The first post where I answer questions

I've gotten a couple of questions in comments and via email lately, so today I will begin the process of answering them, starting with questions asked re this post.

In the comments, Meg asked how long I lived in Connecticut. I lived in Connecticut until I turned 11 (Stamford until I was 2, New Canaan after that). At that point, we moved to Rhode Island, where I went to middle school and high school. When people ask where I grew up, I usually say Connecticut. When people ask where I'm from, I usually say Rhode Island. My childhood friends are people I knew in Fairfield County and nearby New York. My friends from home are my friends from Rhode Island. It's weird how one comes to think about such things.

By email, someone asked when I went to Moorea, Jerusalem, and Hawaii.

• Hawaii was P and my honeymoon in 2005. We spent a week in Maui (in a hotel) and a week in Kauai (in a house we rented on a private beach).
  
• Moorea was March 2000. A good friend from college was doing research loosely connected with his PhD there, and I went to visit him. I really enjoy traveling with/to see him -- they mark some of the best vacations I've had. Over the years, amonf other adventures, we have hiked a volcanic ridge, driven from San Diego to San Francisco in a convertible, gone off-roading in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park more than once (and gotten the undercarriage of a truck stuck over a large rock), surfed in Mexico, and seen the sun set over the Pacific from at least three different countries. The airfare to Moorea from Boston was obscene, but well worth it (and was the primary expense associated with the trip).
• Jerusalem was the summer of 1999. I maxed out my then-very-low-limit credit card and bought myself a plane ticket to Istanbul, where I spent 10 days. I then took a 24-hour bus (with no bathroom) to Athens, where I spent another ten days (well, I also took the ferry to Santorini for several days). Finally, with much difficulty involving canceled flights whose existence El Al denied despite my possession of a physical ticket, I flew to Tel Aviv and took a bus to Jerusalem for ten more days, where I slept on a mattress on the roof of a hostel in the Old City and narrowly avoided being sold for 2 camels. The whole trip was one of those life-altering, world-view-changing types of trips. Well-worth the money spent.
  

7w1d

Two weeks until my next appointment.

I had dinner tonight with one of the friends whose showers I went shopping for the other day. She is one of my oldest friends -- we had 7th grade English together, almost 20 years ago now. I was scared it would be a bit painful to see her and face the very obvious reminder of where I should have been, but it wasn't bad at all. We talked a good deal about her pregnancy, and about my miscarriage. It actually felt good to be able to talk about it with someone in real life, especially someone who gets it. I have talked to a few friends, but most are unmarried and can't really imagine being in a position to want a child, so they have a tendency to spout off statistics and minimize the pain part. This friend didn't do that. It was a great reminder of why we have been friends for so long and how lucky I am to have her in my life. She's going to be a great mom.

100th post

Well, this is my 100th post here, and I'm sad to admit I just don't have a whole lot to say today.

I feel like I've come a long way since I started here in October, healing-wise, but I also feel like I still have a long way to go. I suspect I will never make it that remaining distance back to the person I was. What has struck me lately is how much of my own sense of self-worth was historically caught up in my work (and in school before that). I am not someone who is outwardly competitive; for me, the competition has always been with myself and with my sense of my abilities. Since September, I have let a lot of that go. (And lest anyone think that sounds healthy, it's not. The alternative has been putting that same value on my abilities to conceive and carry a child, which is something I suspect I have far less control over, making my self-worth very dependent on what feels like chance.)

I always thought that if I were able to do that -- let go of work as the thing to which I attached value -- it would likely be for better, but thus far it hasn't been. I spend a lot of my time consumed by anxiety, terrified that someone will notice how little I've accomplished lately and kick me to the curb. In a profession in which I am valued only partly for the quality of my work, in which more of my value is assigned to the quantity and to the dollars that work brings in, my anxiety isn't really unfounded. It's starting to get very real, and I'm starting to realize that the part of me that placed a lot of my sense of self-worth in my work is starting to come back to life. Because if I didn't, I'm not sure how much I'd really care.

