An Infertility Story, Part 4–Conclusion

pregnant Mary

Image by aka_lusi via Flickr

For part 1, click here.
For part 2, click here.
For part 3, click here.

Surgery recovery is ugly: me and anesthesia don’t get along. But the news is: definitely PCO; definitely mild to moderate endometriosis (now burned out and out of the equation); no blockage of the fallopian tubes or scarring. Dr. Stegman prescribes glucophage, because PCO is an insulin-resistance condition. I resist the idea of starting long-term medicine—by now I have a screaming antipathy to pharmaceuticals for anything related to fertility. But he convinces me that the end, in this case, is worth the drug. And he’s right, because almost immediately my irregular cycles settle into a reasonable pattern of length.

My college roommate emails to announce her first pregnancy. It’s a big moment for me, because weeping is my second reaction; first, I feel joy on her behalf.

We are feeling hopeful for the first time since it all began. Christian uncovers some research which reveals that the water in our region is filled with alachlor, diazanon and atrazine, which adversely impact male fertility. We go to Lowe’s and pick up a PUR water filter, because we drink a lot of water.

Thanksgiving Day, the priest talks about the Gospel passage “Seek and you shall find.” In Greek, he says, it actually says keep seeking and you shall find; keep knocking, and it shall be opened to you. It seems particularly apt.

By Christmas of 2002, we’ve decided it’s time to start the adoption process. We tell our families. Mostly, there is support, both loud and quiet…but one family member can’t accept that there’s more to this than the fact that we’re stressing out about it. Christian blows up, and I get a rare glimpse of just how deeply this affects him emotionally, even though he doesn’t talk about it. 

In January 2003, we begin collecting paperwork for our “dossier” to send to Russia. We don’t stop trying to conceive, and we consult via phone with Dr. Stegman, who prescribes various things to try to help improve the quality of my signs…but it’s time to move on. “I love my Russian adopted children already,” I write, “but I still ache for the fulfillment of womanhood.”

On Holy Saturday of 2003, I have a dream. In it, I’m sitting on the floor, holding my adopted children. I wake up feeling completely at peace for the first time in as long as I can remember.

Late spring, we finish the dossier and head to the Secretary of State’s office to have it “apostiled” (think notary on steroids), and mid-June 2003, the paperwork heads to Russia. We are officially expecting. And it’s a good thing, too, because a few weeks later, Dr. Stegman announces he’s moving, and his partner, Dr. Dixon, is too overbooked to take on new patients. I go on his waiting list. In July, we have our fingerprints taken by BCIS, and we receive travel visas. It feels real—even more so when my sister gets The Call in August, and starts making plans for travel to China. At last, my Journal begins to fill up with normal life again, without the pain and angst of unfulfilled dreams.

At first, we expect the wait to be about the length of a pregnancy. But specifics are hard to come by. We call the agency every so often to keep a finger on the pulse of our wait. By the time the 9-month mark comes along, the wait is still 9 months long. I fill the time by learning some rudimentary Russian.

In the meantime, I get a call in November 2003: Dr. Dixon’s practice has opened up enough to offer me a spot. I take it, promising that I won’t crunch their schedule with infertility appointments right now, as we’re expecting to adopt shortly; we’ll get back to infertility treatments after we bring our Russian kiddos home.

The “infertility moments,” as I come to call them, still pop up every so often, but mostly 2004 is a study in frustration as the process in Russia slows to a standstill…for months. In November of 03, we are #8 on the list; by February, we’ve crept to #7. Putin has fired the entire cabinet, and the entire Ministry of Education, which oversees adoptions, is in chaos. It’s been a whole year since we finished the paperwork, and we’re still waiting. And waiting. And waiting. But now, instead of yelling at God, I yell at the Russian government.

At Dr. Dixon’s suggestion, Christian gets re-tested and we discover that the water treatment has done its job. Hallelujah! The first of April, we move to #5. We’re actually getting close enough to taste it. For one cycle, we go back to using NFP to avoid pregnancy, and then we realize how ridiculous that is, after 2 ½ years. We actually give notice at my job, telling my pastor it’s time to find a new liturgy director.

