Holidays are coming…

November 6, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

It’s time for a rambly, unfocused, totally all over the place post because this is my blog and I can be rambly and unfocused if I want 😀

Last week, Kyle and I took Sam down to Texas for a visit with Kyle’s family and to celebrate Halloween. We do celebrate Halloween up here, to an extent, but our neighborhood is really not built for trick-or-treating (our little house is halfway up an enormous hill, and our road is twisty, turny, and poorly lit). Kyle’s parents’ neighborhood, on the other hand, is PERFECT for trick-or-treating, so that’s where we went.

Sam dressed as Jack Skellington, a costume he decided on after roughly two months of debate (first, he wanted to be Darth Vader, as he has been for roughly the past three years; then he wanted to be the cat from the Simon’s Cat videos; then he wanted to be Darth Vader, Simon’s Cat, and Jack Skellington at the same time; and finally, he settled on just being Jack). Kyle’s mom made the costume, since every store was sold out of Jack costumes by the time Sam made up his mind, and it honestly looked a thousand times better than any store-bought costume would have:

jack

It took Sam a little while to warm up to the idea of Halloween overall, mostly because he’s not a fan of change, and last week threw him for a loop (I mean, we flew down to Texas and then he was sleeping in a hotel and at his Nana’s house and there was no school and our singular cat had been replaced with three dogs and it was just wild). He was overtired, too, and reluctant to get into costume at all before Halloween itself. Still, he dove into Halloween crafts with his Nana (including ghosts for the doorway and little skeleton finger puppets and Halloween cupcakes) and was all too happy to help carve the enormous pumpkin we got from the local pumpkin patch:

As trick-or-treat time approached, Sam was still reluctant to put on his costume, despite all of our arguments in favor of it (you’ll get candy! Look, we dressed your stuffed puppy up as Zero the dog! You can sing all the songs from the movie! You’ll look so cute!)… until Kyle told him, “Sam, if you put on your costume, you can have this umbrella.”

For some reason, that worked. The mind of a three-year-old is an enigma.

Trick-or-treating was still a challenge for the first couple of houses, though. Sam’s never really been, so the idea of walking up to complete strangers and saying, “Trick or treat!” to get candy was a little out of his league. He eventually got the hang of it, though, and by the time we’d canvassed the street, he was happily exclaiming “TRICK OR TREAT! THANK YOU! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!” at every door.

And he got a TON of candy that we’re still picking through.

So it was a good Halloween. I didn’t dress up, except to put on some Princess Leia buns I got for $10 at the Disney Store; in lieu of pictures of that, please enjoy this picture of me dressed as an “angel” (or the physical embodiment of the spirit of disco, depending on how you look at it) when I was seven.

angel maybe
(shown here on the far right, with my younger brother as a cowboy and my younger sister as a ballerina)

While we were down in Texas, we got word from Kat that the huge windy storm that blew through Massachusetts about a week ago had not left our property unscathed. One of the many, many oak trees on our property hadn’t been able to withstand the storm and toppled over onto our driveway. Thankfully, it didn’t do any damage to our cars or property, but it was still a pain in the butt to deal with until we had a tree removal company come and take it away on Saturday.

tree

(we had several suggestions that we put up a sign that said “FREE FIREWOOD; CUT YOUR OWN!”)

So that was a thing when we got back. The other thing, the more exciting thing, was that I had a doctor’s appointment on Friday. Everything has been copacetic since the last bleeding incident, so this was just supposed to be a routine visit, and it was. Twins are harder to get individual heartbeats for, so we had an ultrasound to check on those (both very good!), and we saw some good movement as well (Baby B made “hook ‘em horns”–the hand sign for fans of UTA–so Kyle was happy). We were hoping to get a shot that would give us some insight into the sex of our Doublemint Twins, but nothing doing–Baby A was positioned diagonally, so we couldn’t get a clear look, and Baby B was just uncooperative.

But oh well, we figured. We’d had genetic testing done to check for any abnormalities, just so we could know what to expect, and while the test results came back clear for abnormalities, a mix up with our forms hadn’t given us any information on the gender(s). The office faxed another form over to the lab, and we expected to get the results at this appointment…

…and, well. We did. Just the results were “inconclusive,” which I don’t understand how that could be the case (look, either there are Y chromosomes in there or there aren’t), but okay. Error 404: Gender Not Found. Cool.

I laughed about it. It’s frustrating, sure, but not nearly as frustrating as two years of failed transfers and miscarriages and sickness leading to this point. The twins are alive and healthy, the ultrasound tech said it looked like one was a girl, and I’m okay with that. We’re going back for our big anatomy scan on December 7, so in theory, we’ll know at that point… assuming everyone cooperates.

(I’m looking at you, Baby B)

And then, my birthday was this weekend, the big 3-4. It was a pretty typical adult birthday, lowkey and laid back. On Saturday, my mom took me shopping for maternity clothes, my biggest need at the moment, and I got some really cute stuff. We had a good day together, with lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and a side trip to the American Girl store (hush, I need to pretend to be 8 sometimes), and it was cool just getting to spend time together (and to go shopping with someone as enthusiastic about going into Pottery Barn Kids as I am).

Sunday was just a chill day. Kyle let me sleep in as much as I could (which wasn’t very much; if your body’s used to getting up at 7 a.m., it’s hard to go past 8:30 without needing to get out of bed), and I got big hugs and kisses from Sam once I got downstairs. After that, Kyle, Kat, and I went to dinner at the Melting Pot, my absolute favorite place to eat (seriously, the fondue is amazing but then you have the main course stuff that just… I wish I was still eating it, it’s that good) before heading home for the night with a sleepy Sam in tow. The day overall ended with Sam curled up on my lap, chin quivering as he insisted on watching the “Baby Mine” scene from Dumbo. I, naturally, was sobbing hysterically because son, why on earth did it have to be that video? Any other video I can do. I mean, not any other video, but come on. COME ON. That video should be banned by the Geneva Convention for viewing by pregnant mothers–or any mothers for that matter.

57b51917-916d-45ab-89d6-fc40d6854b1e
(gross sobbing)

So it’s been a good time. This is my second-to-last week of work (that’s a story worth telling), and I’m spending a lot of it helping Kat get ready to move out on Saturday (she’s heading out to her mom’s place before eventually settling back in California) and preparing for my mom’s birthday this weekend (she’s requested a rum cake but without alcohol, so that’ll be an adventure). And then it’s on to Thanksgiving and Christmas… my holiday season has officially begun!

Magic in a Jar of Dirt

October 25, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

So there’s a scene in one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies where Jack Sparrow is trying to avoid Davy Jones. Tia Dalma, a voodoo priestess and otherwise witchy character, gives him a jar of dirt, as Davy Jones can’t set foot on land.

“Is the… jar of dirt going to help?” Jack asks, utterly skeptical.

Tia Dalma stares him down. “If you don’t want it, give it back.”

Jack clutches the jar to his chest protectively. “No.”

At that, Tia Dalma smiles and steps back. “Then it helps.”

There’s a weird sort of power in that kind of talisman, in a real life kind of talisman. I don’t necessarily mean an actual power, but that comforting power… the idea that maybe this will help, that maybe it will make things go right. It’s come into play both in my infertility journey and in my parenting.

I had a lot of talismans for my infertility journey; the most important were green fingernails, for fertility, and my Princess Leia socks, for strength. I started wearing them this year, after last year’s IVF treatments kept falling flat on their faces. I don’t think they really necessarily did anything, but then again, I could be wrong. I wore them to my two embryo transfers in the first half of the year, but both of those failed. But then again, I also wore them to my egg retrieval and transfer for this actual pregnancy, so who knows? The point is that they made me feel better, good luck charms, if you will. They made me feel like I had some control over a situation that has long been completely out of my hands.

In truth, the success of this IVF cycle was a combination of things: Kyle’s semenalysis had much better results this go-around, we used the right medication cocktail, I took it easy and carefully throughout the earliest days. Did the socks and the fingernails have anything to do with it? Probably not; but you bet your ass that if something happened and I had to go through this again for any reason, I’d be wearing those Princess Leia socks and painting my nails green.

(which is to say, next time, I’m totally going for beetle wing green)

Talismans, rituals, magic, all of that is pretty important when you have a little kid, too. They need things to comfort them, because they don’t always understand the world around them. It’s big. It’s weird. It’s sometimes scary. And they’re small and often powerless, so giving them something to hold onto that makes them feel more powerful, even if it’s not really magical or powerful… it helps.

When I was really young, I was terrified of thunder. Absolutely bananas terrified. My parents gave me magic to help with it: they called it a thunder stick. It was really just a paper towel tube, sometimes even a toilet paper tube. It was my weapon against the thunder, though. I could shake it at the sky, and I could yell, “Stop that thunder!” and eventually, the thunder would stop. I was powerless, really, against the weather (sadly, I was not a pint sized shaman), but believing that I had that power made me feel less afraid.