I keep telling myself that I need to pull it together, to really buckle down, but I can't, or, more accurately, I won't. Part of it is that I need a lot more work to do. But I do have things to do, I just can't seem to motivate to do them. Each week I say that this week will be different. Today, I will say it again. This week will be different. I will go to work tomorrow and tr harder to focus. If nothing else, I need the income.

Reminder

The showers for those of my girlfriends due the week I was are coming up soon. I knew this time would come, and I was really dreading it. It is such a painful reminder of that which I thought would be but which will not. In August we each, in the privacy of our own lives, saw a positive pregnancy test and felt the excitement that comes along with it. We each innocently began to make plans, to fix a future date in our minds, to look ahead to April without any thought that anything could go wrong. And for the other three, it didn't. Part of me almost wishes my next appointment was after these showers rather than before them, as I fear that appointment will go badly, and the sorrow will overwhelm me, and I won't be able to be there at all. As the midwife pointed out at my last appointment, seeing a heartbeat at 6w2d didn't really change the risk profile at all.

We decided, after it became clear that we weren't going to get any Red Sox tickets this year (screw you, Virtual Waiting Room, and screw you scalpers who bought all the tickets and had them listed on eBay while we were still trying to get through), to head to that scary mecca down the road otherwise known as BRU to do some shower gift shopping. Like many others, I have such a love-hate relationship with that place. But we went. And I bought some registered-for gifts, small and soft and sweet. And P and I dared to look at some of the bedding sets. And he has a weird obsession with Pack N Plays, so we looked at some of those too. And we actually caved and bought ourselves two tiny pieces of clothing. I love them and the hope and promise that they represent. I just want to look at them all the time, as though they might somehow serve as amulets to ward of any ill that could befall us. As though they have the power to fill themselves with a warm, wiggling, crying, pooping body come September. As though they have some sort of power of their own, other than that which I ascribe to them.

Why our dog doesn't get a lot of stuffed toys

While the beagle and basset hound in him love his stuffed toys,



the Jack Russell Terrier in him would prefer to thrash his head around,



slamming the toy into the ground, making himself dizzy with the power of destruction.

Like Maria, I too thought it would be fun

From Maria at Will They Have His Eyes:

Post your own answers in your blog or email...

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? My dad got to choose my name. I share my name with my father's sister and his great-grandmother. That said, I think I'm secretly named after his high school girlfriend, also of the same name.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? Got teary? Yesterday. Fully cried? It's actually been a couple of weeks.

3.DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? I have no problems with it.

4.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? Cracked pepper turkey. Yum.

5. DO YOU HAVE PET? My mutt, Buddy -- the best dog ever

6.IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? Probably not -- I've been told I come off as a bit cold

7.DO YOU USE SARCASM? Often

8.DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes

9.WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Yes, or at least I like to think I would

10.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds, or Quaker Granola (Honey and Oat)

11.DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? No, and it drives P crazy

12.DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? Physically, yes. Emotionally, not so much.

13.WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? Brigham's chocolate

14.WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? The way their mouth moves when they talk (I lost 30% of my hearing almost 20 years ago, so I read lips to supplement)

15.RED OR PINK? Red

16.WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? My thighs. And my tendency to get caught up in minutiae.

17.WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? My person my mom used to be

18.WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR EYES? Green

19.WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Grey wool pants; black and grey plaid heels

20.WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? Pizza

21.WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? Nothing right now. Sirens outside, I suppose.

22.IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? Grey

23.FAVORITE SMELLS? Cilantro; my dog when he first wakes up

24.WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? P, probably

25.DO YOU LIKE THUNDERSTORMS? Hated them as a kid; indifferent now

26.FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? Football

27.HAIR COLOR? Dark blonde, getting darker by the day it seems

29.DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? No.

30.FAVORITE FOOD? Cheese. I love cheese.

31.SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? Happy endings

32.LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Mr. Brooks, on DVD. I Am Legend, in the theatre.

