Striving For Sanity

I’m going to start with a spoiler: Everything is fine.

Now, for the story.

Friday I had been having some light cramping. Saturday it was a little more intense and a little more consistent. I’ve been checking my blood sugars six times a day. Before meals and an hour afterward. My numbers started to get higher, 198. I’m not supposed to go above 140.

Tayla and I went to my mother in laws just to hang out and chat. On the way home, I just had this nagging feeling that I should go in. It’s 8:00 pm. On a Saturday night. Urgent Care is closed and I’m sure the ER is filling up with drunks.

“I’ll be fine,” I told myself.

For whatever reason, I pulled into the parking lot of the Burnsville ER.

At check-in, there is a sheet of paper for you to fill out the reason you want to be seen. I wasn’t sure I actually NEEDED to be seen, maybe I just wanted a nurse to tell me it was ok. Of course, they won’t do that without you being seen.

Sigh. Better to err on the side of caution, right?

The nurse reads my card “pregnant with cramping and high blood sugar”.

“How far along?” She asks

“8 weeks” I replied.

She notices Tayla. Her eyes get a little wider and her head shifts from me to her and back to me.

“You?” she asked nervously.

I was so stunned for a minute like we’re both so far out of the age range for optimal pregnancy that for either one of us it would be a “tragedy”. Que eye roll.

She takes me back to triage right away and a room shortly thereafter.

“The doctor will be in shortly,” she says.

Needless to say, the wait is longer than short.

Finally, she comes in, apologizing and telling me she “forgot” about me.

WHAT?!?!?!?!?

Lie to me woman! Tell me you were holding a patient as he died or attending to someone who came in via ambulance with several Chinese throwing stars sticking out of their chest? Then maybe I’d be ok with it and let it go… who am I kidding? I let it slide anyway.

So, right to the fun stuff. Urine sample. Blood draw. Ultrasound.

It didn’t actually take all that long and The Hunger Games was on. So we watched the second half of that and the first half of Catching Fire.

When it came time for the ultrasound, I have to admit, I was excited. Baby’s heart starts to beat around 6 weeks and you can see and hear it around 8 weeks.

She moved the sensor thing across my belly and dug in. She moved it around, stopping occasionally, hitting buttons on the computer to take pictures and then decided it was too early to see anything using the wand thing. She needed to use the probe thing. Ugh.

I thought there was pressure before! Holy shit. Ow! It actually hurt. Then she added towels under my butt which made it soooo much better…. right.

Then she decided, no, the first view with the regular wand was better. Grrr.

“Do you see it?” I asked.

“I see something but it’s not an 8-week fetus. We’d see a heartbeat, arms and legs… I’m not seeing that.”

I stifled the urge to say “well maybe you just suck at your job”.

It turns out, there were two “sacs”. NOT TWINS. One in the womb and one near an ovary. It’s more of a cystic type thing. She couldn’t determine which sac was the pregnancy so she couldn’t rule out that the egg may have implanted somewhere other than the uterus.

I have to believe though, that if there are two sacs and ONE is in the right spot… that’s baby.

On top of that, the initial doctor I talked to on Friday was wrong about the conception date and I’m only 4 weeks, 6 days. The ultrasound and the Hcg hormone level support this.

Since my blood pressure was ok and my sugars (by that point) were within normal range, they suggested I follow up with my primary care provider for further blood testing until my numbers reach 2,000. Currently, they are 563 and double every two days. At the 2,000 mark, they want to do another ultrasound.

Oddly enough, my cramps went away without any treatment and I started to wonder if it was psychosomatic and needing to overcome my doubt that this pregnancy is actually even happening.

So, my plan of trying not to worry so much didn’t really pan out…  But, I’m not as freaked out and the cramps are still gone (and there has been zero bleeding), so I guess I’ll follow the ER doc’s suggestion, call my doctor in the morning and go from there.

I do feel a certain peace though. Everything is fine, it’ll all work out. That’s probably thanks to all the praying I’ve been doing and the prayers I know other’s have been saying for us.

Thank you.

 

Yesterday I blogged about being pregnant. I was excited and nervous, hoping I wouldn’t “jinx” it by doing so.

I’ve had about 48 hours to sit with this new news. This wonderful, miraculous, terrifying news.

I mentioned that I was aware of the health risks and I am… today it just seems overwhelming.

