The time passes for me rather quickly these days.
I’m not sure if it’s because of the chronic insomnia or the mind-numbing commercials that make their way across the tv screens during my bed rest moments of the past two months.
Today I’ve been back at work 3 days and the mixed blessings of adult conversation and paychecks come head to head with the sheer motivation it takes to drive across town and walk out in this unholy heat that has blanketed Memphis for the past couple of months.
Baby baking is going much better. I carry around meds that rattle when I walk – a grand total of 5 or 6 prescriptions with several doctor’s suggestions on over-the-counter medications. I’ve lugged them all around in a knitting drawstring gift bag, an effort that makes me look both cutesy and poor as hell.
But, I’m not sick like I was. I just simply have to avoid most foods with taste, barring the few foods that are pregnancy staples – beef jerky, pickles and the like.
Potato soup is my friend and I will eat it until I reach the bottom of the bowl and perhaps further if the soup warrants it. McAlister’s Deli potato soup has led me through a table or two recently. It’s delish.
And boy is this an active baby. Moving early, moving late. Moving where others can feel it. I’m only 16 weeks, so this is early… and I can move him – him as a pronoun simply as a guess. I won’t find out the sex for another few weeks… it’s perverseness of denying me enjoyment in fried foods simply has convinced me it’s a boy. But I can move him – and must move him, for this baby and my bladder have bonded in a way that cannot be allowed to happen for the next 5 months.
I’m carrying low. Very low it feels like, especially in comparison to carrying Abbey and every movement is slightly painful in the tender way and causes me to rush to the bathroom in the urge to pee. The urge the may not have been there a moment before, but the bond that I mentioned struck true again and now get out of my way! It’s my turn again.
And. Hopefully.
June 17, 2010
I want to say things are getting better.
And they are.
But when things have been as bad as they have been, better is subjective.
I’m afraid to hope that it’s real.
This hyperemesis isn’t anything to play around with.
After three hospital visits and one admittance, I know that I am only in the small potatoes level of this illness and I have NO idea how any of the women who make it through the worse scenarios do so.
I feel more human today… but who knows how long this will last?
I’ve got the Zofran pump – which is a ton of fun – I love stabbing myself with injections every day.
(And people with diabetes everywhere are rolling their eyes at me).
I’m on Reglan, Zantac, Zoloft, B6 and a variety of other smaller things to help me cope and not go insane with vomitatious glee.
And sometimes it even works.
Dear God, Please let it be working.
Let this be a turning point – let this pregnancy start proceeding normally.
Let me feel human again.
A few thoughts
June 1, 2010
1. I will not be sick. I will not be sick again. I will not be sick all of the time. Oh wait, yes I will. But not right this second. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one.
2. I miss my daughter. My life is a bit of a nothing when she’s gone for the summer. Not that I can’t have fun, but it’s a bit purposeless if you don’t count the activities from #1.
3. It’s hard to be excited about a baby that makes you throw up your toenails. Not that I’ve eaten them, just that this pregnancy is a force of nature.
4. My mom is down helping clean up the oil spill. I think the oil spill is horseshit. I’m glad their stock is going down. Someone ought to punch someone else in the nose. A bar fight doesn’t count. I don’t like my mom being gone.
5. The power going out for no good reason in the middle of the night apparently still makes me convinced we’re being assaulted by a massive burglary ring right at that moment.
6. I’ve already lost 10 pounds with this pregnancy. A fact that brings me the only small amount of happiness I’ve had so far since the hyperemesis kicked in. I know that this method of thought is sick and twisted.
7. I don’t like anyone that’s healthier than I am right now.
8. I am a world class vomiter.
9. If I ever get pregnant again, it will be because the sperm is housing some DNA for a future superhero that can swim past any and all barricades.
10. I have nothing interesting to say for #10 because I am once again concentrating hard on not throwing up.
11. Oh! Why is it that I NEVER want to talk about bathroom poops and whatnot, but have no trouble describing anything and everything to do with my so-called vomiting life? weird.
YOU eat a fucking cracker.
May 27, 2010
I don’t really know what to say or how to talk about what is going on.
It’s nothing horribly bad.
No one is dying, no one has cancer that didn’t already have it… that I know of.
I’m just struggling.
Struggling to eat, struggling to drink, struggling to breathe, struggling to sleep, struggling to work.
I’ve been diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum.
My luck, I suppose. I’ve developed something less than 2% of pregnant woman get.
I can’t win the lottery but I can vomit up my baby. And it’s frustrating. People assume you just have bad morning sickness. You’re overreacting. “Just eat a cracker.”
Just eat a cracker?
I haven’t eaten anything in days that I’ve been able to keep down remotely… don’t you think I’d give ANYTHING to be able to eat a fucking cracker?
The HER foundation put up this handy dandy little chart – dunno if I’m going to be able to get it big enough to read, but click on it if it’s not.
Tuesday I got IV fluids at the hospital, next Tuesday I have another appointment at the doctor’s office – a place that I fear I will NEVER LEAVE at some point.
I feel like I’ve got some sort of wasting disease – I’ve never been so miserable in all of my life.
