May-be Baby

So I've been feeling like it really just isn't happening this month.  The whole getting pregnant thing.  I've had this feeling that "the baby is going to be born in May," meaning that next month (August) would be the month to conceive.  I don't know if this is my woman's intuition, or psychic vibes, or just the five days after the midwife at Planned Parenthood told us to wait "a couple of cycles," during which I cemented it in my brain that if I got pregnant immediately after that waiting period, the baby would be born in May.

Some of my favorite people and favorite musicians are born in May: my lovely and talented cousin, Tyler Gaffaney, physicist Richard Feynman, musicians Danny Elfman, David Byrne, and Martin Carthy, to name just a few.  All males, I guess.









I also feel like the baby will be a boy.

A baby boy born in May.

Then again, it could be a girl born in April.


Or a little Goorak born  on Leap Day.

Kid Success?

Well, I finally broke down and took a pregnancy test last night.  The suspense was killing me: I kept feeling all these pregnancy symptoms and wondering and wondering and hoping and wondering and imagining -- is it my period about to start?  or is it my period disappearing for nine months?

I decided I wanted to know.  I was at work when I decided this, so I didn't have a pregnancy test handy.  I also didn't have any more first-morning's-urine coming to me that day. 

 But end-of-twelve-hour-shift-urine is actually pretty darn concentrated, unless you make a concerted effort to hydrate, which it is easy not to do, especially if you don't have a break nurse (which you don't if, like yesterday, you only have 8 patients on the floor).  That is, if you don't have a break nurse, you're not getting many breaks (even with so few patients, it's easy to be busy nonstop, especially if the other nurses on the floor are new and you are helping them), which means you're not getting many chances to eat, drink, and pee (We're not allowed to have drinks at the nurses' station anymore, not even water.  We can use little water cones, or paper cups to drink water in the pantry, or we can put a drink in the break room or manager's office, but still, hydrating is hard.), so your urine is pretty concentrated by the end of the day.





 So when I got home, I put what little urine I had inside me into a cup.





Then I dipped the test strip in for exactly 5 seconds, just as the box instructed (T timed it).
I saw the control line appear right away, but the instructions said wait 3 minutes.  The control line was so dark and the rest of the result window so white, I could tell right away it was negative. 

We waited the full 3 minutes anyway.  I hosed dog poop off my shoe while I waited.  To distract myself.  And because it needed to be done.  And because it would make a funny story if the test ended up being positive.  I could hear myself telling the story to our first kid, "Mommy was so excited to get pregnant with you.  Waiting for the test result was so nervewracking..."  I can hear myself telling our kids a lot of things, actually, and spend a lot of consciousness-time listening to myself doing this.


Three minutes passed in no time.

                                  It was negative.

Negative.

*sigh*

*cry*

*more cry*



I did cry quite a bit.  I didn't mean to, but I just couldn't help it.  I had gotten my hopes up.  And I'm just so excited.  This baby represents so much...

Also, I had just worked 12 hours on 4 hours' sleep, and, though not pregnant, I had raging PMS.  That's a cruel one, isn't it?  That you're in the throes of PMS just as you're getting your negative pregnancy test result.

T wasn't as bummed out as I was.  He hadn't gotten his hopes up as much as I had.  And he's just much more pragmatic and even-tempered than I am.

I told myself that it wasn't meant to be this month and that, better yet, this was for the best.  Hadn't the midwife at Planned Parenthood told us we needed to wait a cycle or two?  Didn't she have a reason for saying that?  Doesn't my uterus need a month or two to rest and recover and restore itself after having a foreign object in there for so long?

Yes.  Yes yes.

And isn't this an expected finding?  Didn't the doctor say he would be very surprised if I got pregnant the very same cycle that I had my IUD removed during?  Didn't he tell us not to stress about it?  Didn't one of my patients, an old woman with 8 children, tell me not to "Try"?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.


And don't you have enough Pisces in your family??

Tee hee.  Yes.  Even though I don't believe in astrology, yes. 







All of that did make me feel better.   There really is something to Pollyanna's "Glad Game."  That's the game where you try to find something to be glad or grateful about in every situation.  I play it a lot and find that it can improve my mood quite a bit.  So much so that I fancy myself a bit of a Pollyanna at heart.  That, deep down, I always have a core of bright, hopeful optimism, no matter how rough a time I'm having or how depressed I feel.  A bit of a contradiction, I know.





So I just need to be ok with not getting pregnant on the very first try.  To trust that my body knows what it's doing.  That when the time is right, it will happen.  To let go and let God.