I’ve always given blood regularly, but this summer I keep getting deferred for iron. Every time, it’s lower, even though I’m taking supplements. It’s driving me nuts. The first of August, I’m officially unemployed, waiting to be a stay-at-home-mom to two little ones born around the world. I prepare for two weeks of traveling: one weekend to my cousin’s wedding in Michigan, the next to a composers’ retreat in Minnesota. And in the week between the two trips, something happened that has never happened in the three long years we’ve been trying to conceive: My temperatures stay up for 16 days. And 17. And 18.

On the Feast of the Assumption, I go to church, where I hear Mary giving praise for the life within her womb. I tremble at the edge of incredulity. File:Pregnancy test result.jpgAfter all this time, is it possible? The next morning, I wake impossibly early. Heart pounding, I take a pregnancy test. The results are supposed to show up within two minutes, but it only takes about fifteen seconds for a little stick to rock my world.

Well, there are some loose ends to tie up. What about our Russian babies? Apparently it’s feast or famine time for parenthood; just as we find out I’m pregnant, we find ourselves at the top of the wait list. At first we think we’ll keep the pregnancy under wraps and go ahead and bring home the kids as planned. Then we start thinking about the sheer insanity of going from zero to three kids in less than a year—and not babies, either, mind you; we would have had a 3 year old and an 18 month old from Russia, plus a newborn. We decide that’s not fair to the adopted kids, who are going to have a big enough transition as it is, so we opt to get pulled laterally off the list, meaning when we’re ready to adopt they’ll stick us back in at the top. Of course, as pregnancies #2 and 3 come along, the paperwork expires, and we realize that we have to let go of that dream.

What was it that caused my infertility? Stress? Certainly, I was in a stressful job. But as my friend Alison noted on her blog yesterday, stress is a short-term factor, not a long-term one. Water had something to do with it; PCO had something to do with it. But I’m afraid nothing quite accounts for our infertility. Nothing was severe enough to justify it, and thus we just have to thank God that it finally ended.

Which brings up the question why? For a long time, I thought I was going to have to accept that I’d never know the answer to that one. But then Julianna came along, and I realized that all our suffering had prepared us for her arrival.

Well, there you have it. My thanks to all who stuck with us through this long, extremely personal, often “TMI” story. I share it because I think it’s important that we stop treating this subject as taboo, as “too personal.” Infertility is an isolating experience, and the more off-limits the subject is, the more isolating the experience becomes.

Published in: on January 27, 2011 at 7:28 am  Comments (22)  
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Repost: Crisis at the Circulation Desk

It’s just one of those days, folks, so here’s a repost from early of 2009, a few short weeks before Nicholas was born:

***

Scene: the circulation desk at the public library. Behind the counter, a young man and a middle-aged woman. In front of it: two very pregnant women, with small children in tow.

A discussion ensues, instigated by Alex (who else?), about babies in mommies’ tummies. We share due dates, smiling and laughing, because our daughters were enthralled by each other only a few minutes ago at the play kitchen set.

It begins when Alex says he thinks we need five babies. (You might notice, BTW, that he’s increased his ideal family size in the last few days. hehehe.) The woman behind the counter says something like, “Or you could have eight at once, like that one woman. It’s just sickening.”

“W-well,” I hedge, knowing these are deep, dangerous waters, and I don’t really want to navigate them, “I’m all about big families, but not like that.”

Snort. “I’m not all about big families. I believe in zero population growth.” Sardonic shrug; then, realizing she’s overstepped the bounds of common courtesy: “But to each his own.”

Well, okay, then.

Do I say, Excuse me, you do realize you’re talking to pregnant women? Like, on the verge of delivery pregnant?

Do I say, children are a blessing, regardless of how they got here, and no, I can’t stand what Nadia Suleman’s doing either, but the children are holy?

Do I say, siblings are a gift to each other?

Do I say, yes, we need to take better care of the earth, but not at the expense of having children, who are quite possibly the best thing that can happen to a person, because they make you grow, and teach you to view the world in a whole new way?

Do I say, So where does my daughter with Down syndrome fit into your “zero population growth”? Does she even get a place in your utopia?

No.