(I was not this vulgar as a three-year-old, but if I needed a thunder stick nowadays, I would be)

Sam has his talismans, three that we see regularly and a fourth that we consider breaking out the big guns. The three regulars are his lovies: Puppy, the ubiquitous stuffed husky that Kat got him for his first birthday; Pillow, which is literally just a Star Wars pillow; and Blanket, one of the Aden and Anais receiving blankets we were given when we were expecting him. They obviously haven’t got any real magic or power to them. They’re tools of comfort, things that make him feel safe. And he won’t go to bed without them.

The big guns talisman is his Darth Vader bear. That one, though, I actually believe has magic in it.

Eleven years ago, when Kyle and I first started dating, a lot of people in our community cheered us on. We were pretty well known in the small, tight-knit group of RPers, and it seemed like everyone was thrilled to see us together. None, however, were more thrilled than our guild leaders, Veri and Ged. They lived thousands of miles from both of us, but we may as well have been down the street. They cheered us on more than anyone; I swear, when we announced our engagement, we could hear Veri’s squeal of delight from across the country.

And that’s to say nothing of when we told them we were expecting Sam. Veri greeted us whenever we talked by asking, “Are there going to be any baby bears?” (Kyle’s nickname among the group was Kody-bear… it’s a long story) When we told her that yes, a baby bear was imminent, I’m amazed that the joysplosion didn’t take out half the country.

A couple of weeks later, a package arrived at our doorstep, our very first gift for Sam. It was a box from Build-A-Bear, and inside was a black bear dressed in Darth Vader’s robes. The bear was, of course, from Veri and Ged, and came with warmest wishes for a healthy pregnancy and greetings for our new baby. As soon as Sam was born, I started to introduce him to the bear; in recent months, it’s his greatest comfort when all else fails.

Like tonight, when the wind and rain were making him nervous. I rocked him in my arms for a while and let him talk out his anxieties. He wanted some of the stuffed animals that he knew he’d tossed out in the hallway, so we walked over to inspect them, and then he asked me to bring them into his room while he got into bed. He didn’t even ask for Darth Vader bear, but when Darth Vader bear came into his line of vision, it was all he cared about. He touched the mask, the hands, the feet, gently and almost reverently. He asked me to tuck him in (moments before he’d been asking to go downstairs), and his eyes closed as I slipped out of the room.

So Darth Vader bear is special, even more special because Veri passed away last year. She was this beautiful light of a person who could make even the most stubborn of skeptics believe that magic was real, and there’s an ache whenever I remember she isn’t here anymore.

Darth Vader bear may be just a jar of dirt. It may be special because it’s a gift from someone who loved us, who’s gone now. Sam may feel comforted by it because it’s a plush Darth Vader, the only one he has at the moment. He may feel comforted because it’s been part of his life since before he was born.

But for my own sake, I like to believe in a little bit of magic. I like to believe that the most magical person I ever knew put love and blessings into this sweet keepsake, and that maybe, when Sam hugs Darth Vader bear at night, a little bit of that love and magic is hugging him back.

Water Redeemed

October 11, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

This was the weekend of another family trip, kind of a pair of day trips that got melded into a weekend getaway. The occasion was a celebration of Kat’s birthday (29 years young tomorrow!), and the destination was the Plymouth/Carver area of Massachusetts for some beach shenanigans and adventures at King Richard’s Faire.

Which went okay. King Richard’s Faire was, ultimately, a wash. We got there around 10:30 and were thrilled to get front row-ish seats for the tiger show, but around the time the show started, so did the rain. Within a few minutes, it went from spitting to a downpour, and the awesomeness of seeing big cats jump around the stage and show off their majesty was rapidly overpowered by the misery of palming handfuls of water out of our faces.

pirate

Sam dressed up as a pirate but had no interest in the fair whatsoever because of the rain. He and Kyle went on a swinging boat ride, but after that, the whines set in and our attempts to keep Sam entertained despite the storm were mostly futile. He felt better once a few performers teased smiles out of him, and even better after he had a large pretzel and ice cream (look, you don’t go to the faire and eat healthy, ok), but the realization that we weren’t going to drop $300 on a shoulder dragon hit him kind of hard towards the end of the day.

Kat had initially planned an elaborate costume for this excursion, all feathers and corsets and the like. She wanted to portray the Raven Queen from Dungeons & Dragons and Pathfinder lore, but after we found out the weather would be iffy at best, she pared the costume down to just a feathery mantle and a gorgeous wrap that looked like wings. She looked awesome (though she won’t let me post the pictures; I have them on my phone, so I have proof) but also got drenched and learned that the black feathers of her mantle weren’t actually black feathers–they were rooster feathers dyed black, and the dye wasn’t set enough to not trickle down her arms during the downpours. That said, she got a gorgeous tooled leather collar as a birthday gift for herself, so all wasn’t lost there.

Kyle spent the entire time with a soggy Sam because I can’t carry anything that weighs more than 10 lbs (doctor’s orders; that along with pelvic rest make me basically the most pathetic wife ever). That said, Kyle was also sad that we didn’t have $300 to spend on a shoulder dragon.

faire

As for me, I managed to acquire a barometric pressure headache at around 3:00 in the morning before anyone woke up. The right side of my head felt like it was cracking open like an egg, and I ultimately shuffled off to the hanging swing chair building to rest both my pelvic muscles (which scream at me if I walk for more than 10 minutes or do physically strenuous things like rolling over in bed) and my head. To say I was disappointed is the understatement of the year; I LOVE King Richard’s Faire. I love exploring the shops, watching the shows, and overall just exploring. But my god, I was so miserable, I couldn’t even keep my head up.

And that headache lasted for two more days, until the stupid tropical rainstorm that caused it finally shuffled out to sea.

(I tried SO many remedies to calm things down, but ultimately, with a barometric pressure headache, you just have to weep and soldier through)

But that was just Sunday. Saturday, which we spent in Plymouth, was a fantastic day.

We went to Plymouth last summer, just on a fun day trip to Plimoth Plantation and to wander around on the beach for a bit; it wasn’t a bad day, though it was agonizingly hot. The beach was crowded, as beaches tend to be at the absolute peak of summer grossness, too crowded for us to get much farther down the shore than a tiny sliver of sand right beside the parking lot. This was meh in and of itself, but poor Sam had the worst time of it–being all of two years old, he was terrified of both the sand and the waves and remained either firmly planted in one place or attached to either me or Kyle like a lamprey.

So my expectations for a beach day on Saturday weren’t terribly high, especially as it’s October, and though the weather was nice, it was a little cool for the beach.

We started our jaunt at the Cabby Shack (if you’re in Plymouth, I recommend them very highly, though be forewarned that the cheese in the mac and cheese is basically queso–not bad, but a surprise), where we feasted on the thickest clam chowdah in the world, fried clam strips, and coconut shrimp. Sam was game to get his picture taken with one of Plymouth’s infamous lobsters…

lobstah

…and once we’d done that, we headed back to the same beach we’d visited the year before. Again, my expectations weren’t particularly high; Plymouth beach isn’t a bad beach, but I always prefer my autumnal beach jaunts to take place on rockier coastlines or somewhere on Cape Cod that’s removed enough from streets and bustle that all you can hear are crashing waves and seagulls.

(maybe I’m a beach snob)

(but not as bad as Kat is, though in her defense, she spent most of her life living in Santa Barbara)

Once we’d parked, Kat headed off to explore and Kyle and I escorted Sam down to the water’s edge. Things were already a little different–Sam eagerly kicked off his flip flops and ran through the sand, not at all wigged out by the different textures beneath his feet. He hesitated just a moment when confronted with ridiculously cold North Atlantic seawater (look, you don’t go swimming at New England beaches, unless you like turning into a popsicle) but a beat later, he was splashing through the waves and laughing gleefully as he found rock after rock to toss into the water with Kyle.

And they had a blast. Kyle isn’t a big beach person–his beach experiences mostly come from the Gulf Coast of Texas, and in his own words, those beaches “aren’t the best” (he’s very polite). Even when he’s not out of the car and splashing in the water, he’s expressed that the vastness of the sea and sky make him skittish (to which I always say, “You’re from Texas? Where you have nothing but sky?”), so when it comes to beaches, he’s reluctant, to say the least.

beach1

But on Saturday, he and Sam dove in together. He tried to teach Sam how to skip rocks (that went about as well as you’d expect), and then they got to work trying to build a sandcastle. Kyle led Sam into the waves (pretty tame at this beach; nothing that went above Sam’s knees), and they both had an impressively great time frolicking about, as if neither had felt anything but love for a beach in their lives. Sam loved the beach so much that, at one point, he scooped up a handful of seawater in joy and tried to drink it as I squawked, “No, don’t do that!”

Well. It was a learning experience. And it didn’t ruin the day for him; he spat the water out and then went right back to playing happily, jumping up and down in the water and screeching, “Yay beach!” as loudly as he could.

Kat, meanwhile, returned to us with a handful of seashells (always her gift to me when we hit the beach) and a $20 bill (she called it her birthday gift from the ocean and used it to buy that tooled leather collar on Sunday).

