Overheard

I'm lying quietly in bed, preparing a test on the Protestant Reformation for one of my students, and Bruno is in the master bathroom giving it its first good scrub in weeks. I've begged him to let me hire someone to do this while I'm out of commission, but he adamantly refuses, so I've turned instead to nagging him to get the task done, and today he has agreed. I hear the toilet seat clang up, and the slosh of the toilet brush. And then I hear a voice with a Bosnian accent sing quietly, "I work hard for the money....so hard for the money..."

And I start to laugh with even more abandon than I laughed during the "prevent, PREVENT" moment.

Oh, my poor overworked husband....

Gift from the Girls

Last night, right after dinner, the girls played the Whack-A-Mole game in my belly again, and Bruno was there to witness the wonderful weirdness of it all. It gave both of us such a lift, and helped us shift away from the pain and fears of the past into the beautiful reality of our present.

Thanks, girls, for the gift. Mommy and Daddy really appreciated it.

Worrying

I have been crying all day; I just haven't been able to stop worrying about the quantum drop our cervix took this week.

My cervix.

Bruno doesn't have a cervix.

But I don't feel like shouldering this responsibility myself, so I think I'm going to go ahead and call it our cervix. Anyway, I've been basically quivering in my bed all day with tears streaming down my face, afraid to move, afraid of every pinch and pressure.

However, I think I may have just come to the end of my allowing this new news to be worrying: I got emails back from Dr. R here and from my perinatologists up in Portland, all corroborating Dr. K's assessment that cervixes do have quantum drops like that and that we should NOT be worried. With so many doctors saying the same thing, I think I have to face the fact that I am making myself crazy for no reason.

So I'm going to try to stop.

By doing my taxes.

That's always calming.

:)

Just The Facts, Ma'am, Week 22

Moving right along....

So, today's appointment didn't come with the numbers I was looking for, but Dr. K swears up, down and sideways that everything is continuing well and he considers it as if nothing has changed.

That said, my cervix is down to 3.0, from 3.9 two weeks ago. That is nearly double the rate of change we've seen so far.

Again, Dr. K says rate of change is only one element. He says the digital exam revels my cervix to be firm and closed. He adds that the ultrasound also shows the cervix to be closed and without funneling, that the stitch looks terrific and is holding well, that I still have .6 above the stitch, which is placed at 2.4, and that he is very pleased with the shape the cervix is taking below the stitch. He drew us a picture of that shape, and it sort of looked like Marilyn Monroe's bottom. Hmmm...

And our girls are growing terrifically and in sync with each other: Baby A is 1lb3oz and Baby B is 1lb4oz. And Baby B is still treating her sister like a soccer ball. Actually, she sort of treats her placenta and my internal organs like soccer balls too. And in a delightfully sci-fi moment this week, I actually watched her kicks show up through my belly, as though I had swallowed a Whack-A-Mole game.

Wild wild stuff.

Kicked Out of Costco

Despite being on basically house arrest, I am allowed a 20 minute walk each day. I've figured out that I can get to the Trader Joe's and back in 20 minutes; I can't buy anything, but I can touch the doors, look at all the shiny products and people and then head back home. And I can make it to the bank and back, and if there isn't a line I can even deposit my tutoring checks! And I can make it to the beautiful church on 27th Street and back: so close to the 25th St downtown, and yet so far....

On Sunday, Bruno offered me a special treat: the chance to take my 20 minute walk in the Costco! That is an old-school date, the kind we had when Bruno was in grad school and we had neither time nor money to spare. I was thrilled. It was a chilly day, so I swept my cape over my sweatpants (odd combo I know, but not much is still fitting at this point), and off we went.

We entered the store and the heady mix of crowd and commerce made me instantly giddy; I glided through the aisles, delighted by the difference in scenery and energy. Bruno, pushing the cart behind me, was having quite a different reaction, however.

"Get over here", he hissed. It took me a moment to realize he was hissing at me. "You've got to protect yourself better. These people, they're all morons!" I looked back at him in confusion. "Come here, " he commanded.

I returned to him, where I was held onto and steered like the cart, and we continued to mosey through the store. As each person approached, Bruno tightened and muttered commands and judgments. " "Stay over here." "Is that guy blind?" "Don't walk so fast." "What an idiot!" "I hate people!". Oh my good G-d.

