Polar Bear Fish

19 Weeks Along

and I look like I swallowed a basketball. Funnily, my super-oblivious coworker just stopped by my office and said, "Oh my goodness, are you pregnant?"

Seriously?

Being pregnant with twins is some serious-ass business. It is kicking my butt up, down and sideways. But there is a lot of awesome going on as well.

Z is super excited about it. He gets all sweet and pats my belly and talks to them and calls them the twinkles. So I think it might be worth it.

Although...T and I have suddenly realized that we are going to have to purchase a minivan. And you know what? We are both going through the stages of grief. I'm pretty much at the acceptance stage, probably because the pregnancy is more real to me since I can't for one single solitary second forget that I am pregnant. T seems to be stuck at the bargaining stage.

That's it, any small vestiges of cool left in my body pretty much drained out of me the moment I found out I was having twins. All that's left is getting used to the idea.

Roly Poly Days

Fun Fact: Your ribs move up 2 inches when you are pregnant.

I wonder if twins move them up 4 inches? Because it sure as shit feels like they do.

 

So, the placentas are anterior, which means that they are in the front as opposed to posterior (in the back). Apparently this blocks a lot of the baby kicks--or so I've heard. However, this does not seem to block the round ligament pain or the weird rib cage pain that I can only assume is Baby B nestling in as close as possible to my lungs.

Sweet Jesus, I'm not sure that my poor organs are going to survive this pregnancy.

Meanwhile, there's no pretending that I'm not pregnant these days. My belly is ginormous already and I'm only 17 weeks pregnant. At this rate I'm going to have stretch marks on my stretch marks. Toward the end of this pregnancy I should just hire myself out as a walking safe sex ad to all of the local high schools. I could just go in there and scare the crap out of those poor children and hand out condoms.

Yours with a deficit of vim,

PBfish

Things that I have Considered in the Last Few Weeks

1. How feasible would it be to have a catheter inserted for the rest of this pregnancy? Because damn, I sure would like to sleep through the night while I still can.
2. WTF? Do my coworkers actually think I am this fat? For the sake of my sanity, I'm going to pretend like they are all actually super polite people.
3. What is wrong with the women on Babycenter? I fear for our future.
4. Also, why do they name their children Neveah? While they're are at it, they might as well change their own names to Douchebag.
5. I wonder what is going to happen to my internal organs when I have like 12 pounds of baby in there?
6. MUST. NOT. GOOGLE.
7. Being pregnant at 40 is profoundly different from being pregnant at 33, what was I thinking?
8. Oh hell no, you can't stick a needle into my belly twice. Nope.
9. How can I be hungry while eating a super burrito?
10. Seriously, is no one going to ask me if I'm pregnant?

Yours with guacamole on my chin,

PBFish

Womb for Two

Well. I probably did have a miscarriage of sorts, but it isn't the end of the pregnancy. Not by a long shot.

On Friday afternoon an ultrasound confirmed that I have two babies, measuring right on target with lovely little heartbeats, growing inside me. I spent the better part of the weekend coming to terms with it. And I'm still absolutely terrified.

I assume (and the doctor agrees) that the big clot was an egg sac and that my body wisely decided that triplets was a bit much. Is twins too much? I don't know. I'm 5'4" and shortwaisted, so there's not a whole heck of a lot of room in there. During my last pregnancy my stomach was HUGE. I can't even imagine what this will look like. And the destruction that my poor, already stretch-marked body will face.

What's fascinating to me is that before I passed the clot I felt completely horrible: nauseous, exhausted and panicky. Afterwards I feel so much better, more like I felt when I was pregnant with Zach.

 

Welcome to the womb Baby A and Baby B, maybe you should stick around.

Well that can't be good...

Yesterday I woke up and headed to the bathroom for my morning visit and saw a rather large clot of blood. Which, of course, sucks utterly and completely.

It looks like I'm having a miscarriage. My very first miscarriage, how exciting!

Sigh.

I decided that I wouldn't head off to urgent care to sit around for hours waiting for someone to see me and confirm it or tell me to wait and see. I'm just a little under 7 weeks pregnant and from what I've read, that would be the likely response.

Naturally last week I rescheduled my first obgyn appointment for a time that worked a little better for my schedule and my husband's schedule. So now I won't see a doctor until Thursday unless I go in to urgent care. And I just really don't want to heap that misery on top of the misery of knowing that this pregnancy isn't viable.

At first there were no cramps, but now, I've got cramps. Nothing too nasty that would indicate an ectopic, I hope, but enough to make me feel crappy.

Well, it seemed a bit too good to be true. More news on Thursday. I'm hoping this will be clean and won't involve a d&c.

yours with a rueful expression,

PBfish

Bladder Control

Ten years from now, when we have triplets and Zach asks me why, I'm going to have to tell him this story. Once, many years ago, your father and I wanted to give you sibling.  In pursuit of this end we traveled to Mexico and did some crazy-ass sci-fi shit to make it happen. On the day of the embryo transfer, you and your father were frolicking on a beach and I was in a sterile, almost entirely white fertility clinic on the other end of town. And I had to pee like you cannot believe. Because I deliberately drank a large quantity of water and held it in for a long, long time. And the procedure was now going on 45 minutes late.

