State of the moi

We took a mini-vacay this month, to Monterey, and it was amazing. It's only an hour or two away (we stayed in Santa Cruz and took day trips) and we were down there for less than two days, but just being away from my computer and to-do list, and getting to spend real time that was not chore- or errand-focused with my family was beyond wonderful, and so relaxing. Of course, I came home and did three loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, one grocery shopping run, and prepped meals for the week, but it's better to do that on the weekend than have to take care of it incrementally after work, so that was good too. Lesson learned: a mini-vacay, even to the next town over, is a wonderful thing. This was the last real "break" I expect to have before the baby comes, and who knows for how long after, so it was doubly precious. Speaking of which...

Update on the whole pre-term labor situation: I ended up back in the hospital Sunday night for four hours, after contracting more or less constantly - but painlessly - all afternoon. Thank god my partner is now home and could stay with the Squid. My cervix was closed, narrow, totally not showing signs of labor. They sent me home, and I took Monday and Tuesday off work to recover. The fetal fibronectin test results came back on Tuesday evening and there is a less than 1% chance that I will go into real, actual labor in the next two weeks. Awesome. No, really, it is awesome; it just also means that my partner will have to go on his business trip and I will have to go back to work and I am just really tired. And uncomfortable. And tired. But this too shall pass.

Pregnancy dreams, as I've noted before, are intense, as well as intensely fucked-up. Nor are they subtle. A few days after my dream in which the Squid had run off and I was having to look for him - up an endless steep hill, while towing a huge, heavy box of books - I had a horrible nightmare in which I worked for his preschool and was (rightly!) excoriated by the director for being a terrible, irresponsible employee and an awful, neglectful mother. O HAI MY INSECURITIES.

For those of you who have never been pregnant, I have a metaphor for the feeling. Imagine that your stomach contains one of those thick red rubber playground balls, like you had in grade school. A smallish one, fully inflated. Then imagine that it is chock-full of bouncy balls - the heavy, thuddy, really bouncy sort - in multiple different sizes. Fetal movement can feel like anything from those bouncy balls rolling around, to going off like popcorn (one or two at a time or all at once), or shifting, or being squished against the sides of the playground ball so you can see the bulge. Not usually painful, but thuddy and roily and distinctly awkward.

This is a very busy fetus, have I mentioned? The night after the second time I was sent to the hospital for monitoring, we had fetal activity of the full-on popcorn variety from midnight to four a.m. Since sudden increases in activity can be a sign of fetal distress, this freaked me right the fuck out, as you may imagine. Things seem more normal now, but it's like once one thing goes wrong, my worrying kicks into gear, and everything becomes a source of anxiety. I keep prodding my belly to wake her up and make her kick if she is quiet for long periods now.

Basically, I think all the pregnancy hormones have finally manifested in a way that they had refrained from doing previously. I am more anxious, more tired, and infinitely more spacey. My brain seriously has no ability to parse information of any complexity whatsoever, and even my good old autonomic functions are on the fritz. Over the last week, I have had some truly spectacular "pregnancy brain" moments, including calling to rearrange an appointment, getting it solved to my satisfaction, hanging up ... and then five minutes later looking at the phone and wondering, "What happened? Did I get disconnected on hold and I didn't notice?" and almost going through the whole process again before remembering that I had in fact already successfully completed the task. I also had about ten minutes of full-on "monkey bang thing with stick!" type frustration while attempting to open the latch on the garden's sprinkler controls (which pops out easily, it turns out, if monkey bang it the right way), lost or confused a myriad of basic household terms, and attempted to wash my hands with lotion instead of soap. I am a fucking genius these days.