Soon, the hand on my shoulder became uncomfortably tight, so when he next released his grip to go pick up a product, I stealthily returned to my position walking in front of our cart. At which point, Bruno, in his zeal to protect me from others, ran me over with our cart himself! OK, he just ran over my heel, but from the explosion that followed you would have thought I'd darted out into traffic without checking both ways.

"You!....I!!....SEE!!!" he spluttered, red-faced and spitting. "GET OUT!" I turned around to see if he was serious; oh my, yes. I decided it wasn't worth fussing about, so I gave him a kiss on the cheek, took the keys, and told him I'd be sitting in the car waiting.

What in the world is he going to do once our darling girls actually get here?

Just The Facts, Ma'am, Week 21

According to Dr. R, all is well.

Cervix measuring 4.2, small amount of funneling, firm and high.

Normal Bacterial Cultures

Babies wiggling around looking happy.

Weirdo Vaginal Discharge deemed normal variation of flora and fauna of the region, especially following a course of antibiotics

Today is 21 weeks and 1 day. At this point with Pedro and Archer, my cervix had no length, was dilated 1 cm with the bag of waters and Pedro's foot already in the cervix.

We are officially on a different path.

I wonder how long it will take for my heart to believe it. I think right now, I am still feeling acutely the loss of our last path. I'm trying to be gentle with my heart and give it time to catch up to where we are now. But you, dear reader, can feel free to celebrate.

What a Difference a Day Makes

Warning: TMI coming up (Too Much Information)

Valentine's Day was great; yesterday was a nightmare.

Went the bathroom in the morning and there was a large amount of yellow discharge on the paper. Now, Dr. Google says that this can be a normal pregnancy occurrence as the pregnancy progresses, but I FREAKED OUT! With Pedro and Archer, it was at exactly this time, 21 weeks and 1 day, that I noticed a change in my discharge (although it was a different change last time) and went into the hospital only to find my cervix already open 1 cm. The parallel of timing was more than I could take, and I became instantly sure that I had just passed my mucus plug and that things were heading toward disaster. Again.

Some part of me was still aware that mucus plugs really rarely pass through cerclages, and probably this was just a result of the Pap Smear I'd had last week, or one of the fifty other appointments in the last month. So I tried to hide my distress from Bruno. Fat Chance. He is also aware of the time window we are in, and his sensors are on extra alert. So much so that despite the fact that he had already left the house minutes before to go take a hike, I heard the key in the lock as I was sitting at the computer, tears streaming down my face, writing worried e-mails to Dr. D and Dr. K. Ostensibly, Bruno had forgotten his wallet, but I know that, really, his distress radar went off. I convinced him to go on the hike while we waited for the Dr's to get back to us.

I think both the Dr's offices must have been closed, and as the day went on, I started feeling lower abdomen cramping, and a contraction or two, and then upper belly sharp pains. Bruno and I were losing our minds with worry, which probably caused the lower abdomen cramping, contraction or two and upper belly sharp pains. We finally called the two Dr's. Neither seemed alarmed, both think we are within the range of normal pregnancy occurrences, but Dr. R wants to see me today to put our minds at ease and to check that there have been no changes in the cervix. I was so worried, I even missed my beloved PlayGround, where I helped pick the plays this time, to stay home and in bed.

After hearing from the Dr's (and talking to the amazingly level-headed and compassionate Doctor Danielle, my sister-in-law), we did calm down, and even slept last night, pretty well, actually. I'm looking forward to the Dr's appointment today at 10:30, although I'm feeling some shame that I seem to end up at the Dr's twice a week now. I feel like I am a stronger woman than this, but despite my best efforts to control them, my mind and emotions are beyond my grasp right now. I really thought Bruno was going to jump off the sanity cliff yesterday: he was pulling on his hair and keening on the floor for a little bit. It is all just so similar to what started our loss last time that it is nearly impossible to bear.

Anyway, there is my shameful admission. I'll let you know how it goes at the Dr's, and welcome to our D-Day: 21 weeks and 1 day today.

