Whimsically Crazy

I’m in a very ‘make it one day at a time’ mood right now. I’m officially cutting my hours to part-time in July (almost a birthday present to myself), but in the meantime my already short-staffed company is down one person for an entire month. One going-to-be-intense month at work.

Last night near 7 my phone popped up a notification to tell me that there was a six minute delay on my route home, and when I hit the information icon trying to figure out how to get it to stop notifying me of these things, it said that I normally commute home around that time. So not only is my my phone stalking me, but it has proof that I work too late, too often.

Then after work, there was grocery shopping, and cooking, and finally eating except that I was too tired to eat much at that point, followed by the putting away of foods and finally going to bed exhausted. Woke up this morning feeling pretty much the same as when I went to bed.

I’m starting to feel like the first trimester is sneaking back on me – the tiredness, a little bit of nausea. Nothing sounded appealing for lunch today so I ended up at Arby’s again. I’m starting to get tired of that even, but I still feel like my body wants it, so it really does feel like my daily prescribed dose of thinly sliced beef.

I’ve been telling myself that come July I have no excuse not to work on my projects, but I do have one legitimate excuse – pregnancy fatigue is real.

Also blaming pregnancy fatigue for originally writing ‘vary’ for ‘very’.

Pregnancy: The magical time when you crave junk food, and it all goes straight to your boobs.

I was stopped at a light while out at lunch today when I was rear-ended by a car behind me. Much like when I found myself falling off the exercise ball backwards in slow motion, the thought that went through my head was, ‘This can’t happen to me, I’m pregnant!’ Unlike the exercise ball incident, I also was also thinking, ‘there’s no way this can be my fault.’

The guy was very apologetic and gave me his info. I was mostly in shock, and scared, because at the moment I got hit I started feeling pain in my stomach. I called the midwives as soon as I got to a parking lot and they had me come in to check the heartbeat.

I was getting impatient for my next appointment to hear proof again that the baby is okay, but this isn’t how I intended to do it.

I’m supposed to relax tonight, and watch for any signs of a problem (bleeding, worse cramping) but everything should be fine.

In not exactly related news, I just can’t believe how good Arby’s tastes to me now. Roast beef, curly fries, and my daily allotment of caffeinated drink. (Iced tea today.) I feel a little lost when I go in because I don’t really eat fast food, and I have to stare at the menu trying to figure out how to get the most amount of meat (since I’m going to throw out the buns) without looking like a glutton.

Maybe when I’m really pregnant I can just point at my stomach and say, “Give me meat.” But by then, I’ll probably be on to a new random pregnancy craving.

I found the instructions that came with the free sling so I put it on properly and came at Morgan… she gave me such a priceless look of horror that I left her alone until after dinner. Later when she was in a more cuddly mood I got some cuteness.

I’m quite sure there’s something about pregnancy that makes you appreciate naps in a new way.

I’ve never been a good napper – I don’t fall asleep quickly, I wake up groggy, and I can’t get to sleep when I’m supposed to at night. I also can’t help feeling like recreational sleeping is the absolutely least productive way to spend time, even compared to watching bad TV or reading bad Internet. While pregnant it’s different though. It’s all about stockpiling sleep before the baby’s born, right?

I spent a good part of Sunday afternoon sleeping with Morgan on the bed, since she was in the way of me washing the sheets. I have read that 20 minutes is the ideal nap time, so I set my alarm, then turned it off 20 minutes later and went back to sleep…

I dreamed that I was eating Arby’s roast beef. I woke up wanting Arby’s roast beef…

I call him ‘Carnivore baby’ for the way he makes me crave meat, especially beef, which I don’t normally know what to do with.

Since there’s no Arby’s within reach of my apartment I thought instead I could pick up some lunch meat at the store. However the expensive, organic, quality roast beef at Madison Market looked like the opposite of what I wanted.

I put it off for a couple days, but there are two Arby’s near my work. So for lunch I ordered a roast beef sandwich, curly fries, and Dr. Pepper (since if I’m going to be bad, I might as well be bad all the way.) I hid myself in a corner where no one could watch me eat the insides with my fingers and leave the bun, just like I did as a kid. I’m totally pulling the ‘I’m pregnant so I can do whatever I want.’

I took the soda and leftover fries back to work, not realizing right away that the cup had Arby’s name all over it, giving me away! To make it worse, the bag I hid the fries in, with my salad and soup for later, ripped in my hands as I got to my desk, spilling my fries all over the floor and further drawing attention to myself.

I still picked them up and ate them anyway. The floor looked clean enough, and no one messes with a pregnant woman’s food, even gravity.

At 17 and a half weeks, here are the “bad” things I have done so far:

– Taken Immodium (with my OB’s blessing).