I have also been nesting like a madwoman. In the last two weeks, I have:

• Organized and cleaned out all our junk drawers & pen holders
  
• Organized and cleaned out my closet & dresser drawers
  
• Organized & cleaned out dishtowel/washcloth/baby supply cabinet
  
• Organized & cleaned out freezer
  
• Organized & cleaned out medicine cabinet in kitchen
  
• Organized and cleaned out the Squid's toys
  
• Silkscreened onesies and t-shirts for both children
  
• Knit baby hoodie, baby hat, booties, scarf
  
• Replaced glides on kitchen chairs
  
• Packed hospital bags
  
• Bought last of necessary baby supplies
  
• Returned videos and library books and other borrowed items
  
• Set automated backups in motion for computer
  
• Scanned documents & some photos
  
• Sorted family photos and sent more off to be scanned by a service
  
• Weeded the garden
  
• Bought and planted vegetables & herbs
  
• Called potential childcare providers and mapped them and all their info on Google Maps
  
• Paid all back bills and dealt with census and other outstanding mail items
  
• Re-indexed my electronic address book and re-done my spice cabinet spreadsheets
  
• Five million loads of laundry, three million loads of dishes, roomba, cooking, cleaning, sorting, etc.

...I would estimate, conservatively, that since becoming pregnant I have spent at least $300 on organizing containers and equipment of various sorts. This is only a ridiculous outlay if it does not result in the house getting and staying organized, so I don't feel bad about it - not even about the amount of plastics I bought to do it, because I keep rubbermaid and other plastic tubs forever. I measured all the spaces, envisioned the perfect containers, sought them out, indexed the contents where mere sorting was insufficient (my spice cabinet spreadsheets, let me show you them!), and sent bags and bags and bags of Stuff to friends, goodwill, freecycle, the local library, the preschool, and other places that might be able to use them.

Of course, as I then said to my friend I__, I am now nearly out of things to do that do not require brain power (see above re: how much of that I am packing these days) and left twiddling my thumbs, feeling miserable, and wondering when the baby will come. I'm ready! I'm done with my chores! Where is this damn baby already? ... Pregnancy is not for people with control issues.

Long version (5 a.m. insomniac remix)

In retrospect, I wonder how much of the bad temper, poor sleep, and inability to cope of my past few days was brought on by the discomfort of un-noticed contractions. I didn't go into labor naturally last time, and I hadn't really had any Braxton-Hicks before, so I wasn't attuned to them and might have written them off as part of the general misery of being seven and a half months pregnant.

But I sure as fuck noticed Friday afternoon, when I crawled under my desk at two for a brief nap and was almost immediately hit with a series of painful (like, bad menstrual cramp painful), distinct contractions less than seven minutes apart. After about half an hour and a few position switches, they waned, but I dutifully googled up Braxton-Hicks, because I seemed to recall that they were supposed to be ... milder.

Sure enough, B-H are supposed to be "painless" for most women. And you're sure as fuck not supposed to have four or five in the space of half an hour. The internets said to call my doctor, so I did - even though I felt okay at that point and was sure I was just being overcautious.

The advice nurse took all my info and said she'd have the doctor call me back; by 4 pm they had sent me to labor and delivery at the local hospital. I was still contracting, but mildly and less frequently, and feeling like an idiot who was probably just imagining it all. Nevertheless, I called my partner (who was on vacation in Kentucky) and left a message on his phone, saying not to panic, but to develop a "plan B" on how he might get home earlier than planned.

A new acquaintance (seriously, I like her and we've been on the way to making friends, but this woman has been to my house once, and we hung out at a kids' birthday party once, and she had emailed me earlier in the day to say "how about pizza and playdate after preschool?") called to see when I would want to meet to hang out, and I had to explain what was going on. Without my having to even ask (and I had been desperately wracking my brains as to how I could make this work) she offered to pick the Squid up from preschool (all my other authorized picker-uppers were out of town) and take him for as long as I needed. At that point, I was still thinking it wouldn't be a big deal, but I thanked her profusely, called the school to arrange it, and continued on to the appointment.

4:15. Intake, waiting room, ugly gown, urine sample, monitors, blah blah blah. They gave me a button to push when I felt the contractions, which by then were much fainter and not registering on the monitors. The fetus's galloping heartbeat over the doppler machine was soothing and I knit a little while listening to Iron and Wine to calm my nerves. By 5:15 it was clear that they were not going to let me out in time to pick up the Squid - they had found a potential snag in the urine sample and had to send it up to the labs for further testing - so I called my ... acquaintance? friend? savior? Let's call her K ... I called K to tell her I would, in fact, need her to take the Squid, but not to tell him I was in the hospital.