Having a Moment

At Dr. R's the other day, in that moment post ultra-sound, pre-consultation, when my job is to quickly de-goop and re-robe, the door to our exam room slowly starts to open. I am bending over, ass to the air, my underwear and sweatpants about a million miles away on the chair in front of me; Bruno is standing by the door, looking at me in horror. I need to spring him into action, but my brain is jammed with a mix of desperation, anticipatory mortification and the perennial pregnancy state of cow consciousness. Words elude me, but I manage to stammer out the kernel of my urgent need: "Prevent. PREVENT!!!"

Bruno presses gently on the door and says, "One moment, please". The door closes again.

We look at each other, and begin to laugh hysterically. I stagger back into my clothes, both of us laughing so hard we have tears in our eyes, and I begin to worry about whether laughter can trigger contractions. Screw it: this feels too good to cause trouble. "Prevent!!," I whisper through the laughter, and we giggle even harder. I can only imagine what they are thinking outside the door.

We open the door and let Dr. R back in, Bruno and I both red-faced and still spitting and sputtering in our hysteria. I try to explain the source, but the moment doesn't translate, and I try instead to calm myself down. I spend the rest of the consult bursting out into fits of laughter while Bruno looks stern. On the car ride home, we relive the moment with each other, laughing loudly all over again.

Our nerves and our relief spill out in our giddy silliness and we take a breath. All four of us have survived another week, another moment.

Just The Facts, Ma'am, Week 20

Great Doctor's appointment today! Was with Dr. K, the perinatologist. Ultrasound showed that the funneling has disappeared and the cervix is sitting long and strong at 4.0. Dr. K was so pleased with it that he said he wouldn't need to see me again for a month, but we all know this junkie can't wait that long, so he said he's happy to see me again in two weeks. Meanwhile we see Dr. R again next week, so my fixes are all lined up for me.

But we may have a discipline issue on our hands: Baby B seems to be tap dancing incessantly on her sister's head. Actually, I say tap dancing, Bruno says practicing Taekwondo. Either way, she shouldn't be doing either on top of her poor sister. We're thinking maybe a time out is in order. Either that, or Mama should lay off the drinking juice before the ultrasound appointments.

Ultasound Junkie

My name is Lisa, and I'm an ultrasound junkie. It's been 2 days and 11 hours since my last encounter with the transducer.

At first, I could make it almost two weeks before I'd be jonesing for my next hit of the sonar induced serenity of seeing my cervix stable. But as the weeks went on, the addiction grew stronger and I'd need a new fix after only 6 or so days. This week I hit an all time low: a mere two days after I last gelled up, I was curled up on my bed, crying with desperation for another dose, nothing big, just a small peek to help smooth things out. Come on, man: I need this.

I'm not the only junkie living under this roof. My partner is a real enabler. He saw me curled up on the bed, shaking with need, and he actually encouraged me to call my dealer/doctor to schedule a fix. And he drove me there, and held my hand while Dr. Dealer doled out a hit of transducer tranquility. And he too felt the sweet relief as the sound waves flowed through my body, and images of an unchanged cervix flowed onto the screen.

My next hit is in a mere 3 hours, so today is a good day.

Circling

Today I am deep in the crazies. Of course I am. Yesterday we heard the "f" word at our doctors appointment and once either Bruno or I hear that word, it is like some sort of hypnosis trigger: the sane parts of ourselves fall into a deep trance and the crazy people are left running the show.

When Bruno came home last night and I gave him the rest of the doctor's report, it was exactly how I feared (minus the swimming to Croatia part). He yelled at me to get in bed (he wouldn't continue talking to me until I walked to the bedroom and laid down in bed), yelled at my belly to tell my cervix to stop funneling, yelled at the ceiling that it couldn't give us one G.D. day of peace. He yelled for a while.

We've both been in kind of a zombie state since then. Breakfast was a dreary drudge, and then he was off to work, and I was off to paranoia land. My buttocks keep falling asleep: is that because my cervix has opened?! I eat a snack and my belly gets hard with digestion: is that a contraction? I had one yesterday I'm pretty sure: is this a new pattern?! I called Mom and it's been an hour and she hasn't called me back: she must be furious with me for the e-mail I sent yesterday and Dad must be mad at me too and how dare they be mad at me right now, don't they know I am hanging on by a thread over here. A few hours later, I get a sunny phone call from Mom saying how she's been out most of the day, just getting my message now, and hopes today is a good day for me.