I draw a stunned blank…I smile weakly and say nothing at all. I pinch my lips shut, put the kids’ books in the cloth library bag, and head out the door. And I comfort myself by thinking that I get to teach my kids to value family, and children, and the earth…

…and that nothing I might have said would have made any difference anyway.

Published in: on May 10, 2010 at 5:47 am  Comments (2)  
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In The Darkness (repost)

If there was ever a morning when a person was justified in recycling old content, this would be it: up with kids four times between 10p.m. and 4 a.m., and never really getting back to sleep, yet too tired to get out of bed.

It seems fitting, then, that this morning I look back to a time almost two years ago, when I was newly pregnant with Nicholas, and unwrap the gift of the two children who, these days, are depriving me of my sleep.

***

“For you, darkness itself is not dark, and night shines as the day.”
—Ps. 139: 12

It’s been on my mind, but I didn’t realize just how terrified I was of losing this baby until I had waited an hour and a half past my appointment time last Friday. It was an unusual backlog, even for a doctor who takes his time with patients and never makes them feel that he’s in a hurry. I wasn’t upset over the delay, but after reading 150 pages of very non-life-giving nonfiction, I tossed the book aside and lay back on the examining table to pray.

When the doctor came in a minute later, I was already on the verge of tears. He pulled out the Doppler with the warning that it’s sometimes hard to find a 10-week-old baby’s heartbeat. And indeed, the only heartbeat we heard, a whisper of a pulse, was mine. I knew that because it was far too slow to be a baby’s.

“Let’s move you down the hall and get an ultrasound,” he said.

Soon, I was prone in the darkness with the wand pressed against my skin, and the fuzzy, silent image appeared. The baby was wiggling…not the trembling, uncontrolled movement that I remember from early ultrasounds, but the measured, deliberate kicking of hands and feet. The baby stretched its back and pointed its tiny nose up in the air. And in the center of the image was a little shimmer of gray, like stardust caught in a single point in space and time, struggling to escape. It was that moment when I fell in love with the child nestled beneath my heart…a child I can see only in shadows and obscurity.

Later that night, back at home, with Julianna cradled in my arms in the darkness, I gazed into her gleaming eyes and hummed a lullaby. I am as familiar with the contours of her face as I am with my own, but in that dimness her features were blurred and indistinct, like those of her unknown sibling. In the dark places of the world, we are known only by the one for whom darkness is light. May God bless my child of shadows, and bring him or her into the light.

tuesdays unwrapped at cats

Moms’ 30-Minute Blog Challenge

Published in: on April 20, 2010 at 5:40 am  Comments (6)  
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All Systems go

All systems go for tomorrow, despite a nasty, unproductive cough. Here’s a good story: At 3:00 this morning I woke up and began coughing again. I could feel the gunk coating my lungs, and I was thinking, oh man, am I even going to have a baby tomorrow? I’m taking my kids to Mom and Dad’s, and how am I going to explain to Alex if we have to put it off till Monday, and Mom’s got to go back to work on Monday anyway, and how are we going to deal with the kids while we’re in the hospital, and the doctor’s office doesn’t open till nine, which is after I told my parents we’d be at their house, and…and…and…

 

I took myself firmly in hand. All right, let’s do the only thing we can do at 3:25a.m. Call the office and leave a message. They’ve told me before that someone’s always in at 7:30 or 8 and will return messages. So I grabbed the phone and headed into the closet so I wouldn’t wake Christian. I left a message, explaining the situation, and went back into the bedroom. I put the phone in the cradle beside Christian and circled the bed.

 

Just as I sat down, the phone rang. Christian woke with an inarticulate gasp and every limb flailing, but even so he got to the phone before me. “lo?” he mumbled, and then he laid there for five seconds and shoved the phone at me.

 

“I thought I was the only person who couldn’t sleep!” said the bright, cheery voice of one of the nurses at the doctor’s office. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw the message light go on!”

 

I sat down and said blankly, “You couldn’t sleep…so you went to the office?”

 

Not that I’m complaining, mind you! And after all, I suppose that’s what I do if I can’t sleep at 3a.m., too…I come downstairs and turn on the computer. It’s just that I don’t have to shower and drive to get to work!

