Thursday, May 29, 2014

#YesAllWomen

Let me preface this by saying I'm not going to make this about guns because that's a whole entry in itself (I will just say I don't understand the 'nothing has to change! everything is perfect!' attitude. This is... perfect? It can't be better?)

Let me preface this by saying I'm not even open to discussing whether or not autism has anything to do with it - because it doesn't. Aspergers can certainly cause a feeling of social isolation, sure. I'm a chubster - if I was in High School right now I could be crucified for it, I could be lonely. If I then went and attacked people, it wouldn't be because I was chubby or because fat was a universal, gelatinous time bomb. (Someone wrote about it here much more eloquently).

Let me also preface this by saying that even though the majority of people who read this blog are probably women, men folk - of course I'm not talking about all of you. If there could be a positive that has come out of this last week it's been seeing how all of the men in my life have responded in horror, and some of them seem even more affected than women.  I'm surrounded by lovelies - but like I read in a brilliant tweet this week: ""UNFAIR! NOT ALL MEN!" Imagine a bowl of M&Ms. 10% of them are poisoned. Go ahead. Eat a handful. Not all M&Ms are poison." (And if your online outlets aren't full of lovelies like mine are, maybe post this which is awesome).

Let me also preface this with a picture of a cat hurling a Shakespearian insult - because some of this may be a trigger for some ladies, so let's just consider the below cat portion the unsafe bit, yes?

(Source.)

We good?

In the event that you don't know and are too embarrassed to ask, to recap: last Friday a man in his early twenties killed six young people in Santa Barbara, CA, before killing himself. He did this after uploading a series of YouTube videos (the last one remains) and a 141 page manifesto explaining why. In short, women were too stupid to realize what a catch he was, he was still a virgin, and other people were living the life that he deserved - and dontchaknow, if just one woman would have said yes to him then he would not have had to have done this. (Let me say that the video is disturbing - I know a girl or two who couldn't handle it, but I found it handleable. Just as a warning.) This inspired horror, discussion of misogyny and women sharing their own experiences with being victimized because of their gender under the hashtag #YesAllWomen.

I have been at times entranced by and at times unable to read stories under #YesAllWomen. There just isn't a girl or woman past a certain age who doesn't have some story 'big'  or 'small' to contribute. There just isn't, and that's no surprise at all - but there is something about having a few days where you're forced to stare at the details, and the sheer number of them. I haven't added any of mine to the mix even though I think volume is important and my Facebook/Twitter accounts seem to be blowing up with them.. so here goes. (When I'm done I'll put up another catty cat pic so you can skip these to avoid triggers).

By the end of 3rd grade I was a B cup. By the end of 4th grade, a handful of boys called me Dolly Parton and eventually kept offering me money to show them. (I'm happy to report none of these boys grew past 5 ft 2 inches - teach you to make fun of puberty, assholes). #YesAllWomen

I was 10? 11? The first time I said no to a boy and he kissed me anyways. It was not the last. I was 14 the first time a guy tried to grope me without a hint of permission. It was not the last. I was 16 the first time I had to forcefully push a drunk guy away from me so he would just stop trying. It was not the last. #YesAllWomen

When I was 13 and living in a foreign country a man followed me for months, wrote me letters, eventually disarmed our alarm system while we were on vacation, stealing my underwear and pictures of me out of frames. #YesAllWomen

I was 16 when a boyfriend pulled my parking break while I was driving on the highway because I wasn't showing him proper respect. #YesAllWomen

I was 17 or 18 when my big boobs & lack of acting like a 'lady' led to a lot of boys in school wrongfully thinking I was a slut. The number of pregnancy rumors were mind boggling (not to mention totally fucking ironic). #YesAllWomen

I was 20 when I got out of my first emotionally abusive relationship. #YesAllWomen

I'd say it's been nearly 20 years since I've gone a day without a little habit designed specifically to avoid rape, it's been 15 years since I've gone a week without a man having an entire conversation with my boobs, and about 10 years since I've gone a week without a man calling me, in a condescending way, 'honey' or 'sweetie'. #YesAllWomen

What makes the idea of sharing and reading all of these stories awesome? Everyone has them. Solidarity. What makes the idea of sharing and reading all of these stories terrible? Everyone has them. Solidarity.