And this is where I started to lose it.

Because, okay, it was no longer Not A Big Deal. And with my partner in Kentucky and my parents in LA, I had no backup that was familiar enough to the Squid to take him overnight. He's four - he's never had a sleepover except with family. He would be upset and scared and I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. I was pretty sure I could have the baby on my own - that's what hospitals are for, and at 34.5 weeks, most of the major development has taken place; she'd be small and premature, and I could have wished for a little more time for the lungs to mature, but we would be fine. But even my village, the amazing network of friends and neighbors that keep me going when my family is out of town, would not be enough to take care of the Squid overnight. He's a very resilient little guy, social and adaptable (he had a great playdate, and never even blinked over the whole thing) but I think a night away from home and family would almost certainly have freaked him right out. I started to cry on the phone to K, and had to take deep breaths to hold my shit together.

My partner finally called; he hadn't even gotten my message, and was alarmed to hear I was in the hospital. There were, however, no flights that would get him back appreciably sooner than 3:30 the next afternoon, his current scheduled arrival time. Nurses continued to come and go. I continued to contract. They were stronger now, and more regular, and they were showing up on the monitor. I texted K, who reassured me that the Squid was having a great time and told me to take care of myself, and listened to music, and knitted (I had to rip out my knitting at least twice during this process, because I kept fucking up; knitting while contracting, lying on your side, and trying desperately not to freak out is not optimal.) Nurses came and went. At 7 p.m., the extended urinalysis still hadn't come back, and the shift changed.

7:30. The doctor showed up with the urinalysis results. I have never been so goddamn glad to have a urinary tract infection in my life. Apparently, they can contribute to pre-term labor. Fuck only knows how I got a UTI drinking gallons of water daily and peeing what feels like every five minutes, but the point is: treatable. They gave me an antibiotic and a prescription (which they apparently couldn't call in? Look, people, I have a four-year-old, I can't just wait around pharmacies in the middle of the night. I'll be taking the next dose an hour or two late, because there was no way in HELL I was going to drive to the next town (where the 24-hour pharmacy is), drop it off, wait to pick it up, and then go get my kid. I'll do it when he wakes up in the morning.) They also tried to tell me to take it easy and lie down. Fuck, no, I told them, I have a kid who needs me, and no backup. There is no way. So they offered me a shot of something that would make me shaky (thus delaying my discharge from the hospital another half hour) but would stop the contracting so that I could be more or less normally active without worrying. God, I love modern medicine.

At 8:20, they let me go.

I walked the quarter-mile to the parking garage, teeth chattering from the cold air, shaky from the shot and the whole ordeal, and drove straight to K's house, where I found the Squid cheerfully taking a bath with his friend, happy as a clam. K made me a cup of chamomile, fed me leftover pizza, and I endeavored not to have a nervous breakdown at her kitchen table. It took a long time for me to calm down enough to be sure that wasn't going to happen - by the time I headed home with an exhausted Squid, clad in borrowed pjs, it was 10:00, two full hours past his bedtime (and mine, for that matter). Thank goodness he was cooperative - I was so far beyond the end of my resources that I don't know how I could have dealt if he had been fussy - and I fell into bed soon after getting him down.

Everything is fine, now. The UTI is being treated, and the contractions are gone. I was reassured at the hospital that this does not markedly increase my chances of pre-term delivery once the underlying problem is dealt with. The Squid had a great time. I have a new friend. My partner will be home this afternoon, and in a few hours I will wake up (again) and drive to the next town to drop off the prescription and take the Squid out for breakfast.

But holy fuck, that was scary. I just wanted to cry on someone's shoulder the whole time, and there was nobody who could really be there for me in person, and I couldn't be there for the Squid, and it could have all gone so spectacularly downhill.