– Eaten countless turkey lunch meat sandwiches, not microwaved first.

– Eaten much ham, cooked, but full of nitrates.

– While I bought Sunbutter to make sandwiches with instead of peanut butter, because of a potential risk of peanut allergies from early exposure, I’m still eating peanut butter cups and peanut butter granola bars for breakfast practically every day.

– Eaten nuts of all (other) kinds, guaranteeing my unborn child will have allergies or asthma or who knows what all because of my selfish, healthy snacking.

– Eaten Cheetos for breakfast.

– Eaten albacore tuna salads (that’s a green salad with albacore tuna on top) from Alki Bakery far more often than the recommended frequency.

– Consumed caffeine in the forms of: Starbucks decaf, iced tea, regular tea, and the above mentioned Dr. Pepper.

– Gotten foot massages from the cheap massage place in the mall, where they don’t know I’m pregnant and even hit the bad pressure points (which would need constant pressure for an extended period to actually be a concern.)

– Slept on my back, even though I’ve always been a natural side sleeper. I think my changing center of gravity is pushing me back onto my back like a weeble wobble toy.

– Cleaned the litter boxes for two weeks while Andrew was out of town, without wearing gloves – it just seemed like an unnecessary step when I wasn’t going to be putting my hands in my mouth afterwards.

– Scrubbed the bathtub with bathroom cleaner, until the fumes made my eyes burn. (This one seems the most bad.)

– Tried to put Morgan in the “free” baby sling I got (not impressed with the sling so I don’t care about cat hair. Morgan was not impressed either.)

– Got a crazy sunburn… not pregnancy related, but just bad all around!

Bad things I have not done (yet):

– Eaten sushi. Andrew is trying to keep me away as long as possible.

– Had any alcohol – not that I plan to, but the new studies that have come out have me convinced that at least having a taste of someone else’s drink occasionally wouldn’t be the end of the world.

– Had a Baskin Robbins Mocha Blast. I was craving one last weekend but was kept distracted long enough to forget about it.

– Dyed my hair. I’ve had a box of hair dye that was going to be my consolation prize if I didn’t get pregnant that month… and then I did! I was waiting for the second trimester, and now I’m trying to give more time to forget about those bathtub cleaner fumes.

– Used fingernail polish remover, mostly because I’m too lazy to finish the job.

I went shopping for my new boobs last week. It took me a while to figure out if I actually had new boobs, since I didn’t grow a cup size overnight or anything, but after buying new bras it’s much more obvious how my old ones weren’t fitting right anymore. The ones I bought claimed “easy sizing” or something along those lines (S/M/L instead of band/cup) so I don’t have any numbers to compare how much I’ve grown but apparently I’m a “large” now.

Being that I still hate wearing bras any more than necessary, I’m still getting away with going without on weekends and with the occasional outfit that has the right kind of layering to hide any rogue nipples. For example, a shirt I bought recently turned out to be scratchy inside but if I wear a camisole top underneath it feels fine and I can skip the bra.

That was what I was wearing yesterday when I looked into the bathroom mirror at work and a line from Waitress popped into my head.

“As you can plainly see, my right boob is much higher than my left boob…”

It was me!

I’ve always had a natural asymmetry, but it’s only been noticeable when naked (and I’ve never known anyone to care at that point). I think all of my growth went into my left side, because suddenly my breasts were existing on two different planes.

To quote again from the movie,

“Dear baby…“

As your mother, I’m going to love you unconditionally. However you’ve already done a couple things to test those limits. The first was making me lose my taste for Thai food in the first trimester. Now it’s making me have to wear a bra to not look like a freak of nature.

You’re only allowed one per trimester so you’d better be thinking of something good for the next.

I felt something today. The first tiny flutter of something-that-was-probably-nothing (aka, probably “just gas”) but it was my first time feeling anything on the lower left side where the baby seems to like to hide from the Doppler at appointments.

I figured I’d better remember this date in case it turns out to be the real thing. Oh right, I remembered, it’s Mother’s Day. 😀

I’m a big fan of Hyperbole and a Half. I think first she won my heart when the comic/post that introduced me to her site had Ebola in the title. I’ve even found myself thinking in terms of the improved pain chart. In fact I should use it for my birth plan- “I can deal with “My pain is not fucking around.’ but if I get to ‘I see Jesus coming for me and I’m scared.’ it’s time for the epidural.”

Unfortunately there have been lulls in her writing that make my blogs look prolific by comparison, which have been explained by her recent stories of dealing with depression.

The Internet as a whole agrees that Allie puts what it’s like to experience depression into words (and pictures) better than anyone, ever. Personally I know that no one experiences depression the same, so I won’t say that I can relate completely or know exactly how she feels, but there were a number of panels that made me think, ‘Wow. Yes. I’VE BEEN THERE!’