So I've been trying to write (outside of this blog) about the shootings, the hashtags, the videos, the whole bit for several days now. And I keep getting... stuck. Just utterly constipated.  There is too much, so much, epic amounts of shit and it's not coming out.

I'm having trouble getting it out for two reasons, I think.

One, I'm angry, just like everyone else - but I'm really angry that I'm not more surprised. This should be a fucking shock, and it's not.

Because really... way more than a handful of women were killed, today alone, because a man felt he was owed a substantial piece of her being that she wasn't willing to give.

What's shocking about what Elliott Rodgers did is that it was seemingly random. He seemingly had every advantage in the world. He did it on a larger scale than just one, specific woman. He was so confidently rotten at such a young age and most of all he without hesitation recorded his very clear views on women - he didn't pretend, he didn't edit himself, he didn't wait until he was in the 'proper company' - he just laid it all out there, that's how confident he was in his beliefs. (His beliefs weren't shocking, just his confidence in laying them out).

But the fact that a man sought revenge on women because they wouldn't give him what he perceived he was owed as a man? I have tried, and there's just not one little ounce in me that is shocked. And that fucking pisses me off.

The second and much bigger reason I'm having a hard time writing about it outside of this blog in any lucid, cohesive fashion is because I'm fucking exhausted of the idea of misogyny. I am.

I am angry, yes, but most of all I am EXHAUSTED.

A few points as to why:

It's not my job as a woman to validate a man unless I clearly and expressly apply for that job. This seems to be a continued point of confusion in society.

Another point of confusion: the existence of my or any vagina in proximity to a penis doesn't automatically mean, imply, or infer a gd thing.

It's not anybody's job to be PRETTY. That is not something that anyone has to be.  I have never seen a man in a tabloid magazine with a close up shot of his thighs with red arrows pointing to his cellulite.

Whether it's calling for women to be more modest or calling for women to be sexier (and both are demanded at the same time, at all times) a disgusting amount of what we do to fall on the Madonna Whore scale is being dictated to live up to mens schizophrenic ideals. These ideals are exhausting and not fucking anyones right to demand, and not living up to them certainly doesn't make anyone subhuman.

I'm irritated because there are sites/clubs/forums all dedicated to picking up women and some of them immediately exploded with sentiments 'if only he knew how to pick up women, this would not have happened! He needed our help!'.  HORSESHIT. Let's think that through for a second - because if the difference between a perfectly rational lovely man and a mass murderer is his ability to 'snag poon' then we should all be way, way more afraid than we already are.  (And to the well meaning, rational men - just on principle, if any group or club describes women as 'targets' then skip it.)

I'm beyond pissed that there are grown ass men commenting under this hashtag with such rationalizations as 'I've never been the victim of a catcall, so they don't exist'.

I'm in my 30s and I need some of the younger women to pick up some of the fight, at this point. Some of them totally are and doing better than I ever did. Some of them are fucking exhausting. 'Feminism' is not a bad word. 'Feminist' does not mean 'man hater' or can't hang with the boys anymore. For chrissakes most of my friends are men. It just means that you have equal rights and can do the things that you want - you want to be a CEO? Awesome. You want to be a housewife? Awesome. You want to have lots of sex, no sex, kinky sex? Awesome, awesome, AWESOME. The only thing not so awesome is betraying your own damn self because you're afraid if you don't take your 'rightful' place behind men that they won't like you as much. Just like with any other group of people - equality is not taking anything away from anyone else.

I'm exhausted because it's 2014 and on one end you have society telling girls only whores have sex (which leads to death!) and on the other they're being told if they're not sexy, they're worthless.

I'm pissed because fucking purity balls exist, where a girls' entire value is tied up to her virginity. Her entire. value. And it's her Fathers to keep until he can hand it over to her husband (I don't even have words for how creepy that is - and yet somehow, I think we would all feel the cootie vibe if it were Mother's protecting their sons' junk). As someone pointed out on Twitter - even Elizabeth Smart thinks the way we talk to girls about sex is bull shit.