 

Anyway, for all that, I still didn’t get an answer until 10:00 this morning. Now I’m on Z-Pac, and they tell me that although a cough doesn’t affect the C-section, the C-section will affect the cough. “As in, coughing will hurt like the dickens,” they said. “But it won’t harm either one of you.”

 

So Dad and I pulled the kids’ suitcases from the van, moved car seats from our blue van to theirs. I spent the rest of the morning trying to remember every instruction my mother needs to keep my kids from melting down in the next two days, and lying on my parents’ couch trying to sleep while Julianna batted my face with cold little hands and Alex brought very old Disney crank reels for me to look at.

 

The joy and delight with which my children and my parents interacted this morning was breathtakingly beautiful. (Although I’m sure that 48 hours from now, all four of them will be just as excited to get away from each other!) Dad is especially susceptible to Julianna’s charms. He almost couldn’t tear himself away to go to his lunch meeting.

 

At naptime, I took my leave. It was really hard to leave Julianna in the crib, smiling so big at me…she and I have reached a new closeness in the last few days, as if Daddy’s girl and Mommy’s girl are coming closer together. She had no idea, when I laid her down, that she won’t see me again for two days, and that when she does, everything will be different. In her whole life, we’ve never been apart longer than twelve hours. It was hard to walk out of that room.

 

And then there was saying goodbye to Alex, my little mama’s boy, who has had me wrapped around his finger since he was six hours old and he looked up at me with the exact expression I had seen on his daddy’s face a hundred times before. “I miss you already,” I said, choking up as his chubby arms went around my neck.

 

No car seats in the van. Thirty miles back home, with no voices in the back seat. No bickering (yes, they can bicker, even when one can’t talk), no giggling, no mutual annoyance or hilarity, no vocal competitions. No giggling Alex when I went through the car wash. Silence in the house.

 

Nothing to distract me from a good old-fashioned, hormonal, oh-(whatever)-this-is-really-it freak out.

 

Nothing except the phone calls from my best friend and my in-laws, asking how I was doing. God bless you guys.

Published in: on March 18, 2009 at 2:30 pm  Comments (1)  
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Do They Know?

Alex is big enough to understand. In a couple of days, the baby’s coming out of Mommy’s tummy. He’s spent the last several months putting his hands on my belly and giggling every time Baby kicks him; he talks about it to everyone. But he was 21 months old when Julianna was born. He can’t possibly comprehend the changes about to come down the pike.

 

Can he?

 

Julianna, of course, has no clue. Yes, she knows “baby.” She loves her doll babies and every baby she meets. But the reason for Mommy’s changing body shape, the reason she’s always in a stroller now instead of on my hip, the reason she moved to a new bed…no clue. Several times, I’ve taken her hands and put them on my belly, saying, “There’s a baby in Mommy’s tummy” and signing “baby.” She always gives me this Mommy, you’re silly look and laughs. No clue. Concepts are way over her head.

 

Aren’t they?

 

But if they really don’t get it, why are they acting the way they’re acting?

 

Alex screams when he doesn’t get his way. He completely falls apart over nothing. A missing shoe, even if it’s right under his nose; being unable to get the cap off the toothpaste—these things are the end of the known universe. Julianna will whine for hours, and refuse to communicate by sign; she shrieks if Alex gets anywhere in her personal space; when you try to get her to walk, she picks up her feet and howls.

 

That’s not to say that they’re a universal nightmare, because they’re not. There are still plenty of times when Alex is thoughtful, helpful, giggly and sweet. Julianna will stick out her tongue and give us a silly grin as she walks back and forth from Christian to me; at other times, she loves to be tickled and munched on, and asks for more. She and Alex still love to wrestle, and bedtime is not complete for either of them without a hug from Big Brother or Little Sister.

 

At the same time, though, there has been a clear shift in behavior the last few weeks. So perhaps the kids “get it” more than we think they do. Or maybe they don’t understand what’s going to happen; they just know something is going to change, and the very not knowing is unsettling them.

 

If that’s the case, then what’s it going to be like after the baby arrives? Better, because we’re already in transition…or harder, because this is only the tiniest tip of the iceberg?