Once we were all beached out, we packed up the car again, de-sanded ourselves, and headed back to the hotel. Most of Plymouth’s hotels are quaint little B&Bs or fancy spas, so our choices were either squeeze into a way-too-fancy room at a spa or B&B or the Hilton. Of the two, the Hilton seemed the better option, and we had a nice room on the second floor, just a quick walk from the pool and jacuzzi.

Yes, pool. An indoor pool, at that. Nothing terribly deep (the deep end was 4 feet even, the shallow about 3’9”), nothing too fancy, but we all wanted to get some swimming in, and Kyle and I wanted to give Sam a chance to try a swimming pool again, this time accompanied by our guiding hands.

He was reluctant to step into the pool, to say the least, but Kyle was right there holding onto him the entire time, and I was nearby (in a super cute suit, I might add; thank you, ModCloth, for still having cute plus-sized bathing suits despite your turn towards the awful lately). Gradually, Sam’s fear of the water began to disappear. He still didn’t want to try floating on his own (and every time we tried to sneak it in, he screamed, “I want to get out!”), but he liked “swimming” between me and Kyle and splashing about and playing overall. I couldn’t hold him as much because, again, lifting over 10 lbs (I gave myself some leeway because water makes things buoyant and that helps with lifting), but I held his hands and guided him around the pool and helped him get over his fear of putting his hair in the water.

So it went really well! Sam likes playing in pools now, though he’s still not quite independent in the water, but we’re getting there. Overall, Saturday was a day of redeeming water adventures, and I’m happy about that.

We ended the day with a trip to a local IHOP, an IHOP that was… surprisingly really nice inside. Most IHOPs have that really casual “yeah, we’re IHOP, don’t expect much” feel to them, but this one was decorated like some sort of fancy independent restaurant, with exposed industrial ceilings and the kind of shabby chic decor that would make it feel totally normal on any given HGTV renovation show. The food remained IHOP-y, but the fanciness and the fact that we were the only ones there turned it into this strange sort of liminal space, and I’m still not sure that it was a real experience.

And it was a good weekend. A wet weekend, a weekend that ended with us eating McDonald’s food instead of turkey legs at King Richard’s Faire and driving home at 2 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. like we’d expected, but a good weekend nonetheless. And best of all, Sam is no longer afraid of large bodies of water. Hallelujah.

Big Brother Blues

October 6, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / 1 Comment

Sam’s been having a rough week. Roughly every night has been punctuated with nightmares, usually about Kyle walking away from him or Kyle not being able to help him with something scary (like falling into a pond). We have these nightmare phases whenever Sam becomes aware of a big change coming up, and there are a LOT of big changes coming up, one of them bigger than the others.

didi
(hint: the big change is acquiring two babies, seen here at my 11 week appointment)

All my life, I’ve imagined having a gaggle of kids (the “gaggle” in my imagination has shrunk to a “few” since getting pregnant is such a pain in the ass). I grew up with two siblings, and my parents have four siblings apiece, so the idea of only childhood is kind of a foreign concept to me, and has been since my sister was born in 1986. Kyle only had one brother, but he, too, couldn’t imagine having just one kid, even though that one kid took a LOT of work to bring into the world and has the energy of roughly five kids combined.

So it was never a question that Sam wouldn’t be our only child, but as our attempts to have more kids took longer and longer, Kyle and I started to wonder about something that never crossed our minds when we’d talked about family size before: how was this huge change going to impact Sam emotionally?

Now, of course, that question wasn’t enough to keep us from charging forward–we’re both oldest siblings, and we turned out pretty okay (most of the time)–but it still gave us pause. Although we know that Sam will eventually adjust to older brotherhood really well, the transition is something that’s worrisome because neither of us really remember how to help him cope with it.

As I mentioned before, I’m the oldest of three. My sister was born several months before my third birthday, so I wasn’t quite old enough to feel established as THE child yet. I don’t remember any strong emotions building up to my sister’s birth; anything I remember from the nineish months leading up to my big sisterhood is completely unrelated to that and more related to things like the awesome green icing on my birthday cake or the hurricane that knocked down the entire woods behind our house.

I don’t even remember anything about when my sister was actually born. Pictures exist of me visiting my mom and sister in the hospital, sitting on a rocking chair and holding her, counting her toes, playing with my mom’s wonderful hospital bed. I don’t remember feeling anything, though; I’m sure I did, but it wasn’t anything strong that my brain decided to store as a memory.

Family lore has it that at some point when my sister was very young, I remarked to my dad, “Daddy, do you remember when it was just you, me, and Mommy? That was best.” This seems to be a pretty common thing for kids becoming big siblings, even if I don’t remember it happening. Kyle’s mom tells the story of him asking, a week after his brother came home from the hospital, “So when does he go back?” My favorite, though, is the story of Kat’s father, who apparently punched his younger brother the day he got back from the hospital.

BUT. I don’t remember this conversation. What I do remember is Christmas. As with every Christmas, we spent a good chunk of the holiday season at my grandparents’ house in New Jersey, along with the rest of my dad’s family. The two years prior, I’d been the star of the show–I was the first (and to that point, only) grandchild, and all of the aunties and uncles fawned over me and played with me and indulged my toddler whims. My grandparents made remarkable gifts just for me (some of which are still in my house, like the enormous toychest my grandfather built when I was two? Ish?), and overall, it was a good time.

But this year was different. I wasn’t the only grandchild anymore. Now there were two new grandkids added to the equation–my sister and my cousin Tim, born about six weeks apart. The attention was, naturally, almost entirely on the new babies–that’s pretty much par for the course at holidays. Any time a new baby or two or three (as was the case on my mom’s side of the family one year) shows up, that’s what everyone wants to talk about.

(as an aside about my mom’s side of the family: by the time I came along, there were four older cousins, and my first younger cousin was born a year after I was, so jealousy wasn’t an issue there)

I remember feeling really sad. I wasn’t angry, not really. There wasn’t anybody to be angry with, because it wasn’t anybody’s fault. I was still the cutest kid in the universe (Sam hadn’t been born yet, you see)…

adorbz

…and I was still lavished with presents. But I felt left out of all the excitement, like I was no longer important to the family as a whole. This isn’t logical, of course, but three-year-olds are hardly known for their feats of logic.

It was my beloved Grandma who eventually noticed that I was sad. This is the two of us in that moment (I’m playing with what I mentally called “mean Santa” because he looked like he wanted to destroy the world rather than bring it joy).

(I sometimes wonder if Sam got any of my genes, but this picture is exactly what he looks like when he’s being serious)

Grandma took me aside and gave me a big hug. She made sure to tell me how very much she loved me and that the presence of my new sister and cousin hadn’t changed that a bit. She told me that I was always going to be special to her, that nothing in the world would ever make her love me less. She took the time out to let me know all of that, and I believed her because that’s what I had been waiting for all along–for her to tell me that I still mattered.

(of course, I’m sure that people told me that from the moment my mom got pregnant with my sister, but this is the instance I remember the most, and also no, I’m not crying, I just have allergies to human emotion)

re5onya

(but I do miss you, Grandma)

So that’s been the first step of what Kyle and I are trying to do with Sam. I’ve noticed that it works pretty well: on Wednesday, when I got home from work, Sam was acting pretty aloof. He didn’t want to talk to me or give me a hug until I said, “Hey. Dude. I want you to know that even when the new babies get here, you’re still gonna be my guy, okay? I still love you just the same; that’s never going to change.”

And then he tackle hugged me, and we had spaghetti.

tenor
(the universal language of reconciliation)

By the time my younger brother came along in 1988, I was an old pro at the sibling thing. I was also five years old, which helped a lot, I think. I remember how I felt when my mom was pregnant with my brother; I knew from the get-go that he was going to be a boy, and I was SUPER EXCITED about that. The day before he was born, I remember dyeing Easter Eggs, and the kit came with a tiny sticker that said “brother.” I held onto that sticker, and when I met him for the first time in the hospital a few days later, I stood on tiptoe and placed the sticker on his swaddling blanket, just so the world would know, this was MY BROTHER.

Probably because of my age, I felt compelled to help a lot more as well. With my sister, I’d been pretty limited in what I could realistically do to help–again, two-year-olds aren’t really known for their childcare skills. As a five-year-old, though, man, what couldn’t I do? I remember helping my mom to give my brother a sponge bath when he was still little enough to have the stump of an umbilical cord (“eww,” I remember thinking, but my mom promised me that the stump would be gone soon). I remember that he cried a lot, and I remember that I could help with that–I’d play music for him from a copper windmill music box we had, and that would help him feel better. I remember feeding him baby food from a bowl, disgusted that he was so eager to eat this mush, but glad to help him do so.

Being a helper was HUGE. It made transitioning from having two siblings to having three siblings a LOT easier on my emotions; I never felt left out or like attention wasn’t on me because I was necessary the entire time. Nobody could get my brother to sleep like I could (so my five-year-old brain thought). I helped and I was needed.