Not to mention we still have proms where male chaperones are given the job of making sure the girls aren't 'too enticing'. (It's bothersome that ANY chaperone has to do this, really, unless someone shows up nekkid - but there's something particularly grotesque about asking grown men to review whether young girls are boner proof.)

We've all come up with these ridiculous, convoluted, contradictory rules for women in society and that's all we're teaching the boys, too! Rules for women! There is far less emphasis on the 'handbook to being a man' then there is the day in, day out 'role of a woman' bombardment. FAR LESS.

I think, maybe most of all, I'm pissed and exhausted because I'm going to have to actively teach my daughter how not to get raped or abused. It's 2014 and she's going to have to, just like every woman before her, learn a daily habit or two or ten designed exclusively to keep from being attacked. She HAS to learn those things. Do boys have to learn how not to be a threat in the first place, or can they skip that to avoid awkward conversations?

So worst of all, what really gets me, is in addition to teaching her how to avoid rape I'm going to have to teach her how to teach boys. More times than I care to think about, that will be her unapplied for, unasked for and completely unfair job, just like it's been all of ours. And when she doesn't do it 'right', when the results are less than perfect, it's a crapshoot whether or not society will blame her for her lack of teaching skills, her skirt length for lack of clear boundaries or the boy.

So while she's learning all that, what do boys have to do? Play ball?

Thursday, May 8, 2014

Stork's School for the Knocked Up

It. Is. Thursday.

I am nursing an obnoxious, not-going-away headache at home and playing everyone's favorite solitary game of 'hormones, allergies or brain tumor?'  And I'm too afraid to take more than just one Tylenol because of that whole new pesky Tylenol-may-give-ADHD study.

...I ammmmm however exposing my unborn child to the Anna Nicole story as seen through the lens of the Lifetime television for 'no seriously some awful shit happens to' women network. And yes, it is absolutely everything that you are picturing it to be. (Also, every time a pill is mentioned in this movie I am overwhelmed with the desire to be able to take one, which is probably not the message they're shooting for).

Anyhoo.

I feel as though we have some catching up to do... So I'm going to do a bit of info dumping for awhile until we're all caught up.  Just, you know, observations about pregnancy I will likely forget and shit I should have told you months ago.

Requisite disclaimer: I'm happy despite my complaints. I'm also not a scientist or any ist of any kind, I don't think. And blah blah blah every pregnancy is a magical individual snowflake that is as incomparable as leprechauns are to unicorn farts blah blah.

So in no rational, helpful or scientific order - lesson 1 from Storks School for Pregnancy:



Poo vs. Pooh

Naturally, upon finding out that you are pregnant, one of your first obsessions will be spotting your well deserved bump.  You will gleefully start to notice something somewhere between 4 and 10 weeks, depending on your level of insanity because gawdamit you deserve a bump and you can totally see one starting to form! Your clothes even are starting to feel a little bit snug!

Except no. Your bump is shit.

I don't mean shit bump as in inadequate. I mean that literally what you are seeing is a bump made out of shit.

Pooping is a recreational activity that will be going bye-bye fairly early on. You aren't housing a baby so much as a tiny, pea-sized poop-hoarder.  Just like the show Hoarders, really, if your torso was the house,  your baby was the hoarder, and your poop was the giant pile of garbage engulfing everything in smell and stank and awfulness.

You should absolutely take pictures of your tummy-progress because you deserve it.. but yes ma'am, for a long while what we are documenting is your constipation.

I'm a chubster to begin with but I thought for sure by the time I hit, say, 18-20 weeks I would look pregnant. Not so. Between 12 and 22 weeks I just looked like a beer drinker who had hit rock bottom.

And then BOOM - overnight.  BOOOOOOM. One day I wake up - fat fat water rat.  It is so great don't get me wrong, but also disconcerting because clearly you are growing a monster baby. One day I am a chubby girl with a secret, the next I am wedged Pooh-style in a supermarket turnstile and unable to get up off the floor without Bubba channeling his inner crane.



Raise Your Hand if You have ever been Personally Victimized by Regina George.

There's just no way of getting around it - you're going to be pretty mean. Particularly to your significant other. I did not see this coming.