*deep, shaky breath*

Okay. It's 5:45, I've been up since 3:30, and I have to be functional tomorrow, so I guess I'd better try for a few more hours of sleep - though if the Squid gets up at 6 like he has been, I am once again spectacularly screwed on the sleep front. But I had to get it all down so I could stop rehashing it over and over in my head. And now I have.

...and literally two minutes later, Squid is up. Gah.

Dear Universe,

I take it back, okay? I am not tired of being pregnant. Nope, not me. In fact, I hope I stay pregnant for at least another month, that would be great. I am sorry I ever said anything!

Sincerely yours,
Me

(Short version: Preterm labor alarm this afternoon/evening from two to eight thirty, with full-on hospitalization and monitoring. Everything is fine now, but it was scary as shit. Thank God for K, the Squid's friend's mom who picked him up from preschool and kept him for the world's longest playdate - all my backup is out of town, and I don't know what I would have done without her.)

Tantrum

I have hit a wall. I am so fucking tired of being tired.

I am tired of using all my saved sick leave (which should have gone to pay for the first week of my maternity leave, which will now be entirely unpaid) on doctor's appointments and extra sleep and staying home with a sick kiddo.

I am tired of spending all my saved vacation (which other people get to use for, you know, vacation) curled up asleep under my desk at work and still being fatigued and useless all the time.

I am tired of being uncomfortable and huge and having trouble sleeping and bending over and breathing and eating and being kicked from the inside all the time.

I'm tired of being disappointed in my professional performance and disappointing others because I'm so fucking exhausted and I have to take so much time off and my higher-order thinking processes are halfway offline even when I am at my desk.

I'm tired of having to ask for help, and I'm tired of still not getting the help I need because I need more help than I feel I can ask for or than other people can provide.

I'm tired of being a shitty mother because I'm too overtaxed and overwhelmed to be patient and engaged.

I'm tired of being resentful that this process and all of the bullshit it entails necessarily falls on me. I am sick of having my biology determine pretty much all the major parameters of my life.

I'm tired of being constantly aware that I should be grateful to have such first-world, upper-class problems. I'm tired of knowing I'm essentially being a whiny little bitch about everything.

I'm just tired.

Here there be dragons

So, no Squidbits. That's pretty much all this "blog" has been for years, and I'm a little at a loss for how to continue. Everything I can think of is probably the sort of stuff I should stop posting about. But I do have a whole sector of my life (work) that is not Squid-focused, and a whole series of biological events going on that are discrete from him as well.

Which are also not interacting with one another optimally at the moment, sadly.

I don't remember being this tired last time around. I have to nap in the afternoon more days than not, regardless of how much sleep I get at night. And even though I go to bed by ten at the latest (sometimes more like 8:30) and Himself and our wonderful Squid-wrangler T take most of the Squidmornings, I still manage 9-10 hours a night at best, which is sort of minimum maintenance level for me even when I'm not pregnant. I use a bite guard to keep from grinding my teeth and giving myself headaches. I use white noise and earplugs to keep various house noises from waking me. I read dull non-fiction before bed (currently working my way through 800-page recounting of the history of the American tobacco industry) or listen to a yoga meditation audiofile. I take hot showers, stretch, and do self-massage. But between the fetus merrily squirming on my bladder, the near-constant heartburn of third trimester pregnancy, and the various waves of anxiety brought on by god-knows-what, I am still not getting enough sleep to get me through the days.

So I nap at work, using the camping mat and blanket I keep under my desk. Which my work knows about and sanctions, but I still don't charge that time to any of my projects, naturally. Which means that I'm running out of vacation and sick leave at a rapid rate.

And even when I am awake, my attention span, focus, and general higher thought processes are not all I'd like them to be. It's not all me; I'm running into some issues at work that I don't want to talk about in detail, but which are exacerbating my feelings of being lost and confused, and a lot of that is beyond my control. But it's true that the sort of bizarrely bovine fog I find myself in these days isn't doing me any favors in a work environment that values me for my ability to think analytically, synthesize information and data, and keep multiple components of complex projects moving forward smoothly.