That’s part two of our strategy with Sam, and it also seems to be working to an extent. All of the baby books we’ve bought to explain things to him talk about how he can help with the new babies–playing with them gently, helping give them baths, helping them calm down when they’re sad. I know I’ll be relying on him for even more than that, things like fetching diapers and feeding them and helping with tummy time and who knows what else? He seems to like the idea of being a helper, and we’re trying to involve him even now, letting him choose a few things for the babies… nothing crazy and major, but I think it wouldn’t hurt to have him choose some blankets or this season’s Wubbanubs.

wubbanub-infant-pacifier-12-pack-speciality-collection-cc2
(“What should I buy?” ask first-time moms. “WUBBANUBS!” I roar without letting them finish the sentence)

And, of course, there’s my dad’s brilliant idea: we’ll have two gifts at the hospital for Sammy “from the twins.” The more like Santa Claus he sees them, the better.

It’s a rough transition. I don’t think it could ever be anything but. At the same time, though… I think he’ll be okay. We just need to keep reassuring him that he’s loved and letting him be a helper, and he’ll be okay. Eventually.

Symptoms and Big Siblings

September 21, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / 1 Comment

When you’ve had as many miscarriages as I have, you start to get paranoid about feeling those early pregnancy symptoms; if they aren’t overwhelming and making you miserable, you instantly start to panic and think, “This is it, I’m losing this one, too.”

I didn’t really notice my symptoms yesterday, because it was a crazy day at work (worked late for the second day in a row trying to meet a couple of deadlines). I was so worn out from work itself that I couldn’t even pay attention to the usual pregnancy stuff–sure, I was tired, but that’s to be expected when you’re busting your butt to meet a deadline. Sure, I felt a little queasy, but I’d also had some tense exchanges with a couple of people that would’ve set any anxious gal’s stomach a-fluttering. And I went to bed early, as I have every night for the past month, not thinking much of pregnancy but rather thinking of how crazy work had been.

So when I woke up this morning and didn’t immediately feel pukey and achy, a little bit of panic set in. I hadn’t been paying attention yesterday; had my symptoms been gradually fading into oblivion? Was I going to have to sheepishly delete my “Babies #2 and 3” album on Facebook and write another entry on miscarriage? Would I spend the weekend chugging moscato and Cosmos and drowning my sorrows?

wine-cersei

Well… no.

I had some breakfast once I got downstairs (not an easy feat–Sam was in a very friendly mood this morning; more on that later), and it only took about three bites, plus a sip of cranberry juice, for the nausea to return with a vengeance. Crisis averted, time to go back to whining about how sick I feel (the answer? Very).

tenor2
(I wish this could be me, I would love to be horizontal right now)

So in terms of emotions, I’m basically vacillating between paranoia at the idea of miscarrying and panic at the fact that I’m less than seven months away from having two newborns. I’m having such a hard time wrapping my head around the latter that I can hardly begin to plan things, which is a fine kettle of fish because I love planning things. I just don’t know where to start is, I think, the main problem. I know what we need, in theory, and I know that it’s going to be a lot of investment in Things, but it’s also pretty overwhelming.

A lot of it was easier to think about when we were thinking of just one baby because so much of the planning involved recycling what we used with Sam: one crib with its mattress already there, one pack ‘n play, one set of baby clothes (though if you think I wouldn’t buy more clothes if it turned out we were having a girl, you’re a little crazy), one this, one that. Now recycling won’t cover what we need; we’ve got to get double of everything. One more crib and mattress, more baby clothes, two car seats, two of this, two of that. It’s… overwhelming.

Less overwhelmed is Sam, who’s reacting to the fact of becoming a big brother with something between apathy and excitement. Most of the time, it’s apathy because I don’t think he entirely understands what’s happening yet. Occasionally, he gets excited. He pokes my stomach to try and “talk” to the babies (when he’s feeling more impish, he leans back on me to “squish” the babies) and asks if he can come with me to the doctor to see the babies (which is basically going to be impossible until I’m a lot further along because all of my ultrasounds are pretty much going to be really early in the morning).

He’s making the transition from junior preschool to preschool, and it’s mostly going well, finally. The first couple of days, Sam was really nervous about the change–he hates change overall, and school-related change is the absolute worst. He cried every day at drop off and told us that he didn’t like preschool, that he thought the teacher didn’t like him, that he was afraid of the bigger kids because they play too rough, etc.

Gradually, though, he’s started to enjoy himself. I dropped him off yesterday (because Kyle is having car trouble, as is customary in the fall) and he was all smiles and excitement, talking about playing in the sand table and how happy he was to see his friends. When I got home from work, he was all smiles, cuddles, and giggles. He was really glad to have been at school, told me that he had a great day (compared to his “wonderful” day the day before), and I’m glad. Transitions are hard for a three-year-old, and he’s got a lot coming up.

Sometimes I worry about how this is affecting him, because it’s one thing to be gung ho about having a lot of kids when you don’t have any, and it’s another when you’re planning to add a sibling to a family dynamic that already exists. Part of me gets really nervous that changing up the dynamic of our family will cause him serious issues, but then I remember, “oh yeah, I had two younger siblings, and I’m mostly okay.” It’s just a different perspective, at the end of the day.

I miss spending more time with him; my weekends end up being completely derailed by how tired I am, the fatigue resulting in a 2-3 hour nap for me every Saturday and Sunday (I’d take one every day of the week, but for some reason, my office isn’t okay with that). When I am up, I feel bad because I’m overall feeling so crappy that playing with Sam is just completely outside of my capabilities, at least in most of the ways he wants to play.

He’s so very sweet about it, too. He tries to find ways to make me more comfortable and capable of playing with him, and some of those methods work (e.g., bringing a table over so that we can play a game together) and some don’t (putting a pillow on the floor so that I can sit with him). He understands that I’m not at my best right now, and he’s doing everything he can to accommodate me, and that’s sweet.

This morning, he tried to keep me from going to work by “locking” the door (he actually unlocked it) and demanding “one more hug” and “one more kiss” until I finally had to pry him off and tell him I’d see him tonight. If nothing else, I’m really looking forward to those couple of months between me leaving my job and the twins being born where Sam and I can have our days together like we used to. He’s such a sweet boy.

Anyway. First proper prenatal appointment tomorrow, next ultrasound on October 4. Until then…

Just a little anxious

September 14, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / 1 Comment

The fact of being pregnant with twins keeps hitting me roughly every 90 minutes, which is about when my stomach acid bubbles up like some sort of asshole Old Faithful. “Gaaaargh,” I say, feeling as if I’m about to start breathing fire, and then, “Why do I feel like this?” and then I remember that oh yeah, I’m pregnant with twins. This sends me into a mild panic spiral because I still don’t know how to process this fact, that there are two fetuses in me, that both are healthy, and that come probably somewhere between mid-March and early April, I will be responsible for the lives of not one but two potato humans.

(I call them potato humans because let’s be real: newborns don’t do much besides lie around and be fleshy potatoes. I mean, they also eat and poop and puke and cry, but most of my potatoes do that too, so)

I can’t really figure out a way to come to terms with this because it’s never happened to me or anyone I’m really close with before. With one baby, I could look at the roughly six gajillion friends I have who’ve had exactly one baby, or I could plumb the depths of my babysitting experience, or I could even look back on when my mother had my sister and brother and say, “Hey, I know something about that.” With two, though? Honestly, I think the only example I can think of off the top of my head is Full House, and much though I’d love to have John Stamos come help me with twin care, I don’t think that’s going to happen.

giphy
(but, I mean, John Stamos, if you read this and you’re like “hey, I want to go help that chick out with her twin care,” I will not complain, like. At all)

So I imagine it’ll be a lot of flying by the seat of our pants and a lot of swearing (newborns have the benefit of not understanding swear words yet and not being able to repeat swear words yet, so you don’t have to worry about embarrassing Target trips where they remark, “I have a mosquito bite. What the fuck?” and you realize that maybe you should start censoring yourself a little bit), and I don’t imagine I’ll feel very sane for at least another three years after they’re born. Once they’re born, I imagine all attempts at planning anything will go straight out the window, and we’ll just be improvising a lot. We’ll survive, and we’ll be stronger and better for it, but it’s going to be chaotic getting there.

That said, to my absolute delight, I can start planning for some things, and that’s heavenly. I haven’t been able to plan for things since we started this process, so being able to say, “Alright, in Februaryish we’ll do a maternity shoot and we’ll need to get a minivan by late February at the very latest, and we’ll learn the genders sometime in November, and I’ll have energy for the holiday season” and things like that is awesome. I can say with absolute confidence that I’m not making any plans between March 1 and April 25 but that other days and times are theoretically open, particularly before the first of the year.

And I’m making lists of things we need two of, like two car seats, a double stroller, two bouncer things, two new sets of bottles, two million white onesies…

So all of that planning is keeping me from panicking too much about other scary aspects of this, specifically the health aspects.

My pregnancy with Sam was probably objectively an easy one for at least the first ~8 months. I didn’t have nausea so much as I had fullness (read: I could only eat one taco at a time 😦 ). My emotions were chaotic, and towards the end, I got REALLY tired of hauling around all that baby; but for the most part, I was pretty healthy. I didn’t gain too much weight until the last month, I maintained my usual levels of activity, I got enough sleep, and much though I hate pregnancy (and I do; I’d like to skip the next 30 some odd weeks and just get them here), it wasn’t a bad time.