I'm an infertile - I've had hormones up the wazoo for chrissakes and aside from a couple of eventually hilarious meltdowns on said hormones, I was reasonably nice. And any breakdowns were more sad than they were mean.

Enter pregnancy.

I spent the better part of the first three months pathetically mushy and climbing Bubba like a koala bear, and then he'd do something like eat the last bit of fruit I didn't know I wanted and I would want to murder him in the face.



You're being Bugged

Okay I really didn't think about this before I got pregnant - but at some point, she starts to hear. Like a real person. She's like the NSA - she may not have the interest or wherewithal to sort through my information but damnit, she has it.

She started responding to Bub's voice in particular, and suddenly I'm very aware of what a screechy harpy shrew with a megaphone I must sound like from in there... And holy fucking shit balls I'm suddenly aware of how much cursing she must be hearing.



And yes, I know that's a ludicrous concern because it's not like she's really processing what she's hearing... but did you know that babies, once they're born, can recognize and be comforted by lullabies they heard their mother sing while they were still in utero?

Would you like to know what I, no-exaggeration, ask-my-husband, wake up inexplicably singing 3-4 times a week?

WOULD YOU?!  Fine.



(I also give you the super classy Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman version  that I could not figure out how to embed.)

So for those of you keeping score - MY CHILD WILL BE COMFORTED BY RISKAY'S LET ME SMELL YO DICK.


Uterus = Stupid

I live in a weird little Los Angelian world where the fact that a lot of women have drank the fashion koolaid is hella apparent. There are rich women who gleefully brag about spending $300 for jeans (that don't like... clean your house or anything).  Hell, on Melrose there are thriving businesses exclusively dedicated to selling thrift store t-shirt finds for $50+. Due to what I can only assume is a combo of fashion magazines and salon fumes, we are the leaders in idealizing the type of rich where you can afford to be a total fucking moron (goop is a good example of this. I, seriously, want to meet the woman who shops at goop.)

So I should be used to this sort of thing but I still found it shocking - 90% of 'maternity' clothes is an overpriced rip off.  Seriously. They know you're fat and miserable and look increasingly like the actual Mr. Koolaid so they think you'll be desperate enough to drink it.

I'm not falling for it, assholes! I found a couple of dresses I like but I will otherwise gleefully run around naked this summer if I have to! You brought this on yourselves!!!

... I can, however, be talked into an overpriced onesie.

(Source.)
(Source.)


And yes those are absolutely on their way.

WHO ARE YOU TO JUDGE ME?!



Okay pencils down, class.  More soon.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The Pail Sea

Tap tap tap...

Testing.... Testing 1 2....

This thing still work?

CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?!?

It is I, Stork.

It has been... Jesus.... two months since my last confession. Let's just get into it, shall we?

I haven't been too active in infertile world because I've been frozen in terror, and I need to thaw. I need to unfreeze because I miss you people, but mostly for my own sanity.

I've often compared being a member of our community to being a passenger on the Titanic. We're all unlucky - every last one of us somehow ended up on the wrong fucking boat, and most of us wound up in the freezing water. There are unmistakable divides in our community - who's been in the water longer, who was in it for too short a period or too long ago to count, who's currently sitting fat and happy in a lifeboat.

The ideal code of conduct between these divides, as I understood them pre-pregnancy: If you're in the water, try your best not to focus on the order people should get saved based on suffering because that's never the order it will happen in. If you're in a lifeboat, for fucks sakes don't complain about the gd conditions of the lifeboat particularly to people who are still in the water.

I was in the water for 4 years.  It was a tit bit nipply. I thought, if ever I get yanked onto a boat, because of the aforementioned ideals, it would be a non-obnoxious transition. I'll admit - a million times I've heard a finally-pregnant infertile express how terrified they were, and I've thought 'OMG just be fucking happy'.  So I had a pretty good idea of how I was going to respond if I was ever lucky enough to be 'saved'. Pregnant = problem solved. Smooth transition to happiness.

I was - and this still annoys me - totally, fucking, spectacularly, wrong.

The moment my butt hit a dry seat - happiness. Happy disbelief.  No denying that. There's a physical reaction to obtaining what you've been going after for years before you even have a chance to mentally process it.