All of which has me kind of down about the eight hours a day I spend in the office. I love my job in general, my co-workers and the department and company administration are fantastic and supportive, and the work is interesting. But I'm frustrated with my own performance, and I'm the critic who gets the most air time in my head. And I'm frustrated with some of my team dynamics, and I'm pretty sure that the hormonal fluctuations of pregnancy aren't helping me handle those situations with the sort of graceful Zen aplomb I'd like. Er, not that graceful Zen aplomb has ever been a hallmark of my interactions with the world, but I feel like I'm on a shorter string than usual.

Lately, I'm also feeling scared that the sadness that's crept up on me in the past week is somehow a sign that my meds, which have made this pregnancy so much more bearable than the last, are no longer sufficing to keep the blues at bay. I made it through seven months without inexplicable misery and crying, and I even flatter myself that I handled February and March with some sort of panache, but the last five days have been very on-again-off-again iffy, exacerbating everything else.

But that's here and now. There have been so many other wonderful things in the past month that I am not talking about, because I am at a dip in the roller coaster and it's hard to see the big picture from here. But we did pretty well for the three weeks Himself was in Chicago and overseas, managing a trip to LA, outings almost every weekend morning (to toy train exhibits, parks with friends, events, museums, and the like) and relaxed afternoons in the sunshine, orderly get-to-preschool mornings (by dint of help from T and my careful night-before prep of lunches, etc.) and pleasant evenings of errands, swim lessons, cooking, and playtime. Neighbors and friends and T took good care of us, and we leaned on our village hard.

Himself came home three days early to surprise us - best surprise ever - just as I was starting to fray at the edges. It has been great to have him home, though the Squid's behavioral regressions that coincided with Himself's absence did not, as I had hoped, immediately revert to normal. And last weekend we went to brunch and the California Academy of Sciences with one of my dearest friends, in from out of town, and had the playgroup over for Easter egg hunting and bagel breakfast. I feel very blessed to have my life and the people around me.

So, good things too. The fetus continues to have a strong heartbeat and is measuring just about at the 50th percentile, 4.3 pounds and approximately 16" of person-to-be, hanging out upside-down in my uterus. We got to "visit" via ultrasound this week and see cheeks, and wee face, and paw-in-mouth, and yawning, and healthy kidneys and heart and amniotic fluid all normal and everything.

I can't believe I have two months to go, though. I'm as big as I was when I had the Squid, because of the low amniotic fluid problem we had with him, and I'm only going to get bigger. And apparently the placement of the placenta this time is different, too, as well as the resilience of my abdominal walls, which means I can feel every squirm and bonk and flail distinctly, and this is a very busy little proto-person indeed. The whole thing is so uncomfortable! Yuck! And this is an easy pregnancy, all systems more or less normal, and I have wide margins on my life to get the sleep and help I need. I seriously don't know how most people do this. Intelligent design, my ass.

Then again, it's probably good that we have two months to go. Not that we're not "ready" in a material sense - we have all the equipment and stuff we need to get started, thanks to loans from friends, leftovers from Squid, hand-me-downs, gifts, and things we lent out that have been returned. But I'm so totally unready in the larger sense. Not like last time, so much, where D-Day felt like the end of Life As I Knew It and I was terrified of everything that came after, but more like my whole calendar after June 3 is just a giant sepia ocean marked "HERE THERE BE DRAGONS," an unknown territory that I can't even begin to think about or plan for from here. I'm sure we'll be fine, and I'm sure it will be different from last time, and I'm sure things will change, but I have no idea what or how; the surety of unsurety is all I've got.

In the meantime, this weekend we're going to Monterey to see the aquarium and have some awesome family downtime. I'm really looking forward to it; with how much I sleep and how much Himself works and how busy we all are in general, we don't get a lot of time to just enjoy each others' company, and getting away from home and the computers and the loads of laundry and the endless beckoning lists of shit to do will be wonderful.

I can't wait.