***

Addendum: it occurred to me this morning as I was stumbling wearily around the park with Alex while Julianna had PT…it’s no wonder they’re ambivalent. I know as well as can be known, what’s coming down the pike, and I’m ambivalent. Everyone comes in this week and says, “Two days! Are you excited?” And I think, Ugh, mostly I just want my body back! I’ll deal with the rest as it comes. I’m tired, queasy, and listless. I wish I had a more beautiful or poignant response, but that’s the plain truth. Baby raptures will come in a few days. For now, I’m just ready not to be pregnant anymore!

Published in: on March 17, 2009 at 5:36 am  Comments (1)  
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The Final Countdown Begins

I spent yesterday driving crazily around St. Louis, from doctor’s office to Penzey’s to instrument repair shop to drop off my flute. Apparently when you’re pregnant, you forget how to get from point A to point B. Or at least, you lose all common sense, which would tell you that you should take the route that you know, even if it seems a little out of the way, instead of trying to take a road that ought to go where you need to go, only to discover that you’ve wasted ten miles and twenty minutes of drive time.

 

I often wonder about the usefulness of the late pregnancy doctor visits, but at least I got some questions answered about the hospital procedure. Despite having done it twice before, I’m a little fuzzy on the details. Dr. Dixon poked around at some length before telling me I have a head-down baby (wouldn’t you know, the third time around, I finally have a baby who might have been possible to deliver vaginally!), and his guess is between 8 ½ and 9 pounds. Mind you, that’s this week, not next week on D-day. J Yes, apparently I grow them huge. He also gave me some suggestions for easing the persistent low-grade nausea I’ve been experiencing for a month now.

 

At one week and counting, the to-do-before-Baby list lengthens out:

 

  • Empty the crib of books (and find a new home for them!), and change the sheet
  • Pull out the size 0 diapers
  • Pull out the car seat
  • Haircuts for the boys (the girls had them on Monday), so we’re all spruced up and looking our best for our new arrival
  • Put together a chicken & rice casserole to join the lasagna in the freezer
  • Pack the kids for two nights and Grandma & Grandpa’s and two nights with Daddy in St. Louis
  • Pack for the hospital, including busy work
  • Clean the house (my last cleaning for six weeks…darn the luck)
  • Find the cable to connect the camera to the computer…we’ve always used the docking station, so we really have no idea where it is.
  • Scrapbook the last two sets of pictures, so I’m all caught up for the onslaught of new pictures to archive!
  • Make up “welcome note” paper for hospital visitors
  • Last swim lesson
  • Last date without baby-in-tow, which we are only doing because we were asked to do an NFP presentation on Saturday, so we figured we’d make good use of babysitting
  • Find a dolly of some sort to facilitate the transport of two non-mobile children and all choir paraphernalia to and from church during the 6 weeks when I can’t carry anything
  • Call the hospital and insurance to make sure we pick a pediatrician who’s covered

We won’t have a dull moment between now and then, that’s for sure. We’re trying to squeeze in as many therapy appointments for Julianna as we can, and this morning Alex and I have a preschool visit with the public schools. The program that Julianna will enter next year at this time also accepts children as “buddies” or “mentors,” and we’re having Alex evaluated to see if he qualifies. From a logistical standpoint, it just makes sense to try to get both kids going to the same place at the same time. But I also want to make sure that it will be a good fit for him. I’m a little conflicted. It would be wonderful for Alex to grow up around children with special needs, learning gentleness, compassion, kindness. But on the other hand, part of the preschool experience (maybe the most important part) is interacting with peers, which implies playmates at your own level—something that he doesn’t get much of as it is. So I have to ask a lot of questions today.

 

Well, enough of a long, rambling post. Time to get going on The List.

Published in: on March 12, 2009 at 5:23 am  Leave a Comment  

The End of Pregnancy

The upper part of the Spring Valley Trail at Rock Bridge State Park winds through a grove of old cedar trees teeming with tree frogs whose constant chirrup, along with the rush of wind over evergreen, almost drowns out the distant noise of the city’s frenetic energy. I wandered off-trail this afternoon, dodging dead undergrowth to a place where I could make a reflection/writing station out of a picnic blanket stretched across a soft carpet of fallen needles and moss, the breeze filling my nostrils with the sweet scent of cedar. It isn’t perfect. I like to get away from everyone when I come to nature. I don’t want to hear traffic; I don’t want anyone to come by walking their dogs. I come to nature to commune with quiet, to find a place where my soul and my mind can rest, away from the constant grating of manmade noise.