Then, I think because of losing one of the embryos 5 weeks in and having enough time to remember - I dunno, who I was? -  and that person was not someone I associated with good luck or a lack of cruel irony, it just morphed into panicked disbelief.

I thought... this can't be your boat. The last one you were on sank spectacularly, you were in the water forever - one of the gajillions of people floating helplessly in frozen, never moving, on-the-cusp-of-ice water. Do you really think you're going to be one of the lucky people successfully saved on this tiny ass boat after all that? Please, by all means, spend a few minutes thinking your safe - because that will give Gawd/the universe/Mother Nature all the more booming a laugh as they hurl you back into the water and you will pray fondly for the days where your skin was used to the cruelty of that temperature... it's going to be soooo much funnier now that you've warmed up a bit.

Another unforeseen reaction on my part was how I would view my place in our community. A million times before, when one of us has gotten knocked up and then disappeared completely, I thought 'well that's kind of a dick move... I guess we'll see you later? Thanks for playing?'. When my butt hit that dry seat, after I realized what happened I looked back in the water. Freezing cold fucking awful water, full of people who had kept me warm for years - and I couldn't do shit to save them. Still can't.

The water had become my HOME. My community. My place. The unbelievably cold and the unfuckingbelievably strong. To stop paddling seemed preposterous... presumptuous. Better women than me were still paddling. Out of habit, I was/am way more used to the idea of surviving than I was the idea of being a survivor.

For a combination of circumstances I don't really fully understand myself - previous experience, hormones, genetic disposition, who knows - I also went a wee bit coocoo for the first half of my pregnancy. I am, if left to my own devices, a very calm, cool, collected and above all mellow person. I find the goof in everything. About 6 weeks into pregnant I became so afraid of how far I was going to fall when it all went to shit, that my brain started entertaining itself by spending most days picturing every possible disaster. An example? I went hunting for blood so thoroughly I would accidentally make myself bleed. If so much as a fucking ant boarded my lifeboat, I would be completely convinced it would sink the whole damn thing.

I'd have a few days where I'd feel normal, and then a few days where it was just... panic. Maybe I would have been better prepared for that if I had hints of that in my personality to begin with but.. nope. It was like being taken over by someone else.  I technically no longer had to paddle to stay alive, and that threw me into such a panic that I exhausted myself paddling. Exhausted.

Maybe around 20 weeks (I'm 25 now) I started to show a little bit (although I'm pudgy to begin with so one could argue I just look like I'm awkwardly carrying fat). Around the same time, I started to feel her move. I started to feel a slight thaw. Maybe I'm really pregnant - but like, the kind that may result in a baby.

A few weeks ago I was driving to get myself some peanut butter froyo with chocolate chips and strawberries (which is now my jammmmm) and listening to "the Loft" on Sirius. (If anyone knows what the fuck the theme of that radio station is supposed to be - don't tell me because at this point it's become a great big infuriating riddle I need to solve.. but do tell me someone knows?).  Anyway, I was thinking about how I really needed to just... let go. Embrace the unknown.  I didn't get this far being a chicken shit. I am no longer trying to get pregnant or struggling to get pregnant... time to accept that I just may be one of the lucky ones. I'm thinking this to myself, this song comes on I've never heard before, Heisenbaby starts to dance around apeshit, and I start to cry - another totally-out-of-character thing for me, but they were happy/relief tears.



So, I still have rough/weird days where relaxing feels like it will bring on punishment.. However, as pre-pregnancy I was no chicken shit, I'm now trying to embrace the happy ending. I bought a crib. I got her a few outfits. I started a registry.

And I'm forcing myself out of the weird and unbearable inbetween... because again, I miss you and I miss my sanity - and at least previously it would seem one was very tied in with the other.

So... I declare this a PAIL blog.

I'm going to get back to writing in here - which has and will continue to be mostly weird shenanigans and certainly not where you go to get an instructional on how to knit a sweater out of tuna casserole using only heavily used stockings.. but I will be writing my shenanigans as a pregnant woman. Which I will be talking about (but I'll go easy on the fruit comparisons).