At least until the last month. The last month, my body just got fed up with housing my adorable squatter. I ballooned right up, gaining a good 50 lbs over the course of a month. I never had swelling above the waist, the general ticket to ride a train to Ohshitsville, but my feet and legs were so swollen that we could draw smiley faces in them with our fingers (by “we” I mean me and Kat and Kyle). My liver enzymes were pretty elevated, and my blood pressure kept skyrocketing briefly before going back down to pregnancy lows again.

It was miserable.

l7rbhku
(this is funny because no, I could not even move like this for half a second)

And that was just with one baby! I’m looking at a pregnancy with two babies and feeling pretty concerned because twins make basically everything more likely to happen. On the one hand, you have things that are fairly common anyway like gestational diabetes and early delivery; on the other, you have panic-inducing conditions like preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome and oh, just about every other bad juju pregnancy thing you can think of. Scientifically, pregnancy is already an extremely risky prospect for anyone; but when you add double babies to the mix, things get dicey real fast.

Even assuming everything goes really well throughout pregnancy, there’s also the realization that 60% of twins are delivered via C-section. Now, I’m not a natural birth junky by any stretch of the imagination. I loved my epidural (I wanted to take it home with me), and I’m very glad that medical interventions exist. I’m absolutely fine, on an emotional level, with doing whatever it takes to bring my babies into the world safely and without incident.

That doesn’t change the fact that a C-section is major abdominal surgery.

I’m not really wigged out at the surgery aspect of it; the only thing that’s been an issue for me in previous surgeries is the general anesthesia, which makes me nauseous. I think surgery’s kind of cool, honestly, and wish that I could simultaneously be on the operating table and watching my operation take place.

giphy1
(if only to avoid the possibility of being operated on by Weird Al)

It’s really more the recovery that’s got me skittish.

Because recovery is the hard part of any surgery. During surgery, you’re blissfully pain-free (in theory; I’ve read horror stories) and often times in dreamland. Afterwards, things get dicey. I know I take a while to recover from surgeries; when I got my gallbladder out, I didn’t really feel even close to myself again until a week later, and that’s comparatively minor surgery. What’s going to happen when they have to slice me up like a Christmas ham to get the babies out? How miserable am I going to be, and how much shit is going to end up on Kyle’s shoulders because I’m just not capable of doing things?

I kind of long for the days of families all living together in communes and being able to really rely on each other wholly when things got rough like this. I feel shitty putting a lot of the baby and house care on someone else when I’m recuperating; people have their own lives and shouldn’t have to spend their time helping me with mine.

Maybe I could hire someone?

9b47f3aaab81849eedacd19d905d520a

And of course, there’s Sam. Transitioning into life as a big brother was already going to be hard on him (we spoil him quite a lot, which I think happens even more when you’re infertile; you don’t know if this one is the only one you’ll get, and you’re so thankful that he’s here that you’re like, “Sure, absolutely, take all of my time and have a brownie and why not, you can totally have that four-foot-tall Darth Vader”), but even if I manage to deliver the twins vaginally, he’s going to be competing for attention with two newborns, not just one, and he may find himself wholly at the mercy of his mother’s C-section recovery.

I know that once we’re out of those first wild and crazy weeks of newborn-ness and into the baby life, it’ll be a little easier to make sure that he has time with us, just with us, but I still hate the idea of him feeling left out or neglected. And I shouldn’t be so concerned about it because I survived it just fine and Kyle survived it just fine and every oldest sibling on the planet survived it just fine, but you know. I want to make sure that he knows that he’s always our baby, even though we’re bringing more babies into the house.

ANYWAY. There are all my anxieties. These are not going to go away and will be hovering like a cloud of gnats basically for the rest of my life. And that’s not even touching on financial worries (I’m leaving my job, because daycare for one toddler plus two infants would be about twice what I take home in a month; also we need a minivan; also how are we going to pay for diapers and formula–because lol I’m not even bothering with breastfeeding this go-around–and also diapers and clothes and diapers and wipes and diapers for two infants?) and emotional worries (I AM FAT AND JIGGLY AND MY LIFE IS CHANGING) and more meta worries (I am bringing two new humans into a world with a Doomsday Clock two minutes to midnight and recurrent giant hurricanes because of global warming).

I think the only reason I sleep at night lately is because I’m on Effexor and am so tired from growing two humans that my brain starts to be like, “Let’s go over your anxieties!” and the rest of me responds, “Yeah, no, we’re sleeping now, bye.”

Party Party Party

August 28, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

It’s been a big weekend for Sam, for a number of reasons.

The first reason is the most exciting for me: he actually has started running to the potty when he recognizes that he needs to pee!

hallelujah

This is a HUGE milestone in potty training. For weeks now, he’s been reluctant to go, even when he needs to use the potty, and as a result, we’ve seen tons of accidents. Today, though, several times, he dropped what he was doing and RAN to the potty, doing a little dance as he did. You know the dance. That little panicked potty dance that toddlers do.

6359624835470546071911081799_potty-dance1
(this one)

And holy crap, I was out of my mind with joy about it! This is potty training! This is success! He still doesn’t like to use the potty when he’s pooping (he’s super constipated because of it, which is SO MUCH FUN let me tell you), but he recognizes that he needs to go and he goes. That is potty training. I’m so pleased.

So that’s my celebratory thing. The second reason this was a big weekend for Sam was that he had his first ever birthday party at a friend’s house.

The friend was his best friend Hunter; the two of them are absolutely inseparable at all times. Hunter’s mom said several times today, “They’re meant to be best friends,” and it’s so true. They just will not go anywhere without each other, and I’m so glad. I love that he has a best friend from such a young age, and I’m hoping that neither of us ever move away from each other so that he and Hunter can go to kindergarten and first grade and every grade of school together forever.

So it was Hunter’s birthday today, and Sam had an absolute blast. Hunter’s family live on a wonderful plot with acres and acres of green land, apple trees, barns, the works. They pulled out all the stops for the party–they had a bouncy house and a piñata and music and everything. Sam had a fantastic time, he really did.

A couple of things stood out in particular, though: the pool incident and the Power Wheels incident.

The Power Wheels incident first, because that one doesn’t make me look like as bad of a parent. As toddlers do, Sam and Hunter have a hard time sharing things. At school, this isn’t a huge deal because nothing “belongs” to them–it’s just the school’s stuff that everyone has to share. At Hunter’s house, though, all the toys were Hunter’s, and it was harder to talk to either of them about sharing (I let Hunter’s mom take charge of that, because I’m not going to tell someone else’s kid to share with my kid).

So the Power Wheels incident began at the sandbox. Hunter had a cool front-end-loader type of gadget that he was using to “dig for treasure.” Sammy thought this was the coolest thing in history and wanted a turn, but Hunter was, of course, uninterested in sharing. Sam sulked and refused to play with much besides a large shovel until the managed to trick Hunter off the front end loader and steal it for himself. You could almost hear his little victorious thoughts. “Ha ha! You thought the front end loader was yours but IT IS MINE! Ha ha ha ha!”

giphy6

Hunter didn’t seem too bothered at this trickery, though, and a moment later, we saw why: Hunter came rolling out of the family garage on a Power Wheels John Deere tractor. He and Sammy met each other’s eyes, and he looked utterly smug as they passed; Sammy, by contrast, was immediately awash in envy. Hunter had a tractor? That he drove? By himself?

Thus began Sammy’s quest to acquire a tractor of his own. In a shed next to the sandbox, he found a tractor, but it definitely didn’t drive on its own–it required foot power to go, like a Flintstones car. Sam discovered this the hard way by putting his feet on the footrests of the little tractor and not moving forward.

A beat or so later, Hunter abandoned the tractor for a four wheeler version of a Power Wheels that he maneuvered expertly around the apple tree and the sandbox and the shed and everything. Sammy was once again envious because although he’d snagged the tractor, he couldn’t get it to go forward. He wasn’t keeping his foot pressed down on the pedal, and the tractor was stopping and starting like an old jalopy driven by someone who’s never even seen a stick shift before. He thought the issue was with the tractor itself and watched sadly as Hunter zipped around without a care in the world.

Eventually, Sammy was so sad overall that he wasn’t running around playing. He stuck close to me and held my hand with a crestfallen expression. Hunter’s mom had to come over and convince Hunter to let Sammy have a turn on his four wheeler, and after that, they tag teamed–whatever it was they were doing. Zipping around, jumping in the bounce house, eating cake together. They had the best time.

The pool incident makes me look like a bad parent. Hunter’s family has an in-ground pool, and it’s pretty nice. We’ve been looking forward to it for ages. I got Sam some puddle jumpers and a new swimsuit, and I imagined hanging onto him and letting him get used to the water–after all, he’s never been in a big pool before.

He took a while to warm up to the idea of the pool–after all, there was a bounce house and a sandbox and Power Wheels–but eventually he decided that it would be fun. He’d been watching the other kids bellyflop into the water all day, and they were having a blast, so he was ready to give it a try.