 

But such places are hard to find where I live, and I’m trying to learn to find spiritual quiet without demanding perfect stillness. If I had been a more daring young woman, I might have done what my cousin Melanie did, and set off as a nomad across national parks, hiking through pristine wilderness in hours stolen from working whatever job I could find.

 

But I was not a courageous young woman. Not that way, anyway. And God has His plans for each of us, which always turn out for the best, as long as we approach them with the right attitude—an attitude of openness, of willingness to look for the good in whatever is handed to us.

 

After choir practice last night, I spoke to a woman for whom getting out of bed in the morning can be so painful that it sometimes causes her to have words with God. But the words she uses make all the difference. “I say, ‘God, fix me. I mean, fix my mind—so I don’t get resentful.’” Now that is the proper way to frame a prayer. Listening to her humbled me. This pregnancy, I have not kept a willing spirit and a grateful heart. Grateful for my baby, yes. Oh my, yes. But a woman who has traveled the road of infertility has no right to be as whiny as I have been these last months.

 

Early on, when I gained no weight, had no discomfort, and no morning sickness, I worried about miscarrying. It couldn’t be this easy—not with our history. Mid-pregnancy, I fussed about how much weight I gained all at once. And then, right before Christmas, the SI joint stuff hit. The twentieth of December, I could barely walk. I remember that date because we were caroling with the choir.

 

And now? Two weeks from this moment, it’ll all be over…barring Murphy’s Law, of course. Here at the end of pregnancy, I’m tired all the time. Too tired to clean, to play with the kids, even to write properly (which always energizes me). And vaguely nauseous some part of every day—just enough to sap my energy. I don’t remember being this tired before. It’s probably a combination of being 34 instead of 30, having the stomach virus and now a cold, and my usual trouble sleeping. I am grateful that the SI stuff has really settled down this week…as witness, I’m sitting cross-legged on the ground typing this on my NEO.

 

But still, I feel guilty for the energy I’m not giving my kids. Alex always wants to play with me…he doesn’t get nearly enough of me. And I feel sure that if I worked more with Julianna, she’d be much farther along.

 

And oh, the mess in our house! Christian’s always been the one to want the house spic n span, but these days it’s driving me crazy, too. Probably because I see it every time I turn around, and working up the energy to address it takes all day. By which time, of course, it’s worse!

 

When I set out to write about the end of pregnancy, I meant to make it humorous: laugh about how desperate I am to be able to lie on my back, to run, to bend over, to give piggyback rides. To balance the negatives with some raptures about the baby. It has gone in a different direction than I intended!

 

Well, I can rhapsodize about Baby, at least. I’m pleased to say that my baby already has a pattern of waking and sleep. S/he wakes up like clockwork between 5 and 5:30 every morning and then wakes me up with tickles under the ribs, knees poking out my right side (always my right), and playing scales on my stomach. I mean my stomach. Not the skin over my abdomen, but the organ itself. Now that is a weird feeling!

 

The only thing I will miss about pregnancy is watching the baby hop across my abdomen, jerking it this way and that, stretching lazily so that my belly undulates and rolls like a banner in the breeze. (Sort of. That’s really not a good analogy, but there’s nothing else on earth like the movement of a baby.)

 

And suddenly, here on my blanket beneath the cedars, the wind settles into quiet, and the soft, weak March sun wraps its tendrils around my neck, and I am sitting amid a symphony of cedars playing in canon as the breeze skips from one quadrant to another, caressing my skin with the outermost reaches of its passing.

 

And unexpectedly, I find the peace I came here searching for.

Published in: on March 5, 2009 at 9:20 pm  Leave a Comment  

Random Tidbits

I’m up early this morning and don’t have my writing materials, so I’ll just take this opportunity to record a few little random tidbits of life, which are more for the benefit of family records/history than what I usually post.

Random tidbit #1: Julianna
We receive our services through Missouri First Steps, which is a tremendous program, covering everything she needs until age 3. The therapists tell me that once she graduates from First  Steps, there will be many more battles to fight. (Yay.)