I'm going to preface this whole new blog - wherever it goes - with the following disclaimer: I am grateful. So grateful. If I had to put hot needles in my eyes every day for the duration of my pregnancy to result in a healthy baby, I would do it with gratitude.  Not just gratitude, but the same perfect understanding I had a year ago as to why any pregnant person should be grateful.... but in that scenario, on this blog, I will be saying 'dude I wish these needles in my eyes were more fun' in my own overly dramatic way... and when I do, please don't think I've forgotten where I come from or how to have gratitude (I think that ought to cover it for the disclaimer).

If you need to back away from me - don't spend a second feeling guilty about it. Just... before you go, know that if there was any way I could drag you by your hair into the boat I seem to have found myself in, I would.  Because I want us all to be happy, sure, but mostly for selfish reasons - I want the familiar on my damn lifeboat, I want you with me because I'm afraid, and you know I'm not going to be able to socialize with too many of those Carpathia bitches who never sank in the first place.

Tomorrow: back to shenanigans. Shit they don't tell you about pregnancy but STORK WILL.




Monday, February 24, 2014

Dispatches from Coocoo

Greetings, blogosphere!

Just wanted to pop in and say howdoyoudo... Need to get back into the swing of writing, so I first wanted to dip my toe in the water to say hey in a sudden and possibly alarming fashion.

HEY.

Going to be talking about pregnancy in this one, so feel free to skip if you need to.

We good? k.

I shall be 16 weeks along with Heisenberg on Wednesday.

Also? Heisenberg is a SHE-BEAST!

While she may be a lady, she shall still be known as Heisenberg as she is clearly a fucking badass (although a friend on Twitter suggested 'Heisenbroad' which made me die a thousand deaths).


The short story is I haven't been on here because I went a little bit coocoo.

By coocoo, I mean the midpoint between 'oh that Stork and her antics, she's silly' and 'holy Christ on a cracker somebody call someone with a giant butterfly net'... maybe a little closer to butterfly net.

I will admit I previously thought that when infertiles got pregnant and then were all nervous and nutso? That it was melodramatic bullshit.

Not so, friends, not so.

Infertility is a fucking survival game. You do what you have to do to get by.  My MO is to make jokes, numb myself out, soldier on like a good little soldier.

And here's the thing, folks... infertility or not, when you put off feeling things you're not getting rid of them - you're just guaranteeing you have to pay for them later. With interest.

Pretty much every day in my first trimester I was convinced something terrible had happened. Not 'oh that would suck, I wonder if something's wrong' but 'something is WRONG'.

I'd randomly get completely overtaken by anxiety that was seemingly not even related to Heisenberg.  Like, getting out of my house and suddenly crippled in fear that the stove was on when I hadn't used the stove in a few days. Wondering if someone was breaking into my house when I wasn't there.

Why? I suppose because you get used to happiness eluding you that when it finally shows up wanting to be a part of your life, your first thought is to figure out what kind of con this is.

I was constantly, cripplingly, 1,000% terrified of getting attached to the idea of a happy ending.

Best way I can describe it... You know that game where you put your hands straight out, and your opponent puts their hands a few inches below yours, and they have to try to slap your hands before you can pull away?

Okay so the process of trying to have a baby when you're infertile is like getting slapped constantly.  Like a never ending fucking slap fest where your fingers get raw and bloody, and eventually you get used to it.  You're constantly taking punches. If you try = you get slapped.

Getting pregnant at the end of infertility is like putting your hands out never having known anything other than slapping, and your opponent just sits there mind fucking you with their eyes. If this one time you can make it 5 minutes without a slap (even though you've never made it 5 seconds without one) the abuse will stop and you can heal. With each passing second, you're more and more afraid of that slap because it's going to scare you, hurt you, make you feel stupid on a level that you're just never going to be able to recover from.  So while before you were physically getting slapped, now it's psychological warfare which makes you flinch and cringe more than you ever did.  Because this slap?  This slap could be worse than all the rest - your opponent could just be winding up for this one, with every passing second a little more inertia added to it.

A specific example of coocoo level? I was checking so vigorously for blood that wasn't there that I would make myself - in a tiny way - bleed.  Not healthy.