Besides, the longer we have to wait, the more we'll appreciate Baby when s/he finally arrives.  Already I appreciate how much I'm able to empathize with those who struggle with infertility or with long waits before pregnancies.

Really, it's kind of funny how heartbroken I was.  Of all the times I've done home pregnancy tests over the years, this was the first time I'd ever been sad to have it come back negative.  In the past, I'd always felt much more like this kid:

No, I Would Not Crush Your False Hope

I woke up this morning thinking, "I could test today.  If that First Response pregnancy test is right about being able to detect pregnancy six days before your missed period, then today would be late enough.  I could do it."


It was a little hard to pinpoint the first day of my menstrual cycle this month, which is too bad, because ovulation and, if you hit jackpot, due date, is all based on that magical day.  So, speaking of magic, I decided to call June 6th the first day of my cycle.  I think I like the way the two sixes in 6/6/12 add up to twelve.  Also, calling the sixth the first day, instead of the fifth, made ovulation later and made it more likely that we had caught it during our Trying.

I love having hope.

To that end, I decided not to test today.  Because what if it's negative?  I'd rather not know.  Sure, if I knew it was just me in here, I could go drink Sashimi Martinis on a roller coaster, but there's no roller coasters around here.  And I don't have a martini shaker.  And sashimi is very pricey.  No, I'd rather have six more days of magical possibility, even if they're ended by the disappointment of a period.



Besides, can't taking a pregnancy test too early give you a false negative?

That said, I spent the day seeing all kinds of symptoms of pregnancy in myself.  I felt sort of irritable and emotional.  I felt tired, dizzy, and, at one point in the car, nauseous.  My allergies were terrible (several sources have said that your nose can get stuffy during pregnancy, and one website specifically said that allergies can be much worse during pregnancy).  And tonight, best of all, I've noticed that my breasts are tender.

But that could just be because I sunburned them.

Or because I have PMS.

Mommy and Daddy's Second OB GYN Appointment

We got to meet Dr. W today.  Well, technically I had met him before in the course of my work, but this was the first time T met him, and the first time I'd exchanged more than a few, job-related words with him.



                                         It was a very nice visit.



This time they knew I wasn't pregnant (that I know of).  I got to keep my clothes on.  I got to keep all my pee.  Best of all, we both loved Dr. W's manner - very gentle and patient, almost effeminate.  Also, we got to spend 25 minutes talking to him, which is 4 hours in Doctor Time, so that was great.  He answered all our little questions, and I scratched eight more things off my To Worry About list.

Then we stopped at the outpatient lab so my scientist husband could indulge his desire to have my lead levels checked.  It only took 8 minutes.  Guess I can't see the doctor without giving up some bodily fluid.

The only bad news is that the doctor said he'd be very surprised if I got pregnant this month, immediately after removing the IUD.  The good news is that he said nothing bad would happen to the baby if I did.

I am trying not to get my hopes up.

But I am.

Mommy and Daddy's First OB GYN Appointment

Today we went to the OB GYN for the first time.  I called as soon as we got the IUD taken out and made an appointment for a  pre-pregnancy check-up.  I wanted to get in with my preferred provider and start establishing a relationship.  Also, I had a few questions.  Like whether I needed to purchase a plastic bubble in which to seal myself until the completion of my hypothetical pregnancy, so as to protect myself and my prospective offspring from the toxins mentioned in the packets Planned Parenthood gave me*.

The lady on the phone said that the first visit would just be with Dr. W's nurse, and that we would see Dr. W on a subsequent visit.

T and I arrived at the OB GYN group's office at 11am.  Before going in, we snapped a self-take of ourselves in front of the building.  For the Pre-pregnancy Scrapbook.  We'll paste it next to a lifelike replica of my IUD. 

We went inside and I filled out a health history form.  It was much, much less comprehensive than the one at Planned Parenthood.  Not only did they ask me about fewer physical diseases, but they didn't ask which genders of people I or my partner was having intercourse with.  They didn't even ask me which gender I self-identified as.  It's like they didn't even care.

They did, however, request a little cup of my pee.  Planned Parenthood hadn't wanted any pee; maybe these people were interested in my health after all.  The office lady said they would be taking pee on every visit.  They probably do that to all the pregnant women so they can distill out the HCG and sell it to people on the HCG Diet.  If so, I want a cut of all my urine HCG sales.  Depending on how much that stuff goes for, we can fund Junior's college education.