33.WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? Ivory

34.SUMMER OR WINTER? Winter

35.HUGS OR KISSES? Hugs

36.FAVORITE DESSERT? Molten chocolate cake

39.WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? From Beirut to Jerusalem (which I keep putting down and would really like to finish)

40.WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? Some sort of promo for the HR system my work adopted last year

41.FAVORITE SOUNDS? The Dead; bells; flute; waves crashing

42.ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? Beatles.

43.WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? Moorea (near Tahiti), I think; next furthest: Jerusalem, then Hawaii

44.WHERE WERE YOU BORN? Stamford, CT

6w3d

I am so incredibly hungry all the time. I feel lousy if I don't eat every couple of hours, but not nauseated-lousy; it's more a faint-lousy. So very hungry. What is up with this? It's usually better later in the day/evening, by which time a mild nausea sets in, but from waking until midafternoon I feel like there isn't enough food in the world. Yesterday, I kept feeling like if I didn't have a cookie I was going to scream. I kept putting the cookie off. On my way out of the office, I remembered that the place in the lobby has 1/2 priced baked goods in the afternoon/evening. I had a cookie and a brownie (for $1.66!). And no dinner. This can't be good.

6w2d

Not only am I 6w2d, the wee one is measuring at 6w2d. With a heart rate of 130.

After welcoming us back, the first thing the midwife did was offer to do the scan first. And it went well. And she printed off pictures for us without making me ask (I'd share, but they look pretty awful using the scanner at my office -- I'll try again at home). I felt a nearly-instantaneous flood of relief.

Of course, that sense of relief was nearly immediately met by that small voice in the back of my head that kept reminding me that this scan is a week earlier than last time, and things might have looked fine that time at 6w2d. Last time, by 7w3d, the embryo was only measuring at 6w4d and had an irregular heartbeat, but it might have looked perfect at 6w2d. But I'm trying to ignore that little voice, since it isn't contributing anything positive (other than trying to keep me from getting my hopes up again, which is more protective than positive). For now, everything looks good.

And now the wait is on. Next appointment: February 11 (9w1d).

6w1d

We went out to dinner with my moms to celebrate my actual mom's birthday. We knew it was going to be a good one when my mom insisted on ordering a drink at the bar before being seated, even though the table was ready and the hostess was waiting. And she stuck me with the bar tab. And I'm not even sure she realized it.

One more sleep, and I'm off to begin it. I'm so anxiety-ridden, I have no idea how I will sleep at all.

6w0d

Two more sleeps to go until the first appointment. The appointment is Tuesday morning at 10.

The last time I had this first appointment (though at 7w3d last time), we spent what seemed like forever talking about pregnancy -- symptoms, what to avoid (according to the midwife, everything), what to expect, my medical history, our families' reproductive histories, what bloodwork I would be having. Going into the appointment I had had a sinking feeling that something was wrong, but it was that instinctual kind of feeling, whereas intellectually everything seemed fine, so I did my best to set that gut feeling aside. We were unbelievably excited and hopeful. Looking back, I want to kick myself for being so naive, so ignorant of the statistical risks, so fucking idiotic I hate myself for thinking about how nice an April - October maternity leave would be, for worrying about P potentially having to share his birthday, for hoping we would know the sex of our baby by Thanksgiving.

The midwife offered me a quick scan using the portable ultrasound machine in the office. And that's when everything went shitty. She said she would still send me for bloodwork (along with a referral for a formal ultrasound to confirm what she saw, or didn't see (which it didn't, though the news still wasn't good)), but said she was canceling some of the tests, "since there didn't appear to be a viable pregnancy." And she then gave us the "at least..." talk, the one filled with platitudes, each of which begins with that hateful phrase.

P and I both still have really bad feelings about that appointment, for a lot of different reasons. This makes it much harder to get excited for the same thing this time. P thinks the midwife is going to say something hideously insensitive (his favorite suggestion was "So, back for round two?"). I'm just terrified it'll be exactly like last time -- we'll spend a lot of time talking about pregnancy, only to find out something is wrong with mine. The extreme high, the extreme low, the two weeks of limbo. I just want the appointment to be over, for better or for worse. Please God let it be for better.