Fierce.
May 14, 2010
Google is a winding path of sorts.
You start off at one subject and end up someplace completely unexpected.
Most of these journeys are fruitless, some teach you a little something.
I following a meandering Lish path not too long ago and ran across this gorgeous couple, Karen and Todd Andrews from Minneapolis.
The path leading me there is not important at the moment, but when I arrived there I ‘met’ 2 gorgeous people on CaringBridge – folks about my age (though a million times better looking), successful young people with a strong relationship with each other, supportive family and friends, and a really horseshit road to travel.
Todd’s got cancer.
And not just cancer, he’s got Cancer. With a capital C. But he’s also got a supportive wife, a supportive job, a good outlook and this willpower that keeps him going when the Cancer keeps trying to kick his ass.
Had this bastard disease not jumped him, he’d have beautiful kids and a long life ahead of him.
But the first has been rendered impossible biologically with the chemo treatments. The second is up in the air.
And his beautiful wife – she’s the one that gets to me the most. She’s sunny and sparkly and so fierce. I think she would literally kick Cancer’s ass if she could just get her hands on it. Just by sheer will. You can tell she’s one step away from screaming it out of him… dear heavens, I wish that would work, too.
Together they have taught me, without even realizing it – because they don’t know who the hell I am, a little bit about marriage and the unexpected and how it changes you – but not what your marriage is.
It’s a bigger word than I thought originally.
And they get up in the morning (or afternoon) when I’m not sure I could. And they go to the park and to baseball games and they keep LIVING because this damned cancer isn’t going to take that away from them if they can help it…
They’re just simply beautiful.
And I PRAY, so hard, that there is a treatment that can help Todd.
Life is so precious.
Repost.
May 12, 2010
I hate what’s happening to my backside.
I have always had a large ass, but now, without gaining any weight whatsoever, I am now the proud owner of a muumuu ass.
Which.
I know you know what that means.
It’s an ass that starts at my shoulderblades and has no end – at least not an end that anyone can see because who can focus on trying to find an end to that thing when they’re trying just to be in the same room with it without being squished to death against a wall somewhere?!!?
I’m so pissed about this.
Mom helped me feel better about it though… by grabbing my newly growing baby belly and moving it all around to see how the fat makes it dance. Over and over again.
Yep. That definitely helped my self confidence levels.
I haven’t felt this sick 100% of the time since… 14 years ago.
Hello, pregnancy.
It’s been a long time.
Don’t even THINK about mentioning food to me.
May 10, 2010
There are fun things about being pregnant… but they don’t happen until you’re a bit further along than I am.
I’m only five weeks, guys.
Five weeks and though the morning sickness has not hit with a vengeance there are mornings like this one… Where I’m not sure if I’m going to vomit or cry, when nothing tastes or smells like it’s supposed to and where my ability to deal with people has gone totally down the drain.
I’m really. really. really. uncomfortable.
The rain outside has turned the entire city a dim sort of grey and I would love nothing more than a nap. A nap where my stomach and my boobs cannot move an inch.
Ah. The things that make me happy right now.
It’s how I spent much of my weekend.
And is not at all how I get to spend next weekend, when my husband will join me in the Memphis area and tell me that I need to move around more and nap less.
Right before I punch him in the face.
Actually, he’ll more than likely be 100% understanding, as he’s been great 99% of the time during my pregnancy so far (a whole 5 weeks in) and has even surprised me in some of his opinions on things…
But.
Because he did this to me.
And because I feel so icky.
I want to punch him in the face.
It’s nothing personal and I mean it with all of the love in my heart.
This is just… first trimester pregnancy talk.
Torn. Ah. Does.
May 7, 2010
My parents like to make fun of my absolutely psychotic fear of severe weather.
Not in the mean way, more in the ‘if you don’t turn off that weather radio right now I’m going to stuff it in your ears!’ kind of way.
And sometimes I understand.
I go way over the top.
And the damned this is LOUD.
But last weekend, about 1-ish in the morning, the tornado warning siren came off and I hurried to their bedroom to warn them as I do every time it happens.
Right as I reached them this hellish sounding wind hit, bringing torrential rain so loud that I jumped. It was terrifying.
The storms continued but we were left mostly unscathed.
It wasn’t until during the week that we found out a tornado hit about a mile away. To the southwest of us. A tiny one – only EF-0 but a mile long path of destruction.
The wind and the rain were the remnants that hit my house.
Had that been a stronger storm I’d have never made it the 100 feet in time to warn them. Or to reach shelter.
How sobering is that?
So while I am paranoid, and the damned radio is too loud… and I’m so aware of the limitations of the meteorologists’ abilities at night with just radar to guide them – I think I’ll continue my craziness. And probably rudely insist that they move faster next time than the drunkenly-tired movements I inspired on Sunday.
Every second is one more chance to make it to that hallway, that basement, that bathroom.
And it matters.
What a way to make that perfectly clear to me. In a way that the tornadoes I’ve been through haven’t.
Life is DEFINITELY about to change.
May 7, 2010
