, this is a sin.

But it just seems so wasteful. And I am afraid of one thing. I am afraid that when I look at our children in the future, in my mind, I will see two other versions with them.

Sigh....

For the record, here are the sizes of the fetuses today (at 8w5d):
20mm - 8w3d size
23mm - 9w0d size
21mm - 8w4d size
17mm - 8w0d size

*************

In other news of the day:

After the appointment, I did a couple of errands, so when I came home, I was beat and went to bed for a while. When I got up, I realized I hadn't called my father (who is still in the hospital and as of yesterday, was in a normal room rather than ICU, and recovering nicely). However, I couldn't call right them because it would have been during the nurse's shift change, and they request you not to do that if you can help it.

So I called a little later, about 9 p.m. his time. It rang and rang, with no answer. Hm -- perhaps they had shifted him to another room. I re-checked my answering machine. Nothing. So at last I called and requested his nurse's station. They informed me that he had been moved back to cardiac ICU.

Oh, shit oh shit .... Bouncing back and forth between a real room and ICU is never a good thing. My mother did a lot of that in her short and eventful stay in the hospital, just before dying there. My stomach immediately started hurting. I called the ICU and got his nurse, who immediately informed me she couldn't tell me anything because of federal regulations, and then went on to spill almost everything anyway. (Nurses tend to be a compassionate lot; they are crappy at keeping secrets if they realize you are dying inside.)

It turned out that my dad is not dying (at least, not at the moment -- hopefully not anytime in the near future) but he had given them a good scare. His heartbeat had gone wonky and irregular earlier in the day, and his blood pressure had also misbehaved badly (up or down I don't know; she didn't say). They tried medication but that failed to control things, so they gave him a shock to get his heartbeat straightened out. She reassured me that it wasn't a big shock, just a small one (what, like sticking your finger in a socket?), but then allowed that they had given him medication afterward so that he would relax and forget having gotten the shock, since, she said, "It's not very pleasant." It's not pleasant picturing this in my mind's eye, either. Not at all. I am just praying that this was a minor blip on the road to recovery, and not the beginning of something worse. (You can pray with me, if you like -- any type you like is fine.) It's just that with my mother, I saw this slow escalation of events turn into something hideous and ultimately fatal. I am really hoping not to see anything like that again in the near future.

Postscript to the plane story

2006-08-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

The story ran in this morning's local, regarding the small plane that my neighbor's son spotted while out working. Here's the link: Plane crash kills 2 near Petaluma

More of a day than I needed

2006-08-28T21:58:00.000-07:00

Some days are kind of, I dunno, bigger than life. Just jam-packed with a few more events than are really required. Over-achieving days (which can be quite as annoying as over-achieving people). This one is showing indications of that.

Preparations for this day started back in July, when my aged father, who lives in a separate and far-away state (let's put it this way: you can't drive there in one day from here), found out he was going to need a second heart bypass operation. His first one, a triple, was back in 1991, and was quite successful. But two of the arteries had silted back up in the intervening 15 years, and had to be replaced once again.

As noted, we found out about this in July -- just when D. and I were getting ready to start the stim medications for our second IVF. The thing is, we had decided not to tell my dad that we were even trying for a family, since it was still pretty iffy at that point, and we didn't want to set him up for disappointment.

(Also, to be honest, I didn't want to hear any comments about the endeavor from my brother, who lives with my dad. My brother and I have a rotten relationship, due mostly to severe and ingrained defects in his personality. [He apparently does not realize the extent of my dislike for him, since I am polite to him for my dad's sake.] I did not want to hear One. Word. From him. About the whole IVF thing, since I knew if he said the wrong thing, I might finally lose it and try to crawl right through the phone line so I could push his teeth down his throat in person.)

So -- going back to our IVF timing and my dad's announcement of his coming bypass -- we had to decide at that point if we were going to proceed with the stims or hold off. I had already been taking the b/c pills and was within a day of starting Lupron. On the advice of our doctor, we decided to forge ahead, since otherwise we would have had to go back to square one, let me have a period, and start the b/c pills all over again, which could have resulted in a delay of as much as three months. Which is a long time when you're staring 44 right in the eyeball.

It turned out that my father's operation was not scheduled until today, August 28. I had no idea where we'd be at that point, but the possibility existed that my cycle would be a big bust anyway, and that, non-pregnant, I could go help out my dad.