I’m 40 years old. I’m overweight. I’m diabetic. I have high blood pressure. Low back pain. History of miscarriage…

I’m trying so hard to not let these thoughts scare the shit out of me.

It’s not working too well.

I haven’t had my arthritis medication for over a month and now my knees are swollen. I have looked into natural anti-inflammatory foods and will stock up.

I’m trying to make peace with being ok with whatever the outcome of this pregnancy is.

This is where “Heaven’s Reward Fallacy” comes in. Heaven’s Reward is the belief that in this case, we are taught to believe that input is equal to output. We sacrifice and give our all. We put everything and everyone before ourselves. We give out so much good karma that good things must come back to us.

If I eat right, sleep enough, take all my meds, exercise, do everything right… I will have a healthy baby.

I plan on doing all of these things… and I know that I cannot count on right actions absolutely leading to right results.

This pregnancy was planned and in a very real way, a surprise. I had made peace with the fact that Tayla was going to be my only child. I would work in the hospital’s NICU. I would wait (anxiously) to become an aunt … or a grandma (not too anxiously).

I guess I’m saying that whatever happens, I know I’ll be ok. I just need to reassure myself because this full day of worrying… I don’t want to do this again.

What a year 33 days make!

Actually, the past 9 days have really been a trip…

On Wednesday the 24th, I saw an OB/GYN about my fertility. She ordered a blood test to check my “egg reserve”. When it came back, I was devastated.

She knew the number would be low because of my age… but this was incredibly low. A number in the low range is a .5, my number was .070.

The doctor told me it was highly unlikely I’d be able to conceive naturally, if at all. I needed to think about how far I wanted to take this baby thing. Did I want to try IVF? It’s expensive and it might not work. I could look into finding a surrogate… I told her if I couldn’t do it myself, then it must not be meant to be.

I was so depressed over the weekend. I cried a lot. I was angry. And then, I decided to do something different. I called the hospital to look into volunteering at the NICU. There is a program for babies that are addicted to drugs and need cradling and rocking to soothe them while they go through withdrawals. The volunteer told me all about it, I filled out and sent in my application and told myself I’d be alright.

Thursday morning comes and I’m cleaning the bathroom. Under the sink is the last pregnancy test. I think about tossing it but decided “why not pee on it first?”. A few minutes later…

?????????????????????????????????

I felt my depression lift for a minute before I realized it was probably wrong. It sat too long under the sink. The ph balance is off. God is playing a cruel joke on me…

I call my doctor’s office anyway.

I had an appointment this morning and I got this:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only thing more shocking was my estimated due date: September 11th, Natalie’s birthday.

I’m thrilled. Terrified. Cautiously optimistic… and 8 weeks along.

I know that I am high risk, so much so, the high-risk OB doesn’t feel comfortable treating me… so on Thursday, I’m going to meet my team on perinatologists.

I have informed all of my medical specialists and mental health providers.

Now, I’m just going to TRY to relax and worry about anything and everything that could happen in the coming months.