When the doctor came in, he gave me a picture of 3 lovely 3-day old embryos and let me know that he wanted to transfer all of them. I demurred, saying, "Shouldn't we only transfer one or two? You know, so I don't have a litter of babies?" He mentioned my age and statistics.

Meanwhile, I really had to pee. Like, you can't believe how bad I had to pee.

And that's when I made the decision, and I'm not going to lie to you about it. I decided to go ahead and let him transfer all three embryos because I couldn't bear the idea that he was going to have to stop what he was doing and go back and do some sort of sci-fi shit to freeze the extra embryos. I was afraid that he would walk away and that I would have to wait another 30 minutes. Because you know when you are at the doctor's and they have to do anything, it ALWAYS takes like 30 minutes or so. And did I mention that I had to pee? Like so freaking bad?

So, the reason why we can't afford to buy groceries and pay our mortgage is because your mother was afraid she was going to pee all over the exam table.

The end.

Update on April 30th, when I have my first ultrasound.

Oh yeah, and yes, I'm pregnant.

So far...

Privilege

Coming off of a weekend in which I repeatedly tried to play with my 6 year old. And feeling a little bit like a failure because I can't be a true playmate. Because I'm not a little kid and I can't quite inhabit that world.

And so my thoughts turn to having another child. A sibling for Zach. A partner in crime.

And again I will fail. Of course I will. How on earth could I not fail? The ovaries are now legitimately old. It's now totally normal to be infertile. I'm 40. I've been diagnosed as infertile for 9 years.

It's not the kind of condition that gets better with time.

Family-building

People don't use that word unless you are having a hard time getting pregnant.

Once you are infertile this word sequence makes a lot more sense. And yet, being able to "fix" the problem is a question of privilege. And the question of privilege is what stops me from adopting. It's a tangly twisty world of privilege--the domestic adoption world. Women without privilege relinquish in adoption, women with privilege adopt. Or, at least, that is my perception and my fear. I think I would be paralyzed by the weight of this reality if I were to try to adopt. I think I would have an incredibly hard time with it. This isn't me saying that adoption is wrong, it's just me acknowledging that adopting would keep me up at night. And not in the good, healthy, I-have-a-newborn way. And even foster-adoption is fraught with the issue of privilege. I see that women who come from privilege rarely have their children taken away from them. Or, if they do, those children go to family members, not strangers. Again, privilege rears its curious head.

And so, to avoid the stickiness of questions of privilege, I find myself choosing IVF with donor eggs. Which, again---privilege. I get to make that choice, because my financial situation is favorable. And someone is deciding, for some reason, to "donate" eggs...for a fee. That's pretty damn sticky right there.

So what the hell am I doing? And what am I doing in this handbasket?

Yours gluefully,

PBfish

Donor Egg, Ho!

I keep meaning to take some time to write. So that I can hash things out and examine them.

Okay. So here it is.

At the end of March, we’re doing a donor egg cycle in Cancun. During spring break, naturally. Because we are idiots.

And what do I think about it?

Well, the truth is that I’ve thought very little about it since we made the decision. Before that, I worried and fretted and worried and fretted. But now? Now that we’re doing it? I hardly ever worry about what it all means.

And for me, worry-wart supreme, not to be worried is a little odd. I think it all boils to me not believing that it’s going to work. Due to some amazing fortuitous insurance stuff, we’ve realized that we can do this for very little monetary output. So I don’t feel too attached to the outcome. Which is sort of insane, if you think about it. (which, I don’t, apparently) In some ways, I’m sort of doing this so that I can say to myself, “okay self, you tried your level-best to give Z a sibling, now you are off the hook.” Which is a crazy reason to inject yourself in the butt with Lupron, but, well, there it is.

So, on March 28^th or 30^th, I may or may not get pregnant. And I am so weirdly okay with either outcome.

Yours ambivalently,

PBfish

One More, Please

I should never underestimate my willingness and ability to complicate the crap out of everything.

Sometimes I meet people who blissfully walk through life making decisions without crippling guilt and worry. I really, really wonder what that feels like.

Okay, so here's the skinny. I'm now 39 years old. Mama to an awesome almost-6 yr old. And still I want more. I won the infertility lottery and got pregnant despite diminished ovarian reserve. And still I want more. Who the hell do I think I am, anyway?

We've mulled the adoption thing over. A lot. And worried about one child being born to us and one child being adopted and what that would feel like for the adopted child. And worried about birth family and integrating them into our family and what that would be like. And worried about dealing with the grief of adoption and what that would be like. And the ethics. A lot of worrying about the ethics.

And ultimately decided that domestic adoption isn't really the right choice for us.

And so I mulled over foster adoption. And worried about whether we were equipped to help a child who had been neglected and/or abused. And worried that taking on a child who might have those special needs would be onerous for our family and unfair to our existing child. And worried about dealing with a dysfuctional birth family. And the grief of adoption.

And ultimately decided that foster adoption might not be the right choice for us.

And now we have some money from an inheritance. And there is the option of doing IVF with donor egg. And lo, now I have more things to wonder and worry about!

True Confession

Day 37. Sadly, there is so little chance that I'm pg that I won't even waste the $15.

sigh