Of course, things worked out otherwise, and I'm not only preggo (yayyyy!!) but high risk preggo, at age 44 and currently carrying multiples (not so yay). (Also feeling like sh!t on many days of the week, forbidden to have sex, raise my heart rate above 140, or lift more than 20 pounds, and starting to experience vertigo and vague nausea from time to time.) I'm in no shape to go nurse anyone anywhere, let alone in another state.

The thing is, though, my dad still doesn't know I'm pregnant. Because of the high rate of miscarriage at my age, D. and I had previously decided not to tell my dad about the pregnancy until we were past the 12-week marker (and hopefully with a good strong nuchal fold test behind us). When we found out about the multiples, it seemed like an even better idea to keep the whole thing under our hats, since we didn't want "assvice" about it from anyone, even my beloved dad. (And certainly not from my brother, who not only freely dispenses assvice, but gets completely bent out of shape and insulting if you don't follow his carefully thought out assvice to the letter and then report back on its resounding success.)

But my father, being the sweet guy that he is, insisted that he didn't need my help after his operation, since my brother would be there to help him, and in any case they were going to hold him hostage in the hospital for five to seven days after the operation. So technically, I'm off the hook. I guess I just feel wretched because I'm afraid he thinks I simply don't care enough to drop things and come be useful. My mother passed on several years ago, and both of D's parents are gone as well, and I find myself clutching desperately at my sole remaining parental figure. I always got along much better with my dad than my mom, anyway, since our personalities are very similar, and there's nothing both of us love better than going into a long discussion about whether Andre Norton's Witch World books are better than Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, and if so, why. (Answer for the student: Norton trumps McCaffrey any day of the week, since McCaffrey apparently got lazy after a while and started writing what amounted to Soap Operas with Dragons, whereas Norton wrote clear up into her 90's with very little loss of steam or clarity.) (Also, Norton sometimes wrote about cats, which of course gives her extra bonus points. Heh!)

In a nutshell, although my reason and logic tells me I'm doing the right thing, I feel as though I'm keeping a bad secret from my dad -- instead of a great one, which will with any luck will be revealed in just a few weeks.

As for my father's operation today, it apparently went quite well, and the last I heard, he was resting comfortably (or as much so as possible, when they have you hooked up to a morphine pump or whatever they use after they chop your chest open and rummage around in there for close to six hours). I'll know more tomorrow, and hopefully get to talk with him.

Well. Just to make it a thoroughly eventful day, this morning we receive a phone call from D's sis, who informed us that their aunt had died. Aunt Sparky, as we'll call her here, was a very sweet and intelligent woman, with a distinctly tart side to her personality. A lifelong smoker, she had been suffering from emphysema for several years, so her death was not a surprise, but it's always hard anyway. (And anyone who reads this who still smokes should go visit some emphysema patients in the hospital. I honestly think emphysema is worse than lung cancer, since it drags the agony out for as much as a decade or so.) Aunt Sparky also looked and sounded very much like her sister -- D's and sis's mother -- who passed away several years ago, and whom they still miss very much. Losing Aunt Sparky was not only painful in its own right, but also poked a bit at the old wound of losing their mom.

They say things come in threes, and sometimes "they" seem to be right about that. After ordering flowers and so forth for the aunt's family, and finally finding out that my dad had made it all right through his surgery, I eventually made it out the door for my (subdued, heartbeat under 140) neighborhood walk. My neighbor lady was out and about, so we chatted for a while, and she told me about her son, who works for the Mosquito Abatement department. (I had no idea there was such a thing; did you?) He had been out on some ranch doing Mosquito Abatement things, when he saw at a distance what looked very much like the wreck of a small plane. He called his department head, who called the sheriff, who called the rancher, and in short order, several official and unofficial vehicles were bouncing down the ranch's dirt road toward the wreckage.

Her son had assumed it was old wreckage that had simply not been cleared away. When he got there himself, he found out the actuality: It had happened about midnight, and nobody had realized that was where the missing plane was, or come to pick up after it yet. Consequently there were various body parts strewn here and there, and the broken bits of plane and carrion stank to high heaven. The sheriff's department and ambulance people seemed to be inured to that sort of thing, but it was a first for my friend's son, who ended up taking the rest of the day off.

Well. Enough already. Or enough for one day, at least. And then some.