The pinnacle of the crazy was when I was lying in bed this afternoon, trying to take a nap, and I realize that the p17 shot they gave me yesterday didn't hurt at all. Normally they sting like mad and it lasts for two hours. This shot didn't hurt even for a minute. I conclude that they must have forgotten to draw the medicine up into the shot and instead shot my ass full of air! As I type the words now, a few hours post-nadir, I can't help but laugh out loud: even I recognize how insane this thought was.

I stand in the kitchen, holding the medicine bottle in my hand, trying to assess how much is left, crying with the impotence of it. A small (oh so small) voice of reason reminds me that the bottle I am holding contains hormones and maybe, just maybe, the proof that the shot did contain more than air is the outrageously irrational fears I am buying into at this very moment. I throw on my shoes and leave the house. The fresh air and sunshine immediately start to cut through the crazy. A call to my sister-in-law while I walk finishes the transition. Thank goodness.

Of course, as I write this, my buttocks have fallen asleep again, and I wonder...

Just The Facts, Ma'am, Week 19

Today's appointment was with the Ob/Gyn, Dr. R.

Baby girl A and B are looking great: kicking around, kicking each other, playing Red Rover with the membrane separating them. They are in constant motion. Dr. R remarked that they seem to take after their mother. I think he just doesn't know Bruno that well yet.

My cervix is measuring 4.3, down a bit from the 4.7 of two weeks ago, and the 5.0 of the month before that, but Dr. R assures me that this is totally normal and well within the range of what a cervix should measure at this point in a pregnancy. They don't start to worry about a cervical measure until it falls below 2.5, so we are still way above that.

There was some funneling (opening), at the internal os of the cervix (the side closest to the uterus). Oh, how I'd hoped to go our whole pregnancy and never hear the "f" word. But, again, Dr. R assures me that this is totally normal at this point in a second pregnancy and says he'd be surprised if he didn't see this. I asked if I should stop my 20 minute walks, or get in bed and stay there: he said no need for that. I cross-referenced this with my perinatologist, Dr. K, who writes back, "My feel is that nothing has changed so far. See you next week"

OK then. No one is concerned. This is normal. I even call my sister-in-law who tells me that, at week 19 of the pregnancy she just successfully navigated, she had funneling and her cervical measure was only 3.0.

OK then. Everyone stay calm. No need for alarm.

Except it sounds so exactly like the beginnings of what happened last time that I notice I slyly skipped my 20 minute walk today, choosing instead to spend the day in bed, napping. And I notice that I haven't yet told Bruno the full details of today's appointment, other than to say that Dr. R says all is normal, out of fear that Bruno would swim to Croatia to retrieve his Mama, swim back with her on his shoulders and then order her to sit on my hair all day in order to keep me lying in bed.

These are some things that I notice.

And those are the facts.

Lemonade

Wow, what a week.

Big scares have been had and resolved, statistics have been doled out and adjusted and retracted and yet irretrievably absorbed into the psyche, markers have been, well, marked, babies have been looked at and looked at and looked at, Mama has been poked and prodded and gooped up and wiped clean and sent hither and thither. Tears have been shed and anger and panic have been felt and decisions have been made. And relief is beginning to be felt.

Last Thur, week 18, we had our big level 2 ultrasound where the technician takes measurements of every possible aspect of baby A and then of baby B, saying nothing while doing so. Nothing, while measuring aspects of baby A's brain again and again and again. Nothing, while the two bright white dots appear in Baby B's heart. Nothing, while the strange reptilian images flash on the screen, freeze, and disappear. Then the doctor comes in and measures some more of the exact same things, and just before Bruno is about to remove the last of his hair from his head, finally tells us. She has found a soft marker for Down Syndrome on Baby B's heart: an echogenic focus. And, more alarmingly, the tech captured a shot of Baby A's heart that seems to show a potentially fatal congenital heart defect, but the doctor can't repeat the tech's findings and thinks it is just a bad camera angle, but, just to be on the safe side, she wants to send us today, now, to get a fetal echocardiogram. Just to be sure.

Bruno looks like he is about to faint. I can tell the reins have slipped his hands and the horses of his fear are now running wild. He has abandoned the sanity ship, forgotten his life jacket and jumped straight into the roiling sea of assuming the very worst. Poor guy.