– The part about deciding to not want to exist any more, which isn’t exactly the same as being suicidal, but in practice it might as well be.

– The part where trying to explain this to someone else becomes more about having to having to deal with their feelings about the situation.

– The part about the worst part being having to keep going, which for me was my last stint in Maine before moving to Seattle. At that point I no longer had the comfort of my escape plan. I just had to keep surviving and existing until a set date.

I feel like I’ve been mentally cleaning out some closets in my mind ever since reading this, and it might still be the influence of #2 (worrying about other people’s feelings about my feelings) but every time I find something I want to write about, another voice comes up beside me like I’m on Hoarders and asks, “Are you sure you need to post that? Why don’t we just put it in the trash pile instead?”

So the 1-800-GOT-JUNK truck in my mind is hauling away:

– My years of being what I call ‘passively suicidal’ – not wanting to actively kill myself but wishing I could will myself out of existence, or that something would happen to me like the bus crashing, as long as no one else gets hurt.

– A rant on how much I hate the phrase ‘something stupid’, as in, “You’re not going to do something stupid are you?” I really, really hate it. It’s so belittling and dismissive.

– A reminder of the amount of energy it takes to pass as normal while depressed. And sometimes the best ‘normal’ gets is not bursting into tears for no apparent reason at inopportune times.

– My own crying while (figuratively) drinking juice memories.

It’s been about ten months since I went off my meds and for the record, I’m still not crazy yet. I’ve realized that most of my memories of the “bad times” in the past (both as a teenager and something resembling an adult) have merged into a handful of blurry chunks, stuffed away in those closets I mentioned. I think it’s something of a defense mechanism, and if I had clear memories of what it was like before I was medicated, I never would have taken the risk of stopping. I’m thankful that I can pass as normal so easily now, even to myself.

I sometimes think about if and when I’m going back on my meds since I’m doing so well, if I make it through the pregnancy and breastfeeding (and maybe a second pregnancy and breastfeeding at that point) without them. On one hand it doesn’t seem like I should be taking unnecessary drugs just because. On the other hand, depression isn’t like a headache where you feel it coming on and know where your tolerance lies before it’s time to take something to make it stop. Depression tricks your brain into thinking you’re supposed to feel that way, and even if you know better, that not being able to control your own mind makes you a failure. I remember once looking at my bottle of lithium, knowing it was the magic pill that could make everything better in a few minutes, and still refusing to take it because I felt like I should be able to deal with it on my own.

I do worry a little about the future – is all of this ‘normal’ just my mind saving up for the big meltdown later? What about in October, when I’m potentially overlapping postpartum depression with the start of winter? I worry, but it’s an abstract worry.

So if I was “kind of” pregnant before, I am OFFICIALLY pregnant now…

…has been the start of the post in my head for the last few weeks, ever since the less-publicized symptom of mind-numbing fatigue hit me over the head and pretty much knocked me out.

But I wanted to jump in to announce Wednesday night, one day short of 9 weeks, I got my first “real” bout of morning sickness… at 11 at night. My body is backwards yet again.

For the sake of documentation, here are the other thoughts that went through my head:

– “This is disgusting. I could deal with throwing up easier if I didn’t have to taste it.”

– “The grape juice wasn’t a good idea. Or maybe the grape juice was a good idea. Maybe grape flavored stomach acid tastes better than original flavor.”

– “Oh there’s the [fiber] pills I just took. Why did I insist on trying to swallow those?”

– “Is it going to stop? How do I know when it’s stopped??”

– “There’s no way I ate that much tonight…”

– “I need to make sure to clean up or the purple is going to give me away.”

A small part of me was excited to hit a real pregnancy milestone, especially since no women who went through this would take me seriously without going through the full experience, while the rest of me is really hoping that it stops at just this one time.

When I started this blog I had expected to document my decent into madness, and as a side effect, that I’d be interesting. Instead, I found a different kind of madness. One that involves ovulation tests and temperatures, feeling my own cervix, fertility forums and accepting their acronyms, and the kind of obsessing that only someone TTC during the TWW waiting for AF (okay that’s as far as I can go with that) can understand.

I’ve peed on too many sticks to count, although if you wanted to wait a minute I could… X tests/day for Y days… In my case POAS (there’s another acronym I know) is just a figure of speech because I’m too afraid of my aim and wasting an expensive tests that it’s a win-win that the cheap tests you can buy in bulk are the collect-and-dip variety. When I was ovulation testing three times a day I snuck my testing supplies into the work bathroom at lunch, reading the results in my car. I even crossed the line into crazy when – and before you judge remember that this kind of crazy is what helped me get pregnant – my digital ovulation test errored on the sample that I knew would be positive, and the LH surge it tests for might not last until I got home, I sealed the container, packed it in another bag, and it brought home to test again.