😉

My eyes were opened… and not gently. No, I felt like Alex DeLarge at the end of “A Clockwork Orange”. Strapped into a chair with my eyelids pried open and kept that way.
A lot of you know that I am in a therapy group. It is a trauma processing group and a lot of times there is what’s called “parallel processing” where one or more people have had similar experiences to whoever is sharing. It can be very difficult and rewarding.
A few years ago, when I was pregnant with Noah, a new group member started. She had recently suffered a miscarriage. I felt awful. I wanted to quit the group, not to be a constant reminder of what she’d lost. I loved my group though and one of the main “rules” we have, is to not “treat each other as fragile”.
As God, or fate, would have it, I lost Noah a week or two after she started. I could be wrong but I’m almost certain that within a month, she was pregnant again.
Then Natalie died.
There was so much grief, I was drowning in it and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to get another full breath.
The following months that passed were brutal, for both she and I.
She was expecting her rainbow baby (a baby born after a miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death or infant loss) …in a way and also, not really “expecting” anything to go right, terrified she would lose another pregnancy.
I understood, and I tried to be supportive. I can’t honestly say that I was supportive, I don’t know. I hope that I was… and, that time is kind of a blur, further complicated by overwhelming jealousy and grief. I want to say I didn’t talk about the loss of Noah at the time because she had so much anxiety about the health and continuing growth of her baby that I didn’t want to add to it… but I think losing Natalie trumped Noah. Maybe it was both.
It hurt to hear her talk about the pregnancy and all that it entailed…not like a knife to the heart but like a dull, dirty, four-pronged fork.
Spring came, and baby was born. I thought I’d made it through the hard part.
I had made it through A hard part.
She took a break to recover and care for her newborn.
When she came back, she was still filled with fear that something would happen to baby and she would lose him.
More time passed, as it does, and she had friends who had miscarriages. They were triggering for her and she wanted to be there for her friends and also to have the support she needed from the group.
By now, I was getting to the point of being ultra sensitive. Even the mention of the word “baby” and I tensed up, started to zone out. I found myself irritated with this group member, she spoke excessively about her loss, her friends’ loss, her new baby… etc.
“Why am I getting so upset?” I’d ask myself. Her happiness, her grief, her joy and loss, they take nothing away from me…
Somewhere inside of me I heard or felt a voice saying, “I want to be heard too”.
“I hurt too”.
I bring all of this up to finally make my point.
Last Tuesday, I feel like I flipped out on this group member. I had very little sleep the night before. Tayla didn’t go to school, in fact, she ended up in urgent care. Work was crazy busy and we were short drivers…. I was worn out.
Even though I was trying my best to be skillful, I fell short. I said things in a way I wish I hadn’t. If I had it all to do over again, I would simply say “thank you”.
Thank you for being you. For sharing your struggles and joys and your journey. Because of you, I looked deeper into my own feelings and acknowledged that I haven’t yet grieved Noah. That I am entitled to talk about him and mourn him. Thank you for not treating me as fragile.
It has taken me nearly a week to write this and as I reflect back, one thing sticks out the most.
I know she felt attacked and unsafe. She said she wasn’t coming back. I told her if she didn’t, that would be treating us both as fragile. She said something along the lines of “that sounds manipulative” and we all laughed, except her. Maybe she wasn’t joking. Generally, when people are manipulative, it is to get something they want or for their benefit. That’s not exactly the case here. Yes, I do want her to come back… I want her to have her safe place. I want her to have support.

I want that for both of us.

 

There is a challenge going around on Facebook. Seven Photos for seven days. Each day you post a black and white picture from your daily life, with no explanation. No kids, no pets.

Today I was nominated to participate. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t just do it myself… I wanted to do it, I “liked” every post that I saw (that was participating) in hopes that someone would nominate me. I think it’s kinda funny that it happened today because the writing prompt for today was identity.

I’ve struggled for a long time with the concept of identity and actually, with the concept of black and white thinking (all or nothing- either/or vs both/and) so to get both of those things on the same day… I knew I had to post.

For a few years, “photographer” was a big part of my identity. Not nearly as long as “writer” but I almost took more pride/joy in the role of photographer. As a writer, fear got in my way so much… I was afraid to write. I was afraid to submit anything anywhere. Once I finally did, when I wound up with a rejection, it was paralyzing. The worst time being, I’d quit writing for almost a year. I was miserable. With photography though, it was instant gratification. Pictures were digital, parents were happy, I felt accomplished. Plus, I met some really cool people.

And then it happened. Whatever “it” was or is. The problems with my back. And my legs. The fibromyalgia, the chronic fatigue. I couldn’t do it anymore. I don’t think I could go back to it either. Not as a job, anyway. But it was nice to go out and do something fun, snap a photo and be able to post it.

Thank God I’m back to my writing!

The “feature photograph” is the one I took and posted on Facebook. What do you think?

 

Don’t deny your strength. You do have a choice and you continue to choose to be strong.

Often times on social media I see things that say “People tell me ‘I can’t believe how strong you are… How do you do it’ and I say ‘I didn’t have a choice'”.

Well, you do. Suicide is an option. I’m not saying it’s a good one, but it is there. In these last 17 months, I’d be lying if I said suicide hadn’t crossed my mind. The date, the photographs, sickness, and death of people around me… Sometimes I do want to just hit the fuck it button. I think that’s normal.

I won’t do it. I know that too. As painful as life can be, there is so much love and joy to be had and to be shared.

I just watched a TED talk on addiction. How we treat addicts, what our approach is, he did research and reviewed studies… this guy is a genius. I love this idea and subscribe to his notion that “the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.” I still believe there is a “chemical hook” and it does play a role but maybe that role isn’t as big as I thought.

Please watch.

Everything You Think You Know About Addiction is Wrong by Johann Hari