We brought him back to the car and changed him into his swimsuit and puddle jumpers. Kyle then started stripping down to his swimsuit (I was feeling crappy; I swear to god, if there’s not at least one gestational sac and heartbeat when we go in for the ultrasound on Thursday with how awful I feel this pregnancy, I will burn something down), and we both figured that Sam would take his time getting into the pool.

636212775464801330131027457_tumblr_nxxljueesx1ub6o1yo3_500
(expectations)

See, Sam is kind of… not the bravest child. He’s skittish about a lot of things, including being barefoot, petting cats OR dogs, eating new foods, sand, fried pizza, rain, and oh, ten billion other things that I could list that he has no reason to fear but does. When in a new situation, he usually sticks to me or Kyle like a barnacle until he’s feeling more comfortable. At the beginning of the party, even though he knows Hunter and Hunter’s entire family, he still would not leave us alone until Hunter finally wheedled him into coming into the bounce house.

So we figured the pool would be the same way. Even as he started to take the first step, we thought it would be the same way–the water was deep enough that he’d have felt that buoyancy right away, and considering that he’s scared of LITERALLY EVERYTHING, I figured the buoyancy would give him at least pause long enough for Kyle to get his shorts on.

Not so. In slow motion (from my perspective), Sam took the next step and the next, not pausing. His puddle jumpers lifted him up so he was floating. In the moment of confusion about “wtf is going on I’ve never floated before” he panicked. He flailed and sputtered. Never for a second did he go underwater (thank GOD, and thank you to everyone who suggested puddle jumpers), but his face went down for less than a second and came back up again in time for him to wail in terror.

He did an impressive doggy paddle for a kid who’s never swum before (thank you, puddle jumpers) as Kyle (also in slow motion, so it seemed) finished stripping down and got into the pool. He and Sam caught each other and Sam screamed and sobbed until Kyle put him back on the concrete.

I was frozen the entire time. From the instant I realized “that child is not stopping” right until he was back in my arms and wrapped in a towel, it was like I couldn’t move (which bodes REALLY WELL for future Situations). The other moms chuckled understandingly. “Ohh, is it his first time in a big pool?” they asked and chuckled knowingly when I nodded. They probably weren’t thinking anything beyond, “poor kid, oh well, now he knows,” but my guilt definitely projected into them thinking, “what terrible parents to let him just jump in like that.”

source
(my expectations for the rest of the party)

We were watching him and right there the whole time. It was maybe three seconds between Sam stepping off the bottom step and Kyle getting to him. Logically, I know that he’s fine and we didn’t do anything wrong, but I’ve still been thinking that GOD, I should’ve been holding him, I should have yelled at him to wait for Kyle, I should have done anything to prevent that moment.

Anyway, despite his (understandable) fear, Sam tried the pool again with Kyle, but once he got a taste of buoyancy again, he shrieked and panicked and that was the end. He sat on my lap shivering and sniffling until he’d dried off and then mostly told us about the pool, “I was really scared until you got me, Daddy.” He didn’t have anything even remotely resembling a breathing problem, so we know he didn’t inhale any pool water, and his energy level was high until we got home after the party and he absolutely (and understandably) crashed.

And, of course, I’m now in a frantic search for well priced swim lessons near us because Sam thinks floating is the enemy.

But in the end, his memories of the party were good ones, and he had a grand time. He and Hunter remain inseparable, and he’s begging for both his own Power Wheels and a bounce house for his next birthday party (I told him “we’ll see” by which I mean I’ll be depending on Kyle and Kat and everyone I know to help me make Pinterest-worthy Star Wars stuff for said birthday party so that Sam doesn’t feel sad about the lack of bounce house). He fell asleep with a smile on his face. So overall: a win? Maybe?

T-minus four days until the ultrasound.

Mornings with Sam + Follicle Count

July 24, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / 1 Comment

It’s 6:45 a.m. I’m in the middle of a dream that’s complicated, emotional, and fantastic: after tearily dropping Sam off for his first day of kindergarten, I’ve encountered a teleportation beam, out of which my husband, Thor, emerges. “Where have you been?” I demand as the schoolchildren and staff begin to crowd around us. “Asgard,” Thor tells me. “And Hel is coming here to destroy earth.” Sure enough, Cate Blanchett is outside, in all of her made-up glory. My Husband Thor looks concerned and manly, but I squeal in delight: that’s Cate Blanchett, guys. That’s Cate Blanchett. She’s like. The embodiment of awesome, even if she is trying to destroy the world. I’m going to go give her a hug.

And then a pair of alarms go off simultaneously. My alarm plays “Wait for It” from Hamilton, kind of my theme song for the last two years of infertile misery. I groan and fumble for my phone; I should’ve known it was just a dream because my brain somehow thought that Thor was played by Chris Pratt, not Chris Hemsworth. Stupid brain, confusing the Chrises.

57960-thors-yes-small

tumblr_inline_orhs9gtprv1s50qig_540
(get with the program, brain. Hemsworth is Thor and is “dusty roadtrip in the desert” hot. Pratt is Peter Quill and is “Star Wars and Chinese food” hot)

Across the hall, Sam’s alarm goes off, too. The alarm was supposed to tell him when he was allowed to get out of bed, as he’s had this tendency to get up and demand attention at 5 a.m. Yesterday, when he tried to do that and Kyle told him to go back to bed until 6, Sam fell silent and then woke up again at 7, very put out with Kyle. “I fell back asleep!” he scolded.

This morning, though, Sam’s sleeping in, and I don’t blame him. It’s a gorgeously rainy day. The weather is cool and damp, and it’s the perfect day to stay in bed until at least noon, listening to the patter of rain against the roof and the windows, snuggled up in far too many blankets. Kyle rolls out of bed and goes to open Sam’s gate, a safety measure against our rambunctious three-year-old who doesn’t quite understand why falling down the stairs would be a bad thing. A beat later, I hear a shuffling of tiny feet, and then Sam hefts himself up onto the bed. He’s not quite awake yet; his eyes are wide open, but his face is still flushed and his expression is still serious.

He curls up on Kyle’s pillows next to me. “Hi,” I say. “Hi,” he says, and then asks me to pull the blankets over him. Why? “My legs are covered in Han Solo ice cubes,” he explains. He’s cold.

“Did you have a good sleep?” I ask. He nods. “What did you dream about?”

“The Death Star,” he answers. He always dreams about the Death Star. It’s his favorite thing.

“I dreamed about you,” I tell him.

He finally smiles drowsily. “Mommy, can we check the weather?” he asks. This has started to be a thing for him, checking the weather every day. He doesn’t know what most of it means–temperatures and radars and barometric pressure and stalled fronts–but he likes to see the pictures of clouds and sun and rain and thunder. I pull up my AccuWeather app, which I use almost exclusively since the Weather Channel app decided it wanted to forget where I was geographically.

“It’s going to be rainy today,” I tell Sam, pointing to a tiny picture of a raincloud, “and it’s going to be chilly out. There may be a thunderstorm this afternoon.”

He lights up. “I love thunderstorms!” And he does. He got his father’s genes in that area: Kyle, who grew up in Dallas, sleeps best when there’s a rumble of thunder outside. I grew up in Massachusetts and can’t sleep through even the gentlest of thunderstorms. Go figure.

lightnings_sequence_2_animation

Speaking of Kyle, he gives Sam’s hand a tug. “Let’s go downstairs, buddy. I’ll get you some breakfast.”

Sam jerks his hand away and wraps it around my arm. “No! I want to stay with Mommy today!”

Kyle and I exchange looks and then shrug. “Alright,” I tell Sam, “but I have to get ready to go to the doctor and then to work, so I can’t play with you, okay?”

Sam nods and follows me dutifully as I shuffle through my morning routine. I have to leave early today, so I rush through the process, wasting too much time on uncooperative hair and trying to find my favorite socks. Sam asks all manner of questions: why are you wearing that? Did you put your boobs on? Can I have a hair tie? What does “chilly” mean? What day is it?

I answer the last one as we gather ourselves to go downstairs. “It’s Monday,” I answer.

tenor1

“Monday? Is that a Mommy and Daddy day?” Sam asks. He’s being a little too eager on the stairs, and I resist the urge to take his hand and steady him. He’s not falling, I remind myself, he’s just hurrying.

“No, Monday is a school day. We have to get you ready for school.” Once I say this, his face falls. He wants to stay home with us he argues, and loudly. I imagine that Kat is in her room, covering her head with a thousand pillows to drown out the cacophony that follows.

“I! DON’T! WAN! NA! GO! TO! SCHOOL!” Sam howls as Kyle tries unsuccessfully to change him into a pair of jeans. He eventually gives up and goes to the kitchen to work on Sam’s lunch, and I try to cajole Sam into the jeans.

“It’s a fun week at school!” I tell him. “Look, you’re going to do Halloween things, even though it’s July! You’re going to make trick-or-treat bags, and you’ll get candy and wear masks…”

“I! DON’T! WAN! NA!” he continues, though now he’s sniffling and calming down, sitting on my lap. Another minute or so, and he’s back to his usual self, though now victoriously pants-less and mildly concerned that we ran out of Mickey Mouse waffles. Five minutes later, he’s playing “pewer nap,” a game that involves him lying on the ground with his pillow, blankie, and favorite lovey (“Puppy”), and also the laser gun that Kat got him for Christmas.