After I gave them the wee, T and I were taken to an exam room.  Dr. W's nurse came in with a puzzled look on her face.

"So, um, did you take a pregnancy test?" she asked.

"Oh, I'm not pregnant," I said.  "We're just here for a pre-pregnancy check-up.  I told them that on the phone."

"Oh..." the nurse said.  "They put you down as already being pregnant.  You'll need to come back and see the doctor for a 'family planning visit.'"

"Ok," I said.

Nevertheless, we took advantage of our time with this knowledgeable OB nurse and asked some of our most pressing questions:

"Can I keep taking antidepressants while I'm pregnant?"

"No, they're really not safe.  Some people do stay on them, but it's better not to."

Darn.  I was liking those.  Oh well.  We'll go without and see how I feel.

"What kind of screening do you offer for birth defects and genetic disorders?"

She gave us an informative packet and said the screening would be offered every visit.

And, our most pressing question of all, "I just had a copper IUD removed -- do we really have to wait two or more cycles before we start trying to get pregnant?"

"No.  Not at all.  You can go ahead and start right away."

"Really?  It's really ok?  The doctor always tells people it's ok?"

"Yes."

"Nothing bad will happen to the baby because I recently had a copper-plastic doohickey in my uterus?"

"No."

Alright.


We are now officially TTC**.



*Could this just have been a strategic move to further the liberal anti-family agenda?  Were they just trying to scare us away from having children?  Maybe it's a way to sell abortions:  "Oh, your house was built before 1979?  Better abort just to be on the safe side...What's that?  You don't own a radon detector?  You didn't even know there was such a thing??  That's it, I'm getting the fetavac."

**Trying to Conceive.  It's a term I learned from my What to Expect When You're Expecting to Expect book.  I went looking for such a book months ago because I was so excited at the very prospect of getting pregnant.  I was stoked to find that just such a book existed.  Technically its title is What to Expect Before You're Expecting, but I like my version better.

Taking Out the IUD

Today we went to Planned Parenthood and had my IUD removed.  I was tempted to have T do it at home for free -- I have a pair of hemostats, after all (which I have yet to use at work). 

But there are some things which are better left to the professionals.  Feline euthanasia, for example.  Also gynecology.

So we paid a nurse midwife to remove this little device from my uterus.  T watched.  (Hey, he needs to get to know my vag.  It is going to be a major player in a very important event in about nine months.) 

The removal didn't hurt much and the device came out pretty easily, which was a relief.  After six and a half years, I was worried it had grown into my uterus and become a part of me.  I didn't see how it could not have done so.  And, based on an anecdote I heard from a girlfriend, apparently the cure for an IUD that you can't pull out is, well, pulling harder.

The IUD was much smaller then I had pictured it.  When my uterus was cramping down on it during my periods, it always felt huge.  But it wasn't.  Here's a picture of a copper Paragard IUD:

This isn't a picture of my actual midwife holding up my actual IUD.  My midwife was wearing gloves.  And my IUD was covered with thick, sticky mucus.  And the copper had turned dark, greenish-black.  I asked if we could keep the used IUD, but the midwife said we weren't allowed to.  One less thing to paste in the scrapbook.  *sigh*  And she probably just threw it away. 

So much for preaching re-use.

The midwife told me I had to wait "a cycle or two" before trying to get pregnant.  Then she emphasized, "a couple of cycles."  So I let Planned Parenthood give me some condoms.  Planned Parenthood loves giving you condoms. 

So, sex with condoms again.  Good ol' condoms.  The sensuous feel of latex.

*sigh*

 But at least the IUD was out.  Whew!  I scratched one thing off my To Worry About list.

Then the midwife gave me a bunch of packets on how all modern products, and all old houses, cause birth defects.

And I had to add 472 things to my To Worry About list.

Little Creatures of Love

My partner* and I have been discussing having children for some time.  Today, we decided that now is the time to get pregnant (hopefully).  The anticipation itself offers a lot of fun and excitement.  It's a joyous thing and we wanted to share it with you all.

So welcome to my new blog, Little Creatures (of Love).  The title is (as always) a Talking Heads reference.  If you're not familiar with the album Little Creatures, here is a YouTube vid of the song, "Creatures of Love":

There's no music video.  It's just this album art and the song.  It's an easy way to hear the song for free.  :O)  For lyrics, go here.

We are creatures of love.

So let's make more.


*Alas, ours is a plain ol' male-female marriage (which makes making babies easier), but we like the term "partner."  Given the vernacular of our area, "partner" sounds downright righter, actually.