Anyway, at present the therapists come to our house: Physical, Occupational, and Speech. Gerti, our PT, still gets 2 visits a week, but as soon as Julianna really gets walking we’ll be cutting back to one and passing the other to the other therapists, who get 6 visits per month. I detail this to explain that we have 5-6 visits per week…except this week, because Gerti is out of the country, and other scheduling factors combined so that we had only TWO therapies this week. We did not know what to do with ourselves. Particularly Julianna, who simply has gone on strike this week. She won’t walk–whenever you try to set her on her feet, she picks her legs up and howls. She won’t drink from a glass–preferring to go without liquid altogether. I’m shaking my head and saying, Kiddo, regression’s supposed to happen AFTER the baby comes!

However, on the up side, she had a great week for signing. She learned 5 new signs: Daddy, Mommy, hat, fish, play. And she pointed to “cat” when Chris, the speech therapist, asked her to choose between two pictures. So both of those are good things.

Random Tidbit #2: Alex

Alex is definitely transitioning out of nap time. The trouble is that he still really needs it, even if he can’t or won’t go to sleep. So by evening, there are purple marks under his eyes and he’s acting…well, not good. The other thing this affects is bedwetting. He’s always been a sound sleeper–once he fell out of bed without waking up! This is why, we think, he is still wetting at night instead of getting up to go to the bathroom. I’ve let it go for months now without trying to work on it, but it’s very frustrating. It seems like all his friends are dry at night, and he’s not only wet, he’s as drenched as any baby.

Random Tidbit #3: Alex

On a more positive note, a couple of language funnies. He’s always said “pwanio” instead of “piano.” Christian & I think it’s adorable, but about a week ago, I thought, oh, my goodness, this child is nearly 4 years old. If I let this go much longer he’s going to get into the habit, and imagine the musicians’ kid at age 7 having to learn to say “piano” properly! So I brought him over and taught him to say it properly. Christian was really mad at me. :)

However, he still says “amn’t.” He’s got the gist of language so well that he created for himself the one contraction that we DON’T use. You’re really tired, Alex–it’s time for bed. “No, I amn’t!” Adorable.

OK, so honesty compels me to admit that even though he made up an appropriate contraction, he doesn’t have his past tense straight yet.

Random Tidbit #4: Baby

Baby is manifesting his or her personality by waking up every time I sit down or lie down, and using me as a boxing target…and a tickle target. Its favorite time is when I first lie down at night. I get a good 15 minutes of crazy movements. The kind where an entire leg from the knee down pushes out of my flank, and I can run my fingers along both sides. The kind where both sides of my body bulge at the same time. The kind where my stomach jumps and rolls like something out of an Alien movie. And s/he LOVES to take those little toes and tickle the underside of my ribcage. I must say, it’s most unfair, because I have very little defense against internal tickling! But maybe it’s a payback-in-advance  for all the tickling this little one will have to endure from Mommy in the years to come. :)

Random Tidbit #5: Writing

I set a goal to have my novel complete & submission-ready before Baby. I think that ship has sailed, much as I hate to capitulate. I’m very close, but my focus has gone in other directions lately…an assignment for Family Foundations (thank you, Christina!), and some composing, which I always miss when I go into a musical dry spell. And let’s be honest…a lot of blogging. Balance, Kate, balance.

So we’ll see what happens when I finish my assignment, which I should be able to turn in well ahead of deadline. Who knows? Maybe the last fixes and polishes on the novel won’t take too long. Maybe I’ll still make it! Think positive!

Published in: on February 28, 2009 at 6:28 am  Leave a Comment  

Of oopsies and unmade decisions

Yesterday, between thunderstorms, the kids and I went outside. I knew it was not a good idea to put Julianna on the wet ground, but neither could I carry her for an hour, and I wanted to show Alex the buds starting to pop out. So I walked her over to the basketball hoop and left her to fend for herself for five minutes. Naturally, when I returned, she was sitting on the wet driveway, soaked through—but happy.

 

Alex took her for a long ride in his jeep. I couldn’t even keep up, he was running her down the sidewalk so fast, but she had a ball. When we finally got back to the house, I put Julianna on the floor of the garage and popped inside to use the restroom. By the time I headed back out, she was tapping on the door. I opened it and saw…

 

Black handprints…all…over…the…door.