Through something that could alternately be called motherly intuition, abject denial, or base survival instinct, I am not worried about the potential heart defect. That is the red herring in our story, I am certain, and not our path. We will need to go through the inconvenience of getting over to the hospital and getting through the ordeal of another 2 hour ultrasound, but in the end we will be told all is well with Baby A's heart. And that is exactly how that part plays out: a wonderfully warm new pair of technician and doctor spend another two hours silently measuring all kinds of things, the "nothing" hanging so heavily in the room that Bruno actually has to excuse himself to the lavatory for a while. But, two hours later, we are told that, yes, in fact, the first tech just got a lousy angle, and this doctor finds nothing wrong with Baby A's heart.

Ok. Phew. Now back to Baby B.

Before we were bundled off for our second 2 hour ultrasound of the day, we were taken into a room for genetic counseling. We were told that echogenic foci (the bright spots on Baby B's heart), have absolutely no medical repercussions, no impact on anything, only that a certain number of Downs Syndrome babies have them. And so finding this marker on Baby B increases our odds to 1 in 150 that one of the girls has Downs. Except, we are told, really we should ignore that because 5% of "normal" babies have this marker and 7% of Downs babies have it, so really it is a nearly useless marker, the softest of the soft. But they are compelled to report it. But really we should ignore it. But would we now like to consider having an amnio?

Oy.

They advise us to take the weekend off from thinking about it, and to weigh the two worst case scenarios against each other. Worst case scenario 1 being we have an amnio and the amnio either goes wrong or causes a complication which causes us to lose the entire pregnancy. Or, that in finding that one of the girls has Downs and choosing to selectively terminate, we lose the entire pregnancy. Worst case scenario 2 is that at the successful birth of our twin girls, they tell us that one or both of them has Downs, and our lives are altered forever.

We do take the weekend off from thinking about it. Bruno flies up to Vancouver to ski with a friend and I go for a weekend at Spa Morse (Mom and Dad's place). We come back together on Monday to begin to work our way through this statistical nightmare and the crying and wailing and gnashing of teeth begins at the Universe which just won't cut us any slack and make anything easy for us.

After a day or two of picking at the threads of the dilemma, beginning to tease apart the complicated knot of our feelings, we got down to brass tacks on Wed evening and discovered that we were actually very clear about how we felt, and very much on the same page. We both felt that if we chose to do an amnio, and anything at all went wrong with the pregnancy from that point on, we would assume that it was because we had intervened, had needed to know and control things. And we wouldn't survive that. We'd eat ourselves alive with guilt and we don't think we'd recover. Whereas if we got to their birth and discovered one or more daughter had Downs, we'd feel sad and mad and Job-like for a bit, and then we'd make magic. We'd pull together and build a beautiful life for our family. I'd start an Arts Camp for developmentally disabled kids and Bruno would run some sort of camping/hiking/biking retreat for families with DS kids. We actually decided that regardless of whether our girls are born with Downs, we will do these things.

When we laid it out like that, it became clear that there was only one choice for us right now: option 1 had the potential to lead to emotional Armageddon, whereas we could live with and even thrive with option 2. So, we decided, once and for all, to eschew the amnio: to open up our controlling little fists and let go and see what happens next. And I have to say, that decision, and coming to it together as a couple, has given me a lot of peace, and a lot of hope.

I guess when you find yourself in the middle of a two year lemon hailstorm, eventually you find your way to getting out the juicer and making something sweet.

Me and U

Picture:
1:39 AM: a buck-naked, overheated, irrationally incensed pregnant woman, strung out on sodium and sugar from a pulled pork sandwich and way too many whole grain chocolate chip cookies (ostensibly nutritionally valuable, but actually composed entirely of pregnancy crack) gets up and yanks her new acquisition, a U shaped pregnancy sleeping pillow, which takes up nearly the whole bed and weighs nearly as much as her pre-pregnancy weight, from said bed and onto the floor. With tears in her eyes, she gathers her previous system, a complicated collection of normal sized pillows in varying states of dilapidation, tosses them on the bed, marches off to the office to admit her folly on her blog, and then returns to the scene of her U shaped crime to attempt to gather any sleep still available to be had that night, not to mention the shreds of her dignity.

Thoughts:
1) Thank goodness Bruno isn't home to witness her pillow mutilation.
2) Thank goodness he comes home tomorrow. Apparently, she's become a bit unglued.