I'm starting to feel better. I'm thinking it's a combination of the Maternity21 testing coming back (which I only had on account of my being adopted) lovely, getting a fetal doppler so I can find her when I want, and knowing that prior to this happening to me, when another infertile reached 16 weeks of pregnancy I thought 'oh okay, she's really pregnant. A baby is going to come of this.'

So for the most part I am more relaxed... a few paces further away from the butterfly net. Just a few paces.

Don't get me wrong, in a moment of relaxation panic can still find me...

(Source.)

but it's a little less alarming than it was a week or two ago.

(Source.)

So I'm dipping my toe back into the world.

Hello, world.



Monday, January 13, 2014

Drunken Vampire

Happy Monday my magic mistresses of uterine mayhem.

It has been more than a week since my last confession.  I throw myself at the mercy of the court.

In a manner referencing the great Mickey Rourke pre-plastic surgery binge, I am 9 1/2 weeks (10 on Wednesday holy shit me.) The only thing I have in common with that movie is my ability and willingness to blindly eat whatever the fridge presents me, though I can assure you it is in no way sexy.

I am pregnant.  This hasn't really sunk in yet.  I'm thinking once I get to.. what.. 14 weeks?  I can breathe and stop considering it a 'waiting game' and let the full on bliss set in.  I realize this is obnoxious and that some people are going to read that and go "you're pregnant, enjoy it you moron".. Totes get it because that's basically what I used to think.. You know what it's like?  It's like being the nerdy outcast in High School and then finally, finally your senior year the captain of the football team you've been coveting for four years asks you to prom.  YES you are feeling blissful and this is what you've been waiting for - but there's that damn realist heart-guard side of yourself that keeps whispering 'he may just want to dump pigs blood on you...'

ANYHOO.

I am going to talk about being pregnant in here.  Love me still, please.  For the most part I just anticipate shenanigans. If you need to take a step back do it and I totally get it - if you don't or can muster up some bravery, please do! I am NOT GOING TO SIT AT THE FERTILE TABLE.  Do you hear me?!  YOU ARE STUCK WITH ME.

::ahem::

Either the experience of pregnancy is truly an individual experience, or no one explained it to me right - other than the obvious shit like "hey, your boobs are going to get veiny and hurt, eventually".

So I'm realizing that my description will probably have no relevance whatsoever to how it's going to feel for you, but I'll give it to you anyway.

Pregnancy thus far - at least the first 9 1/2 weeks - is basically like being a drunk, a vampire, and/or a drunk vampire.


(Source.)

Initially you are mostly drunk - without the fun high, unless we're counting the high of knowing WHY you feel like ass.

Your stomach is iffy.  You would like to vomit a never ending river but at the same time, maybe eat a burrito.

Mysteriously your sense of balance and sage wisdom goes completely out the door, and you are left a blob of muttering animal instincts.

You have two emotions: giggly or weepy.  And that's when you can get it up to show an emotion assuming you are not too closely circling vomit river.

THERE IS NO LONGER A PLACE ON THIS EARTH WHERE YOU COULDN'T FALL ASLEEP.

Then the transformation begins.

A third emotion is added to the mix and that emotion is BLIND RAGE.  You cannot imagine what you ever found appealing about going out during the day and mixing with humans.

Unbelievable 'seriously, is she okay?  should she be driving?' exhaustion still plagues you during the day, and sleeping for any length of time at night becomes an impossible dream.

Food occasionally tastes like pointless ash, and blood becomes something you are on constant, constant look out for.

Those 'twinges' people describe - your uterus expanding actually feels like you have a big fat sunburn on the inside of your skin that someone is scratching.

You awake to newly enhanced spidey senses where you just no longer experience the world in the same way.  Oh - how do I know my husband is almost home?  BECAUSE I CAN SMELL HIM DRIVING DOWN THE STREET.



(I have never been so excited to be uncomfortable.  Bring on the second tri).

And on that note, here is Heisenberg as of this morning - had a VERY small, blink-and-you-miss-it, only-on-toilet-paper spotting on Sunday night (which I'm pretty sure is coming from the outside, not the inside) so he/she got a check up this morning just in case:


Heisenberg head down on right, crazy umbilical cord on left.