 

Which, naturally, led me to look at the hands that made the prints. My reaction went something like this:

 

“!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

 

Cute little terrycloth jacket: Black.

 

Cute little pink and white capris: Black.

 

Adorable, munchy little hands: BLACK. (Not so munchy.)

 

I don’t know how she did it, unless she actually laid down in the tiny pile of cinders left by the truck tires.

 

Oops.

 

Yesterday was also a day for unmade decisions. Hugely important decisions. Change-the-course-of-existence decisions…like buying a couch. : /

 

I’ve said before that my husband is a consummate financial planner. We like to joke that I grew up on a farm in the ‘80s, and Christian makes me look like a spendthrift. When Christian moved into an apartment in 1995, he purchased two couches, a coffee table, and two antique lamp tables from someone’s basement for $50. Almost thirteen years later, we’re still using the same furniture.

 

However, its days are numbered. The big couch—my alternate sleep site on white nights—has been steadily failing ever since Alex discovered the joys of cushion forts and couch jumping. Now he has Julianna on board, too. We put it off as long as we could, but one of the zippers is broken, and we can’t even close the cover over the cushion anymore.

 

So we’ve been couch shopping for four months. We’re very picky consumers, you see. We think if you’re going to spend the money, you’d darned well better spend it well. And because our basement, where the TV is “supposed” to go, instead hosts a piano, a flute studio, and all the kids’ toys, we’re shopping for a couch for our all-in-one living/entertaining/TV room. It has to look good AND feel good.

 

Last night we went out to Ashley furniture. Since it’s cheap, all we found were stock couches that look like every other couch ever made. Bo-ring. Alex was without nap, and starting to look drugged and act like a toddler; Christian was holding Julianna, who was of course perfectly happy because she was with Daddy. I was running (well, okay, waddling) from couch to couch, plopping down, struggling back to my feet, when suddenly I realized that my husband was simply standing there, frozen in place in the middle of the store, with a look on his face that would have curdled milk.

 

“What’s going on?” I said.

 

“I DON’T WANT TO SIT ON ANY MORE COUCHES!” snapped Christian. “I’M TIRED OF SITTING ON COUCHES! I CAN’T MAKE A DECISION FROM SITTING ON A COUCH FOR FIVE SECONDS!”

 

Clearly, we need a break from furniture shopping. As my sister-in-law would say, “Ah, the drama…” J

 

And then, of course, there’s the Name Game.

 

After the kids were in bed, I came back downstairs. Christian sauntered into the kitchen and sat down across from me at the table. “So,” he said, “have we decided on a girl’s name?”

 

Two hours later, we went to bed, still nameless on the girl’s side…and on the boy’s, we just threw our hands in the air and decided we’ve got to stick with what we’ve got. We’ve had a boy’s name ever since Julianna was born, you see, but one or the other of us keeps waffling. And the girl’s name? I’ve got one I adore, but he thinks it’s too close to our new niece’s name. He’s got one that I accepted three months ago and then decided was boring. “I think it’s time to ask for outside help,” he sighed.

 

I’m not sure that’s such a great idea, myself…we’re very independent about these sorts of things. What do you think, my faithful friends and readers? Should I start a poll? J J J

 

Two weeks, six days.

 

How dare you insinuate that I’m counting? J

Published in: on February 27, 2009 at 1:30 pm  Comments (2)  

Why, oh, why, is it so hard…

….to come up with a name for the third child?

And why, oh why, are the websites so darned useless? Bigger is better, apparently, but who can process 5,000 names, let alone 27,000???? You open a web site, intending to start at the beginning, and after three pages of “Aa” your eyes begin to glaze over, and you realize…this is just not going to work.

The best site I’ve found is www.Nymbler.com, because it gives you a 3-by-5-column chart with a mix of names (and most of them are normal ones). But even at that, it’s just plain hard to name a third child. I like one, Christian doesn’t. Christian likes one, and it is the name of a person I couldn’t stand, long before I ever met him. And so on.

Ah well, we’ve still got four weeks and three days. But who’s counting? :)

Published in: on February 16, 2009 at 8:43 pm  Comments (7)  
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