I’ve become more familiar with my own urine than I ever expected. I figure that’s part of the preparation for having kids. That test was positive by the way. I just really wanted to see that smiley face.

The day after I got my (acronyms have invaded my brain) BFP, I found yet another level of crazy. Suddenly I felt like I was only allowed to eat things of the highest nutritional value, like kale, and… just kale. Just days before I had been trying to convince the then-hypothetical fertilized egg to implant because I would (and did) feed it yummy things like macaroni and cheese and cupcakes. I wanted Thai food for lunch and reminded myself that Thai women eat Thai food while pregnant all the time. In the car I wondered if blasting Rise Against was really good for Baby Blastocyst and perhaps I should turn it down. Then on the radio was a Lumineers song I like, but I don’t want future-baby being born liking boring music.

I also realized that, in my mind, this is what’s inside of me:

A couple days later my test lines got horribly faint. I saw my chemical pregnancy coming and after the initial let-down I started to accept it with the same level of disappointment I’ve had when I got my period every other time, with a little bonus excitement at the fact that I know I’m capable of getting pregnant. The Panic Free Pregnancy says what to do about early losses is to just not test early, which is where I rolled my eyes and realized that the book was written by a man. It would be impossible for me to not test early again, but I did spend some time thinking about what I would have done differently if I didn’t know…

– I would not have obsessed and felt guilty over having a single cup of regular tea.

– I would have perhaps drank a cup of raspberry leaf tea a day, preventive against menstrual cramps but questionable safety during early pregnancy.

The biggest thing, I wouldn’t have done the “calendar math”. My chart already tells me that my due date will be October 17 if I conceived this cycle. I saw that 8 weeks, when I think the first appointment/ultrasound usually happens, would be Andrew’s birthday week and wouldn’t that be an amazing present? (Wait, do I get out of buying presents by being pregnant?) My own birthday I would get to flaunt a 5-month belly at my traditional birthday sushi.

I found myself strangely calm about the whole situation… and then my tests got dark again! And calm went back out the window…

The main thing that’s been driving me crazy is that if I hadn’t been testing or tracking in any way, I’d be absolutely convinced that my period was coming as normal. I’ve been spotting nonstop since before my first positive. I’ve had the same little cramps off and on that I always called “warning cramps”, as in, “Guess what, this is just a taste of what’s coming and when it does, it’ll be BAD…” My brain will absolutely not stop thinking, “Oh it’s about to start, you’re not pregnant” every single time I feel one.

I was due today. I read earlier that while the miscarriage risk starts at 40%, it drops to 15% now which is no longer like flipping a coin. I get my blood test tomorrow which will make it official, but today’s the day I feel actually pregnant (except when I don’t) and didn’t take a second (or third, or foruth…) test to prove it. I decided to stop temping so I won’t worry about fluctuations in my temperature and moved the thermometer away from the bed so I can’t change my mind in the morning.

I originally had a sigmoidoscopy scheduled for today. I canceled it a couple days ago after finding out the news (pink lines!) because I didn’t want to risk doing anything right now that would convince a cluster of cells that my body isn’t a habitable place. I know things are generally safe, but that seems like a special kind of trauma to go through so early. Ultimately the relief I felt after it was canceled told me I made the right decision. Not only did I avoid an uncomfortable procedure but also I’m not interested in escalating my UC treatment at the moment which sounded like it going to be based on the results. Reminding myself that it’s my body and I’m ultimately the one in control is a good thing.

So I canceled the appointment but kept the day off I had scheduled. Time off from work is pretty much my favorite thing these days, and as the perfect way to distract myself from the waiting game, I scheduled a massage with a boutique spa down the street that offers a hand massage but is incredibly hard to schedule around work. I had an envelope of money from my mom sent during the bad times last year that I’ve been saving in my desk drawer as my rainy-day-and-I-need-a-massage fund.

On the intake form I got to mark the ‘pregnant’ box for the first time ever and under ‘stage’ wrote 4 weeks, because for some reason the medical community thinks pregnancy starts before ovulation. Well the woman looks over my paperwork and has to talk to the front desk to confirm after explaining to me that spas generally don’t give massages to pregnant women in the first trimester because of the slight risk. She said they were happy to have me back in a couple months and would offer a good incentive like 50% off, although I didn’t get anything in writing so I’m not sure if I should just call back in that time saying, “Hey someone said you’d give me a discount…”

I do really want that hand massage so I’ll probably do it discount or not. For today I had to replace my indulgence with a cupcake from Cupcake Royale.

However I’m extra glad I canceled my original appointment. If letting someone rub my body is supposedly a risk, then I certainly feel justified in not wanting to let someone stick a camera up my butt.