Dr Kickass pointed out he/she was MOVING which was a crazy, crazy thing to see... definitely hasn't fully computed that this is on the inside of my body but there you have it.

I go see OB tomorrow.  Crazy crazy crazy.













Thursday, January 2, 2014

Feeling Dump

It. Is. Thursday.

Hoping that Santa brought you everything you wanted and that the New Year brought you some closure on the old one.

Sorry that this is going to be brief - still pulling myself out of the holiday haze and more importantly, I am pretty much constantly in a state of panic.

I am, as of today, 8 weeks and 1 day pregnant.  Tomorrow morning, yet another ultrasound.

At 6 week 2 day ultrasound - our Doctor couldn't find a heartbeat on his machine so he sent us upstairs to a higher tech machine.  After an hour of being in that waiting room with multiple visibly pregnant women thinking 'welp that's it', they found it right away (phew). 102.  But I was measuring only 5 weeks 5 days (which would explain why Heisenberg was so hard to find).

At 7 week 2 day ultrasound my Doctor was out of town so a different Doctor saw me.  Heartrate was up to 128 (which is right), and it grew about a weeks worth in a week.  But I was measuring 6 weeks 4-5 days.

Apparently, this could be fine or it could not be fine.  I kind of grilled the fill-in Doctor about what the hell I should be feeling because just going week to week with what is essentially "we don't freaking know anything " is stressful. (I understand there are no guarantees but why the fuck am I even doing ultrasounds if afterwards I can't feel better or worse.)  He elaborated - but by elaborated I mean used more words to say "we don't freaking know, it could be nothing or it could be something". 

PS - I love that my Doctors office is realistic and doesn't blow sunshine up your ass, I do.  However I think all RE's need a memo that NONE of the women who have been trying for a certain amount of time have the problem of not enough doomsday scenarios running around in their head.  As far as help is concerned that's not something I need help with.  Statistically speaking I'm ALWAYS on the shit end of the stick when it comes to reproduction so feeling the need to make sure I'm being realistic or that my hope is well in check is kind of bull shit.

Anyway.

So sometimes this means it's an abnormal pregnancy that will eventually end.  Sometimes it's just something that people who have had FETs encounter - late bloomers.  So it could mean something or it could mean nothing (I mean, a 51/49 scenario even would be nice).

The one thing they said that I find equally comforting and terrifying depending on my mood is that the outcome is long ago decided - there's nothing I can do to change it.

I always imagined that once I did get pregnant, I would just be happy, that's it - number one emotion.  Some nerves thrown in for sure because at this point I know WAY too much to be without them, but mainly I would feel happy.

And let me say here before that statement makes anyone upset - I am happy and I know how lucky I am to have gotten this far.  And if I have to have a panic attack for the next 32 weeks - NO problem.  Happy to do.

But mainly I am fucking terrified.  I am terrified that after all this time, if I let myself get happy or attached or optimistic and it's snatched away from me (not just hope for a dream but being close enough to fucking TASTE it) I will fall so tremendously far that there will just be no recovering.  Not like 'oh that's awful but she'll persevere she's so strong' kind of breakdown but a full tilt boogie, old school, 'call someone with a big butterfly net' crazy.  

So every day, I'm afraid. I know I should be enjoying every second that I am pregnant (someone gave me the very helpful mantra - which I've been using but to no avail - today I am pregnant and I am happy).  I know I should - and don't get me wrong, every day there are moments where I'm like 'fuck yeah this could end in a baby!' But I'm so afraid of getting attached.  So afraid. So afraid that if I start thinking that maybe this one fucking time I'll come out on the good side of statistics and a Doctor may look at me and say something OTHER than 'well we just don't know, maybe you're screwed' that I'll be punished beyond measure for my foolish optimism.

But today I am pregnant, today I am pregnant, today I am pregnant, today I am pregnant.  Please stick around, Heisenberg.  Please, please, please, please God please.

Anyway...

Think a happy thought for me and Heisenberg for tomorrow!  Think pray do a small jig, something please. 

Hopefully everything caught up and grew properly, and I can go back to fun posts (like about how I'm pretty sure Macaulay Culkin and Mary Kate Olsen are the same person).