“Is Auntie awake?” he asks of Kat, and when I say no, he says, “Okay, I will just pretend to pew. Tell me where to pew.” I point at the corner, and he aims his laser gun and says, “Pew! Pew! Pew!” shooting down imaginary enemies all over the place.

I have to rush now; the pants incident has eaten up a lot of time, and I’m running late for my doctor’s appointment. IVF monitoring today, and though it’s early in the cycle, I’ve had early ultrasounds take half an hour before, between counting follicles and finding follicles to count. I gulp down some breakfast (Pop-Tarts and cranberry juice, I’m so healthy) and my medication (antidepressant and prenatal vitamin, I’m unironically healthy), and then it’s kisses all around before I sweep out the door…

…and sweep back in because it’s pouring rain, and I forgot my umbrella. “I love you guys!” I call over my shoulder. “Have a good day!”

“I love you!” they both answer. “See you tonight!”

And that’s my morning with Sam and Kyle. It’s a trade-off: I have to leave earlier to get to work earlier, whereas Kyle has more flexibility. On the other hand, he doesn’t get home until almost 7 most nights, and I get home early enough to have a nice evening with Sam. Still, I miss the mornings. When I was at home, Sam and I would cuddle together after Kyle left. We’d play games and watch all the network TV available to us–he particularly liked The Price is Right and Ellen. Sam has always been a delightful morning baby, and I miss those precious early hours with him.

The precious early hours this morning belonged to the IVF clinic: a blood draw and ultrasound to check my follicle count. Currently, I’m sitting at around 20 tiny follicles, but those don’t count as much as the larger ones will in the days to come. I’m waiting for a phone call from the nurse, and she’ll tell me how many there were, how my progesterone and estrogen are looking, and what my new medication instructions are. With any luck, I’ll have a nice quick cycle, a smooth retrieval, and good news. Until then…

I’m being suppressed!

July 18, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

Your average IVF cycle starts with a month of hormone suppression, typically by way of hormonal birth control. Well. Actually, it’s not quite a month, it’s more like two and a half weeks, and you only know if you’re properly suppressed after a suppression check around the two and a half week mark.

Today was my suppression check. I’ve been on oral birth control for about three weeks, maybe a little less, and it’s made me into a beast. I don’t mean that in a positive way; I mean I’ve been as volatile and sensitive as I was when I was a delicate teenager, known for days of emotional pique that left my family sighing and saying, “She’ll grow out of it.”

giphy1
(side note: Heathers is a very wonderful movie)

Which is mostly true. I’m far less volatile, by and large, than I was when I was going through puberty. Except when I’m on hormonal birth control.

Even then, I don’t quite reach the same heights I did when I was thirteen and sobbing because I don’t know why except nobody understood me except you, Michael W. Smith, and the toy horses that I couldn’t tell my boyfriend I still played with. I did at one point, when I was on clomid, the cycle before I got pregnant with Sam. Kat was visiting us from California, in preparation to move out and live with us, and on day two of clomid, I had a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde moment, in which I completely lost my fool mind sobbing because Kat and Kyle were bonding over their shared love of Pokemon, something that I do not and never will understand.

confused-pokemon
(this is me when Pokemon is the topic of conversation)

I felt left out, and my poor, hormone-addled brain turned this mild feeling of “well, it sucks that I can’t relate to that” into a disaster. They were now best friends because Pokemon, and I was no longer a friend, and I would die miserable and alone while they played Pokemon as best friends forever. I told them to leave me behind and go get lunch while I buried myself under blankets and sobbed.

Obviously, none of my fears came true, but man, was I a wreck over them. And thankfully, Kyle and Kat are super understanding and brought me back my favorite meal from Chili’s and then we all three went on a trip to Salem for no reason other than that it was there and had neat stores.

Hormonal birth control is sort of a gentler version of that. I’ve yet to have that level of meltdown while on hormonal birth control (come close, but usually over my work in a call center because that’s just… it’s a terrible place to work, y’all. Also, if you’re the type of person to take out your frustration with a situation on a call center worker, I don’t like you), but I’ve noticed that I become more prickly and more apt to overreact to things.

In some cases, I figure it’s just that my tolerance for bullshit goes way down; and it’s already pretty low. Traffic on the Mass Pike goes from minor annoyance to, “Are you kidding me?! You’re doing 40 MPH in the passing lane, and there’s nobody in front of you and your car appears to be in good working order?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING.” Telemarketers go from “what you’re doing is probably illegal, and I’m just not going to answer the phone because I don’t recognize that number” to “I will find you where you live and personally force you to walk barefoot on wet food.” I avoid all discussion of politics and religion; if you ever find me recusing myself from such discussions, it’s less that I don’t care and more that I like you and don’t want to lose my temper either at you or where you can see.

In other cases, I overreact to perfectly reasonable situations. About a week ago, for example, Kat asked when I got home from work if we could run out to the store. This is a perfectly reasonable request, but my hors were moning, and I managed to turn it into a Thing. It was a very fraught grocery store trip, not much helped by Sam’s quintessential three-year-old behavior or the traffic I’d endured to get there; the primary good that came out of the whole thing is that I now text Kat on my way home every day to see if she needs a store run, or even for me to pick up some food for her.

My biggest fear with these hormone issues is that I’ll end up scaring or hurting Sam–not physically, but with angry words and, worse, angry tone of voice. Growing up, I always had a tremendous fear of my dad’s yelling. He didn’t yell terribly often, but when he did, we knew that shit had hit the fan, and it was not good times. I don’t want Sam to ever fear me or my voice for any reason. I want him to respect me. I want him to know that when I tell him to do something, it’s for his own good. But I don’t want him to fear me.

Sunday, we went up to Target as a family. Sam had been in a State all day–he’s going through a growth spurt, and he’s three, which combine to form a Perfect Storm of rage. We never quite know what will set him off–will it be that he’s wearing the wrong shoes? Will it be that he doesn’t want to be buckled in his car seat? Will it be that there are caterpillar remains on the car? Who knows? And when he’s in a State, anything can set him off, even more than usual.

So he was in a State on Sunday. He was hungry, so Kyle took him to the Pizza Hut in Target to have something to eat while Kat and I did a quick shopping run. I met up with Kyle and Sam as the run ended, Sam cheerfully clutching a bottle of fruit punch and Kyle less cheerfully carrying a bag of popcorn. “Can he stay with you?” Kyle asked. “I need to grab a few things.”

Sam latched onto my cart, cheerfully munching popcorn as we slowly walked down the aisles featuring arts and crafts and party supplies. I tread carefully, knowing that any misstep could cause a meltdown, and meltdowns aren’t my favorite thing, especially in my emotionally volatile and hormonal state. We almost made it, too. Kyle grabbed whatever it was he needed, and we found a line. As we were waiting, Sam let go of the cart and started poring over the candy, finally deciding that he wanted a Kit Kat for dessert.

Understand: candy is a treat. It’s a sometimes food. Sometimes, he gets candy as a dessert if he finishes his entire dinner. Sometimes he doesn’t. But he wasn’t hearing that on Saturday, and when I took the Kit Kat bar away and placed it back on the shelf, meltdown mode activated. He dropped to the floor, as if he suddenly weighed a thousand pounds, and sobbed. “But I doooooo!” he protested, trying to grab the Kit Kat again (“but I dooooo” here means “but I do want the candy bar”). “I don’t care,” I told him and looked at Kyle, who’d gotten that world weary look on his features.

“Should I take him to the car?” I asked.

“NOOOOOOOO!” howled Sam from the floor.

“Yes,” said Kyle, rapidly trying to get our merchandise on the conveyor belt.

I’ve not become an expert in many things over the last three years, but one thing I’m adept at is sweeping up a reluctant child in one arm and carrying him out to the car. Sam’s body is a great deal bigger than it was three years ago, but I’m still able to football carry him across the parking lot without dropping him or anything else I’m holding, even when he’s kicking and screaming.

And I do mean that literally. He stopped kicking once I shifted him to my hip–I think that might be some instinct like when you pick up a kitten by the scruff of their neck and they just go limp–but he screamed as mightily as before, especially when I told him that I was going to put him in his car seat.

“I DON’T WANNA BE BUCKLED!” he screamed in my ear, which started ringing like I’d survived a movie explosion and Chris Pine was trying to tell me he loved me.

original1
(I love this movie and had a dream about him last night)

Sam continued to scream once we got to the car; I put him in his seat, and he began to writhe and twist like Luke Skywalker being attacked by the Emperor, with comparable screaming to accompany. “I DON’T WANNA BE BUCKLED!” he continued to yell, sobbing at the same time. I gently but firmly guided his arms through the straps on his car seat, and he kept pulling them out and hitting me. It was hot and humid. I didn’t once consider hitting him, but I wished that I could consider it, if that makes sense.

Instead I yelled, and I don’t remember what I said. Nothing nasty. I didn’t call him a little shit (he was very much acting like one) or berate him or insult him. I think I told him to sit down. The problem I felt wasn’t in the words I used, but in the tone, the same tone my father used to use when he yelled at me as a child, the one that terrified me.

It didn’t affect Sam at all, of course. He’s the kind of kid where, if we did spank him, he’d probably say something like “is that the best you can do?” The only thing that really works on him is a logical and immediate consequence for his actions–you hit Mommy, you go to your room to calm down. You throw a toy, the toy gets taken away. You refuse to clean up your mess (which happens so rarely lately–it’s a miracle how well telling your three-year-old that it’s a race works in getting him to clean up after himself), the toys get put away for a while. Yelling, especially when he’s already screaming and sobbing with a tantrum, is about as effective as spitting in the ocean.

anigif_sub-buzz-4565-1494454788-3
(this is the first image that comes up for “spitting in the ocean” and I’m not sorry)

I’m not worried about him, but I did scare myself, not from my words but from the tone. Kat, who was in the car towards the end of this (and was eventually instrumental in calming Sam down–she’s amazing at that, gets him distracted by pointing out things like hey, look, a ladybug, and then he sniffles and quiets and then asks questions about ladybugs), said she’d never heard me that angry before.

And it’s been a really long time since I’ve expressed anger that way. I think the last time was long before I even met Kyle, during a hot and exhausting wait for a bus at Disney World, when my sister and I were screaming in each other’s faces for no good reason (well. It was hot and exhausting). It used to happen more often. It was normal where I grew up. Yelling was how you took out your frustration and anger. We all yelled at each other at some point. We all had screaming fights that left our throats sore and our heads pounding and were ultimately completely pointless.

My home now isn’t like that. We never yell; we holler across the house, “Hey, do you want any of this pork?” or “Could you grab me some toilet paper?” or occasionally “I’m leaving now, whether we’re ready or not!” Anger isn’t a rare thing, but we handle it differently, depending on who’s angry at each other. Kat and I snipe at each other, more sarcastic than anything, but then cool down and talk things through. Kyle and I don’t even snipe at each other; we both just take deep breaths, express our frustration, work through it, and move on.

So yelling like that was… I didn’t like it. I don’t like it. I wasn’t ever afraid that I’d hurt Sam or lose control, but I didn’t like the tone that came out of me, something that scared me when I was younger and something I didn’t want to scare Sam.

I feel like I’m probably overreacting to it. Kyle pointed out later that night that Sam loves me, that we got home from Target and Sam immediately cuddled up on my lap with his head on my shoulder as if nothing had happened. Sam didn’t even flinch in the moment; his tantrum continued uninterrupted, as if I wasn’t even there trying to do anything about it. I really did scare myself more than I scared him, which isn’t good, but it’s better than if I’d actually scared him.

I don’t know. I do know several things, however.

First, I’m relieved to be off birth control. That shit is a menace. I’d have requested that they switch me to a different hormonal birth control (NuvaRing and Ortho Evra tend to be my favorites), but it didn’t seem worth it for two and a half weeks. I know I’m not as beastly when I’m just on stims, for some reason; they just mostly make me tired and bloated.

Second, I’m glad to be on antidepressants, because they really do help with mood regulation. Sometimes, when I feel really tired or really bummed out about something, I wonder if they’re even working… but then I remember how many years and countless nights I couldn’t fall asleep because of anxiety about any number of things; I remember the panic attacks that I had after Sam was born, and before, and how they’ve stopped almost completely; I remember how I couldn’t feel anything except that everything was meaningless. I’m pretty sure that, without them, I’d be even worse on any hormone medication than I already am.

And third, if this is the worst I ever am to my kid, I’m a damn good mom.

Hormone injections start Thursday, first monitoring is Monday. Until then…

Getting There

June 29, 2017 / lovescienceandnat20s / Leave a comment

Last night, I told Kyle that I really wished we could have a normal week for once, because our weeks lately have been anything but normal.

Take this week.

Things started out somewhat normal. Sunday was filled with trips to the park and the store and experimental recipes (specifically, strawberry Jell-O popsicles in Star Wars molds, which were super easy to make but have a kind of weird texture? We’ll have to work on that) and then the week started out normal. Sort of. I went to work and Sam went to school and Kyle went to work.

My Monday was probably the most Mondayest of Mondays, but that’s something I won’t get into. When I got home on Monday, I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone but Sam, and I did, and we had a delightful evening just cuddling and watching videos together. I went to bed thinking of one of my favorite poems, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 30, in which the narrator talks about how they can be having the worst and saddest day of all time, “but if the while, I think on thee, dear friend, all losses are restored and sorrows end.” That’s honestly a Sammy thing. He brings me a lot of joy.

joy
(after bathtime the other day)

And Tuesday was better, not by a HUGE margin, but better. And then Wednesday.

Tinkerbell, as I’d written a couple of weeks ago, was recently diagnosed with hypercalcemia. She’d been doing better by a mile, but on Wednesday morning, Kat heard her straining to use the litterbox, straining so hard that she made herself vomit. Tinkerbell wasn’t herself at all, so we sucked it up and brought her back to the ER, which meant high bills again. It turned out that the hypercalcemia caused something called “megacolon,” which is basically like EXTREME CONSTIPATION for cats. We saw X-rays of it. It wasn’t pretty.

636203499834803396-emojimovie-dom-firstlook-working004-rev-rgb
(aside: I have so many questions about the Poop Emoji and also this movie, most of which are probably better left unanswered)

$1500, some fluids and enemas later, and Tinkerbell is pretty much back to herself, now with doctors’ orders to eat only wet food and take Miralax to keep her regular. Like any old lady, her guts have lost motility, and since we can’t really put her on an old lady diet of prunes, prune juice, and a side of bran, Miralax it is. If that doesn’t work, we’re looking at prescription meds.

The $1500 is the sticking point. Once again, we had it, but it was what we had left over after the last time, when we recouped about $600 and Kat managed to do a great whip-round and raise $700 to offset the overall costs of the situation. I’d pulled $1500 out of our account just a couple of days ago because I didn’t want it to end up being spent in a flurry of bill paying and birthday money spending. And it wasn’t spent on those things. It was spent on the cat’s constipation issues.

giphy3
(my actual life lately. The furnace is a cat’s anus)

There really wasn’t any way around it. We weren’t about to just let her die in agony of constipation, and putting her down would’ve been both (a) silly because it’s constipation and (b) pointless because it would’ve been the same cost either way. The overall cost for the treatments she got is pretty standard, so even if we’d waited and taken her to a cheaper vet, we probably would’ve had a similar bill. It was a lose-lose situation, financially (though thankfully, since we have a plan going forward, this shouldn’t happen again any time soon).

And just like that, PGS is off the table for the time being.

We could do it, I suppose, if we waited until next spring or something. Waited until the next tax return, waited until the next windfall, whenever that is. Kyle’s company gives him a sizeable bonus every year, and combining that with a theoretical tax return would probably be enough. In theory.

I’m hoping to do another cycle without PGS in the next month or so; I start birth control probably Saturday or Sunday. After that, we’d have two cycles left of IVF with ICSI before we’d have reached our lifetime maximum on the insurance, and I don’t know what would happen after that. It’s a while from now. I’m afraid to think that far ahead because things keep changing and becoming undone.

But then there’s hope, too.

This week, some friends of ours finalized the adoption of their foster daughter after what seems like an eternity of having her. I watched it on Facebook Live (sidenote: I always have to laugh at people who are grumpy about technology, because holy crap, how awesome is it to be able to watch your friends adopt their daughter live while it’s happening 2000 miles away?), and I cried buckets. And then I cried more buckets at a picture of their daughter signing her new initials at dance class. I don’t know if there’s a word for “something so awesome that it makes all other awesome things look boring” but if there is, that’s the word I’d use here.

giphy4
(if such a word exists, it’s probably German)

Watching my various friends who are going through the process of adopting through foster care has been heartbreaking but also enlightening. I used to think that it wasn’t something I could do, especially after the pain of dealing with infertility… it’s bad enough to get your hopes up every month for a child that doesn’t even exist yet, but to fall in love with a child that does exist only to have that child taken away or constantly worry about that child being taken away? Terrifying.

But I’m feeling differently lately, not in an immediate sense, but in a sense that someday, when we’re done with this IVF process (whether it’s because we’ve had a child or because we couldn’t), I’d like to foster-to-adopt. We’ve always talked about adopting, and we’ve always wanted to, and I think we could eventually manage going down that road. Eventually. Not as a consolation prize or as a “well, we couldn’t get pregnant, so we might as well adopt,” but because we have love to give and we want to give it to someone who needs it.

Eventually. I think, though, that right now, life is a bit too turmoil-y for it. But someday.

In the meantime, I go in for bloodwork tomorrow, and we have another appointment with the RE on July 6 to square things away for this next cycle. Something somewhere along the line will work out. It’s just a question of getting there, that’s all.

Love, Science & Nat 20s

The family life of a bunch of nerds.

my sam